Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/105

82 de Berrio, a native of Castile. Villagutierre continues (lib. ii, cap. 10): “He, having been there [at Zaclun] a matter of fifteen days, because he did not well agree with the affairs and actions of the Captain and the Soldiers, returned to Merida without saying anything to them, and he went to the presence of his Provincial, who, being informed of all that was going on, considered his retreat to that City [Merida] a deed well done.

“A second time Captain Mirones made complaint through Contador Eguiluz, and he asked, as he did the first time, for another Friar. The Provincial refused to give him one because of what had occurred with the other two whom he had sent before&hellip;.” As a result of these wranglings two Creole monks were finally sent to Zaclun.

Revolt of the Indians. After they had been ordered to go to Zaclun, they proffered various excuses, and the matter was ended at last by one Padre Fray Juan Enriquez, who offered to go thither himself. He was well received by Mirones; at about that time Bernardino Ek arrived with the news of the death of Delgado and his companions. Mirones would not believe him. He soon had ample cause to do so. On the Day of Purification, 1624, when all the Spaniards of Zaclun were at Mass, the Indians rose in revolt and put most of them to death.

Some time later Padre Fray Juan Fernandez and Captain Juan Bernardo came to Zaclun by way of Mani. The latter joined him at Mani, and as both were made suspicious by some Indians leading a mule of which they could not give a satisfactory account, Fernandez and Bernardo determined to go to Zaclun. When they reached that place they found the bodies of their compatriots, who had died “by the very arms with which they had thought to go against the Itzaex, in opposition to the orders and will of the King.” (Villagutierre, p. 144.) A Christian burial was given to the dead, after which Fernandez and Bernardo returned to Merida to report on what they had found. Eventually an Indian captain named Don Fernando Camal captured many of the aggressors, the chief of whom, Ahkimpol, with several others, was beheaded in Merida.

An Epidemic of Apostasy; the Third Phase of the Conquest