Three-Fingers Border Region of present-day Zacatecas and Jalisco. The Zacatecos inhabited most of what is now known as Western Zacatecas. The widespread Guachichiles inhabited large portions of eastern Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, eastern Jalisco, and western Guanajuato.
At the end of 1529, after serving as President of the First Audiencia in Mexico, a professional lawyer named Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán led a land expedition from Mexico City toward the region of Aguascalientes and Jalisco. Leading an army of 300 Spaniards and 6000 indigenous people, Guzmán entered this territory and discovered springs of thermal water and mineral deposits.
In his expeditions, Guzmán laid waste to large areas of Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Michoacán, and Zacatecas, capturing and enslaving many Indians. Although Guzmán was eventually brought to trial for his crimes, his reign of terror would become a major catalyst for the Mixtón Rebellion of 1541.
In April and May of 1530, Guzmán's lieutenants Pedro Almendes Chirinos and Cristóbal de Oñate, spent some time exploring the territory of present-day Teocaltiche, Nochistlán and Aguascalientes. During the 1530s, more Spanish forces moved into the area, and soon the Spanish colonial administrators gave this region the name Nueva Galicia, an area that comprised much of present-day Jalisco, Nayarit, Aguascalientes, and Zacatecas.
The Mixtón Rebellion of 1540-41 and the Chichimeca War of 1550-1600 made Nueva Galicia a war zone for many years. For the better part of four decades, the indigenous population of Aguascalientes, northern Jalisco and Zacatecas waged an unrelenting guerilla war against Spanish entrepreneurs and military forces and Indian laborers who traveled through the area. As a result many settlements were depopulated.
As early as the 1550s, Spaniards from Guadalajara had received grants for establishing cattle estancias in Guachichiles territory
