Spanish friar Domingo de Vico. De Vico had established a small church among the inhabitants of San Marcos, a region that lay between the territories of the Lacandon and the Manche Chʼol (an area unrelated to the department of San Marcos). De Vico had offended the local ruler by repeatedly scolding him for taking several wives. The indigenous leader shot the friar through the throat with an arrow; the angry natives then seized him, cut open his chest and extracted his heart. His corpse was then decapitated; the natives carried off his head, which was never recovered by the Spanish. In response a punitive expedition was launched, headed by Juan Matalbatz, a Qʼeqchiʼ leader from Chamelco; the independent Indians captured by the Qʼeqchiʼ expedition were taken back to Cobán and resettled in Santo Tomás Apóstol. Lake Izabal and the lower Motagua River Gil González Dávila set out from the Caribbean island of Hispaniola early in 1524, with the intention of exploring the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. His course took him to the north coast of Honduras. After founding Puerto de Caballos, Gil Gónzalez sailed west along the coast to the Amatique Bay, and founded a Spanish settlement somewhere near the Dulce River, within modern-day Guatemala, which he named San Gil de Buena Vista. He launched a campaign of conquest in the mountainous region dividing Honduras from Guatemala. González left some of his men under the command of Francisco Riquelme at San Gil de Buena Vista, and sailed back east along the coast to Honduras. The colonists at San Gil did not prosper, and soon set out in search of a more hospitable location. They resettled in the important indigenous town of Nito, near the mouth of the Dulce River. Although they were in a desperate state, and near-starving, they were still there when Hernan Cortés passed through en route to Honduras, and were absorbed into his expedition. The Dominicans established themselves in Xocolo on the shore of Lake Izabal in the mid-16th century. Xocolo became infamous among the Dominican missionaries for the practice of witchcraft by its inhabitants. By 1574 it was the most important staging post for European expeditions into the interior, and it remained important in that role until as late as 1630, although it was abandoned in 1631. In 1598 Alfonso Criado de Castilla became governor of the Captaincy General of Guatemala. Owing to the poor state