ar supplicating His
Majesty with importunate insistence, that he should not concede nor
permit that which the tyrants have invented, pursued, and put into
execution, calling it Conquests; which if permitted, will be
repeated; because these acts in themselves, done against those
pacific, humble, and mild Indian people, who offend none, are
iniquitous, tyrannous, condemned and cursed by every natural,
divine, and human law.
5. So as not to keep criminal silence concerning the ruin of numberless
souls and bodies that these persons cause, I have decided to print
some, though very few, of the innumerable instances I have collected
in the past and can relate with truth, in order that Your Highness
may read them with greater facility.
6. Although the Archbishop of Toledo, Your Highness' Preceptor, when
Bishop of Cartagena, asked me for them and presented them to Your
Highness, nevertheless, because of the long journeys by sea and land
Your Highness has made, and of the continual royal occupations, it
may be that Your Highness either has not read them or has already
forgotten them.
7. The daring and unreasonable cupidity of those who count it as
nothing to unjustly shed such an immense quantity of human blood,
and to deprive those enormous countries of their natural inhabitants
and possessors, by slaying millions of people and stealing
incomparable treasures, increase every day; and they insist by
various means and under various feigned pretexts, that the said
Conquests are permitted, without violation of the natural and divine
law, and, in consequence, without most grievous mortal sin, worthy
of terrible and eternal punishment. I therefore esteemed it right
to furnish Your Highness with this very brief summary of a very long
history that could and ought to be composed, of the massacres and
devastation that have taken place.
8. I supplicate Your Highness to receive and read it with the clemency,
and royal benignity he usually shows to his creatures, and servants,
who desire to serve solely for the public good and for the
prosperity of the State.
9. Having seen and understood the monstrous injustice done to these
innocent people in destroying and outraging them, without cause or
just motive, but out of avarice alone, and the