Early Exploration of tl1e Coast of Texas
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of Chila and the Panuco region were reduced to submission. It was during this campaign that Cortes relates how his soldiers found the dressed skins of some of the followers of Camargo and the other captains sent by Garay in I 520, with the faces so well preserved, beards and all, hanging upon the walls of the temples, that their features were recogniza- ble. When some of the soldiers identified their former companions, they broke down and wept. After all resistance had been overcome and the land had been paci fled, Cortes proceeded to establish a town which he named Santiestevan. Here he left thirty horsemen and one hundred footmen to protect the town. He gave the city, which was five leagues from the coast and not far from the mouth of Panuco River, a ship and a fishing net. He then appointed the officers who were to govern in his name and left for Mexico, where his presence was needed in the reconstruction of the city. 52 Garay ,plans ,permanent settlement. While Cortes securely established his claim, Garay, lured by visions of success that might rival the achieve- ments of the conqueror of Mexico and urged by numerous friends, who wished to share in his good fortunes, actively went on with the prepara- tions of an expedition much more formidable than that with which Cortes originally set out on his unparalleled venture. By the early summer of I 523, he had succeeded in obtaining sixteen vessels, large and small, and in enlisting six hundred men and one hundred and fifty cavaliers. 53 An adequate supply of provisions was gathered, two hundred guns and three hundred crossbows were purchased, and a number of pieces of artillery were secured. Among the members of the expedition there were prominent residents of both Jamaica and Cuba, many of whom were friends and relatives of Velazquez. To serve perhaps as an example to the natives of the new lands he was about to occupy, Garay took a number of Indians from Jamaica. Before setting out, he organized the provi- sional government of the first town he intended to found on the Rio de las Palmas, which was to be called Garay. After appointing all the officers for the civil government of the new town, he required each one of them to take a solemn oath of allegiance to him and to promise on 52 Cortes, Carta de Relacion, October I 5, I 524; Oviedo, op. cit., III, 442-446. 53 Real cedula, dirigida a la Audiencia de Santo Domingo ... December 27, 1523. Pacheco y Cardenas, Documentos /nedilos, xiii, 497-498. The estimate of the num- ber of vessels varies in the different accounts. This being the official decree of the king in which reference is made to the official report on the Garay expedition which the Audiencia of Santo Domingo made, should be taken as the most authoritative.
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