the cost of neglecting their fields or trades. There were also accounts of the friars physically punishing the Indians for their work or lack of it, "But one must accept with reserve the testimony of the Indians who complained of abuses by theDominicans during the construction of the convent at Puebla, claiming they were exhausted from work, and that one of the religious had loaded them with large stones and them beaten them over the head with a stick". (Ricard 170)The missions set up by the church were also guilty of abusing the native population. The Indians were supposed to benefit from these missions, but all they recieved from them was more misery. The Indians in having to support these new edifices and having toconvert to Christianity suffered from a double edged sword.The native americans had three responses to the thrusting of the Christian religion upon them. One response was the incorporation of elements of Christianity into their own religion, creating a new religious system. They took the beliefs out of the Christian religion that agreed or make sense with their religion and combined thetwo. "Ancient rituals attached to Christian ones included a sweeping ceremony that accompanied the bringing of the Eucharist to the sick, the lighting of fires on the eve of the nativity, the extreme use of self-flagellation, the burning of a traditionalincense before images of saint, dedicating strings of ears or corn to the Virgin". (Luenfeld 304) Some Indians outright rejected Christianity. An example of this written by Thomas Giles was, "among the Incas of Peru, baptism was considered subjection tothe invader; some Incan chiefs killed those who accepted the rite". (Giles 2) The Indians largely could not accept Christian beliefs because of the actions of the Christians themselves. The brutality and the lack of concern or remorse that the Spanish showed tothe Indians played a large role for the rejection of the Spanish religion. The Indians...
