The natives were wont to make captives and slaves with great readiness in illegal warfare, and for very slight causes.

This God remedied with the coming of our Spaniards.

It was usual for a man, with forty or fifty associates, or servants, to attack a village of poor people suddenly, when totally unprepared for such an assault, and, capturing them all, to make them slaves, without other cause or right; these they would keep as slaves for life, or sell them in other islands.

And should one loan one or two baskets of rice to another, of the value of one real, stipulating that it should be returned within ten days, should the debtor fail to pay it on the day set, on the next day he had to pay double, and the debt continued to double from day to day, until it grew so large that the debtor was forced to become a slave in order to pay it.

The Catholic Majesty, the king our sovereign, has ordered all those enslaved by this and similar means to be freed; but this just order has not been obeyed entirely, for those who should execute it have some interest therein.
All these islands were pagan and idolatrous.