Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/261

Rh was exacted. Every male over fourteen was obliged at appointed times to bring a little packet or quill of golddust if he lived near to or worked in a mine; or if he had no gold, he paid tribute in cotton.

After several experiments, the government of Mexico and of other Spanish colonies in the West was confided to the "council of the Indies," a body of men appointed by the king and nominally responsible to him. This council was represented in New Spain by a viceroy, who, with the old audiencia for his counselors, was absolute enough for a real monarch. There had been so much difficulty in ruling through persons of inferior rank, like the audiencia, that it was decided to put a man over them with "that divinity which doth hedge a king," that he might stand between the natives and the crowd of moneymaking adventurers who were flocking to America. Of the sixty-four viceroys who reigned in Mexico, several seem to have befriended the downtrodden race over whom they were placed. The second of these rulers declared that "justice to the Indians was of more importance than all the mines in the world, and that the revenues they yielded to the Spanish Crown were not of such a character that all human and divine laws were to be sacrificed in order to obtain them."

During the reign of Mendoza, the first viceroy, the Indians, grown desperate with their manifold wrongs, rose in their first formidable rebellion since the death of Guatemozin. The old names of Tlascala, Cholula and Tezcuco gleam out as of old in the records of these stormy days, although in the guise of serfs one scarcely recognizes the proud warriors of twenty years before. Up to that time their chiefs still wore their old insignia of rank and tied their hair on the tops of their heads