DOCUMENTARY SOURCES OF EARLY SPANISH-AMERICAN HISTORY.
THE earliest of the historians to use, to any extent, documentary proofs, was Herrera, in his Historia general, first published in 1601.[1] As the official historiographer of the Indies, he had the best of opportunities for access to the great wealth of documents which the Spanish archivists had preserved; but he never distinctly quotes them, or says where they are to be found.[2] It is through him that we are aware of some important manuscripts not now known to exist.[3]
The formation of the collections at Simancas, near Valladolid, dates back to an order of Charles the Fifth, Feb. 19, 1543. New accommodations were added from time to time, as documents were removed thither from the bureaus of the Crown Secretaries, and from those of the Councils of Seville and of the Indies. It was reorganized by Philip II., in 1567, on a larger basis, as a depository for historical research, when masses of manuscripts from other parts of Spain were transported thither;[4] but the comparatively small extent of the Simancas Collection does not indicate that the order was very extensively observed; though it must be remembered that Napoleon made havoc among these papers, and that in 1814 it was but a remnant which was rearranged.[5]
Dr. Robertson was the earliest of the English writers to make even scant use of the original manuscript sources of information; and such documents as he got from Spain were obtained through the solicitation and address of Lord Grantham, the English ambassador. Everything, however, was grudgingly given, after being first directly refused. It is well known that the Spanish Government considered even what he did obtain and make use of as unfit to be brought to the attention of their own public, and the authorities interposed to prevent the translation of Robertson’s history into Spanish.
In his preface Dr. Robertson speaks of the peculiar solicitude with which the Spanish archives were concealed from strangers in his time; and he tells how, to Spanish subjects even, those of Simancas were opened only upon a royal order. Papers notwithstanding such order, he says, could be copied only by payment of fees too exorbitant to favor research.[6] By order of Fernando VI., in the last century, a collection of selected copies of the most important documents in the various depositories of archives was made; and this was placed in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid.
In 1778 Charles III. ordered that the documents of the Indies in the Spanish offices and depositories should be brought together in one place. The movement did not receive form till 1785, when a commission was appointed; and not till 1788, did Simancas, and the other collections drawn upon, give up their treasures to be transported to Seville, where they were placed in the building provided for them.[7]
Muñoz, who was born in 1745, was commissioned in 1779 by the King with authority[8] to search archives, public and family, and to write and publish a Historia del nuevo mundo. Of this work only a single volume,[9] bringing the story down to 1500, was completed, and it was issued in 1793. Muñoz gave in its preface a critical review of the sources of his subject. In the prosecution of his labor he formed a collection of documents, which after his death was scattered; but parts of it were, in 1827, in the possession of Don Antonio de Uguina,[10] and later of Ternaux. The Spanish Government exerted itself to reassemble the fragments of this collection, which is now, in great part, in the Academy of History at Madrid,[11] where it has been increased by other manuscripts from the archives at Seville. Other portions are lodged, however, in ministerial offices, and the most interesting are noted by Harrisse in his Christophe Colomb.[12] A paper by Mr. J. Carson Brevoort on Muñoz and his manuscripts is in the American Bibliopolist (vol. viii. p. 21), February, 1876.[13] An English translation of Muñoz’s single volume appeared in 1797, with notes, mostly translated from the German version by Sprengel, published in 1795. Rich had a manuscript copy made of all that Muñoz wrote of his second volume (never printed), and this copy is noted in the Brinley Catalogue, no. 47.[14]
AUTOGRAPH OF MUÑOZ.
“In the days of Muñoz,” says Harrisse in his Notes on Columbus, p. 1, “the great repositories for original documents concerning Columbus and the early history of Spanish America were the Escurial, Simancas, the Convent of Monserrate, the colleges of St. Bartholomew and Cuenca at Salamanca, and St. Gregory at Valladolid, the Cathedral of Valencia, the Church of Sacro-Monte in Granada, the convents of St. Francis at Tolosa, St. Dominick at Malaga, St. Acacio, St. Joseph, and St. Isidro del Campo at Seville. There may be many valuable records still concealed in those churches and convents.”
