They forced them to pay not only the tithes,
but extravagant prices for every church service, forty reals being charged
for a baptism, twenty for a marriage certificate, thirty-two for a burial,
etc. Such sums as these, which fairly beggared the poor Indians, enabled
the clergy to build costly churches and mission houses and to keep up
abundant revenues.
These general statements very faintly picture the actual state to which
the Indians were reduced. This may be better shown by some instances of
their sufferings. The Timebos Indians, for example, of the province of
Velez, New Grenada, were reduced to such extreme misery by the
embezzlement of the funds, that whole families flung themselves from the
top of a rock twelve hundred feet high into the river below. One night, in
order to escape from the cruelty of the colonists, the whole tribes of the
Agatoas and Cocomes killed themselves, preferring death to the horrors of
Spanish rule. Many Indians strangled themselves when in peril of being
enslaved by the Spaniards, feeling that a quick death was better than a
slow one under the torture of incessant toil.
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