Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/221

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INDIANS.
189

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.