Daily quote by Spanish colonization of the Americas

• We traveled over a great part of the country and found it all deserted, since the people had fled to the mountains, leaving their houses and fields out of fear of the Christians. This filled our hearts with sorrow, seeing the land so fertile and beautiful, so full of water and streams, but abandoned and the places burned down, and the people, so thin and wan, fleeing and hiding.
  • Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Account of the Narváez Expedition (1542). Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions were shipwrecked and had lived among Indians for several years.