e have an organized state, and others not?" And if
this so brave people settle in communities and bind themselves with
laws and government, they will in time lose that natural haughtiness
and adopt different customs. For if animals incapable of reason are
domesticated by human intercourse and lose their fierceness, men
capable of reason will do it much more. The negroes furnish us with
an example of this. Although they appear a race that seems the scum of
the world--so wild [100] when they are brought, that they even appear
more bestial than the beasts themselves--yet, after intercourse with
a civilized people, they learn at last to act like human beings. Now
how much better would the Indians of these islands do this, in whom
has been found much capacity for whatever we have tried to teach
them! Those only who are unwilling do not learn--through laziness,
and because they see what little gain they derive from it. Who will
doubt that some of them make excellent scribes, so that even the
Castilians are children compared to them. Some are excellent singers,
and there are choruses of musicians in Manila who would be notable
in Espana. For one to become an excellent tailor, all that is needed
is for him to see the work. They make very good carpenters; and this
trade is not taught them, but they only have to see it. For in what
pertains to _agibilibus_ [101] they are better than we, for they are
more phlegmatic. The Indian women have more capacity, and learn easily
to use the needle, when they see it, thus they are more skilful than
the Spanish women reared here; therefore the articles of handiwork that
have been exported from these islands are numberless. And all these
Indian women live where there are religious, which is quite different
from the visitas, with which there is no comparison. [102] The women
of the visitas tremble before a religious. When the religious talks to
them in the church or elsewhere, they do not understand him. They are
thoughtless beings, and seem even more heedless than beasts. I shall
prove this proposition. While I was visiting the Sibuyan Islands,
I was trying to confess those people, who, although truly many of
them were Christians, had never been confessed, perhaps because no
more could be done with them. I performed all my duties in order
to persuade a people so rustic and rude, and without sense, to make
confession. At that time an honorable Spaniard, one Alonso de Barco,
who was married to a