with exaltation to so sublime an estate; their cupidity with power
will be better fed; their laziness, with the lack of necessity;
and their vanity, with the applause that they would wish to have,
for they would desire to be served by those whom they would in
another estate respect and obey; and the villages would suffer
from the curse mentioned in Isaiah xxiv, 2, sicut populus, sic
sacerdos. For the Indian who is ordained does not become a priest
because it is the calling that conduces to the most perfect estate,
[301] but because of the great and almost infinite advantage that
comes to him with the new estate that he chooses. How much it differs
from being a father cura, to be a baguntao or sexton! From paying
tribute, to being paid a stipend! From going to the [compulsory]
cutting of timber, to being served in it! From rowing in a banca,
to be rowed in it! That does not count with a Spaniard, who, if he
become a cleric, often gives up an office as alcalde-mayor, captain,
or general, with many other comforts in his native place, while his
house is exalted above all the nation of the Indians. Let one contrast
this with the vanity with which one who has been freed from the oar,
[302] or from an ax in the cutting of timber, will give his hand to be
kissed! What a burden for the village will be the father, and mother,
sister and nieces ranked as ladies, when many other better women are
pounding rice! For if the Indian is insolent and intolerable with
but little power, what will he be with so much superiority! And if
the wedge from the same log [303] is so powerful, what will it be if
driven by so great authority! What plague of locusts can be compared
to the destruction that they would cause in the villages? [304] What
respect will the Indians have for him, seeing that he is of their
color and nation--and especially those who consider themselves as
good, and even better perhaps, than he who became a cura, while they
do not become anything better than bilango or servant? How severely
the good cura will chastise them, and for trifling offenses! [305]
as we see the Indians do when they act as gobernadorcillos of their
villages for even a single year--when the first thing that they do,
and in which they most delight, is immediately to place the picota
[306] in front of their houses, in order to apply lashes with the
hangman's strap [penca]. What tyranny will the cura practice on
them, such as they are wont to practice if they