450 FIRST INHABITANTS OF MEXICO. 



LIB. vir. was to hunt, wherein they were very expert. They lived in 

 the roughest partes of the mountaines beastlike, without any 

 pollicie, and they went all naked. They hunted wilde 

 beasts, hares, connies, weezles, mowles, wilde cattes, and 

 birdes, yea vncleane beasts, as snakes, lizards, locusts, and 

 wornies, whereon they fed, with some hearbs and rootes. 

 They slept in the mountaines, in caves and in bushes, and 

 the wives likewise went a hunting with their husbandes, 

 leaving their yoong children in a little panier of reeds, tied 

 to the boughs of a tree, which desired not to suck vntill 

 they were returned from hunting. They had no superiors, 

 nor did acknowledge or worship any gods, neyther haddo 

 any manner of ceremonies or religion. 



There is yet to this day in New Spaine of this kinde of 

 people, which live by their bowes and arrowes, the which 

 are very hurtfull, for that they gather together in troupes to 

 doe mischiefe, and to robbe : neither can the Spaniards by 

 force or cunning reduce them to any pollicie or obedience : 

 for having no towns nor places of residence, to fight with 

 them, were properly to hunt after savage beasts, which 

 scatter and hide themselves in the most rough and covered 

 places of the mountaines. Such is their maner of living 

 even to this day, in many Provinces of the Indies. In the 

 Bookes De procuranda Indorum salute, they discourse 

 chiefly of this sort of Indians, where it is saide that 

 they are to be constrained and subiected by some honest 

 force, and that it is necessary first to teach them that they 

 are men, and then to be Christians. Some will say that 

 those in New Spaine, which they call Otoinies, were of this 

 sort, being commonly poore Indians, inhabiting a rough 

 and barren land, and yet they are in good numbers, and 

 live together with some order, and such as do know them, 

 find them no lesse apt and capable of matters of Christian 

 religion, than others which are held to be more rich and 

 better governed. Comming, therefore, to our subiect, the 



