brains. He is most valiant
and influential who has cut off most heads. No woman will marry any one
who has not cut off some heads. They are so inhuman and churlish a race
that they do not care whether those whom they kill are women, children,
or men. They obstruct the most needed road in the island, and occupy
the best land. They are near the province of La Pampanga, which is
inhabited by an agricultural people, who support Manila. They prevent
the latter from cultivating their fields, for seldom can the Indians,
whether men or women, go out to cultivate their fields, without their
heads being cut off. Although the governors have often sent soldiers
to punish them, scarcely have the latter ever killed one of them. For
they run like deer, and have no village or fixed abode. They do not
sow grain, but live on wild fruits and game. The most efficacious
remedy will be for your Highness to order that they be made slaves
of the natives of the province of La Pampanga; for with this, through
their greed to capture these enemies so as to cultivate their fields,
the Pampangos will subdue the country in a very short time, at their
own cost. I petition your Highness to commit this matter, as above
stated, to the Audiencia, archbishop, and bishops. This is a matter
of great importance. Slavery, as practiced among the natives, is such
that they are almost not slaves at all; and the system is of great
benefit to the country. If this matter be not remedied by the above
method, the many depredations that are committed will have no check.

Also, the reason why the enemies have become emboldened beyond
their wont is for the lack in those regions of ships fit for that
warfare. For that, it must be known that those people use certain light
craft called caracoas. Those craft are short and undecked. They have
one palmo, more or less, of freeboard; and they carry eighty or one
hundred Indians who act as rowers, who use certain oars one vara in
length. Each of these vessels carries ten or twelve fighting Indians,
no more. They cannot take the open sea, except when it is very calm
weather, nor do they carry provisions for even one fortnight. When
we Spaniards used those craft, and others called vireys, which
resemble them, they greatly feared us; for, since those craft were
as light as their own, we made great havoc among those people. And
finally--although at great cost to the natives who were drafted as
rowers--those ships made the country saf