The first government of the Spaniards was a military one, whose chief was Fernando Cortés. He had wisely surrounded himself by a body of advisers or approvers, in the early time of founding Vera Cruz when he established the Ayuntamiento, composed of his companions of the voyage. This organization was maintained during the time of Cortés' administration. Its duties were to found new cities, parcel out lands and farms among the colonists, establish markets, regulate sanitary conditions, and enforce the laws; thus standing between the natives and new settlers, who began to enter the country. Many of the rules and ordinances of the early Ayuntamientos are still in force.
On account of complaints which reached the court of Spain, against the rule thus established by Cortés, the king resolved to put the new country in the hands of a body of magistrates who should be obeyed by all the governors of provinces, representing the person of the monarch and enforcing his authority. The members of the first Audiencia arrived in Vera Cruz on the 6th of December, 1528. There were five of them; their president was Nuño de Guzman, a cruel and sanguinary man, whose despotism left the most bitter recollections throughout the country. With his oidores, as the other members were called, he displayed the greatest cruelty toward the Indians, in direct disobedience to his instructions, which were to treat them with the greatest gentleness; he continued the traffic in slaves, by which he and his Audiencia expected to enrich themselves. They quarrelled with the ecclesiastics and religious orders, so that they were excommunicated by the bishop, in return for which they broke up by force a religious procession in the streets of the capital. In short, they made themselves intolerable alike to natives and colonists. Nuño de Guzman, finding himself thus unpopular, went away from Mexico in 1529, and paid a visit to Michoacan, where he strove to extort quantities of gold from Calzonzi, who, as we know, had hitherto escaped the violence of the invaders, and was living happily in his palaces of Tzintzuntzan and Patzcuaro, nominal sovereign of his Tarascans.
Calzonzi could not or would not satisfy the greed of the cruel Guzman, whereupon he was burned alive, as is shown in the same picture where he embraces the cross, in the town-hall of Tzintzuntzan. Nuño went away without any treasures or precious stones, and made war upon the natives of Jalisco, founding in that country a town which he called the Holy Ghost. This afterwards became Guadalajara, now one of the finest cities in the whole of Mexico.
This career of destruction and tyranny came to an end by the arrival of the second Audiencia, sent in response to the volume of complaints which reached the court of Spain. This second body had for its task to undo all that the first had done.
It published a royal decree which declared all the Indians free, and condemned to death all those who had made slaves of them. It had the care of diffusing instruction among the natives, and establishing the teaching of Latin in a college founded for the education of the natives. Its authority was used only for beneficial ends, and was of good effect in calming the agitation caused by its predecessors. The archbishops and bishops, by their religious character, also exercised a great influence over both colonists and Indians, with whom they were objects of veneration and respect.
Complaints, however, still reached the court of Spain, which, weary of so much dissension, resolved to send a viceroy as the supreme head of the colony, to represent in every thing the person of the king, subject only to the orders received from home, and controlling all affairs, civil and military, connected with the government. Difficulties often arose from quarrels between the viceroy and the Audiencia, and in extreme cases the will of the latter prevailed, while advices from the parent government were on their way from Spain; but in general the functions of the Audiencias were from this time limited to the simple administration of justice.
The country of New Spain, at the time of the the arrival of the first viceroy, had a wide extent; large tracts at that time unknown, were afterwards explored and included in its territory, through colonization by settlers. These lands extended over the immense prairies of the north, and included Texas, Alta California, Louisiana, and New Mexico, which now belong to the United States.