Villagers bar their doors with canes and Columbus forbids entering houses

Having crossed this river, according to the Admiral’s account, with much difficulty, because it certainly must have been running very high with the floods, as I myself have sometimes seen it, besides being large in itself, he came upon a great town. Much of its people took to flight, hiding in the nearest woods as soon as they sensed the Christians. Another part of the people remained in the town and went into their houses of straw, and in all simplicity laid small canes across the doors, as if they were setting up some carts with culverins at the loopholes of a wall, reckoning that the Christians, seeing that obstacle of canes laid across, would recognize that it was not the will of the owners that they enter their houses, and would thereupon refrain from wishing to enter. What greater proof of their innocence and good simplicity? What more could have been practiced in that golden age of which the ancient authors, especially the poets, sing so many wonders and felicities? …