8 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM 
while they smoked, beat a kettle-drum, and danced. In this manner the feast went 
on till midnight, when the greater part of them fell senseless to the ground, dead- 
drunk. As intoxication affects men differently, some of them seemed to sleep 
motionless, others staggered around weeping, shouting, or kicking about them desper- 
ately. While they were in this condition, their wives and friends, or children, came, 
took them home, and put them to sleep in their houses, where they continued sleep- 
ing till noon the next day, and some even till the evening of the following day. 
Any one of this people who does not take part in these drinking-bouts is considered 
aman unfit for war. 
‘““While they were weeping and shouting at the feast, it was a fearful thing to 
see their mad capers, and while they were getting more and more drunk we became 
still more apprehensive, not knowing what the end of the feast would be and that 
we might be exposed to great danger. The women, the wives of the most distin- 
guished men, act in the same way by themselves. Once indeed we thought 
that the dance and the drunkenness were becoming dangerous to us, the six or seven 
Spaniards who were present, and therefore we were on the lookout, and with arms 
ready, for, although we were not numerous enough to defend ourselves against such 
odds, still we were determined to sell our lives very dearly, and to try to kill the 
eacique and as many as possible of the leading men, without whom the lower people 
amount to but little, being quite lost and cowardly without their leaders. When 
the revelry was over, I said to the cacique that since he was a Christian, and also 
claimed that his best men and a great part of his people were Christians, they ought 
not to have started this drunken bout, because a man who is dead-drunk is nothing 
but a dirty brute. I also reminded him of the fact he already knew, that man’s 
best possession is reason and understanding, and that, the clearer his understanding, 
the greater is his advantage over other men, the more he is esteemed by others, and 
deserves their respect ; but the more foolish, doltish, or ignorant he is, the more he 
resembles the beasts. I further reminded him that Christians must not do what he 
did, who most nights slept with a virgin, which was a great sin and abomination in 
the sight of the Lord, nor was it right for him to have more than one wife, and he 
had many, besides those virgins, whom he deflowered. He replied that he saw an 
evil in the drunken revelries, but that they were a custom inherited from his ances- 
tors, and that, if he did not observe them, his people would not like it, but would 
consider him churlish and his conduct bad, and would leave the country. As 
regards the women, he said, that he would not have more than one, if it were possi- 
ble, and that he thought he would be more contented with one, than with many, 
but that their parents gave the virgins to him and requested that he should take 
