Francisco Tenamaztle
[2] Over a six-year period Guzmán conducted frequent violent slave raids throughout Northern Mexico, enslaving thousands of natives.
Guzmán and his lieutenants founded towns and Spanish settlements in the region, called Nueva Galicia, including Guadalajara, the first temporary site of which was at Tenamaztle’s home of Nochistlán, Zacatecas.
The Spaniards encountered increased resistance as they moved further from the complex hierarchical societies of Central Mexico and attempted to force Indians into servitude through the encomienda system.
The Caxcan Indians are often considered part of the Chichimeca, a generic term used by the Spaniards and Aztecs for all the nomadic and semi-nomadic Native Americans living in the deserts of northern Mexico.
Alvarado declined to await reinforcements and attacked Mixton in June 1541 with four hundred Spaniards and an unknown number of Indian allies.
They assembled a force of 450 Spaniards and 30 to 60 thousand Aztec, Tlaxcalan and other Indians and under Viceroy Mendoza invaded the land of the Caxcanes.
The aftermath of the Caxcan's defeat was that "thousands were dragged off in chains to the mines, and many of the survivors (mostly women and children) were transported from their homelands to work on Spanish farms and haciendas.
[12] By the viceroy's order men, women and children were seized and executed, some by cannon fire, some torn apart by dogs, and others stabbed.
The reports of the excessive violence against civilian Indians caused the Council of the Indies to undertake a secret investigation into the conduct of the viceroy.
After an investigation, on August 12, 1552 Spanish authorities established his identity as the leader of the Caxcanes in the Mixton War and on November 17 he was ordered to be sent for trial to Spain.
[17] Tenamaztle asked the king to consider "the unparalleled wrongs and evils that the Caxcanes had endured at the hands of the Spanish" and said that the objective of the Indians was not to rebel but to "flee the inhuman cruelty to which they were subjected."
