duct the ships and galleons
from Acapulco and other kingdoms? Is it the Spaniards? Ask that of
the pilots, masters, and boatswains, and they will all affirm that
this great and inestimable good is due to the Indian alone. (Here is
indeed where a hyperbole will fit exactly.) Besides this, who are
the people who support us in these lands and those who furnish us
food? Perhaps the Spaniards dig, harvest, and plant throughout the
islands? Of a surety, no; for when they arrive at Manila, they are
all gentlemen. The Indians are the ones who plow the lands, who sow
the rice, who keep it clear [of weeds], who tend it, who harvest it,
who thrash it out with their feet--and not only the rice which is
consumed in Manila, but that throughout the Filipinas--and there is no
one in all the islands who can deny me that. Besides this, who cares
for the cattle-ranches? The Spaniards? Certainly not. The Indians
are the ones who care for, and manage and tend the sheep and cattle
by which the Spaniards are supported. Who rears the swine? Is it not
the same Indians? Who cultivates the fruits--the bananas, cacao, and
all the other fruits of the earth? of which there is always abundance
in the islands, unless unfavorable weather, locusts, or some other
accident cause their loss? Who provide Manila and the Spaniards with
oil? Is it not the poor Visayan Indians, who bring it in their vessels
annually? Who furnishes so great profit to the Spaniards in Manila
with the balate [337] and sigay; and who buys these products very
cheaply from the wretched Indians, and resell them for double the sum
to the pataches of the coast and to the Sangleys? Who guide and convey
us to the villages and missions, and serve us as guides, sailors, and
pilots? Perhaps it is the Spaniards? No, it is the Indians themselves,
with their so exaggerated, magnified, and heightened laziness. Is
this the thanks that we give them, when we are conquering them in
their own lands, and have made ourselves masters in them, and are
served by them almost as by slaves? We ought to give God our Lord many
thanks, because He maintains us only through the affection and by the
useful labors of the Indians in this land; and He would perhaps have
already driven us hence if it were not for this usefulness of theirs,
and for the salvation of the Indians. We also owe many thanks to the
Indians, since God our Lord sustains us in their lands by their means;
and because we would die of starvation if