the insurgents, until at length, Mendoza obtained such decided advantages over his opponents that they gave up the contest, threw down their arms, and enabled the viceroy to return to his capital with the assurance that the revolted territory was entirely and permanently pacified. His conduct to the Indians after his successes was characterized by all the suavity of a noble soul. He took no revenge for this assault upon the Spanish authority, and seems, to have continually endeavored to win the natives to their allegiance by kindness rather than compulsion.
These outbreaks among the Indians were of course not unknown in Spain, where they occasioned no trifling fear for the integrity and ultimate dominion of New Spain. The natural disposition of the Emperor towards the aborigines, was, as we have said, kind and gentle; but he perceived that the causes of these Indian discontents might be attributed not so much, perhaps, to a patriotic desire to recover their violated rights over the country, as to the cruelty they endured at the hands of bold and reckless adventurers who had emigrated to New Spain and converted the inoffensive children of the country into slaves. Accordingly, the Emperor, convened a council composed of eminent persons in Spain, to consider the condition of his American subjects. This council undertook the commission in a proper spirit, and adopted a liberal system towards the aborigines, as well as towards the proprietors of estates in the islands and on the main, which, in time, would have fostered the industry and secured the ultimate prosperity of all classes. There were to be no slaves made in the future wars of these countries; the system of repartimientos was to be abandoned; and the Indians were not, as a class, to be solely devoted to ignoble tasks.[1] The widest publicity was given to these humane intentions in Spain. The Visitador of Hispaniola, or San Domingo, Miguel Diaz de Armendariz, was directed to see their strict fulfilment in the islands; and Francisco Tello de Sandoval was commissioned to cross the Atlantic to Mexico, with full powers and instructions from the Emperor, to enforce their obedience in New Spain.
In February, 1544, this functionary disembarked at St. Juan de Ulua, and, a month afterwards, arrived in the capital. No sooner did he appear in Mexico than the object of his mission became gradually noised about among the proprietors and planters whose wealth depended chiefly upon the preservation of their estates and Indians in the servile condition in which they were before the
- ↑ Herrera Decade vii., lib. vi., chap. v.
