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Chapter 8 surveys the efforts to transform the Pijao territory and the borderlands of the Magdalena River valley into gold and silver mines during the early seventeenth century. It concentrates on Juan de Borja’s ethnocidal mission, in which he gathered armies to exterminate the Pijaos and all other Indigenous groups of the hot lands who did not comply with the kingdom’s demands. He also passed new regulations to send a percentage of highland Indigenous people to work the mines through the mita, a coercive labor institution modeled after the Inca mitmaes. Finally, Borja followed imperial guidelines to create a new post, accountant of the audiencia, who became a protagonist in the administration of the kingdom. Among other things, the accountant advocated for the introduction of thousands of enslaved Africans to the mines. Borja’s presidency lays bare the kingdom’s administrative rationale and infrastructure.