l slavery: they also hid the truth by threatening
the Indians who showed themselves and by other means, such as withholding
facts from the licentiate Gregorio Lopez which he could not divine, but
which should have been told him. The only remedy for such injustices,
according to the officials of this house who are very good people as far
as I can see and who have consciences, is that Your Highness should order
to be proclaimed throughout Andalusia that all those who have Indians must
bring or send them to this house within a certain time, otherwise they
shall all be considered as free; adding other penalties for noncompliance.
According to the provision made by His Majesty, there should be an
immediate settlement of the pretensions of those who allege a title by
purchase, which allows them to hold an Indian as a slave until it is
ascertained from whom he was first acquired; for they stole them all and
sold them when they arrived here. Any such Indian should not remain in
their possession but should be placed where he could earn enough to clothe
himself and save sufficient to return to his country--because they subject
him to a thousand oppressions and cruelties. I have seen things of that
sort daily since my arrival. San Pablo is crowded with Indians who think
that I can take them or can relieve their captivity and the torments they
suffer. And their masters, discovering this by their absence promptly
beat them and put them in irons, even those whom the licentiate Gregorio
Lopez left neither in slavery nor free. Not to prolong this letter, I do
not relate many other things to Your Highness.

I likewise beg Your Highness to order some relief that is final and not
indefinite, for the men who were thus left neither slaves nor free:
because I do not know what relief it can be considered, to leave them
neither free nor slaves until they die; for meanwhile, they are daily
treated worse and worse by those who call them slaves and dogs, because
they consider that the licentiate Gregorio Lopez approved of their
captivity, etc., tying their hands the more tightly. I have seen what I
state ever since I came here. Your Highness would both laugh at and
abominate the spice dealers of this city, who barter spices for Indians
and for gold (as it is they who mostly own them), and their fierceness in
making war on the Indians, that makes them to seem like dummy lions,
painted. What I wish Your Highness would do to protect all such