This was not a solitary instance of rebellion, though, on the whole, the Indians endured their cruel fate with meekness and long suffering. Yet they are not a mean-spirited people, and at length they showed their oppressors that it was possible to press the yoke down too hard even for their powers of endurance. The tribute, the _mita_, the exactions of the curas, and the _alcabala_, or excise duties,[181] were all patiently borne; but another method of extortion, the "_repartimiento_," or "_reparto_,"[182] at length exhausted the patience of the over-tasked Indians. The _reparto_ was a system, ostensibly for distributing European goods to the Indians, which was converted into a means of wholesale robbery by the Spanish corregidors, and finally led to a general rebellion. An Indian chieftain thus describes the _reparto_ system:--"Abandoning their souls for their avarice, the corregidors have the assurance to distribute (_repartir_) by force, and against all reason, baize and cloths worth two rials for one dollar, and in the same proportion with knives, needles, dice, pins, cards, trumpets, rings, and pewter mirrors, which are all quite useless to the Indians; besides velvets and silks, which the poor people cannot use; for they are obliged to dress in the coarsest clothes, to sleep on beds of rags, and feed on roots; while the corregidors and their dependants commit the most unjust extortions and outrages. They even exceed the legal quantity of _repartos_ assigned to their respective provinces; for example, that of Tinta was ordered to be 112,500 dollars, and the corregidor made it 500,000 dollars, as was proved by his books and papers."[183] General del Valle, who commanded the troops employed to put down Tupac Amaru's rebellion, complained that the avarice of the corregidors, in recovering their claims on the Indians for _repartos_, was such that they refused him the aid of their people in pacifying the country. Their obstinacy and avarice, he declared, had reached to such a point that, if they were informed that the rebels had reached the very suburbs of their towns, they would rather see the defeat of the king's troops than send away a single Indian who might owe them a yard of cloth.[184]