118 



THE PAMPAS INDIANS. 



listening to his report of the killed and wounded, I 

 happened, very simply, to ask him, how many pri- 

 soners they had taken ? The man replied by a 

 look which I shall never forget — he clenched his 

 teeth, opened his lips, and then sawing his fingers 

 across his bare throat for a quarter of a minute, 

 bending towards me, with his spurs striking into 

 his horse's side, he said, in a sort of low, choking 

 voice, Se matan todos," (we kill them all.) But 

 this fate is what the Indian firmly expects, and 

 from his earliest youth he is prepared to endure not 

 only death, but tortures, if the fortune of war 

 should throw him alive among his enemies; and 

 yet how many there are who accuse the Indians of 

 that imbecility of mind which in war bears the 

 name of cowardice. The usual cause for this 

 accusation is, that the Indians have almost always 

 been known to fly from fire-arms. 



When first America was discovered, the Spaniards 

 were regarded by the Indians as divinities, and 

 perhaps there was nothing which tended to give 

 them this distinction, more than their possessing 

 weapons, which, resembling the lightning and the 

 thunder of Heaven, sent death among them in a 



