Note 2 — LETTER FROM THE ECCLESIASTICAL CABILDO TO FELIPE III

Opposite this city on the river side is a small hamlet containing less than one hundred native houses, all poor folk. They with the permission of the governor, come during the solemn feast to adorn and clean this poor church. That village is instructed by the cura of the natives of this city. The said fathers of the Society bought an estate in that village some years ago.2 Little by little they have been extending themselves in that village so that they now have the greater part of the little land that it contains. They rent it to heathen Chinese, from which results not only that the wretched Indians are despoiled of their lands whether they are paid or not and that they have no place where they may plant their rice fields except in the vicinity of the Chinese. That is very harmful to the Indians for the Chinese arc a vicious race with evil customs. It is also said that the above-mentioned father of the Society intends to beg your Majesty for the concession of the instruction of that village and another called Sant Miguel which lies on the other side outside the walls of this city. The inhabitants of the latter place attend service in the house of the Society, and they might be satisfied with that, and leave the instruction to the cura who is a canon of this church. The latter has no other income than fifty thousand maravedís, which your Majesty grants him for his curacy. We also petition your Majesty to concede us the favor to deny this to those fathers, and not to allow us seculars to be despoiled for the religious. For they have too much while we have some men so poor that they do not possess more than the alms of one mass.