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Nuño de Guzmán
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán | |
|---|---|
 The conquistador Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán as painted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (folio 44r) | |
| Born | Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán October 31, 1490 |
| Died | October 26, 1558 (aged 68) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | Spain |
Rank | Conquistador, explorer, Governor of Pánuco, President of the Real Audiencia of New Spain |
Conflicts | Conquest of Mexico |
| Awards | Governor of Pánuco |
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (Guadalajara, October 31, 1490 – Torrejón de Velasco, October 26, 1558) was a Spanish conquistador. His military activity covered the west of present-day Mexico, in particular the territory that became known as New Galicia.
A descendant of noble hidalgos, he arrived in the New World with the title of Governor of Pánuco. He was appointed President of the Real Audiencia of New Spain, an office he held for only one year because of his excesses and cruelty toward the American natives. His greed for wealth led him to undertake a long expedition through western Mexico, which he named the Conquest of the Holy Spirit of Greater Spain. His route through the present-day states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Nayarit and Michoacán was marked by the plundering and devastation of the native communities, as well as by the murder of the last Purépecha king, Tangáxoan II.
He founded a series of settlements, among them: Sahuayo, Michoacán in 1530, San Miguel de Culiacán, Santiago de los Valles, Compostela, and the first foundation of Guadalajara. Vicente Riva Palacio branded him "the abhorrent Governor of the Province of Pánuco (located in lands in the South of the present-day State of Tampico and the North of the State of Veracruz) and perhaps the most perverse man of all who had set foot in New Spain"; for his part, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas described him as a "great tyrant".[1]
No portraits of him remain except in codices.
Family
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán came from an old and noble family. He was the son of Hernán Beltrán de Guzmán "the elder", who was appointed by the Catholic Monarchs Alguacil of the Holy Inquisition, and he was probably a descendant of Pedro de Guzmán, who was appointed by Henry IV of Castile as the first Corregidor of the City of Guadalajara, Spain.
Hernán Beltrán married his cousin Magdalena de Guzmán, with whom he had seven children: Juan Beltrán de Guzmán, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa (who took the name of a great-grandfather), Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, Luis Suárez de Guzmán, Hernán Beltrán de Figueroa, Isabel de Guzmán and Violante de Figueroa.
Political and military career
Before his arrival in New Spain, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán took part in a series of military campaigns of King Charles I of Spain and V of Germany.
In 1523 he was in the service of Francisco de los Cobos; that same year he was entrusted with the mission of taking the town of Pareja, which was in the charge of Bishop Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa (who was in Rome and refused to return to take up the charge of the Town). This conflict lasted from May 9 until August of the same year, when the Bishop was removed and Nuño de Guzmán received the keys and arms of the town.
Between March 1524 and December 1525 he was in the cities of Valladolid, Madrid and Toledo; it was in the last of these that he decided to move to the Indies.
Arrival in the Indies
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán came to the Indies because the King appointed him in 1525 Governor of the Province of Pánuco and Victoria Garayana; this province comprised all the territories discovered by the Adelantado Francisco de Garay and his captains. That same year he went to Seville where, by royal instructions, he presented himself before the Casa de Contratación de Indias in order to be able to embark for the Indies in 1526.
The arrival in the Indies was not easy. During the voyage the expedition lost a caravel, which forced them to stop at the Island of Santo Domingo, where Nuño de Guzmán fell ill with malaria. For this reason he remained on the island for seven months.
Governor of Pánuco
When Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán arrived in Pánuco —present-day state of Veracruz— on May 24, 1527, the only Spanish town in existence was "Santiesteban del Puerto", which was located 357 km from Mexico City. Immediately upon his arrival, Beltrán de Guzmán began to apply a series of reorganization measures, with the aim of limiting the measures and the power of Hernán Cortés.
During his administration the settlement's first lighthouse was also raised, and a series of neighboring Indian villages were "pacified" and conquered. He also introduced mares to the area.
Slave trade
Before Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán arrived in Pánuco, 4,000 natives had already been enslaved and sold at one peso de tepuzque per head. The Crown gave Beltrán de Guzmán permission to recover 500 of these slaves and to enslave more natives. This led Santiesteban to become an enclave of the slave trade with the Antilles, and Beltrán de Guzmán managed to raise the price per slave to four pesos of mine gold.[2] It should be noted that the enslavement of Indians had been permitted since 1500 if they were captives of war. Friar Juan de Zumárraga spoke of some 15,000 natives enslaved in Pánuco.[3]
Beginning of the conflict with Hernán Cortés
The presence of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán was part of a policy of the Crown to reduce the power of Hernán Cortés; this generated conflicts between the two from early on. However, this situation intensified after the expedition of Gil González to the border villages between New Spain and Pánuco, in which these villages were burned and plundered while their inhabitants were sent as slaves to Mexico City.
