trade with them. Although they are of another people and language, they understand the language of the people with whom we were. They had arrived there with their lodges that very day. Then the people offered us many prickly pears because they had heard about us and how we healed and about the wonderful works that our Lord did through us. If God had done nothing else, it would have been wonderful enough for him to have led our way through such a desolate land and to provide us with people where for a long time there had been none, and to deliver us from so many dangers and not allow us to be killed, and to feed us when we were so hungry, and to inspire those people to treat us well, as we shall explain later.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

How We Cured Some Sick People

The very night we arrived, some Indians came to Castillo telling him that their heads hurt a great deal, and begging him to cure them. After he made the sign of the cross on them and commended them to God, they immediately said that all their pain was gone. They went to their lodges and brought many prickly pears and a piece of venison, which we did not recognize. Since news of this spread among them, many other sick people came to him that night to be healed. Each one brought a piece of venison and we had so much we did not know where to put the meat. We thanked God heartily because his mercy and kindness grew every day. After the healings were finished, they began to dance and perform their areítos and festivities until sunrise. The merrymaking caused by our arrival lasted three days. At the end of the three days, we asked them about the country ahead and about the people that we would find in it and what food was available in it. They replied that throughout that land there were many prickly pears, but that their season was over, and that there were no people, since