beseech Your Majesties to order such measures taken as are most profitable to the service of God, and to that of Your Royal Highnesses, and so that we who are here in your service may also be favoured and recompensed.
Amongst other things which are contained in our instructions to our procurators, whom we send
Information
Against
Diego
Velasquez
to our Highnesses, one is to pray Your Majesties on our own behalf, that you should in no way give, or make concession in these parts, to Diego Velasquez Lieutenant Admiral in the Island of Fernandina of the adelantamiento, nor the perpetual governorship, nor any other, nor the charge of justice; and if any such has been given to him, to order it to be revoked, because it is not profitable to the service of Your Royal Crown that the said Diego Velasquez, nor any other person, should have authority, or any other perpetual concession of any sort, save as may be the will of Your Majesties, in this country of Your Royal Highnesses, inasmuch as it is, as far as we can foresee and hope, very rich. Moreover, far from profiting Your Majesties' service, should the said Diego Velasquez be provided with some office, we foresee that we, the vassals of Your Royal Highnesses, who have begun to colonise, and to live in this country, will be ill-treated by him, because we are convinced that, what has already
and, in accord with other authorities, asserts that while it existed amongst the Panuchesi, the only evidence of it elsewhere was the severe laws enacted for its punishment. He does not hesitate to say, that the accusation was made by some of the Spaniards to palliate their own excesses, — a peculiarly heinous tactic. The friars, who were later in the best position to know the morals and customs of the Indians, unanimously repudiate the charge. Amongst modern authorities, Orozco y Berra combats the imputation as unfounded. Bernal Diaz records that obscene images were found in the temples at Cozumel, and the Anonymous Conqueror describes in language which I do not translate, the debauchery common amongst the Indians of Panuco, and gives some singular details of their different ways of intoxicating themselves, similar to nothing I have ever heard of amongst any people, ancient or modern (Apud Icazbalceta, Doc. Ined. II Modo di Sacrificare, etc.).
