128 AVARICE OF SPANISH SUBORDINATES. Chap. VIII. 



worth two rials for one dollar, and in the same proportion 

 with knives, needles, dice, pins, cards, trumpets, rings, and 

 pewter mirrors, which are all quite useless to the Indians ; 

 besides velvets and silks, which the poor people cannot nse ; 

 for they are obliged to dress in the coarsest clothes, to sleep 

 on beds of rags, and feed on roots ; while the corregidors and 

 their dependants commit the most unjust extortions and 

 outrages. They even exceed the legal quantity of repartm 

 assigned to their respective provinces ; for example, that of 

 Tinta was ordered to be 112,500 dollars, and the corregidor 

 made it 500,000 dollars, as was proved by his books and 

 papers."^ General del Valle, who commanded the troops 

 employed to put do^^^l Tupac Amaru's rebellion, complained 

 that the avarice of the corregidors, in recovering their claims 

 on the Indians for repartos, was such that they refused him 

 the aid of their people in pacifying the country. Their 

 obstinacy and avarice, he declared, had readied to such a 

 point that, if they were informed that the rebels had reached 

 the very suburbs of their towns, they would rather see the 

 defeat of the king's troops than send away a single Indian 

 who might owe them a yard of cloth.''' 



This unblushing dishonesty and extortion, which was 

 winked at by the Koyal xVudience at Lima, the highest com-t 

 of judicial appeal, di-ove the Indian population to a state of 

 desperation, which only required a spark to set it in a blaze. 

 The humane laws, and the elaborate system of legislation for 

 the Indians, had, after 200 years of hopeless inefficiency, 

 ended in this. The careful enactments to limit the amount 

 of tribute, to prevent the Indians from suffermg by forced 

 personal service, the laws of ecclesiastical councils to protect 

 them from the exactions of the curas, the benevolent inten- 

 tions evinced in declaring all Indians to be minors in the eye 



5 Informe por Diego Tupac Amaru. I ^ liCtter from Gen. del Vallc to two 

 —Azu'ngarn. Oct. 18, 17S1. fAngelis). I friends at Lima, Oct. 3, 17S1. 



