“Listen to me, my dear sister, and keep to yourself what I shall tell you.  The insolence of these men, who expelled us from our homes, is such that the caciques of the country are resolved no longer to submit to their tyranny.  Five caciques [whom he named one after another] have combined and have collected a hundred uru.  Five thousand warriors on land and water are prepared.  Provisions have been collected in the province of Tichiri, for the maintenance of these warriors, and the caciques have already divided amongst themselves the heads and the property of the Spaniards.”

In revealing these things to his sister, the brother warned her to conceal herself on a certain day, otherwise she might be killed in the confusion of the fight.  The conquering warrior gives no quarter to those whom he vanquishes.  He concluded by telling her the day fixed for the attack.  Women generally keep the fire better than they do a secret,[2] and so it fell out that this young woman, either because she loved Vasco Nunez or because in her panic she forgot her relatives, her kinsmen, and neighbours as well as the caciques whom she betrayed to their death, revealed the same to her lover, omitting none of the details her brother had imprudently confided to her.  Vasco Nunez sent this Fulvia to invite her brother to return, and he immediately responded to his sister’s invitation.  He was seized and forced to confess that the cacique Zemaco, his master, had sent those four uru for the massacre of the Spaniards, and that the plot had been conceived by him.  Zemaco took upon himself the task of killing Vasco Nunez, and forty of his people whom he had sent as an act of friendship to sow and cultivate Vasco’s fields, had been ordered by him to kill the leader with their agricultural tools.  Vasco Nunez habitually encouraged his labourers at their work by frequently visiting them, and the cacique’s men had never ventured to execute his orders, because Vasco never went among them except on horseback, and armed.  When visiting his labourers he rode a mare and always carried a spear in his hand, as men do in Spain; and it was for this reason that Zemaco, seeing his wishes frustrated, had conceived the other plot which resulted so disastrously for himself and his people.

[Note 2:  Literally, Puella vero, quia ferrum est quod feminae observant, magis quam Catonianam gravitatem.]

As soon as the conspiracy was discovered, Vasco Nunez, assembling seventy men, ordered them to follow him, without however telling any one either his destination or his intentions.  He first rode to the village of Zemaco, some ten miles distant, where he learned that Zemaco had fled to Dabaiba, the cacique of the marshes of Culata.  His principal lieutenant (called in their language sacchos, just as their caciques are called chebi) was seized, together with all his other servants, and carried into captivity.  Several other natives of both sexes were likewise captured.