91.]
[Footnote 21: Ibid., ubi supra.]
In this valley Pizarro halted for several days, while he
refreshed his troops from the well-stored magazines of the Incas.
His first act was to bring Challcuchima to trial; if trial that
could be called, where sentence may be said to have gone hand in
hand with accusation. We are not informed of the nature of the
evidence. It was sufficient to satisfy the Spanish captains of
the chieftain's guilt. Nor is it at all incredible that
Challcuchima should have secretly encouraged a movement among the
people, designed to secure his country's freedom and his own. He
was condemned to be burnt alive on the spot. "Some thought it a
hard measure," says Herrera; "but those who are governed by
reasons of state policy are apt to shut their eyes against every
thing else." *22 Why this cruel mode of execution was so often
adopted by the Spanish Conquerors is not obvious; unless it was
that the Indian was an infidel, and fire, from ancient date,
seems to have been considered the fitting doom of the infidel, as
the type of that inextinguishable flame which awaited him in the
regions of the damned.
[Footnote 22: Hist. General, dec. 5, lib. 6 cap. 3.]
Father Valverde accompanied the Peruvian chieftain to the stake.
He seems always to have been present at this dreary moment,
anxious to profit by it, if possible, to work the conversion of
the victim. He painted in gloomy colors the dreadful doom of the
unbeliever, to whom the waters of baptism could alone secure the
ineffable glories of paradise.
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