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 Indians as are left neither slaves or freemen and all who are bound in any way, would be to oblige their owners to exhibit a receipt of the sale: because it is clear to every one, save to those whose perceptions God has allowed to be weakened by their malice, audacity, and ambition, that there has never been a war in all the Indies for which there was any real authority given by His Majesty or by his royal predecessors. The royal instructions on this point have never been heeded, as I have seen and on my conscience affirm, and as all those violaters admit. Consequently, as there was never just cause, it follows that all the wars were unjust and that no Indians could have been justly enslaved: all the more so since the Spaniards attacked them in time of peace and captured millions of them. This being the real truth, Your Highness should order that all such owners be obliged to prove the title of him who sold any such Indian, and so on back till the first one who stole or treacherously captured him is unearthed. In the meantime the Indians should be taken from them and placed as above indicated, all of which should be done within a limited time, so that the legal proceedings would not last eternally; and when they are finished the said Indian should be declared free. But what I would take on my conscience and would answer for to God on my deathbed is, that Your Highness should proclaim throughout this kingdom that all the Indians here must be free—because in truth they are just as free as I am. In this Casa de Contractacion, outside its judges and officials such as the treasurer, accountant, and agents, who seem to me to be those I have mentioned above, and some few minor officials, I see there is little zeal or kindness for the Indians, and I observe such disinclination to accomplish anything in their favour, that however small may be the pendulum, they work it with as much effort as though it were a tower they had to move.