with
white hair, mixed with the lads; and slouchy old women with their
scapularies, clapping their hands and singing nonsensical things with
the lasses. Scarcely is there an Indian who knows his age, and many
[172] do not know the baptismal names of their wives, after they have
been baptized for fifty years. [173]

42. They are so ignorant that they do not have the slightest knowledge
concerning the origin of the ancestors from whom they descend,
and whence they came to settle these islands. They do not give any
information concerning their paganism, which is not the worst; and
they only preserve in certain parts some ridiculous abuses, which
they observe at births and sicknesses, and the cursed belief that
persuades them that the souls of their ancestors or the grandfathers
of the families are present in the trees and at the bottom of bamboos,
and that they have the power of giving and taking away health and of
giving success or failure to the crops. Therefore, they make their
ancestors offerings of food, according to their custom; and what
has been preached to them and printed in books avails but little,
for the word of any old man regarded as a sage has more weight with
them than the word of the whole world. [174]

43. They act tyrannically one toward another. Consequently, the Indian
who has some power from the Spaniard is insolent [175] and intolerable
among them--so much so that, in the midst of their ingratitude, some
of them recognize it, although very few of them. Yet it is a fact
that, if the Spaniards had not come to these islands, the Indians
would have been destroyed; for, like fish, [176] the greater would
have swallowed the lesser, in accordance with the tyranny which they
exercised in their paganism. [177]

44. They are wanting in understanding and reflection, so that they do
not recognize any means in anything, but go to extremes. Consequently,
if one ask them for warm water, they bring it boiling, and then if they
are reproached and told that one wishes it more temperate, they go and
bring it back as cold as ice. [178] In this vicious circle of extremes,
they will continue ceaselessly without finding a mean. Consider then,
how they will act in prudential matters, where one must seek the mean
and not the extremes, as says the poet: [179]

Es[t] modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines.
Quos ultra, citraque nequit consistere rectum. [180]

This is the cause of great anxiety to us, and