“It does not appear whether this Governor divined what was to occur in the future from the obstinacy, cruelty, and malevolence of these Barbarians, and how many efficacious Means were to be insufficient to reduce them to Peace; but that of War (is the best). But he pressed for permission to make use of it in order to bring them to subjection.”
Here it may be well to compare Cogolludo's account of these same events with that of Villagutierre. Cogolludo (lib. ix, cap. 1) says that these events took place in the reign of Bishop Don Fray Gonzalo de Salazar. In 1609 a great plague did much harm in Yucatan. In 1610, at the end of August, Salazar arrived to take the post of Bishop of Yucatan. At about that time two Indians called Alonzo Chable and Francisco Canul gave out that they were respectively the Pope and the Bishop, and they made the wretched Catholic Indians venerate them as such. All the most sacred mysteries of the Church were profaned by them, even the Host itself. This deplorable state of affairs was brought to an end by the intervention of the Governor of the village of Tikax in the sierra. He was one Don Pedro Xiu, a descendant of Tutul Xiu, Lord of Mani. Owing, perhaps, to the influence of a convent in his region, this chief was a good Christian, and he severely punished the offenders for their sacrilege. He even forced the Spaniards to attend Mass. In short his virtue was such as to earn him the hatred of all malcontents. Finally, being pursued by his enemies, the cacique sought refuge in the convent of Tikax,
that, in the time of Don Antonio de Figueroa, who was Governor of Yucatan from August, 1612, to September, 1617, Yucatan enjoyed a goodly measure of prosperity, which was interrupted in the following manner: “...there came in the time of this Governor [Figueroa] to the city of Merida some Itzaex Indians, saying that their purpose was to give their obedience to the King and to the Governor in his name, and he gave them staffs as Alcaldes, and appointed them a government, and they returned, leaving him in the belief that they were voluntarily his subjects, but soon it was all seen to be a trick. Now that it was known that the coming of those Indians had no better end than this, in the reign of this Governor a great reduction of this province was carried on, for many of the people of this Province were fugitives in the Woodlands of Zahcabchen. By these, says the Bachiller Valencia in his relation, were founded the Villages of San Antonio de Zahcabchen, San Lorenzo de Vlumal, Tzuctok, Cauich, by a commission headed by Captain Francisco de Villalobos, his [Valencia's] grandfather, who intended the reduction of these people....”
