Second: in regard to the many occupations in which the Spaniards employ the Indians, such as setting them to row in the galleys and fragatas despatched by the governor and officials on various commissions, which are never lacking. At times they go so far away that they are absent four or six months; and many of those who go die there. Others run away and hide in the mountains, to escape from the toils imposed upon them. Others the Spaniards employ in cutting wood in the forests and conveying it to this city, and other Indians in other labors, so that they do not permit them to rest or to attend to their fields. Consequently, they sow little and reap less, and have no opportunity to attend religious instruction. It sometimes happens that while these miserable creatures are being instructed for baptism the Spaniards force them to go to the tasks that I have mentioned; and when they return they have forgotten what they knew; for this reason there are today many Indians to be baptized. In some cases when I have gone to a village to administer confirmation, I have returned without confirming any one, because the Indians were not in the place, but were occupied in labors ordered by the alcalde-mayor, and I could not collect them together. In proof of this, I send a mandate issued by a deputy of Tondo. (I was present at the time, and all the people were away, occupied in the tasks assigned to them; and the only Indians in the village were those who were being instructed for the reception of baptism.) This ordinance commanded all the Indians of the said village to cut wood, and those who were receiving instruction to quit it.
Third: Before the governor Don Gonçalo Ronquillo came, there were not more than three or four alcaldes-mayor in all these islands; but now there are sixteen and most of them are men who came with him. As they came poor, and as the salaries are small, they have taken away the Indians—as all affirm, and it is common talk—at the time for harvesting rice; and they buy up all other provisions, and many profit by selling them again. In this way everything has become dear, because, as they have forbidden the Indians to trade and traffic, they sell at whatever price they wish. Formerly the Indians brought their produce to the gates, and sold it at very low-prices; for they are satisfied with very little gain, which is not true of the Spaniards. But, not to ascribe all the guilt to men, but to our sins, the cause of this dearness has in part been that these years have not afforded as good weather as others. This is the state in which the country has thus far been up to the present.
Injuries inflicted upon the Indians
First: When a long expedition is to be made, the wrongs which they suffer are many. One is to despatch for the Indians who are to row in a galley or fragata a sailor who has neither piety nor Christian feeling. Moreover, it is notorious that, without inquiring whether an Indian is married or single, or whether his wife is sick or his children without clothing, he takes them all away. It has happened that when a husband has led this deputy to his wife, who was great with child, and has asked with tears that he might be left behind as she had no one to care for her, the sailor has beaten her with cudgels in order to make her go, and the poor husband also, despite his resistance. In other cases, their wives are abandoned when dying, the husband being compelled to go away to row. The Indians are put into irons on the galleys, and flogged as if they were galley-slaves or prisoners. Moreover, the pay that is given them is very small; for they give each man only four reals a month—and this is so irregularly paid that most of them never see it. The [officials of the] villages from which they take the rowers divide the pay among themselves, or give it to those whom they impress as oarsmen. This statement is thoroughly authenticated; for when the governor, Don Gonçalo Ronquillo, sent to the mines, in Vitis and Lobao alone they divided three thousand pesos belonging to the Indians themselves; and when he sent to Borney, in Bonbón they divided more than two thousand. They say that in all Pampanga five or six thousand pesos were taken, and similarly in all towns where they get recruits.
Sometimes they do not go at harvest-time to collect the rice which they say belongs to your Majesty, but only when it is very dear; and then they require it to be sold for the price which it was worth when they harvested. Sometimes the Indians buy back for five or six tostons what they sold for one. The past year, when the Indians ate shoots of palms and bananas because they had no rice, and many Indians died from hunger, they made them sell the remaining rice at the price which it was worth at harvest-time. Sometimes the entire quantity of his rice is taken from an Indian, without leaving him a grain to eat. One poor widow, seeing that they were carrying off all her rice without leaving her a grain to eat, took, as best she could, two basketfuls to hide under the altar, and there saved them; but it is certain that if the collector had known it, they would have been taken from that place.
