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are very inclined and sometimes being lenient and tolerating them. Have confidence in us, Your Majesty. We are not doing this out of any desire to rule nor because we wish to have authority in such matters as these, neither because it has occurred to us to defy Your Majesty's commands, but rather because it is evident to us that it is of the utmost importance that we treat these natives in this fashion so that things can be done among them and with them. This has already been clearly seen, because once the Court arrived and it was known among the Indians that the priests were not allowed to punish them, more was lost in six months than had been achieved since we came here, because with the liberty they now have, they do not even wish to come to Mass nor bring their children to be baptized nor do they give their consent to the children receiving instruction in the faith and the chaste people we had created will be ruined and they are going into the mountains where they can live more freely being hidden from view and in many places they are performing their old rites as before without respecting the priests who are their teachers nor paying attention to what they are told, seeing that they can no longer be forced to do anything and if they are opposed they go to the court to lodge a complaint and they are heard in the court as if it were a question of a lawsuit between parties, and lawyers and clerks of which there is no lack incite them to this and the landowners encourage them and if the decision goes against their ministers then they want for nothing. And in this fashion, everything has collapsed so suddenly that there is no longer any trace of piety and it seems that we have only come to these lands to become involved in lawsuits and disputes and we are so discredited in the eyes of the Indians that they pay more attention to a magistrate's bailiff than to all the friars and priests.
God, to whom we must give account of what we write here, knows that we are not stating this for any selfish motive and neither because we are looking for an easy life instead of being involved in so much work as we have in these lands, but we write to Your Majesty in Spain from here because we clearly see that if we do not do so all our work will be in vain. And we are writing in this manner to Your Majesty so that, should our mission meet with Your approval, you graciously command that the obstacles we describe here should no longer be placed in our path, since otherwise we cannot fulfil our responsibilities. And, if our mission does not meet with Your approval or if we are not working in an appropriate fashion, we request Your Majesty's permission to abandon that which we so much wish to achieve.