The Indians were adopted one by another, in presence of the relatives.  The adopted person gave and delivered all his actual possessions to the one who adopted him.  Thereupon he remained in his house and care, and had a right to inherit with the other children. [150]

Adulteries were not punishable corporally.  If the adulterer paid the aggrieved party the amount adjudged by the old men and agreed upon by them, then the injury was pardoned, and the husband was appeased and retained his honor.  He would still live with his wife and there would be no further talk about the matter.

In inheritances all the legitimate children inherited equally from their parents whatever property they had acquired.  If there were any movable or landed property which they had received from their parents, such went to the nearest relatives and the collateral side of that stock, if there were no legitimate children by an ynasaba.  This was the case either with or without a will.  In the act of drawing a will, there was no further ceremony than to have written it or to have stated it orally before acquaintances.

If any chief was lord of a barangai, then in that case, the eldest son of an ynasaba succeeded him.  If he died, the second son succeeded.  If there were no sons, then the daughters succeeded in the same order.  If there were no legitimate successors, the succession went to the nearest relative belonging to the lineage and relationship of the chief who had been the last possessor of it.

If any native who had slave women made concubines of any of them, and such slave woman had children, those children were free, as was the slave.  But if she had no children, she remained a slave. [151]

These children by a slave woman, and those borne by a married woman, were regarded as illegitimate, and did not succeed to the inheritance with the other children, neither were the parents obliged to leave them anything.  Even if they were the sons of chiefs, they did not succeed to the nobility or chieftainship of the parents, nor to their privileges, but they remained and were reckoned as plebeians and in the number and rank of the other timaguas.

The contracts and negotiations of these natives were generally illegal, each one paying attention to how he might better his own business and interest.

Loans with interest were very common and much practiced, and the interest incurred was excessive.  The debt doubled and increased all the time while payment was delayed, until it stripped the debtor of all his possessions, and he and his children, when all their property was gone, became slaves. [152]

Their customary method of trading was by bartering one thing for another, such as food, cloth, cattle, fowls, lands, houses, fields, slaves, fishing-grounds, and palm-trees (both nipa and wild).  Sometimes a price intervened, which was paid in gold, as agreed upon, or in metal bells brought from China.  These bells they regard as precious jewels; they resemble large pans and are very sonorous. [153] They play upon these at their feasts, and carry them to the war in their boats instead of drums and other instruments.  There are often delays and terms for certain payments, and bondsmen who intervene and bind themselves, but always with very usurious and excessive profits and interests.