Rule of Hernán Cortés

Rule of Hernán Cortés

Between November and December 1521, Captain Francisco Orozco conquered Oaxaca.

February 20, 1522. Tzintziche, lord of Michoacán, acknowledged himself to be a subject of Emperor Charles 1.

June 1522. The Franciscan, Pedro de Gante, arrived in Mexico and settled in Texcoco, where he began teaching Indian children. He was thus the founder of the first school on the continent of America.

July 1523. Pedro de Garay conquered Pánuco, and in December Pedro de Alvarado set out to conquer Guatemala.

January 1524. The first 12 Franciscan missionaries landed at Vera Cruz. Cristóbal de Olid marched to Las Hibueras (today Honduras) to look for an exit to the Southern Sea.

August 1524. The Royal Council of the Indies was established in Burgos, Spain. This was to be in charge generally of the government of Spanish possessions in the Americas.

Accusing Cristóbal de Olid of being a rebel, Hernán Cortés began his own expedition to Las Hibueras in October 1524.

Cuauhtémoc accompanied this expedition as a prisoner. After having been wrongly accused by Cortés he was tried, condemned to death and finally hanged at Izancanac, Tabasco , on February 25, 1525.

At the beginning of June 1526 the first 10 Dominican missionaries arrived in Mexico and set about converting the inhabitants of the states of Chiapas, Guerrero and part of Puebla and Veracruz.

After receiving the news of the rebellious Cristóbal de Olid's death at the hands of Francisco de las Casas, who had been sent for this purpose by Cortés, the captain returned to Mexico-Tenochtitlán with his much reduced expedition, arriving in the capital at the end of June 1526.

In June 1527, Panfilo de Narváez' expedition to conquer Florida failed in the attempt, and its leader was drowned.

Cortés' left for Spain to settle certain matters with the Crown, taking with him his son by La Malinche (Marina), Martin Cortés y Monroy. He was received with honors by Charles V in November 1527 and awarded the title of Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca.

Under an order signed in Burgos, the lawyer Nuño de Guzmán was nominated president of the first audiencia of New Spain, settling in Mexico in December 1528.

In July 1530 Cortés returned to New Spain, but the audiencia refused to let him enter Mexico City, so he took up residence at Texcoco.

April 1530. Captain Juan de Oñate founded the first city of Guadalajara, in the modern state of Jalisco.

From 1530 to 1535 Nuño de Guzmón carried out the cruel conquest of western Mexico in the present day states of Michoacán, Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and parts of Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Durango and Sonora.

Repeated complaints against the abuses of Nuño de Guzmán led to the appointment of the second audiencia made up of illustrious men and presided over by Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenleal. It was to be a member of this second audiencia that Vasco de Quiroga arrived in Mexico in January 1531

on to: The Viceroyalty