While here, Guzman learned that his presentiment of a change unfavorable to him in the government of New Spain had been verified. A letter from the oidores Matienzo and Delgadillo arrived in the first week of September, announcing the return of his enemy Cortés and the overthrow of the first audiencia. Certainly Guzman congratulated himself for having so timely and with such advantage escaped the company of his former associates. Although probably on the same occasion he was summoned to appear in Mexico, he was in a mood rather to increase the present distance from the capital, until he could return as the conqueror of a new kingdom.[1] But in any case it would be better not to leave the territory wholly to his enemies, particularly as the late oidores would doubtless attempt to prove their own innocence by heaping blame upon him. It was difficult, however, to find a person intelligent and at the same time trustworthy enough to plead successfully for the absent governor. Nevertheless he would do what he could. So he selected the former veedor, Peralmindez Chirinos, whose interest he considered as linked with his own, especially since the appointment at Tepic of his nephew, Hernando Chirinos, as veedor. With a letter of Guzman, and accompanied by ten or twelve other Spaniards, Chirinos set out from Aztatlan for Mexico.[2]
Scarcely had Chirinos departed when a fresh mis-
- ↑ The author of 4a Rel. Anón., 470, says he had received the news of the arrival of Cortés already at Omitlan, though the message of the oidores reached him only at Aztatlan. Beaumont asserts that it was at Tepic, but his account of this expedition is very confused. Crón. Mich., 11i. 400-1.
- ↑ In his letter to the emperor, dated Chametla, Jan. 15, 1531, Guzman refers to another sent from Aztatlan. Guzman, Carta, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiii. 406. According to the 1a Rel. Anón., 292-4, Chirines returned from Chametla north of the other point named.
this connection. Tello, Hist. N. Gal., 349-50, says that Aztatlan was burned, vaguely implying that a battle was fought in which a great number of natives perished, and that subsequently the province submitted, the Spaniards being received amidst dances and festivities. He also gives an account of a public performance arranged in honor of the strangers, a fight between a tiger and a caiman in the yard of a house. According to the 3a Rel. Anón., 447, the relics of a Christian trader who had died seven years before were found at Aztatlan. Have we here a trace of the missing Villadiego?
