Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/184

 what had happened, and to punish the culprits. They, hearing this, fled, and wandered about for some days until I captured them, so that the said alcalde mayor secured only one of the rebels, whom he sentenced to death; and this man appealed to me. I delivered those whom I had captured to the said alcalde mayor, who proceeded against them likewise, and sentenced them as he did the other, and they also appealed; the cases are now finished, and ready to be sentenced in the second instance before me. I have-examined them, and, while I think their error was very grave, still, considering the long time they have been in prison, I have determined to commute the death penalty to that of civil death or banishment, forbidding them to return to these parts without Your Majesty's permission under pain of incurring their first sentence.

During this time, the chief of the said province of Tututepeque died, and it and other neighbouring provinces rebelled, so I sent Pedro de Alvarado, and with him the son of the said chief whom I had kept here in my power. Although he had some encounters in which some Spaniards were killed, they resumed their allegiance to Your Majesty, and are now pacified and serve the Spaniards to whom they are surely and pacifically apportioned, although the town has not been resettled for want of people and because at present there is no need for it, as, since their chastisement, they are so subdued that they come even to this city when they are summoned.

Immediately after this city of Temixtitan and its dependencies were recovered there were reduced to the Imperial Crown of Your Cæsarian Majesty two provinces called Tututepeque and Mezclitan which are forty