The Relaciones Geográficas de Indias and the printed questionnaire of 1577

On 25 May 1577 Philip II ordered a description of the Indies to be made by the people who lived in them, and sent out a printed questionnaire of fifty numbered chapters to be distributed town by town, in Spanish and in Indian settlements alike. It asked for latitude, distances and terrain, but also for what the town's name meant in the local language, whether there were more or fewer Indians than before and why, and whom they had obeyed and paid before the Spaniards came.