but sent a force under the chief Tzomon to aid the malecontents. Depredations were committed from time to time; and though open rebellion was finally prevented on the west, the dissatisfaction spread eastward, and in 1703-4 as we are told by Arlegui, the Indians of the Tololotlan sierra rose, killed Captain Silva, their protector, threatened their curate, and stole everything within their reach. They were four thousand in number, held meetings at Nostic, and surrounded Tlaltenango; but Count Santa Rosa marched against them with three hundred men from Zacatecas, and defeated them with considerable slaughter. Whether the Nayarits took any active part in this revolt we are not informed.[1]
The Nayarits, though often professing friendship or even submission on the border, allowed no white man to enter their province; and thus, by the weakness of Spanish effort rather than by any achievement of their own, became day by day more firmly convinced that they could not be conquered. Various attempts were made to reduce them, but with insufficient forces. Then a party of devoted Franciscans from Nueva Galicia started barefooted from Guadalajara for the dominions of the devil and Gran Nayar. But not even bare and saintly feet were permitted to enter there, and the sorrowing friars turned back from Guazamota. All this occurred before 1709. The Nayarits, however, as proved later, were by no means invincible; all that was required for their reduction was a determined effort by a few hundred armed men.[2]
The time for decisive action had not yet arrived.
- ↑ Arlegui, Cron. Zac., 89-90, 201. Mota-Padilla, Conq. N. Gal., 459, gives the date of the defeat of Bracamonte—whom he calls Juan—in 1709.
- ↑ The Jesuit chroniclers, like the author of the Society's Apostólicos Afanes, or Apostolic Labors, though doubtless conversant with the facts, delight in exaggerating here as elsewhere the fruitless efforts of state and church to bring gentiles to law and faith before the task was undertaken by the company of Jesus. The Jesuits were, like other orders, zealous and able workers; but they also had the good fortune in several notable instances to undertake a difficult task, just when the government was ready to learn by past experience and adopt an effective policy.
