HISTORICAL SKETCH. 211 



associate the Indian villages with the towns 

 and cultivated lands of their more civilized 

 brethren, forming out of the whole a state, 

 or rather states, comprising a population 

 shaded off in various tints of civilization. 



Of the Indians existing at the time of 

 the Spanish conquest in Mexico and Peru, 

 immense numbers, it is well known, were 

 sacrificed through the cupidity and the 

 cruelty of their conquerors and oppres- 

 sors, who compelled them to a species of 

 labour in the mines, constructing roads, &c. 

 to which they were not accustomed, nor 

 their constitutions adequate. The conse- 

 quence was, that the Spaniards, who by 

 their extreme cruelty exterminated the 

 greater part of the natives, whom they had 

 previously reduced to slavery, had re- 

 course to the importation of negroes from 

 Africa, who became the substitutes for that 

 portion of the Indian population which had 

 p 2 



