The son of an encomendero, Baltasar Obregon was twenty years old when he joined the 1564 expedition led by the first governor of Nueva Vizcaya, Francisco de Ibarra. The purpose of the expedition was to establish mining settlements in the borderlands of New Spain and to suppress indigenous rebellions in the region.
Although Obregon's role in the Ibarra expedition was that of soldier-explorer, and despite his lacking an advanced education, he would go on to compose Historia de los descubrimientos de Nueva Espana twenty years later, expanding his narrative to include the years before...