Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/327

 where the people were, to learn if any of them would like to settle there. The land being good, about fifty of them, mostly of those who had come thither with me, consented, and thus, in Your Majesty's name, I founded there a town, which on account of the day of its foundation, being the Nativity of Our Lady, I named Natividad de Nuestra Senora. I appointed alcaldes and municipal officers, leaving them a priest, church ornaments, and everything necessary for the celebration of mass; I also left them workmen and mechanics, such as a smith, with a verygood forge, and his necessary tools, a carpenter, a shipwright, a barber, and a tailor. Among the settlers there were twenty horsemen and some crossbowmen. Finally I provided certain artillery and powder.

When I arrived at that town, and heard from the Spaniards from Naco that the natives of that and the neighbouring towns were all in a commotion, and had fled from their dwellings to the forests, refusing to return, although frequently invited to do so, for they remembered their injuries at the hands of Gil Gonzales, Cristobal de Olid, and their men, I wrote to the captain there to endeavour by all means to secure some of those Indians and send them to me that I might speak to them and calm them. He did this, and sent me certain persons whom he had captured in a foray he had made for the purpose. I spoke to them, and reassured them, and made some of the principal persons from Mexico who were with me speak also with them. These latter told them who I was, and of what I had done in their country, and of the good treatment all had received from me after they became my friends, and of how they had been protected and maintained in justice, they and their property, their wives and children; they told of the punishment which those who rebelled against the service of Your Majesty received, and of many other things which tended to pacify the captured Indians. Nevertheless, they still