An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

land was not in the form of gold and silver and later abandoned the region. Therefore,
there is little information regarding the native society or related details (Scholes and
Warren 1965:778). What was accomplished by this entrada was the introduction of
European diseases that rapidly decimated the population.
In other parts of the Sotovento, the secular Spanish administrators ensured that the
continuation of the Aztec tribute system would provide a significant source of colonial
revenues (Drucker 1970:ix). Colonial tax assessments from 1554 demonstrate that the
region was an agricultural breadbasket. A diversity of native products including cacao,
maize, beans, cotton, turkey, turtles, and honey were harvested in substantial quantities.
The success of exotic crops is evident in the fact that sizeable quantities were being
produced within a few decades of their introduction. Oranges, plantains, rice, cabbage,
onions, watermelons, sugarcane, grapes, and mangoes became common foodstuffs by
1580 (Coe and Diehl 1980b:14). Cattle, pigs, chickens also proliferated in the region.
The hierarchal authority of these territories or provinces within the precolumbian
señorío political and economic system was maintained by the Spanish colonizers. To
accomplish this objective, the Spanish practice of erecting governmental and commercial
centers on the site of major indigenous principalities (e.g., Mexico City; Merida, Izamal,
and Valladolid, Yucatan) (Clendinnen 1989:31-40) was continued in this region, albeit on
a smaller scale. Major Spanish mayoral capitals were established to act as provincial
headquarters supplanting the indigenous centers that had controlled the same areas. More
remote regions, like that around El Marquesillo, were slower to be organized into
dependencies or tributaries of the Spanish regional centers.
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