'
'I thank you, my people,' she said, 'for I have still much to tell you.
Our crime is then, that we drew an army after us to fight against the
Teules. And how did we draw this army? Did I command you to muster your
array? Nay, I set out my case and I said "Now choose." You chose, and of
your own free will you despatched those glorious companies that now are
dead. My crime is therefore that you chose wrongly as you say, but as I
still hold, most rightly, and because of this crime I and my husband are
to be given as a peace offering to the Teules. Listen: let me tell you
something of those wars in which we have fought before you give us to
the Teules and our mouths are silent for ever. Where shall I begin? I
know not. Stay, I bore a child--had he lived he would have been your
prince to-day. That child I saw starve to death before my eyes, inch by
inch and day by day I saw him starve. But it is nothing; who am I that
I should complain because I have lost my son, when so many of your sons
are dead and their blood is required at my hands? Listen again:' and
she went on to tell in burning words of the horrors of the siege, of the
cruelties of the Spaniards, and of the bravery of the men of the Otomie
whom I had commanded. For a full hour she spoke thus, while all that
vast audience hung upon her words. Also she told of the part that I
played in the struggle, and of the deeds which I had done, and now and
again some soldier in the crowd who served under me, and who had escaped
the famine and the massacre, cried out:
'It is true; we saw it with our eyes.
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