Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/558

538 of the Spaniards would probably have occurred. A more alarming conspiracy was one planned against the magistrates during the same year. It was betrayed, however, and the instigators were executed; some of the accomplices who had fled toward Peru were overtaken and punished.

During the year 1548 there was an uprising in Oajaca among the Tequipans, who felt secure by reason of the mountainous nature of their retreats; but the ever-watchful Mendoza sent against them a force under Tristan de Arellano, who quelled the revolt before it had made much progress. In 1550 the province of Zapotecas rebelled against the Spanish yoke under circumstances which gave the revolt a more than passing interest. The traditional [sic]Qnetzaleaotl was said to have reappeared. The old men of the tribe excited the young to take up arms. One of the caciques assumed the role of the ancient chieftain, but unfortunately for the natives, with none of his expected power. The success of this general uprising was but momentary; it was but another fiasco, and collapsed before a few vigorous blows of the viceroy.

These occurrences were but an indication of the unrest and dissatisfaction that pervaded the colonists. The victors of the Mixton war clamored for their reward, and it must come largely from the enforced labor of the natives. War, pestilence, and conscription had wrought havoc, and perplexed the labor question until its solution became the paramount difhculty of the day. All the labor of mining, of tillage, of stock-raising, and of household drudgery was performed by the natives. There is no evidence that any Spaniard during that or the following century