of Puerto de Caballos on the Honduran coast and its exposure to repeated pirate raids he sent a pilot to scout Lake Izabal. As a result of the survey, and after royal permission was granted, Criado de Castilla ordered the construction of a new port, named Santo Tomás de Castilla, at a favourable spot on the Amatique Bay not far from the lake. Work then began on building a highway from the port to the new capital of the colony, modern Antigua Guatemala, following the Motagua Valley into the highlands. Indigenous guides scouting the route from the highlands would not proceed further downriver than three leagues below Quiriguá, because the area was inhabited by the hostile Toquegua. The leaders of Xocolo and Amatique, backed by the threat of Spanish action, persuaded a community of 190 Toquegua to settle on the Amatique coast in April 1604. The new settlement immediately suffered a drop in population, but although the Amatique Toquegua were reported extinct before 1613 in some sources, Mercedarian friars were still attending to them in 1625. In 1628 the towns of the Manche Chʼol were placed under the administration of the governor of Verapaz, with Francisco Morán as their ecclesiastical head. Morán favoured a more robust approach to the conversion of the Manche and moved Spanish soldiers into the region to protect against raids from the Itza to the north. The new Spanish garrison in an area that had not previously seen a heavy Spanish military presence provoked the Manche to revolt, which was followed by abandonment of the indigenous settlements. By 1699 the neighbouring Toquegua no longer existed as a separate people because of a combination of high mortality and intermarriage with the Amatique Indians. At around this time the Spanish decided on the reduction of the independent (or "wild" from the Spanish point of view) Mopan Maya living to the north of Lake Izabal. The north shore of the lake, although fertile, was by then largely depopulated, therefore the Spanish planned to bring the Mopan out of the forests to the north into an area where they could be more easily controlled. During the campaign to conquer the Itza of Petén, the Spanish sent expeditions to harass and relocate the Mopan north of Lake Izabal and the Chʼol Maya of the Amatique forests to the east. They were resettled in the Colonial reducción of San Antonio de las