Thus, in 1723, Bustamante was the person in charge of studying the case of the alcalde mayor of Albuquerque, Martin Hurtado, who had developed a system of political corruption in his city.

Under his administration, settlers and Native Americans in New Mexico were forced to keep their weapons (specifically their guns) and their horses, through a law that cancelled the sale of any such products.

In addition, Bustamante perceived a notable reduction in the number of soldiers available to the presidio of Santa Fe, from a little over 100 people in 1715 to only twenty two in 1723.

[3] After this, the Comanches set fire a series of villages in the Jicarillas's territory, [3] which caused the death of many of its inhabitants, except for seventy-four people (mostly adult men, but also some women and children).

[3] Thus, a war between the Comanche-Jicarilla peoples broke out in the El Gran Sierra de Fierro, located in the modern-day Texas panhandle.

After the war, which lasted nine days, some of the Jicarilla bands fled from their villages to other parts of Texas and New Mexico,[4][5] while others settled in the Navajo territory of Colorado, who also were Christianized and were loyal to the Spanish governor, to take refuge from the Comanches.

In 1727 Bustamante requested the Viceroy of New Spain to send several troops to New Mexico in order to investigate a group of Frenchmen who, according to him, had been in El Cuartelejo, located in modern-day Kansas, and Chinali, a region near Santa Fe, and whose place of settlement was unknown at that time.