Not less attention has been paid to the government of the Indians and natives of these provinces. I found them greatly oppressed and harassed by the many burdens, assessments, and services that were imposed on them for the service of your Majesty and the support of the government employees and justices. In regard to this matter, I held several conferences with the ecclesiastical prelates, the regulars, and the seculars. At these were present your Majesty's fiscal, the assessor of the government, and two encomenderos in the name of the others, and I conferred with them on the most important points. Later, with general consent, I made a new set of instructions and ordinances concerning the justices and encomenderos. By them was prohibited under heavy penalties whatever had been introduced that was harmful to the Indians. An attested copy of certain points was given to the superiors of the orders and to the ministers who are not regulars, of which it seemed best that they should be notified at the same meeting. They were strictly charged with the execution of those clauses; under penalty that if redress were not made by their own action, your Majesty will enforce it. And in order that some cooperation might be supplied on the part of your royal treasury to this general relief which we are trying to effect for the Indians, it was resolved, with the consent of the tribunal of the treasury, to pay the natives who serve in the naval storehouse, the rope-factory, and in the repairs of the ships of your Majesty, a moderate sum which seemed a just recompense for their labor. By that means, and without any remarkable cost to your Majesty (since other expenses were cut down), the villages were relieved of many thousands of ducados which they had to contribute (to their own ruin) every year for the just payment of the aforesaid services. Thus, adding to all this the efforts that, as I wrote in the letter on military affairs, have been made and are being undertaken in regard to their protection, I think everything possible will have been done this year for the just government and administration of these unfortunate natives. [_In the margin_: "Take it to the fiscal." "The fiscal says that from what this section shows, the zeal and care of the governor in the welfare, protection, and instruction of those natives ought to be esteemed, and he ought to be ordered to go ahead. At present nothing else in particular can be answered or advised, because this letter does not contain the matters mentioned in it and said to have been given to the religious orders, etc." "Advise him that the papers have not come, and that we are awaiting them, in order to decide as shall be most advisable."]