| Summary: | Anyone working on colonial Amerindian history dreams of finding an autonomous voice, a petition freely presented by some indigenous authority to the main local Spanish power representative, in order to claim his and his subjects' legitimate rights on their ancestors' lands, thus allowing to locate them at the same time. This paper presents and transcribes a document that seems to fit such features. The positive answer given to cacique Calibay's petition by the governor lieutenant may lead one to believe in a enviable and quite rare—especially in late 16th century Tucumán—situation of “negotiation” between “actors”, contrasting with the age-old asymmetrical frame of the Conquest. The document is all the more remarkable since it is extremely early: the petition is dated February 1, 1586, meaning it would testify to the state of relationships between the vecinos of the recently born Salta city (founded less than four years before, on April 16, 1582) and the Pulares Indians. The main interest of this document does not rest upon its historical condition only, it also relies on the very status it has been endowed with in the historiographic tradition, and more particularily in ethnohistory and historical archeology works dealing with the populations called Pulares in Spanish sources and the part they are supposed to have played in times of the Inca Chicoana province.
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