Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

“ The destruction of the archives and of writings of all kinds in New Mexico during the Indian revolt of 1680 and in succeeding years has left the documentary history of the province during the seventeenth century almost a blank. Publications are very few in number. There is no doubt that the archives of Spain and even those of Mexico will yet reveal a number of sources as yet unknown ”

“ The historical data given by Vetancurt in regard to New Mexico during earlier times are not of great value, but the Menologio, as well as the Cronica, contains a number of details on the missions and on the lives and achievements of the missionaries that become important to an understanding of the Indian himself. That such references are overburdened with details of a purely religious character does not at all impair their ethnologic value: they are pictures of the times according to the nature of which circumstances and events can alone be judged properly. ”

“ There are also the "Informaciones Matrimoniales," which contain data of great importance. Through them we are informed of the tragic fate of the last expedition of the Spaniards to the northwest, with its horrifying incidents. The story of woe and disaster that pictures the life of the Indian Pueblos and Spanish settlers during the eighteenth century is contained in fragments in the plain, matter-of-fact church registers, and it requires painstaking investigation to collect it. The greatest part of this information concerns the Rio Grande Pueblos. ”

“ Valuable documents exist also in the archives of the Surveyor General at Santa Fé; these are valuable chiefly for historical data covering the first half of the eighteenth century. The national archives in the City of Mexico are much more complete than those of New Mexico, while in Spain we may expect to find an almost complete set of government documents, preserved with much greater care and with more system than in any early Spanish possessions in America. The city of Sevilla would be the first place in which research in this direction should be conducted. ”

“ The number of villages of some of the Pueblo groups is also somewhat suspicious. It is not difficult to explain these probably intentional deviations from the truth in an otherwise sincere and highly valuable work. As already indicated, the publications emanating from the Franciscan Order, which exclusively controlled the New Mexican missions, had a special purpose distinct from that of mere information: they were designed to promote a propaganda not simply for the conversion of the Indians in general, but especially for the conversions made or to be made by the Order. ”

“ Both Castañeda and Jaramillo wrote a long time after the events had occurred, and probably from memory, hence the comparative accuracy of their descriptions is indeed remarkable. But that accuracy, however commendable, is relative rather than absolute, as both were liable to err, owing to the lapse of time and consequent failure to remember facts and events, and, especially with Castañeda, the influence of personal prejudice growing stronger with age. Jaramillo had less occasion to fall into error resulting from such weakness, but he is much less detailed than Castañeda. ”

“ We have now arrived at a period marking a great temporary change in the condition of all the Pueblo Indians, and of those of the Rio Grande especially. This is the insurrection, successful for a time, of the Pueblos in 1680, against the Spanish domination. The material on this eventful epoch is still largely in manuscript, the nearest approach to a documentary presentation in full being the incomplete paraphrase furnished by W. W. H. Davis in his Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, published in 1869. No blame should be attached to the author for the insufficiency of his data. ”

“ If the sources are given clearly and circumstantially, yet happen to be wrong, the author is exonerated from blame for resting upon their authority, provided, as it not infrequently happens, he has no way of correcting them by means of other information.
In entering the field of documentary research the first task is to become thoroughly acquainted with the languages in which the documents are recorded. To be able to read cursorily a language in its present form is not sufficient. ”

“ That the Piros and the Tiguas should have separated from the main stock might be accounted for by the attraction of the great salt deposits about the Manzano and greater accessibility to the buffalo plains, but that in the Rio Grande valley itself foreign linguistic groups should have interposed themselves between the northern and southern Tiguas and the Jemez and Pecos constitutes a problem which only diligent research in traditions, legends, and the native languages may satisfactorily solve. ”

“ The number of early maps of New Mexico is larger than is generally supposed, and there are to-day unpublished maps (for instance in the National Archives of Mexico for the eighteenth century) that indicate, as existing, Indian pueblos and missions that were abandoned nearly a century before the maps were made. ”

“ A number of letters emanating from Franciscan sources have been published lately in Mexico by Luis Garcia y Pimentel, and these throw sidelights on New Mexico as it was in the seventeenth century that are not without value. In the manuscripts from the archives at Santa Fé that survived the Pueblo revolt, now chiefly in the Library of Congress at Washington, occasional references to events anterior to the uprising may be found; and the church books of El Paso del Norte (Juarez) contain some few data that should not be neglected. ”