Cortés's 1524 expedition and the appointment of his relative Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura to travel through the west and reaffirm its settlement brought Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán and Hernán Cortés into conflict, leading to the release on January 17, 1525 of the Relación de una visitación, which describes the areas of Michoacán, central and southwestern Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima, Ixtapa and Guerrero, thus becoming the oldest description of the region.[4]
President of the Real Audiencia of New Spain
On December 9, 1528 the first Real Audiencia of New Spain was inaugurated, with the aim of achieving better control over the territory.
From April 1528 until 1530 Nuño Beltran de Guzmán was President of the Real Audiencia of New Spain, by an appointment made by the King. During this period, together with the oidores Juan Ortiz de Matienzo and Diego Delgadillo, he took a series of measures to try to reduce the power of Hernán Cortés. However, upon realizing that this was impossible, he ended up resigning.
The Actas de Cabildo of Mexico City recount the constant conflicts between Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán and Hernán Cortés.
Among the various actions taken by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, we may mention that in 1528 he ordered the destruction of the Leprosarium of San Lázaro, which had been founded by Cortés between 1521 and 1524 in Tlaxapana. Cortés was also stripped of the encomiendas of the villages of Zapotlán, Tazamula (where there were a number of gold and silver mines), Tuxpan and Amula (whose jurisdiction included Mazamitla, Quintupan, Zapotilic, Tonila and Piguamo). For this reason, on March 15, 1531 Cortés initiated a lawsuit for dispossession against the said members of the Real Audiencia, a lawsuit that was never concluded, and the territories passed directly to the Crown.
From 1528, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán received instructions from the King to begin a trial for disloyalty against Cortés. In 1529 the juicio de residencia against Cortés began owing to pressure from the audiencia; the reason was the death of his wife Catalina Xuárez Marcaida, since he was accused of having murdered her.
On May 8, 1529 the cargos que resultan contra Hernando Cortés ("charges resulting against Hernando Cortés") appeared,[5] signed by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, President of the audiencia, and Diego Delgadillo, one of the oidores.
Expeditions to the northwest
While President of the Real Audiencia of New Spain, he began his first explorations through Tonalá, Jalisco and Sinaloa, since these regions were already known thanks to information provided by the natives.[6] It should be noted that these expeditions were private in nature, that is, they were not ordered by the Crown but were undertaken on Beltrán de Guzmán's own initiative.
Military tactics
His tactics were as follows: besiege the native villages, seize the maize and other crops, raze and burn the settlements, all of this together with torments applied to the native caciques to obtain information about their riches and those of other native kingdoms, riches that frequently existed only in the imagination of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. One episode among many gives an idea of his tactics. The "king" or cazonci of the Michoacanos, Tangáxoan Tzíntzicha, received him in peace, gave him gifts of many ingots of gold and silver, and provided him with warriors and provisions, but Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán responded to his hospitality by having him tortured and executed.
First expedition, 1529
In 1529 the Spanish Crown granted Hernán Cortés the title of Captain General of New Spain and he returned to Mexico, so Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán decided to leave his office as President of the Real Audiencia and organized a military expedition toward the northwest of Mexico. The purpose of this first expedition was to confirm rumors of the existence of a territory farther north and, if so, to found settlements.[7]
This campaign consisted of 500 Spaniards and 10,000 native auxiliaries from the Valley of Mexico, and later 10,000 from Michoacán would join,[8] an expedition that resulted in great harm to the natives of the present-day states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Aguascalientes and parts of Sinaloa, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Durango, and which is still remembered as one of the most brutal episodes of the conquest of Mexico.
This expedition was a slow process, since its purpose was to found new settlements, and for that reason it carried a large quantity of supplies and provisions, which made movement difficult in a territory characterized by its complexity. Nuño de Guzmán advanced toward the Province of Xilotepec.
He entered the territory of Michoacán, where he recruited more than 8,000 Tarascan Indians and had the cacique Tangáxoan II killed for not handing over the amount of gold he had demanded.
On reaching Cuitzeo, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's expedition divided, because he had sent Captain Pedro Almídez Chirinos to explore Zacatecas, and Cristóbal de Oñate to Tlocaltiche and Nochistlán. Once this was done, he continued toward present-day Guanajuato and Jalisco.
