and the proceedings amounted to nothing. Of course the governor was allowed to retain his title. Again in 1548, during which year the province was made subject to the audiencia of Mexico,[1] the licentiate Diego de Herrera was ordered to proceed to Mérida and take the residencias of the adelantado, his son and nephew. The principal charges brought against Montejo[2] are those of unlawfully abstracting funds from the royal treasury, and of refusing to liberate his slaves in the face of repeated orders from the government.
In spite of all prohibitions, slave labor was common throughout the province, and in 1549 the India Council, learning from the reports of missionaries. that no heed was given to their injunctions, caused a real provision to be sent to the province, wherein all the settlers were ordered at once to release their bondsmen, and were promised in return a compensation for the loss of their services.[3] During the year the oidor Santillan arrived at Mérida with full power to corrret abuses; and once more the governor was subjected to residencia.[4] Before the investigation was completed Francisco de Montejo bid farewell to the scene of his many disasters and his bitter humiliations. Returning to his native land, advanced in years, despoiled of office, and shattered in health and fortune, he sought redress at the court of Spain, but
- ↑ In 1547 the cabildo of Mérida petitioned for this change, because Gracias á Dios, then the seat of the audiencia de los confines, was far distant from Yucatan, and the journey was attended with great danger, whereas one could reach Vera Cruz by sea within eight days. Squier's MISS., xxii. 14, 15, 103.
- ↑ They are given in full in Bienvenida, Lettre, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy.,série 1, tom. x. 320-33.
- ↑ It does not appear that either Montejo or his heirs received any immediate benefit from the promised compensation; for in Cogollvdo, Hist. Yucathan, 277-85, we learn that the matter was in litigation between 1561 and 1618. In the latter year a decision was rendered in favor of Doña Catalina, Montejo's daughter.
- ↑ Santillan's instructions were not to investigate matters which had previously been sifted by Herrera. Puga, Cedulario, 166. Cogolludo mentions that this third residencia was generally regretted by the settlers, and in Montejo, Carta, Squier's MSS., xxii. 104-5, 127-30, is related the adelantado's plea for quick justice.
