and sent to Peyotlan where they remained a month or more.[1] Communication with the Nayarits on the mesa was not rare. Negotiations, of which the details are complicated and need not be repeated, took much the same course with much the same results as before the battle. Many of the chiefs were free with their promises, but never quite ready to perform. Torre called upon them repeatedly to submit, but was not ready to enforce his order, and always granted the few days' delay required. On the mesa a small party with the tonati still opposed resistance; but a plot was formed to kill the tonati and put another in his place. The plot failed, partly because the rival chieftain was captured by the Spaniards in one of their raids to the foot of the mesa.
In Mexico, though it was resolved to prosecute the war, it was deemed unsafe to trust the command longer to Torre, a return of whose malady might cause disaster at the very moment of success. Juan Flores de San Pedro[2] was made governor, and Torre was summoned to Mexico. The order came on December 8th, and the new commander, marching from Villanueva on the 24th, arrived on the 4th or 5th of January 1722, at the camp of San Juan,[3] with sixty men, three hundred horses, and a large store of supplies. Captain Escobedo and his men seem to have returned at about the same time. Torre gave up the command and started for Mexico.[4]
Governor Flores lost no time in notifying the
- ↑ The names of citizens who contributed to the fund of 839 pesos are given in Nayarltas, Rel, 13-17. Capt. Escobedo raised his company at his own cost.
- ↑ So called in Apostólicos Afanes, 148; Gacetas de Mex., Jan. 1722, and Nayaritas, Rel, 16. Mota-Padilla, Conq. N. Gal., 474, and Revilla Gigedo, Informe, 467, call him Juan Flores de la Torre, a descendant of the second governor of N. Galicia. Mota-Padilla attributes Torre's insanity to his defeat, and accordingly represents the correspondence with Count Laguna as having taken place while the army was at Peyotlan.
- ↑ Called Santiago Teyotan in the Gacetas de Mex.
- ↑ The Gaceta de Mex. for Jan. 1722 contains the notice that Capt. Rioja had arrived with news of the battle, and that Torre was expected soon. The number for Feb. announces Torre's arrival. The force brought by Flores is given by Mota-Padilla as 60; by the Afanes as 70; and by the Relacion as 16.