When he reached Etzatlán, he faced a shortage of food, so he advanced toward Ixtla and Ahuacalán, where he managed to resupply. Thus in 1530 he reached Jalisco and Tepic, in May 1530, where he settled and sent explorations toward the South Sea. From there he maintained peaceful relations with the caciques of Jalisco, Zacualpan and others, who came in peace asking that their villages not be destroyed.
In June 1530 an expedition left Tepic and continued advancing toward Nayarit, crossing the present-day Santiago River, which he called the Espíritu Santo River. He wished to name all the territories conquered during this period the Conquest of the Holy Spirit of Greater Spain. However, the Council of the Indies, in the name of Queen Isabella of Portugal, did not agree, and so by a Real Cédula issued in Ocaña (Spain) on January 25, 1531 it ordered that the conquered territory be named the Kingdom of New Galicia and that a city be founded with the name of Santiago de Galicia de Compostela as its capital. To comply with the royal cédula, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán founded the first Hispanic settlement of Nayarit in the present-day City of Tepic. Because of the hostility of the natives, the Spanish settlement was later moved to Compostela.
By 1530 he resigned his office in the Audiencia. That same year, the Council of the Indies sent secret instructions to the second Audiencia to remove the encomiendas that Nuño de Guzmán had granted and to replace them with a centralized system of tribute collection.[9][10]
Second expedition, 1531
Because of the high rates of death and flight among the natives of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's first expedition, the second campaign of conquest was reduced by half, so Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán forced the local caciques to hand over sufficient provisions to carry out this campaign. He also took from Cortés between ten and twelve gangs of slaves[citation needed] that he had in Tamazula, for which reason Cortés began another lawsuit against Beltrán de Guzmán. On this expedition, he traveled through the west of the Sierra Madre Occidental.[11][7]
By 1532, he had captured hundreds of Tlaxcalan Indians, whom he led in chains as captive slaves.[12] In this year, the violence applied by Beltrán de Guzmán against the Indian villages led the villages that had been at peace to rise up against the Spaniards.
In 1533 he settled in Jalisco and seized one of the ships Cortés was using for the exploration that reached the Baja California Peninsula that year; this ship was taken initially with the aim of making a new exploration. Cortés complained to the King about this situation, and in 1534 the Council of the Indies requested that the ship be returned to Cortés. From this event began a lawsuit between Beltrán de Guzmán and Cortés over the ship, in which even the King became involved.
Foundation of the Kingdom of New Galicia
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán originally sought for his conquests to extend from ocean to ocean, in such a way that with the territories they would end up being an independent entity that would go on expanding toward the North of New Spain, with a truly undetermined frontier and with lands over which the Crown had no control whatsoever in the 1530s. Thus he would have control of jurisdiction from the present-day states of Jalisco and Sinaloa to the Region of Pánuco, since he was still Governor of the latter, and therefore upon becoming Governor of New Galicia, Nuño's power would have been uncontrollable; for that very reason this plan could not be carried out, because the King and the Royal Council of the Indies became aware of Nuño's plan and would obviously prevent it, since it was opposed to the authority and interests of King Charles I.[7]
It should be noted that originally the territory invaded by Nuño was to have the name of New Castile of Greater Spain, a name that was considered a challenge to the Crown, so by royal command it was determined that it should be called the Kingdom of New Galicia, and of course its extent would not comprise territories from sea to sea, but only some regions of the West of New Spain and of the Pacific coastal strip. In this sense, of the settlements founded, the farthest to the North was the Town of San Miguel de Culiacán, which was designated as the capital of the Kingdom of New Galicia, although that status as capital eventually passed to the City of Guadalajara.
Juicio de Residencia
Beltrán de Guzmán's enterprise was characterized by its violence against the natives. From the beginning there had been complaints from both Spaniards (we may mention García del Pilar) and Indians.
During the government of Antonio de Mendoza, first Viceroy of New Spain, a proceeding was initiated against Nuño Beltrán. The Spanish Crown resolved to put him on trial and sent the licenciado Diego Pérez de la Torre to investigate him, who found him gravely culpable, removed him from the government of the province and sent him as a prisoner in shackles to Spain, where he died imprisoned in the Castle of Torrejón de Velasco in March 1558.
Among the charges of which Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán was accused was the collection of tributes in Huejotzingo in 1531, Huejotzingo being the property of Cortés. The collection of these tributes was carried out with violence, as three natives testified, who confirmed the collection of tribute and the services demanded by Beltrán de Guzmán, Delgadillo and Matienzo.
Another charge was for the death he ordered of Tangáxoan II, King of Michoacán.[13]
Impact
The conquest of New Galicia opened the way to the later explorations of northwestern Mexico. In seven years Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán explored and conquered almost a third of Mexico.
