Caxcan (Amerind tribe)
Nation | Defunct
1150 CE to 1940 CE
The Caxcan are a partly nomadic indigenous people of Mexico.
The Caxcan are allied with the Zacatecos against the Spaniards during the Mixtón Rebellion.
During the rebellion, they are described as "the heart and the center of the Indian Rebellion".
They are famously led by Tenamaxtli.
After the rebellion, they are a constant target of the Zacatecos and Guachichiles due to their ceasefire agreement with the Spaniards.
Their principal religious and population centers are at Teul, Tlaltenango, Juchipila, and Teocaltiche.
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The violent conquest of western Mexico by Nuño de Guzmán from 1530 to 1537 had left Spanish control of the area unstable.
During his campaign he had killed, tortured, and enslaved thousands of natives and provoked a rebellion in order to subdue them.
Despite his arrest in 1537 by the colonial authorities, Guzmán’s reign of terror is to have long-lasting repercussions in the land of the Chichimeca.
Full war reemerges between the settlers and the native peoples of the area when in early 1540 the native population begins a rebellion against the Spanish and their native allies from the south.
The Mixtón War, which is to last from 1540-1541, pits an alliance of Coras, Gauchichiles and Caxcans against the settlers.
The Spanish, under Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain, have gathered a force of four hundred and fifty Spanish soldiers and thirty thousand Aztec allies and begin to gradually put down the rebellion in Jalisco.
The Chichimeca War breaks out in 1546, this time pitting mostly Zacatecas against their former allies, the Caxcan, who have now allied with the Spanish.
The conflict, which can be considered as a continuation of the Mixtón War, since the fighting had not come to a halt in the intervening years, is to last for forty-four years, the longest and most expensive conflict between Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain in the history of the colony.
Guadalajara, given the growing wealth of the region with the discovery of silver to the north, especially in Nueva Vizcaya, becomes the seat of the second mainland Audiencia of New Spain in 1548.
The Audiencia of Guadalajara has oversight of all the northern mainland provinces of the Viceroyalty.