The Province of Pánuco was a province of the Spanish colony of New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

. It was probably discovered by Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. The Americas are generally believed to have derived their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.-Expeditions:...

 in 1498, and later by Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva was a Spanish conquistador. Some authors said he was from the same family as Diego Velázquez.He went to Hispaniola in 1508 and to Cuba in 1511....

. It is located on the Mexican gulf coast centered around Santiestebán de Pánuco, from the river of Tuxpan

Tuxpan

Tuxpan is both a municipality and city located in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The population of the city was 78,523 and of the municipality was 134,394 inhabitants, according to the INEGI census of 2005, residing in a total area of 1,051.89 km²...

 and extending into the current state of Tamaulipas

Tamaulipas

Tamaulipas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Tamaulipas is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 43 municipalities and its capital city is Ciudad Victoria. The capital city was named after Guadalupe Victoria, the...

. Originally inhabited by Huastecs, it was claimed both by conquistador Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...

 who sent Francisco de Montejo

Francisco de Montejo

Francisco de Montejo y Alvarez was a Spanish conquistador in Mexico and Central America.Francisco de Montejo was born in Salamanca, Spain, in 1479 to Juan de Montejo and Catalina Alvarez de Tejeda. He left Spain in 1514, and arrived in Cuba in time to join Grijalva's expedition along the coast of...

 to claim the area and by Francisco de Garay

Francisco de Garay

Francisco de Garay was a Spanish Basque conquistador. He was a companion to Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World and arrived in Hispaniola in 1493. Here he attracted attention when he encountered a large gold nugget worth four thousand pesos.- Jamaica:From 1514 to 1523...

, governor of Jamaica, who sent Alonso Alvarez de Pineda

Alonso Álvarez de Pineda

Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was a Spanish explorer and cartographer. His map marks the first document in Texas history.-Expedition:The Spanish thought there must be a sea lane from the Gulf of Mexico to Asia...

. The province was the object of a power struggle between supportes of Cortés and his opponents, first divided into encomienda

Encomienda

The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....

s and allotted to Cortés supporters. In 1525 Nuño de Guzmán of the Anti-Cortés faction was appointed governor of Pánuco and he stripped Cortés' supporters of their encomienda's and undertook a policy of violent slaveraids against the local indians.