lute masters of the sierra. Nevertheless we find that outrages and disturbances soon afterward became the order of the day. For many years the towns in the jurisdictions of Querétaro, San Miguel el Grande, Celaya, Chamacuero, San Juan del Rio, Cadereita and elsewhere remained in the same condition. The native tribes of Sierra Gorda were under neither military, civil, nor religious control, and their raids extended at times into the very streets of Spanish settlements.
If we can believe Arlegui, one or more of the governors of Nuevo Leon were induced to persecute the natives by private persons who claimed to have lost lands through the appropriation of tracts for the Tamaulipas tribes in 1715, and many Indians were subsequently hanged for trivial offences. Nor would this suffice; the settlers themselves constantly sought to drag the Indians into revolt in order to have a pretence to make them slaves. Under such circumstances the efforts of a few friars were of no avail.
Such was the state of affairs when in 1734 José de Escandon, an officer of the Querétaro militia, was commissioned to pacify the Sierra Gorda. At last the proper person had been found to carry out this difficult task. During his first expedition four hundred prisoners were taken; the ringleaders were summarily punished, while the others, in place of being enslaved, were treated with great consideration. This policy had the desired effect, and in the course of a few years several other expeditions under the same leader completed the work of pacification. All these campaigns were carried on by Escandon with little expense to the crown, without burdening too much the Spanish settlers, and without enslaving the natives. He was a wealthy man, and expended the greater part of his own fortune in maintaining his troops, who were kept under strict discipline, and not allowed to commit any excesses. His conduct gained for him the esteem of the government, the respect of the colonists, and the love
