La Relación - page 100

La Relación - page 100

repay and reward good people and condemn bad people to eternal punishment with fire. We told them to say that when good people died, God took them to heaven, where no one ever died or was hungry or cold or thirsty or in need of anything, but instead experienced the greatest bliss imaginable; and that in the case of those people who refused to believe him or obey his commandments, God would cast them under the earth in the company of demons, into a great fire that would never end and would torment them forever; and that, besides this, if they wanted to be Christians and serve God the way we told them to, the Christians would consider them brothers and treat them very well. And we would tell the Christians not to harm them nor remove them from their lands, but instead to be their good friends. But if the Indians refused to do this, the Christians would treat them very badly and take them to other lands as slaves.

The Indians replied to the interpreter that they would be very good Christians and they would serve God. When they were asked what they worshipped and sacrificed and whom they petitioned for water for their cornfields and health for themselves, they replied that it was a man who was in heaven. We asked them his name and they told us he was named Aguar, and that they believed that he had created the whole world and everything in it. We asked them how they knew this and they said their fathers and grandfathers had told them so, for they had known about this for a long time, and they knew that water and all good things were sent by him. We told them that we called the man they were describing God, and that they should also call him God and serve him and worship him as we had told them to do, and that things would turn out very well for them. They replied that they understood everything very well and would do so.

We ordered them to come down from the mountains in peace and feel safe to populate the land and build their houses. Among their houses we told them to build one for God and to place at the entrance a cross like the one we had, and to greet arriving Christians with crosses in their hands and not with bows and arrows, and to take them to their houses

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