26 
Introduction 
prohibit the issuance of papal bulls in the Indies and to prohibit appeals 
to the Pope. Acts of ecclesiastical councils in America had first to be sent 
to the Council of the Indies and approved by that body before they could 
be executed or even published. But while the king was supreme, both in 
theory and practice, he was altogether in sympathy with the ideals and 
methods of the Church, with the result that the Church and the State—the 
two majesties so often mentioned in the documents of the period—went 
hand in hand with much less friction than elsewhere. 
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in the Indies in 1569, 
but only Spaniards came under its jurisdiction. Tribunals of the Inquisi¬ 
tion had jurisdiction over civil officers as well as over religious. The 
tribunal at Mexico City, which was under the supervision of the viceroy 
as vice-patron of the Church, had its own executive officers, swore wit¬ 
nesses, arrested prisoners, fined the guilty, and, in extreme cases, turned 
criminals over to the civil authorities to execute. Sentences of the Inquisi¬ 
tion were called autos de fe. Friction between officials of the Inquisition 
and civil officers was very common. 39 
In addition to the secular clergy, or members of the Catholic hierarchy, 
there was the regular clergy, composed of the members of the various 
religious orders. In northern New Spain the three most important orders 
were the Franciscans, the Jesuits, and the Dominicans, and of these the 
Franciscans, for our purposes, were the most important. By 1590 the 
Franciscans of New Spain were grouped into three provinces and these in 
turn were divided into custodias , at the head of which were custodios. 
At the head of the Franciscan order in New Spain was a commissary- 
general, resident at Mexico City, while in Madrid was a resident commis¬ 
sary-general of the Indies. The chief significance of these religious 
orders, as far as the political development of New Spain was concerned, 
lay in the fact that in the founding of missions on the frontier their mem¬ 
bers became political agents for the crown also. Likewise the missions 
established by them proved to be but stepping-stones for the advance and 
bulwarks in the defense of the whole northern frontier. 40 
The Spanish Indian Policy; the Encomienda System. 
The natives with whom the Spaniards came in contact in the New 
World were from the first regarded as wards of the crown. As a con¬ 
sequence the Catholic kings felt obliged not only to provide a strong 
protective power for the Indians, but to convert and civilize them. Also 
it was inevitable that the exploitation of their labor should at the same 
time be attempted. The chief means by which it was hoped to attain 
these ends was the encomienda system. This system had its beginning in 
the island of Española. After an uprising of the natives in 1495 they were 
put under tribute by Columbus—either a hawksbell of gold or an arroba 
39 For instance see p. 221 of this volume. 
40 For further details see: Alamán, op. cit., pp. 36-37; H. E. Bolton, “ The Mission 
as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish American Colonies ”, in the American Historical 
Review, XXIII. (Oct., 1917) 42-61; Moses, op. cit., pp. 206-232; Recopilación, lib. 1; 
Shepherd, op. cit., pp. 49-59. 
