Diego de Madrid Avendaño, 1618 
75 
has been the very efficacious means of reducing and attracting them, which 
it has not been possible to accomplish before now by force of arms, in 
which his Majesty has spent many millions of ducats. To the great plea¬ 
sure and satisfaction of the said Indians, the said Fray Juan Bautista de 
Molinedo and Don Juan de Porras y Ulloa have assembled the said con¬ 
gregation entitled San Francisco at Rio Verde, and built a convent, where 
the Franciscan friars, of whom Fray Juan de Cardenal is superior, reside, 
and the Indians are very peaceful and content. . . . 
VIII. . . . That, for their better conservation and sustenance, the said 
Don Juan de Porras y Ulloa, at his own expense and out of his own 
fortune, and the said father Fray Juan Bautista de Molinedo with alms 
which he collected, caused a crop of maize to be raised in the year 1617, 
giving them for it oxen, ploughs and seeds, until afterwards when the said 
señor viceroy ordered them to be given, on account of his Majesty, two 
hundred bushels of maize for planting, fifty cows with two bulls, two 
hundred sheep with their rams, and a herd of twenty-four pigs—all for 
breeding—so that his Majesty might be relieved of the cost of supporting 
them. . . . 
IX. . . . That the said Don Juan de Porras y Ulloa has rendered to 
his Majesty at his own cost, without salary or any aid in expense, this 
service, which has been and is of very great importance, for, with the 
reduction and conversion of the said band of Mascorros and Guachichiles 
Indians, that province and its neighboring territories have been made safe, 
and the very great damage which the said Indians did has ceased. . . . 
XI. . . . That the licentiate Estéban de Porras, father of the said Don 
Juan de Porras y Ulloa, has served his Majesty for forty years in the 
office of relator of this royal Audiencia, and is at present serving in it with 
the satisfaction and approbation of the señores president and oidores and 
of the ministers and officials of the royal Audiencia, and of the litigants 
and all the government, conducting himself with great fidelity and recti¬ 
tude and living in a virtuous and Christian manner. He has supported 
and aided in every way that he could the matter of the conversion, reduc¬ 
tion, and assembling of the Chichimecos, Mascorros, and Guachichiles 
Indians and the other nations. . . . 
In the City of Mexico, the twenty-sixth day of the month of April, 
1618 . . . they ordered it to be taken to his Majesty’s fiscal of this royal 
Audiencia. 
The fiscal says that for the present there is nothing to be reported by 
the licentiate Don Juan Juárez de Ovalle. 
Very powerful sir: I, Don Juan de Porras y Ulloa, declare that the 
report on my merits and services was intrusted to the licentiate Pedro 
Juárez de Longorio, and at the time of his death it had been commenced. 
I ask and pray that your Highness will intrust it to another of the señores 
oidores , so that it may be finished and the opinion sent away by the first 
fleet or ship that sails; by which I shall receive benefit and favor with 
the justice that I ask, and for it, etc. Don Juan de Porras y Ulloa. 
