The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 2, July 1898 - April, 1899 Page: 311
[335] p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Discovery of Bay of Espiritu Santo. 311
Fourthly, Captain Leon had a chum along, Captain So-and-So,
so honorable that he never failed to play the tale bearer and excite
quarrels; so kind-hearted that only his friend Leon drank choco-
late, and the others luke-warm water; so considerate of others that
he got up early in the morning to drink chocolate, and would after-
wards drink again with the rest; so vigilant that he would keep
awake and go at midnight to steal the chocolate out of the boxes;
perhaps this vigilance was the reason why, while, by order of His
Excellence, Captain Leon sho ld have left for the priests twelve
hundredweight of chocolate and the same quantity of sugar, he
left only six hundredweight of each.
This same fellow is so smooth-tongued that he told me once:-
"In truth, in truth, since the time of Cortes there has not been in
the Indies another man who can be compared with my protector
Gen. Alonso de Leon." This fellow of whom I have been speaking
is so compassionate towards the Indians that because he saw now
poor they were, and that their only clothing was the skins of ante-
lopes and buffaloes he endeavored to provide them in secret with
the articles which His Excellency had sent for them-e. g. blan-
kets, flannel, cloth and knives-but that fellow so arranged his
almsgiving, by first robbing the Indians of what they had, that his
gifts were equal to about one-fourth of his robberies.
Fifthly, when the Indians brought certain complaints against
the soldiers for entering their houses, Captain Leon never at-
tempted to remedy things at all. In one particular case, when the
brother of the governor of the Tejas came to us, complaining that
a rape had been attempted on his wife, I remonstrated with Cap-
tain Leon, about his letting such misdeeds go unpunished. I urged
that conduct like this would not be tolerated even among Moors
or heretics, and should be the more severely reproved in this case
because we had come among these heathen people in order to give
an example of right living. But Leon did not say a word-perhaps
because he feared exposure.
For lack of more time I shall now only add what is the most
noteworthy thing of all, namely this: While we were at the Tejas
village, after we had distributed clothing to the Indians and to the
governor of the Tejas, that governor asked me one evening for a
piece of blue baize to make a shroud in which to bury his mother
when she died; I told him that cloth would be more suitable, and
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 2, July 1898 - April, 1899, periodical, 1898/1899; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101011/m1/315/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.