The ordinances of 20 March 1524: Cortés legislates for New Spain

In March 1524 the governor of New Spain issued a code for the Spaniards living in it, and it stayed in a private family archive until a Mexican historian printed it in 1844. It arms every householder in proportion to the Indians he holds, orders Castilian vines grafted and wheat sown in the Indian towns, requires a church and a priest in each, and forbids anyone to press the Indians for gold or to strike them — on a ground the text states plainly, that they would otherwise rise.