“ Words from Indian languages are subject to very faulty rendering in the older documents. In the first place, sound alone guided the writers, and Indian pronunciation is frequently indistinct in thep. 3 vowels and variable according to the individual—hence the frequent interchange in the Spanish sources of a and o, ó and u, e and i. For many sounds even the alphabets of civilized speech have not adequate phonetic signs. I may refer, as an example, to the Indian name in the Tigua language for the pueblo of Sandia. ”

“ Perhaps the last book published on New Mexico in the Spanish language is the little book of Pino, which, however, has little more than a bibliographic value except in so far as it touches the condition of New Mexico at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The documents in the New Mexican and Mexican archives up to the date of the American occupancy present features similar to those that characterize the Spanish documents of the eighteenth century. ”

“ The printed sources on Coronado's march may be divided into two chronologically distinct classes, the first of which comprises documents written in New Mexico in the years from 1540 to 1543; these reflect all the advantages and disadvantages of the writings of eye-witnesses. The mere fact that one had been a participant in the events which he describes is not a guaranty of absolute reliability: his sincerity and truthfulness may be above reproach, but his field of vision is necessarily limited, and the personal element controls his impressions, even against his will, hence his statep. ”

“ A tendency to enhance somewhat the importance of discoveries is inherent in almost every discoverer, but in the case of Espejo he was exposed to another danger. As he proceeded from village to village the natives gathered at every point from other places out of curiosity, fear, or perhaps with hostile intent, so that the number of the people which the explorer met was each time much larger than the actual number of inhabitants. ”

“ Every Pueblo language has its own geographical vocabulary, and when, as sometimes happened, several tribes met in council with the whites, the latter heard and unwittingly recorded several names for one and the same locality, thus apparently increasing the number of villages. ”

“ We also obtain from him some data, not elsewhere found, concerning the establishment and fate of the missions, and the true relations of the Spaniards and the natives are particularly well portrayed. Both the Apaches and the Navajos also receive some attention, Benavides giving, among others, the true reason for the hostility which the Apaches displayed since that time against the Spanish settlements. It is a book without which the study of the Pueblo Indians could not be satisfactory.
Where there is strong light there must of necessity be some shadow. ”

“ Royal decrees operated very slowly in distant colonies. Neither Chamuscado nor Espejo kept journals, but Castaño de Sosa, and especially Oñate, did. His diario (which is accessible through its publication in the Documentos del Archivo de Indias, although there are traces of an earlier publication) was copied for printing by someone manifestly unacquainted with New Mexico or with its Indian nomenclature, hence its numerous names for sites and tribes are often very difficult to identify. ”

“ As Oñate followed the course of the Rio Grande upward from below El Paso del Norte, and afterward branched off to almost every sedentary settlement in New Mexico and Arizona, the comparison of his diary with previous reports (those of the Coronado expedition included) is highly valuable, indeed indispensable. ”

“ Of the manuscript materials preceding and foreshadowing the insurrection, an important letter by the Franciscan Fray Francisco de Ayeta, a copy of which is in the national archives of Mexico, deserves to be specially mentioned. To this indefatigable monk, whose timely warnings were too lightly regarded by the Spanish authorities, are also due the data concerning the lives and the awful fate of the Franciscan priests at thep. 21 hands of the Pueblo Indians on August 10, 1680. ”

“ These documents, commonly called "Diligencias Matrimoniales," are the results of official investigations into the status of persons desiring to marry. From their nature these investigations always cover a considerable period, sometimes more than a generation, and frequently disclose historical facts that otherwise might remain unknown. ”

“ On the question of population Espejo could have no knowledge, since he had no means of communicating with the people by speech. Furthermore, it is well known that a crowd always appears more numerous than it would prove to be after an actual count ”

“ In 1602 there was published at Rome, under the title of Relación del Descubrimiento del Nuevo Mexico, a small booklet by the Dean of Santiago, Father Montoya, which purports to give a letter from Oñate on his occupancy of New Mexico and journey top. 16 the Colorado river of the West, thus covering the period between 1597 and 1605. It is preceded by a notice of Espejo's exploration, but it is entirely too brief to afford much information. The little book is exceedingly rare ”