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In a paroxysm of rage against his father-in-law, he declared to his wife that he was going to fight against him. She reminded him of the courage and singular strength of her father; when Cuseru, without uttering a single word, took a poisoned arrow, and plunged it into her bosom.
Cuseru became a christian only a few days before his death; but in battle he had for some time worn on his left hip a crucifix, given him by the missionaries, and which he believed rendered him invulnerable. We were told an anecdote that paints the violence of his character. He had married the daughter of an Indian chief of the Rio Temi.
Cuseru, the chief of the Guaypunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind the granitic mountains of Sipapo. He was the friend of the Jesuits; but other nations of the Upper Orinoco and the Rio Negro, led by Imu, Cajamu, and Cocuy, penetrated from time to time to the north of the Great Cataracts.
Whilst dining at the table of the Spanish general, Cuseru was allured by promises, and the prediction of the approaching fall of his enemies. From being a king he became the mayor of a village; and consented to settle with his people at the new mission of San Fernando de Atabapo. Such is most frequently the end of those chiefs whom travellers and missionaries style Indian princes.
The Caribs returned in such great numbers that only a feeble remnant of the Cabres was left on the banks of the Cuchivero. Cocuy and Cuseru were carrying on a war of extermination on the Upper Orinoco when Solano arrived at the mouth of the Guaviare.
"Let me labour with my people in clearing the ground," said Cuseru to the Jesuits; I will plant cassava, and you will find hereafter wherewith to feed all these men." Solano, impatient to advance, refused to listen to the counsel of the Indian chief, and the new inhabitants of San Fernando had to suffer all the evils of scarcity.
After the death of Macapu, the command devolved on another warrior, Cuseru, called by the Spaniards El capitan Cusero. He established lines of defence on the banks of the Inirida, with a kind of little fort, constructed of earth and timber. The piles were more than sixteen feet high, and surrounded both the house of the apoto and a magazine of bows and arrows.
When Cuseru, the chief of the Guaypunaves, saw the Spanish troops pass the cataracts, he advised Don Jose Solano to wait a whole year before he formed a settlement on the Atabapo; predicting the misfortunes which were not slow to arrive.
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