Cristóbal de Oñate, one of Guzmán's captains,…
January 1531 CE
Cristóbal de Oñate, one of Guzmán's captains, founds a small town near Nochistlán in 1531 (probably January), to which the name "Guadalajara" is given.
Oñate had arrived in New Spain in 1524 as the assistant to Rodrigo de Albornoz.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, had made Albornoz auditor, one of five royal officials named to oversee Cortés's government in the colony.
In New Spain, he has been reunited with his twin nephews Juan and Vicente de Zaldívar y Oñate.
Cristobal de Oñate had contracted marriage with Catalina de Salazar de la Cadena, daughter of Gonzalo de Salazar and Catalina De La Cadena Maluenda.
This is Catalina's second marriage.
Her maternal uncle Antonio De La Cadena Maluenda, is Treasurer of New Spain.
Gonzalo Salazar is a high-ranking official in the Royal Treasury of the colony, and at times a member of the junta that rules New Spain.
Oñate is a part of the expedition of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán that, from 1529, has conquered the western part of Mexico (the current states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Aguascalientes and parts of Sinaloa, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí).
This brutal conquest takes only a few years, and the newly conquered region becomes known as Nueva Galicia.
The foundation of the cities of Compostela and Tepic in present-day Nayarit and Guadalajara in Zacatecas is attributed to Oñate.