Indigenous bundles with nilpotent $p$-curvature

We study indigenous bundles in characteristic p>0 with nilpotent p-curvature, and show that they correspond to so-called deformation data. Using this equivalence, we translate the existence problem for deformation data into the existence of polynomial solutions of certain differential equations with additional properties. As in application, we show that P^1 minus four points is hyperbolically ordinary (in the sense of Mochizuki. We also give a concrete application to existence of deformation data with fixed local invariants.