Our Catlrolic Heritage in Texas
Coronado rendered most efficient service. The viceroy wisely recommended that the importation of negro slaves be curtailed. 5 Viceroy Mendoztls interest in exploration. With the coming of Mendoza much of the unrest and turmoil that had characterized the life of New Spain ceased. Agriculture and the peaceful pursuit of trade became the chief preoccupation of the new viceroy, who encouraged immi- gration, restored order, carefully enforced the collection of revenues, improved the stock of the large !1acie11da.s, and advocated by word and deed a more tranquil and kindly policy towards the natives. He was deeply interested, also, in extending the frontiers of New Spain, and from the very year of his arrival petitioned the king for authority to explore and conquer the vast expanse of territory to the north, which the imposing mountains seemed to guard so jealously. Less impetuous than most of the conquistadors, he made careful plans before undertaking so hazardous a venture. 6 When in the summer of I 536 Cabeza de Vaca. Alonso del Castillo, Andres Dorantes, and the negro Estevanico, the sole survivors of the ill-fated expedition of Narvaez, arrived in Culiacan, the viceroy invited them to come to Mexico City as his guests, where they stayed for several months. What he learned from them besides what is told by Cabeza de Vaca in his Relacion will never be known, but there is no doubt that Mendoza then made up his mind to send an expedition into the lands over which these men had just traveled. Evidence of this intention is seen by his immediate purchase of the slave Estevanico from Dorantes, "that there might be some one left in New Spain who could guide an expedition back to the countries about which the wanderers had heard." 7 Due to unforeseen circumstances, however, the Spaniards did not sail in the winter of 1536 as they had intended. The viceroy immediately proposed to Dorantes that he stay in New Spain in order to explore the country more thoroughly. "I explained to him," Mendoza declares, "that he should return to that land with some missionaries and horsemen which I would give him in order to find out the truth concerning what was there." He was disposed to spend as much as three thousand five hundred to four thousand ducats of the royal treasury in the venture, which he 5 Mendoza to the King, December 10, r 537, Documentos lneditos, II, 198-199. 6 Winship, op. cit., 352-353, 368; Mendoza to the King, February 11, 1537, Documentos/neditos, XIV, 235-236; December 10, 1537, in Ibid., II, 206-207. 7 Winship, op. cit., 348.
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