IMMIGRATION REPARTIMIENTOS OF INDIANS. 85 



Four years had not entirely elapsed since the fall of Mexico, 

 when a new and splendid city rose from its ruins and attracted the 

 eager Spaniards, of all classes, from the old world and the islands. 

 Cortez designed this to be the continental nucleus of population. 

 Situated on the central plateau of the realm, midway between the 

 two seas, in a genial climate whose heat never scorched and whose 

 cold never froze, it was, indeed, an alluring region to which 

 men of all temperaments might resort with safety. Strongholds, 

 churches, palaces, were erected on the sites of the royal residences 

 of the Aztecs and their blood-stained Teocallis. Strangers were 

 next invited to the new capital, and, in a few years, the Spanish 

 quarter contained two thousand families, while the Indian district 

 of Tlatelolco, numbered not less than thirty thousand inhabitants. 

 The city soon assumed the air and bustle of a great mart. Trades- 

 men, craftsmen and merchants, thronged its streets and remaining 

 canals. 



Cortez was not less anxious to establish, in the interior of the 

 old Aztec empire, towns or points of rendezvous, which in the 

 course of time, would grow up into important cities. These were 

 placed with a view to the future wants of travel and trade in New 

 Spain. Liberal grants of land were made to settlers who were 

 compelled to provide themselves with wives under penalty of 

 forfeiture within eighteen months. Celibacy was too great a 

 luxury for a young country. 1 The Indians were divided among 

 the Spaniards by the system of repartimientos, which will be more 

 fully discussed in a subsequent part of this work. The necessities 

 and cupidity of the early settlers in so vast a region rendered this 

 necessary perhaps, though it was promptly discountenanced but 

 never successfully suppressed by the Spanish crown. The scene 

 of action was too remote, the subjects too selfish, and the ministers 

 too venal or interested to carry out, with fidelity, the benign ordi- 

 nances of the government at home. From this apportionment of 

 Indians, which subjected them, in fact, to a species of slavery, it 

 is but just to the conquerors to state that the Tlascalans, upon 

 whom the burden of the fighting had fallen, were entirely exempted 

 at the recommendation of Cortez. 



Among all the tribes the work of conversion prospered, for the 

 ceremonious ritual of the Aztec religion easily introduced the 

 native worshippers to the splendid forms of the Roman Catholic. 

 Agriculture and the mines were not neglected in the policy of 



1 Prescott 3d, 261. 



