departments of Baja Verapaz and Alta Verapaz, Izabal and Petén, as well as the eastern part of El Quiché and a part of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The western portion of this area was the territory of the Qʼeqchiʼ Maya. Pedro Orozco, the leader of the Sacatepéquez Mam of San Marcos department, lent willing help to the Dominicans in their campaign to peacefully subject the inhabitants of Verapaz. On 1 May 1543 Carlos V rewarded the Sacatepéquez Mam by issuing a royal order promising never to give them in encomienda. Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas arrived in the colony of Guatemala in 1537 and immediately campaigned to replace violent military conquest with peaceful missionary work. Las Casas offered to achieve the conquest of the Land of War through the preaching of the Catholic faith. It was the Dominicans who promoted the use of the name Verapaz instead of the Land of War. Because it had not been possible to conquer the land by military means, the governor of Guatemala, Alonso de Maldonado, agreed to sign a contract promising he would not establish any new encomiendas in the area should Las Casas' strategy succeed. Las Casas and a group of Dominican friars established themselves in Rabinal, Sacapulas and Cobán, and managed to convert several native chiefs using a strategy of teaching Christian songs to merchant Indian Christians who then ventured into the area. In this way they congregated a group of Christian Indians in the location of what is now the town of Rabinal. Las Casas became instrumental in the introduction of the New Laws in 1542, established by the Spanish Crown to control the excesses of the conquistadors and colonists against the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. As a result, the Dominicans met substantial resistance from the Spanish colonists, who saw their own interests threatened by the New Laws; this distracted the Dominicans from their efforts to establish peaceful control over the Land of War. In 1543 the new colonial reducción of Santo Domingo de Cobán was founded at Chi Monʼa to house the relocated Qʼeqchiʼ from Chichen, Xucaneb and Al Run Tax Aj. Santo Tomás Apóstol was founded nearby the same year at Chi Nim Xol, it was used in 1560 as a reducción to resettle Chʼol communities from Topiltepeque and Lacandon in the Usumacinta Valley. In 1555 the Acala Chʼol and their Lacandon allies killed the