"Learning that the Spaniards were coming, one day [the cacique]
gathered all his people together to remind them of the
persecutions that the Spanish had inflicted on the people of
Hispaniola: ‘Do you know why they persecute us?’ The replied:
‘They do it because they are cruel and bad.’ ‘I will tell you
why they do it,’ the cacique stated, ‘and it is this - because
they have a lord whom they love very much, and I will show him
to you.’ He held up a small basket made from palm full of gold,
and he said, ‘Here is their lord, whom they serve and adore… To
have this lord, they make us suffer, for him they persecute us,
for him they have killed our parents, brothers, all our people…
Let us not hide this lord from the Christians in any place, for
even if we should hide it in our intestines, they would get it
out of us; therefore let us throw it in this river, under the
water, and they will not know where it is.’ Whereupon they threw
the gold into the river." Bartolomé de Las Casas, oral history
collected from Tainos