334 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



by the savages and as they are thatched with palm leaves (palmicha), 

 they burn up at once and are abandoned. This gives the alarm to 

 their neighbors, who imitate their example by following the same 

 course and abandon everything, without the Spaniards being able 

 to get any benefit from it. Then they take to the Rio Choco in their 

 dugouts or rafts and go on downstream to some swamps formed by 

 the river, where they fish and live on the product of their fishing 

 until the Spaniards retire, for the country is rainy and unproductive, 

 although richest in gold in the Indies. 



1001. The best method to follow for the subjection of these 

 provinces and enjoy the great wealth of gold which God has planted 

 there, is for two captains to enter the country at the same time, one 

 up the Darien and the Choco, and the other across the Choco terri- 

 tory ; in this way the Indians will not be able to escape, and they will 

 have to give themselves up and become subjects. They have a large 

 stretch of rich land, covered however with woods, groves, and water- 

 courses. Between these Indians and the State of Popayan at one side 

 there are more than 4,000 hostile Indians of the Quirimbaraes tribe. 



1002. From Antioquia to the seacoast it will be over 150 leagues; 

 the very high and extensive Sierras de Abibe have to be crossed, 

 with thick woods and uninhabitable wildernesses. This State is divided 

 from the Corregimiento of Mariquita by the city of Los Remedios, 

 which lies at the apex of a triangle formed by Antioquia and Zara- 

 goza, to the ESE. It is separated from that of Cartagena by the 

 town of Mompos, which is almost straight N., over the vast wilder- 

 nesses formed by the Rio de Cauca and Rio de La Magdalena. 



1003. It contains within its district five Spanish settlements : three 

 cities — Santa Fe de Antioquia, Caceres, and Zaragoza ; and two 

 towns, San Jeronimo del Monte, and Guamaco, although Guamaco 

 falls within the Diocese of Cartagena. They have a Governor and 

 Royal Officials ; but the whole State comes under the jurisdiction of 

 the Circuit Court and Archdiocese of Santa Fe de Bogota ; Santa Fe 

 de Antioquia is in the Diocese of Popayan, from whose State admin- 

 istration it was severed by special agreement with Andres Valdivia, 

 so that the city might become a fortified post for the subjugation 

 of the country between the two rivers (entre los dos rios). 



1004. The original Antioquia was settled by Jorge de Robledo in 

 the year 1541 ; it was 30 leagues S. of where it is today. They 

 established Valdivia on Forge Hill (Loma de La Fragua), to main- 

 tain a post near their subjugated area, and then moved their city to 

 a point half a league from the Rio Cauca, on the banks of the Rio 

 de Tonusco and on the slopes of the high ridge of Buritica; this 