Another injury that they do to this poor people, under pretense of its being for your Majesty, whereby your royal name is detested among them, is as follows. Formerly, when rice was plentiful, four hundred gantas were worth one tostón; your Majesty’s officials of La Pampanga furnished me with the price which it was worth. Last year the governor ordered that twelve thousand fanégas of rice be taken from La Pampanga for your Majesty, and that the Indians should give three hundred gantas for one tostón. It was then worth among them about a peso of gold, because it could not be had at any price. Many Indians died of hunger. The three hundred gantas which they took from them for one tostón were worth about six tostóns, and a person who wished to buy it could not find it. This present year, when they have so little grain and the famine is so great in La Pampanga, the Spaniards might have sent to other districts to buy rice, where—although they must go farther—it is more plentiful, and could be taken without injuring the Indians. Yet the Spaniards have chosen not to do this, but rather to order that it be taken from La Pampanga. And while the price among the Indians is fifty gantas for one tostón, they require them to give for your Majesty at the rate of two hundred and fifty gantas. At the season when this was collected, I was visiting La Pampanga, and I saw so much weeping and moaning on the part of the wretched Indians from whom they took the rice, that it moved me to great pity—and all the more since I could see so little means to provide a remedy; for although I wrote about it to the master-of-camp, who was at that time lieutenant-governor, it profited me little.
As for the means of collecting this rice, the alcalde-mayor or his deputy divides among the chiefs two, three, four, or more taes of gold (which is a certain weight worth five pesos), and orders that so many gantas of rice be collected for one tostón. Afterward they send, to collect this rice, men without piety; who, with blows, torture, and imprisonment enforce compliance with the rate of three hundred and fifty gantas for a tostón; and, in other years, one hundred of wine, and this year, sixty. It is a fact well established, for I have learned from the very persons who collect it that it often happens, that the Indian, not having so much rice as is demanded, is obliged to go to buy at the rate of fifty gantas for a tostón, and fifteen gantas of wine; and from him, as is said, they take two hundred and fifty of rice and seventy of wine for one tostón. If this occurred only with respect to rice, which is necessary for the expense which your Majesty incurs in this city, it would be but half a wrong, although I do not know what law permits them to invent one price for your Majesty and another for others. However this may be, I will pass on. But the real evil is that the governor, master-of-camp, alcaldes-mayor, your Majesty’s officials and other persons to whom these wish to give it, all consume it at this same price, and they also collect it at this price for the hospitals of the city. Although the governor, in the orders which he gives for the hospitals and for other persons, such as alcaldes-mayor, does not name the number of gantas to be given for a tostón, yet the rate is not higher than for your Majesty. He is at fault, in that—knowing that they collect at this price—he neither causes what has thus been taken to be restored, nor punishes him who transgresses in this matter; thus many dare to take rice from them at these same prices, knowing that they will not be punished. I know that many alcaldes-mayor, having orders from the governor to buy from the Indians of their districts three hundred fanégas from each single man and five hundred from each married man, take it at the aforesaid price, and even much more than they are permitted to take, and sell it again at the current price. I know that 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, injuries, and vexations, the torments and miseries, which the Indians are made to suffer in the collection of the tributes. The tribute at which all are commonly rated is the value of eight reals, paid in gold or in produce which they gather from their lands; but this rate is observed like all other rules that are in favor of the Indians—that is, it is never observed at all. Some they compel to pay it in gold, even when they do not have it. In regard to the gold likewise, there are great abuses, because as there are vast differences in gold here, they always make the natives give the finest. The weight at which they receive the tribute is what he who collects it wishes, and he never selects the lightest. Others make them pay cloth or thread. But the evil is not here, but in the manner of collecting; for, if the chief does not give them as much gold as they demand, or does not pay for as many Indians as they say there are, they crucify the unfortunate chief, or put his head in the stocks—for all the encomenderos, when they go to collect, have their stocks, and there they lash and torment the chiefs until they give the entire sum demanded from them. Sometimes the wife or daughter of the chief is seized, when he himself does not appear. Many are the chiefs who have died of torture in the manner which I have stated. When I was in the port of Ybalon some chiefs came there to see me; and the first thing they said to me was, that one who was collecting the tributes in that settlement had killed a chief by torture, and the same Indians indicated the manner in which he had been killed, which was by crucifixion, and hanging him by the arms. I saw this soldier in the town of Caceres, in the province of Camarines, and learned that the justice arrested him for it and fined him fifty pesos—to be divided equally between the exchequer and the expenses of justice—and that with this punishment he was immediately set free. Likewise I learned that an encomendero—because a chief had neither gold nor silver nor cloth with which to pay the tribute—exacted from him an Indian for nine pesos, in payment of nine tributes which he owed; and then took this Indian to the ship and sold him for thirty-five pesos. And although I told this to the steward and asked for the Indian, he remained in slavery. They collect tribute from children, old men, and slaves, and many remain unmarried because of the tribute, while others kill their children.