But even more shocking to Varo was the Comanches’ behavior at the fairs. Before handing over female captives, he reported, they “deflower and corrupt them in the sight of innumerable assemblies of barbarians and Catholics … saying to those who buy them, with heathen impudence: ‘Now you can take her—now she is good.’” The horrified priest attributed such acts to Comanches’ “unbridled lust and brutal shamelessness,” but it is likely that the public rapes were a way to generate markets for captives.
