On the military side the viceroy of New Spain was captain general of the entire viceroyalty. In practice, however, he exer cised merely supervisory military authority in the captaincies-gen eral of Guatemala and Havana. In the audiencia districts of Mexico and Guadalajara he exercised direct military authority. The powers of the subordinate or local captain-general were ex ercised by some provincial governors. At first the viceroy was in charge of the fiscal administration of New Spain. In 1786, how ever, a separate fiscal administration, dependent upon the viceroy, was introduced with the establishment of the intendancy system. Under this system the viceroyalty proper was divided into twelve intendancies and three provinces. Each intendant was ruled by a governor-intendant, who assisted in the collection of revenues and, in addition, was charged with certain administrative, judicial and military authority in his intendancy.
The Church and the People.—The regular and secular clergy, particularly the former, supplemented the work of the conquerors. The Franciscans were the first regulars to enter New Spain with papal sanction, three of them arriving in May 1522. The mem bers of this order were noted for their charitable work among the Indians and for their missionary work on the northern frontier from Florida to California. Regulars of many other orders fol lowed the Franciscans to New Spain, notably the Augustinians, the Dominicans and the Jesuits. The last-named were transferred in 1572 from Florida to western New Spain where they were actively engaged until 1767 in missionary and educational work and in advancing and holding the frontier. Each of the orders had its own organization, the principal unit of which was the province, which was administered by a provincial. The various orders in 1805 were maintaining 254 convents in New Spain proper. Secu lar organization began with the nominal creation of the bishopric of Yucatan in 1519; actually it began with the creation of the bishopric of Tlaxcala in 1526. Juan de Zumarraga arrived as first bishop of Mexico City in 1528; in 1547 Mexico City became the seat of an archbishopric. In 18o5 there were in present Mexico one archbishop, eight bishops and 1,703 parishes. The Council of the Indies, a joint body of clergy and laity, exercised sovereign au thority. Through special concessions of the papacy the king of Spain became virtually the administrative head of the colonial church. As such, the Crown appointed to all ecclesiastical hold ings, supervised the conduct of the clergy, and controlled ecclesi astical revenues. The liberal policy of the Crown was such that the church became immensely wealthy and early attained pre ponderant power and influence. Alarnan states that its wealth in
1821 included not less than one-half of the real property and cap ital of the country. Its power may be judged from the petition of the city council of Mexico to Philip IV. in 1644 to stop the foundation of religious houses, to suspend ordinations because there were more than 6,000 unemployed clerics and to suppress feast days because there were at least two each week. To assist the church a tribunal of the Inquisition was established in Mexico in 1571. By the Crown the church was delegated almost exclusive control over education, but this it was unable to diffuse widely, though Humboldt said that in certain respects Mexico surpassed England. According to authoritative estimates, out of a popula tion of about 6,000,000 at the beginning of Mexican independence, only 30,00o were literate. On the other hand the church estab lished a number of higher institutions of learning, the underlying aims of which were to equip young men of the upper classes for the priesthood and the practice of law. The most noted of these institutions was the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico which was inaugurated in 1553. The Church also had charge of charitable institutions, as hospitals and orphanages.
Three distinct races were represented in New Spain—the Eu ropean, the Indian and the negro. The most important of these races was the European, with Spaniards overwhelmingly predom inating. They were divided into two classes—gachupines, or European-born Spaniards, and creoles, or American-born Span iards. For the gachupines were reserved most of the political, commercial and social preferments. The total number of Euro peans in New Spain in i800 probably was about 885,00o, of which number approximately 15,000 were gachupines. The native race remained the most numerous. In i800, in New Spain proper, the Indians probably numbered 3,000,000, or approximately 50% of the total population. Negroes were early brought to New Spain to work as slaves on the coastal agricultural lands. Prior to 1575 they probably outnumbered the whites, but by 1821 they had largely been absorbed or else had bought their freedom and had disappeared. Few Spanish women came to America at first, and at the close of the colonial period they probably did not total more than one-tenth of the European-born Spaniards. As a result, there were many classes of mixed blood, the most important being the mestizo (Indian and European) ; the sambos (negro and In dian), and the mulattoes (negro and white). The number of per sons of mixed race in 1800 was approximately 2,000,000. A few Chinese and Malays were settled on the Pacific coast.