Nature of the American Indians

American Indians were most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They were by nature the most humble, patient and peacable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people were the most devoid of rancords, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. They were weak and complaissant and were less able to endure heavy labor and soon die off even from small maladies. They were poor people, they possessed very little and had no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason, they were not arrogant, embittered or greedy. As to their dress, they were generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They had no beds, but sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called hamacas. They were very clean in their persons with alert intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive hold Catholic faith, to be endowed with vitruous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith, they were so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and an observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries need to be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness.