The first royal ordinances for the treatment of the Indians (1513)

The first body of royal law written specifically about how the indigenous people of the Americas were to be housed, fed, taught, worked and rested — thirty-two chapters despatched after the Dominican protest on Hispaniola. Read from the crown's own chronicle, the code turns out to contain both a forty-day rest and an order to burn the houses people were being moved out of, and to be followed at once by large repartimientos to the King's own courtiers.