Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende

among all those who have come to the New World.
    Valdivia traveled to Panamá by land, and from there, in 1537, along with four hundred soldiers, sailed to Peru. The journey took a couple of months, and when he reached his destination the Indians’ uprising had already been subdued by the opportune arrival of Diego de Almagro, who had returned from Chile in time to join his forces with those of Francisco Pizarro. Almagro had crossed icy peaks in his advance toward the south; he had survived incredible hardships and had returned across the hottest desert on the planet, a ruined man. His expedition to Chile had reached the Bío-Bío, the same river along which the Incas, seventy years before, had retreated when they had unsuccessfully tried to take the land of the Indians of the south, the Mapuche. The Incas, like Almagro and his men, had been stopped by these warring people.
    Mapu-ché, “people of the earth,” they call themselves, although now they are called Araucanos, a more sonorous name given them by the poet Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, who took it from who knows where—perhaps from Arauco, an area farther to the south. I intend to call them Mapuche—the word has no plural in my language—until I die, since that is how they call themselves. It does not seem just that their name was changed only to make it easier to rhyme : araucano, castellano, hermano, cristiano , and on and on for three hundred quartos. Alonso was a runny-nosed boy living in Madrid when we first Spaniards fought on this soil. He came to the conquest of Chile a little late, but his verses will tell the epic story through the centuries. When there is nothing left of the spirited founders of Chile, not even the dust of our bones, they will remember us through the work of that young man who, in his eagerness to make his lines rhyme, is not always faithful to the facts. Furthermore, he does not always present us in the best light. I fear that many of his admirers will have a slightly erroneous impression of what the war of the Araucanía was.
    Ercilla accuses the Spaniards of cruelty and an excessive hunger for wealth, while he exalts the Mapuche, to whom he attributes qualities of bravery, nobility, chivalry, a spirit of justice, and even tenderness with their women. I believe I know them better than Alonso because I have spent forty years defending what we founded in Chile, and he was here for only a few months. I admire the Mapuche for their courage and their deep love of their land, but I can tell you that they are not models of sweetness and compassion. The romantic love that Alonso so extols is quite rare among them. Every man has several wives, whom he prizes for their labor, and for bearing his children. At least this is what we are told by the Spanish women who have been kidnapped by them. The humiliations they suffered in captivity were so great that these poor, shamed women often choose not to return to the bosom of their families. On the other hand, I must admit that Spaniards do not treat the Indian women who serve them and satisfy their lust any better. The Mapuche do surpass us in some aspects. For example, they do not know greed. Gold, land, titles, honors, none of those things interests them. They have no roof but the sky, no bed other than moss. They roam free through the forest, hair streaming in the wind, galloping the horses they have stolen from us. Another virtue I celebrate is that they keep their word. It is not they who break pacts, but we. In times of war they attack by surprise, but not in betrayal, and in times of peace they honor accords. Before we came they knew nothing of torture, and they respected their prisoners of war. Their worst punishment is exile, banishment from the family and the tribe. That is more feared than death. Serious crimes are paid for with a swift execution. The condemned man digs his own grave, into which he throws small sticks and stones as he names the beings he