Note 13 — ANDA’S MEMORIAL, 1768

Pardo de Tavera cites (note 11, pp. 56–58) a royal decree dated April 27, 1704, charging the governor (then Zabalburu) and Audiencia to restrain the friars from levying unjust exactions on the Indians. This decree was occasioned by the complaints on this score made (in 1702) by Archbishop Camacho; in it are enumerated the following acts of such injustice: “Besides the stipends which are paid to them from the royal treasury, they oblige every Indian in their districts to render them service in all their domestic necessities, and to furnish them with four fowls every day in each mission, and with fish, fuel, and everything else that the land (and even the water) produces. At the same time they collect from the Indians excessive fees, without observing the tariffs; for from an Indian whose property is worth four hundred pesos (which is the value usually of that belonging to the wealthier natives) they exact for a burial one hundred or two hundred, besides what they afterward receive for the funeral honors [i.e., ceremonies for the welfare of departed souls]; and twelve pesos for the offering for [wearing] the cope [del habito de la religión], or, if the natives are very poor, six or eight pesos, the religious making it necessary to the burial that he shall wear the cope; and when they lack means to pay for these, they serve the religious like slaves until they have earned what they need to pay these impositions. As for the marriages, the religious receive thirteen pesos for what they call the altar fee, and thirteen reals for the cross, and eight for the offering for the mass, and four for the veiling; even when they are very poor, the religious exact from them at least six or eight pesos as a requisite [for the marriage]. The Indians are, for a long time, living in illicit intercourse, because they have not the means to pay [these exactions]. In the baptisms they have introduced another tax after the offering; the rich Indian must pay up to twelve pesos for the silver cross, and the poor one pays, as such, for the wooden cross. Besides this, they also receive three reals every year from each Indian for the feast of the patron saint of the village, honors for the dead, and wax for the monument; and, added to this, one or two reals when they confess the Indians at the Lenten season—without giving any care or attention to their instruction, or to the greater service of the churches in their charge. They are deficient in almost all which belongs to their obligations as missionary curas, excepting the religious of the Order of Preachers and those of the Society, who treat the natives more kindly and instruct them better.” Cf. the “tariff of fees” drawn up by Camacho (VOL. XLII, pp. 56–64). ↑