Spanish exploration of the area of what…
1616 CE
Spanish exploration of the area of what is today western and northwestern Durango and southern Chihuahua, Mexico, had begun in 1531 with Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's expedition.
He had named the main city founded in the area Villa de Guadalajara after his birthplace and called the area he conquered the sonorous la Conquista del Espíritu Santo de la Mayor España ("The Conquest of the Holy Spirit of Greater Spain").
The name did not stick, and instead another suggested by Queen Joanna, el Reino de Nueva Galicia ("The Kingdom of New Galicia"), did.
In the following decades, especially under the leadership of Francisco de Ibarra, settlements had moved north and into the interior of the continent, beyond the city of Zacatecas, when silver was discovered in the area.
Francisco de Ibarra, the first to colonize Durango, had named the new area Nueva Vizcaya, after his homeland in Spain, Biscay (the historic name of the Basque Country).
Nueva Vizcaya includes the modern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, the eastern parts of Sinaloa, Sonora and the southwest of Coahuila.
The region had come under the judicial jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara and the administration of its president.