The metropolis made full and very exacting regulations for everything that referred to the obtaining and control of precious metals and stones. Even in the first days of Spanish colonial expansion in America, the regulations contained in capitulations and instructions were innumerable. Later on, laws, royal cedulas, ordinances, and other juridical norms ordained in a detailed manner the requisites to which all had to submit who proposed to exploit the deposits of precious metals or the pearl fisheries. They regulated the manner in which they were to be established, the work of the Indians in them, and, above all, the control of production and the participation of the crown in the benefit obtained.