The Mexicans then played another card. They proclaimed their absolute authority over Eastern Yucatan, and granted concessions of the wood-cutting lands to Mexicans. Such proclamation was in direct breach of the Treaty rights of the Indians, and in contradiction of their own deliberate statement to the British Government that these Indians were independent. It was a Machiavellian scheme, and succeeded. The Indians naturally resented the companies' trespass, and, after due warnings, killed the trespassers. This was just what Mexico expected, and wanted. Talking blather about unprovoked outrages, cannibals, and a menace of savages to the Republic, she started a war of extermination. From the first it was as cowardly a war as it is now. Troops were sent before dawn to surprise defenceless villages. Men, women, and children were butchered as they slept. In one case, that of Chansenote, a settlement of many hundreds was so successfully wiped out that when we visited the district the inhabitants numbered about thirty. To the south of the Peninsula the same policy has been pursued. The Indians have been ruthlessly massacred, whenever a cowardly opportunity offered. The Mexican troops have invariably got the worst of it in such open fighting as the country permits.[5] Their actual invasions of the Indian strongholds have always resulted in their withdrawal without the slightest permanent success. The Indians are now concentrated at Tuloom, on the mainland opposite the island of Cozumel. Three times the Mexicans have taken this place, and three times have been obliged to evacuate it.