Their arms were arrows and bows, which they carried only for the purpose of defending themselves against attacks of the Spaniards; for they did not harm those who passed by peacefully and who let them have a part of the provisions they carried.  They often declared that their principal reason for resorting to these mountains was to be ready to join the English or Dutch, if these some day appeared in the Gulf, for they well knew that these, unlike the Spaniards, would let them live in peace.

Among the most remarkable facts learned by Thomas Gage in Guatemala is the story of a Negro freedman who had accumulated great wealth.  This Negro lived in Agua Caliente, an Indian village, on the road to Guatemala City, or Antigua, where the natives had obtained considerable quantities of gold from some spot in the mountains only known to them.  The Spaniards, not content with an annual tribute paid them by the Indians, endeavored in vain to force the natives to show them the mine, and because they refused killed them, thus gaining no knowledge of the mine for which they were still searching in vain in the times of Thomas Gage.  “In that place of Agua Caliente,” continues Gage, “there is a Negro who lives and receives very well the travelers who call upon him.  His wealth consists in cattle, sheep, and goats, and he furnishes the city of Guatemala and the environments with the best cheese to be found in the country.  But it is believed that his wealth does not come so much from the produce of his farm and his cattle and cheese, but from that hidden treasure which is believed known to him.  He, therefore, has been summoned to the Royal Audience in Guatemala, but he has always denied to have any knowledge of it.”

He had been suspected because he had formerly been a slave and had secured his liberty by means of a considerable sum.  After that, he had bought his farm and much of the surrounding land and had considerably increased his original holdings.  To his inquisitors he replied that, “when young and still a slave he had a kind master who suffered him to do what he pleased, and that by economy he had accumulated where-with to buy his liberty and afterwards a little house to live in; and God had given His blessing to that and let him have the means for increasing his funds.”

Another one of Gage’s accounts discloses the abuses common among the slave-holders under Spanish rule, and the silliness of the belief that the masters for their own benefit would treat their human property well.  This account refers to one Juan Palomeque, a rich landowner and promoter of mule-transports, who lived in Gage’s parish of Mexico, near the actual capital of Guatemala.  He was believed to be worth six hundred thousand ducats, about 1,400,000 dollars.  He owned about a hundred Negroes, men, women, and children, but was so stingy that, to avoid the expense of decent house-keeping, he never lived in the city, though he had several houses there.  Instead, he lived in a straw-hut and feasted on hard, black bread and on tasajo, or thin strips of salt beef dried in the sun.