mayor of San Luis Potosí, who controlled all this region, for a grant of the lands and water of the hacienda San Francisco.[1] This petition was signed by Montemayor as royal treasurer, showing that even then he was a prominent personage.
The favorable features and resources of the region soon became known, and Luis de Carabajal y de la Cueva, a frontiersman, made a contract to effectually colonize it at his own expense, in consideration for the appointment of governor. His original jurisdiction under the name of Nuevo Reino de Leon was to comprise a vaguely defined territory, from the port of Tampico along the River Pánuco as a basis, thence extending northward, but not to exceed two hundred leagues either way, which would seem to have included all of Tamaulipas. To pacify and colonize the new territory Carobajal was allowed to employ one hundred soldiers and take with him sixty married laborers, including their wives and children.[2] Armed with this concession he appeared at Mexico in the early autumn of 1580, and began to prepare for occupying his territory. But the allurements of the rich mining districts of San Luis Potosi and Guanajuato tended to eclipse the more pastoral vistas offered by New Leon, and the enrolment proved slow.[3] In 1584, however, he appears to have set out, and on reaching the Spanish settlement already established at Santa Lucía, in Estremadura Valley,[4] he determined there to plant his colony, changing the name of the place to
- ↑ The present town of San Francisco de Apodaca. Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, 3da ép. i. 231.
- ↑ This capitulation was dated May 31, 1579. Calle, Mem. 4 Not., 104-8. Gonzalez, Col. N. Leon, p. xvii. 6, the historian of the province, followed by a writer in Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, 3da ép. i. 224-5, argues strenuously that Carabajal was appointed in 1569, but this date is disproved not only by Calle's document, but by the admitted fact that Carabajal did not enter the province till 1584-5.
- ↑ An appeal must have been made to the king, for by a cédula of April 19, 1583, the viceroy was charged to promote the undertaking in every way. See also Instruccione, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., ii. 480-99.
- ↑ Founded probably by Father Gavira and Diego de Montemayor. Yet some assume that General Urdiñola senior may have brought the settlers here established.
