Chapter Index

× Proem 1. Which Tells When the Fleet Sailed, and of the Officers and People Who Went with It 2. How the Governor Came to the Port of Xagua and Brought a Pilot with Him 3. How We Arrived in Florida 4. How We Entered the Land 5. How the Governor Left the Ships 6. How We Entered Apalachee 7. What the Land is Like 8. How We Left Aute 9. How We Left the Bay of Horses 10. Of Our Skirmish with the Indians 11. What Happened to Lope de Oviedo with Some Indians 12. How the Indians Brought Us Food 13. How We Found Out about Other Christians 14. How Four Christians Departed 15. What Happened to Us in the Village of Misfortune 16. How Some Christians Left the Isle of Misfortune 17. How the Indians Came and Brought Andrés Dorantes and Castillo and Estebanico 18. How He Told Esquivel's Story 19. How the Indians Left Us 20. How We Escaped 21. How We Cured Some Sick People 22. How They Brought Other Sick People to Us the Following Day 23. How We Left after Having Eaten the Dogs 24. About the Customs of the Indians of That Land 25. How the Indians Are Skilled with a Weapon 26. About the Peoples and Languages 27. How We Moved On and Were Welcomed 28. About Another New Custom 29. How They Stole from One Another 30. How the Custom of Welcoming Us Changed 31. How We Followed the Corn Route 32. How They Gave Us Deer Hearts 33. How We Saw Traces of Christians 34. How I Sent for the Christians 35. How the Mayor Received Us Well the Night We Arrived 36. How We Had Them Build Churches in That Land 37. What Happened When I Wanted to Leave 38. What Happened to the Others Who Went to the Indies
TOC
La relación - p.80
 


and then they returned to us, continually running while coming and going. In this manner they brought us many things for our journey. Here they brought a man to me whom they said had been wounded by an arrow a long time before, in the right side of his back. They said that the arrowhead was over his heart. He said that it hurt a great deal and that it caused him to suffer all the time. I touched him and felt the arrowhead and noticed that it had gone through cartilage. With a knife that I had, I opened his chest through to that spot, and saw that the arrowhead had gone through and would be very difficult to remove. I cut further, stuck the point of the knife in, and at last removed it with great difficulty. It was very long. With a deer bone, I practiced my trade as a physician and gave him two stitches. After I had stitched, he was losing a lot of blood. I stopped the bleeding with hair scraped from an animal skin. When I removed the arrowhead they asked me for it and I gave it to them. The entire village came to see it and they sent it further inland so that the people there could see it. Because of this cure, they made many dances and festivities as is their custom. The following day I cut the stitches and the Indian was healed. The incision I had made looked only like one of the lines in the palm of one's hand, and he said that he felt no pain or suffering at all. And this cure gave us such standing throughout the land that they esteemed and valued us to their utmost capacity.

We showed them the rattle, which we had brought. They told us that in the place from which it had come there were many sheets of that material buried and that they valued it very much and that there were settlements there. We believed that this was on the South Sea, which we always had been told was richer than the North Sea.

We left these people and wandered among so many others and so many diverse languages that it is impossible to remember them all to tell about them. They always looted one another, and that way those who lost and those who gained were equally happy. So many people accompanied us that