at they also go to collect,
at the price fixed for your Majesty, for themselves and their friends,
much more rice than they have a right to take according to order. The
same is true in regard to cutting timber.

They compel the Indians to work at tasks in the service of your
Majesty, paying them but little, and that irregularly and late,
and often not at all.

I do not mention the injuries which the Indians received from the
Spaniards during the conquest, for from what happened to them in
other parts of the Yndias can be inferred what would happen here,
which was not less, but in many places much more. I speak of what has
happened and now happens in the collection of the tributes, so that
your Majesty may see if it is right to overlook or tolerate things
which go so far beyond all human justice.

As for the first, your Majesty may be assured that heretofore these
Indians never have understood, nor have they been given to understand,
that the Spaniards entered this country for any other purpose than
to subjugate them and compel them to pay tributes. As this is a
thing which all peoples naturally refuse, it follows that where
they have been able to resist they have always done so, and have
gone to war. When they can do no more, they say that they will pay
tribute. And these people the Spaniards call pacified, and say that
they have submitted to your Majesty! And without telling them more of
God and of the benefits which it was intended to confer upon them,
they demand tribute from them each year. Their custom therein is as
follows. As soon as the Spaniards have subjugated them, and they have
promised to pay tribute (for from us Christians they hear no other
word than "Pay tribute"), they say to the natives, "You must give so
much a year." If they are not allotted in encomiendas, the governor
sends some one to collect the tributes; but it is most usual to allot
them at once in an encomienda to him who has charge of collecting the
tributes. Although the decree relating to encomiendas says, "Provided
that you instruct them in the matters of our most holy faith," the
only care that they have for that is, that the encomendero takes with
him eight or ten soldiers with their arquebuses and weapons, orders
the chiefs to be called, and demands that they give him the tributes
for all the Indians of their village. Here my powers fail me, I lack
the courage, and I can find no words, to express to your Majesty the
misfortunes, inj