The king our sovereign, your Majesty’s father, (may he be in heaven), having been informed of the slight service enjoyed by this church (which amounts to only four prebendaries, to whom a stipend is paid from your royal treasury), was pleased to despatch a decree ordering the president and auditors of these islands to inform him of the facts regarding this matter so that he could enact the advisable measures. An investigation was made in accordance with that order, and this cabildo published the need of this church of being better served than others, as it is surrounded by so many barbarous nations who are daily receiving the light of the gospel and entering through its gates. We petition your Majesty, as a service to your Lord to please consider this matter, and enact regarding it what most pleases you.
Report has also been given your Majesty that the royal Audiencia is trying to have the ecclesiastical judge plead its aid in arresting Indians. Were that to be done it would be a great wrong to the miserable wretches, for the aid is not given unless the secular judge first examine the acts which are not fulminated in regular form against the Indians. We however, proceed briefly and summarily against the Indians, conforming thereby with the royal decrees. If their aid had to be asked, it would necessarily become a cause for receiving witnesses and issuing peremptory orders, and the expenses which now amount to nothing would be heavy. The provisor is continually taking Indian women from the houses of the inhabitants and soldiers with whom they are living in evil relations. If account had to be given to the civil judge for that, delays would ensue and the [guilty] parties would hear of it and would hide themselves so that the sin could not be corrected. The correction of sin is the end of the ecclesiastical tribunal and it has no other object. Consequently, since the aid [of the Audiencia] is not asked for any matter concerning the Indians throughout the Indias, it would not be advisable to cause any innovation in this region where the Indians are so poor that besides a few chiefs no one possesses ten pesos’ worth of property. In consideration of the above arguments and others, the former Audiencia issued acts of revision and review, by which the ecclesiastical judge was permitted to arrest the Indians without any aid until your Majesty was consulted. We humbly petition you to please order the course taken in this hitherto to be followed; since in what concerns the Spaniards and other matters we conform so closely to the laws that we have never, so far as we are concerned, had any encounters with your judges.