24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 97 



desperate and without orders, sent a party of lo men through Olancho 

 to go to Trujillo. According to Bernal Diaz, they got as far as the 

 gold-working region on the Guayape River, when they learned of 

 Cortez' departure. Receiving orders from Saavedra to return, they 

 did so, and, Bernal Diaz remembers, they threw stones at the country 

 as they left. They met Marin at the pueblo of Acalteca and then 

 proceeded to another pueblo called Maniani, where they encountered 

 six of Alvarado's soldiers. In two days' marching they reached 

 Alvarado " near the town called Chuluteca Malcala." This was 

 probably the site of Tegucigalpa on the Choluteca River. From here 

 the combined parties proceeded toward Guatemala after a difficult 

 crossing of the Lempa River, which was then in flood. 



Years later, Bernal Diaz (1916, vol. 5, pp. 328, 329) thus recalled 

 the country of Naco and of the Ulua River, as it was when he first 

 saw it and as it soon became : 



and what I state I know, for when I came with Cortes on the expedition to 

 Honduras I was present in Trujillo, which was called by the Indian name of 

 Guaimura, and I was at Naco and the Rio de Pichin, and that of Balama, and 

 that of Ulua, and in nearly all of the pueblos of that neighborhood, and it was 

 thickly peopled and at peace (and the people were living) in their houses with 

 their wives and children ; but as soon as those bad governors came they destroyed 

 them to such an extent, that in the year fifteen hundred and fifty one, when I 

 passed through there on my return from Castile, two Caciques who had known 

 me in the old days, told me with tears in their eyes of all their misfortunes and 

 the treatment (they had received), and I was shocked to see the country in such 

 a condition. 



The details of this tragic and complex period in Honduran history 

 cannot be considered here. The withdrawal of Cortez threw the new 

 colony into turmoil and the starving colonists engaged in every form 

 of intrigue. Coming from Guatemala, Pedro de Alvarado took over 

 the governorship and set about pacifying the country. He built the 

 town of San Juan at Puerto Caballos and founded San Pedro. For 

 the Indians this was an even more tragic period. According to Ban- 

 croft (vol. 7, pp. 233-234) Indian slaves were kidnapped and sold in 

 Honduras by the shipload. In the vicinity of Trujillo where there had 

 been villages of from 600 to 3,000 houses, there were not more than 

 180 Indians left in 1547. Those not enslaved or killed had fled to the 

 mountains. At Naco, where there had originally been a population 

 of about 10,000, there were, in 1536, only 45 remaining. At La Haga, 

 a coastal town some 9 leagues from Trujillo, there had been about 

 900 houses, but of the entire population, only the daughter of the 

 Cacique remained. The cruelty toward the natives was even greater 

 than in Guatemala. In 1539, when Alvarado returned from Spain 



