and practice of European arts and institutions. Others were placed in apprenticeship to Spanish artisans.[1] Efforts were also made to gather and provide for half-breed children deserted by their fathers,[2] and to administer relief for the suffering created by the measles, which burst suddenly upon the natives as an epidemic, and committed ravages only inferior to those of the small-pox.[3] Moors and Jews, and descendants of those who had been stamped by the inquisition, were expelled, so that their presence might not profane the increasing number of converts.[4] Measures against vagrants were made more stringent, as they set a bad example to the community, and created no little mischief in the native towns. This applied also to many idle and dissolute persons, who, without being actual vagrants, proved equally pernicious to the community. A number of these were settled in different towns, and given land, together with ten or twenty natives to aid them in cultivating it.
Among the results of the colonization measures was the founding in 1530 of the city of Puebla de los Angeles, by Hernando de Saavedra, corregidor of Tlascala, with the approval of the audiencia. Bishop Garcés had
- ↑ It was founded by Quiroga, who projected two more. Id., 135, 166; Beaumont, Crón. Mich., iii. 310-11.
- ↑ They might be intrusted to encomenderos till of an age to care for themselves. Puga, Cedulario, 88. Quiroga had been actuated to this step partly by the number of children drowned in the ditches round Mexico. Moreno, Fragmentos, 20-1. The illegitimate offspring of Indians and Spaniards received the name of Montañeses. Frejes, Hist. Breve, 174. Bishop Zumárraga had fined Indian adulterers, but this act was annulled. Ordenes de la Corona, MS., ii. 6.
- ↑ It stands recorded in the native annals as tepiton zahuatl, small pest, the small-pox being called great pest. Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., 514-15. Motolinia places it 'eleven years after the conquest,' Hist. Ind., i. 15; while Bernal Diaz assumes that it came in 1527, preceded by a 'sabre-like light" in the heavens, from which the priest predicted what followed, namely, an epidemic of measles and a sort of leprosy. In the year after, a rain of toads terrified the settlers of Goazacoalco. Hist. Cong. (Paris, 1837), iv. 461-2. In Oajaca, Rel., Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., 1x. 212, a famine is recorded, which extended over Miguatlan region. Sahagun describes a pest about that period, 'y salia como agua de las bocas. . .gran copia de sangre [a] por lo cual moria y murió infinita gente.' Hist. Gen., ii. 273.
- ↑ Several petitions appeared to this effect. See Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xii. 124, 136. The decree against Jews appears in Libro de Cabildo, MS., 194, and that against the others was already issued by the previous audiencia, both to be evaded by bribes.
