It is next in order to inform your Majesty of what is done here with the prelates; [36] it is as follows:  When a Spaniard comes to this country he is at once ordered to serve under the flag, although he may be a merchant who comes here to buy and sell.  The authorities say that for the present it seems proper to allow the merchants to depend upon their merchandise, and the encomenderos to live upon their encomiendas.  All the rest live a very poor and wretched life; for they are not supplied with any provisions, nor do they possess means to procure food and clothing.  Notwithstanding all this, they are ordered with great severity to assist the sentinels and aid in other duties of war, just as if they were well paid.  Hence ensue oppression and ill-treatment of the Indians; for sometimes when an Indian has some food that he has cooked for his own meal, a soldier enters and takes it away from him.  Not only that; they also maltreat and beat the Indians, and when I, being near at hand, go to them and reprimand them for it, they say to me:  “What is to be done? must we be left to die?” I assure your Majesty that in this matter I suffer an intolerable torment; because all come to me with their troubles, and I have not the means to remedy them.  I only pity them, and do what I can, with my limited means, to aid them.  Moreover, the encomenderos refuse to pay tithes, although they have been ordered to do so; nor can the royal officials pay me what your Majesty orders to be given me from your royal treasury, because they assert that no adequate instructions are sent them.  Thus I am without means for myself or for the poor.  The former governors were accustomed to divide among the poor soldiers some of the rice paid to your Majesty as tribute, in order that they might endure their misery; but now not even this is given to them.  It is a still greater oppression that the authorities neither consent to furnish them a living, nor give them permission to go in search of it or even to leave this island.  I gave to the governor the decree regarding this matter which your Majesty ordered to be sent; but nothing has been done, because in it your Majesty did no more than to order him to attend to it, and to do what he might think best.

The governor consulted me about his intention to add to the tribute of the Indians two more reals apiece, with which to support the poor soldiers; and I convened the fathers and the clergy to confer about this matter.  Seeing that this country cannot be sustained unless there are Spaniards in it, unless the encomenderos are supported, unless the tributes are collected with the aid and assistance of the soldiers here, and unless the Indians pay the tribute which the encomenderos levy for love of the faith, they concluded that the encomenderos are obliged to support the soldiers, who are necessary to render the country secure.  But, on the other hand, they considered that as the encomenderos of these islands are very poor, and some