In addition to having explored and conquered the northwest of Mexico, he is credited with the foundation of the cities of Guadalajara, Jalisco; Culiacán, Mazatlán (both in Sinaloa) and Tepic, Nayarit, even though some say that the founder of Guadalajara and Tepic was his companion and lieutenant Cristóbal de Oñate.
He also founded cities in the Huasteca area of what is now San Luis Potosí; one example is Ciudad Valles.
However, his campaigns are considered one of the main reasons for the outbreak of the Mixtón War.
Will
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán left a will in which he asked to be buried in Guadalajara, Spain; in this document he sets out what is to become of his debts; the freeing of his personal slave, Francisco; how his wife will be the beneficiary of his wealth; and how the money that came to him from the Indies would be used to pay the dowry of his niece María de Guzmán. This document was paleographically transcribed by Jorge Palomino Cañedo.
Por lo mucho que le devo e de ello o de parte dello haga haber una memoria por mi Anima […]
— Nuño de Guzmán, Testamento[14]
This document is currently held in the custody of the CARSO Center for the Study of the History of Mexico.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Vicente Riva Palacio (1991 [1880]), México a Través de los Siglos, vol. II. Barcelona: Espasa. ISBN 978-84-7764-516-0, cited in DIJES ANTÓN, JUAN and MANUEL SAGREDO Y MARTÍN (1889), "Biografías de hijos ilustres de la Provincia de Guadalajara", p. 45. It should be borne in mind that Dijes and Sagredo write: "It truly strikes us that Riva Palacio, from the moment he deals with Nuño, begins to use a sui generis language, applying to him at every step the harshest epithets of the Castilian language, a language not employed with anyone else, and the said gentleman will allow us to attempt to refute him." (43) They also point out that the chroniclers of the period – among them Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Francisco López de Gómara – say little about Guzmán, and what they say is positive. They conclude that Riva Palacio may have made use of the unpublished sources of the General Archive of the Indies to arrive at his so very different account.
- ↑ "Medidas y Pesos" (in español). Retrieved December 11, 2015.
- ↑ de la Torre Villar, Ernesto. Lecturas Históricas Mexicanas (in español). p. 193-197.
- ↑ Martìnez, José Luis (1990). Hernán Cortés (in español). ISBN 968-16-3330-X.
- ↑ Cargos que Resultan contra Hernando Cortés (in español). May 8, 1528.
- ↑ Del Río, Ignacio. La compañía de Jesús y la conquista en el Noroeste de Nueva España (PDF) (in español). p. 40. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Del Río, Ignacio. Estudios históricos de la formación del norte (in español). p. 9-10. ISBN 978-607-02-0437-1.
- ↑ Everardo Gámiz (1948). Monografía de la nación tepehuana que habita en la región sur del estado de Durango. Mexico City: Ediciones Gámiz, pp. 89.
- ↑ Martínez, José Luis (1990). Hernán Cortés (in español). ISBN 968-16-3330-X.
- ↑ Romero de Solís, José Miguel (2001). Andariegos y pobladores. Nueva España y Nueva Galicia (siglo XVI) (PDF) (in español). ISBN 968-7412-56-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
- ↑ Güereca Durán, Raquel Eréndira (February 2013). Las milicias de indios flecheros en la Nueva España, siglos XV-XVIII, tesis para obtener el grado de maestro en historia (PDF) (in español). pp. 24–126. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ↑ Martínez Baracs, Andrea (1993). Historia Mexicana (in español). El Colegio de México. p. 195-250.
- ↑ Nuño de Guzmán - Fausto Marín Tamayo. Ed. 1992, p. 296.
- ↑ Nuño de Guzmán. 1543. Testamento
External links
- Biography of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (in Spanish)
- The first Audiencia (in Spanish)
- Cervantes virtual Relación de la entrada de Nuño de Guzmán, que dio García del Pilar, su intérprete
- Cervantes virtual Relación de la conquista de los Teules chichimecas que dio Juan de Sámano
- Cervantes virtual Primera relación anónima de la jornada que hizo Nuño de Guzmán a la Nueva Galicia.
- Cervantes virtual Segunda relación anónima de la jornada que hizo Nuño de Guzmán a la Nueva Galicia.
- Cervantes virtual Tercera relación anónima de la jornada que hizo Nuño de Guzmán a la Nueva Galicia
- Cervantes virtual Cuarta relación anónima de la jornada que hizo Nuño de Guzmán a la Nueva Galicia.
