On account of complaints which reached the court of Spain, against the
rule thus established by Cortés, the king resolved to put the new
country in the hands of a body of magistrates who should be obeyed by
all the governors of provinces, representing the person of the monarch
and enforcing his authority. The members of the first _Audiencia_
arrived in Vera Cruz on the 6th of December, 1528. There were five of
them; their president was Nuño de Guzman, a cruel and sanguinary man,
whose despotism left the most bitter recollections throughout the
country. With his _oidores_, as the other members were called, he
displayed the greatest cruelty toward the Indians, in direct
disobedience to his instructions, which were to treat them with the
greatest gentleness; he continued the traffic in slaves, by which he and
his Audiencia expected to enrich themselves. They quarrelled with the
ecclesiastics and religious orders, so that they were excommunicated by
the bishop, in return for which they broke up by force a religious
procession in the streets of the capital. In short, they made themselves
intolerable alike to natives and colonists. Nuño de Guzman, finding
himself thus unpopular, went away from Mexico in 1529, and paid a visit
to Michoacan, where he strove to extort quantities of gold from
Calzonzi, who, as we know, had hitherto escaped the violence of the
invaders, and was living happily in his palaces of Tzintzuntzan and
Patzcuaro, nominal sovereign of his Tarascans.
Calzonzi could not or would not satisfy the greed of the cruel Guzman,
whereupon he was burned alive, as is shown in the same picture where he
embraces the cross, in the town-hall of Tzintzuntzan. Nuño went away
without any treasures or precious stones, and made war upon the natives
of Jalisco, founding in that country a town which he called the Holy
Ghost. This afterwards became Guadalajara, now one of the finest cities
in the whole of Mexico.
This career of destruction and tyranny came to an end by the arrival of
the second Audiencia, sent in response to the volume of complaints which
reached the court of Spain. This second body had for its task to undo
all that the first had done.
It published a royal decree which declared all the Indians free, and
condemned to death all those who had made slaves of them. It had the
care of diffusing instruction among the natives, and establishing the
teaching of Latin in a college founded for the education of the natives.
Its authority was used only for beneficial ends, and was of good effect
in calming the agitation caused by its predecessors. The archbishops and
bishops, by their religious character, also exercised a great influence
over both colonists and Indians, with whom they were objects of
veneration and respect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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