The originals of the letters-patent, and other evidences of privileges granted by the Spanish monarchs to Columbus, were preserved by him, and now constitute a part of the collection of the Duke of Veraguas, in Madrid. In 1502 Columbus caused several attested copies of them and of a few other documents to be made, raising the number of papers from thirty-six to forty-four. His care in causing these copies to be distributed among different custodians evinces the high importance which he held them to have, as testimonials to his fame and his prominence in the world’s history. One wishes he could have had a like solicitude for the exactness of his own statements. Before setting out on his fourth voyage, he intrusted one of these copies to Francesco di Rivarolo, for delivery to Nicoló Odérigo, the ambassador of Genoa, in Madrid. From Cadiz shortly afterwards he sent a second copy to the same Odérigo. In 1670 both of these copies were given, by a descendant of Odérigo, to the Republic of Genoa. They subsequently disappeared from the archives of the State, and Harrisse[15] has recently found one of them in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris. The other was bought in 1816 by the Sardinian Government, at a sale of the effects of Count Michael-Angelo Cambiasi. After a copy had been made and deposited in the archives at Turin, this second copy was deposited in a marble custodia, surmounted by a bust of Columbus, and placed in the palace of the Doges in Genoa.[16] These documents, with two of the letters addressed (March 21, 1502, and Dec. 27, 1504)[17] to Odérigo, were published in Genoa in 1823 in the Codice diplomatico Colombo-Americano, edited with a biographical introduction by Giovanni Battista Spotorno.[18] A third letter (April 2, 1502), addressed to the governors of the Bank of St. George, was not printed by Spotorno, but was given in English in 1851 in the Memorials of Columbus by Robert Dodge, published by the Maryland Historical Society.[19]
The State Archives of Genoa were transferred from the Ducal Palace, in 1817, to the Palazzetto, where they now are; and Harrisse’s account[20] of them tells us what they do not contain respecting Columbus, rather than what they do. We also learn from him something of the “Archives du Notariat Génois,” and of the collections formed by the Senator Federico Federici (d. 1647), by Gian Battista Richeri (circa 1724), and by others; but they seem to have afforded Harrisse little more than stray notices of early members of the Colombo family.
Washington Irving refers to the “self-sustained zeal of one of the last veterans of Spanish literature, who is almost alone, yet indefatigable, in his labors in a country where at present literary exertion meets with but little excitement or reward.” Such is his introduction of Martin Fernandez de Navarrete,[21] who was born in 1765, and as a young man gave some active and meritorious service in the Spanish navy. In 1789 he was forced by ill-health to abandon the sea. He then accepted a commission from Charles IV. to examine all the depositories of documents in the kingdom, and arrange the material to be found in illustration of the history of the Spanish navy.[22] This work he continued, with interruptions, till 1825, when he began at Madrid the publication of his Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Españoles desde fines del siglo XV.,[23] which reached an extent of five volumes, and was completed in 1837. It put in convenient printed form more than five hundred documents of great value, between the dates of 1393 and 1540. A sixth and seventh volume were left unfinished at his death, which occurred in 1844, at the age of seventy-eight.[24] His son afterward gathered some of his minor writings, including biographies of early navigators,[25] and printed (1848) them as a Coleccion de opúsculos; and in 1851 another of his works, Biblioteca maritima Española, was printed at Madrid in two volumes.[26]
The first two volumes of his collection (of which volumes there was a second edition in 1858) bore the distinctive title, Relaciones, cartas y otros documentos, concernientes á los cuatro viages que hizo el Almirante D. Cristóbal Colon para el descubrimiento de las Indias occidentales, and Documentos diplomáticos. Three years later (1828) a French version of these two volumes appeared at Paris, which Navarrete himself revised, and which is further enriched with notes by Humboldt, Jomard, Walckenaer, and others.[27] This French edition is entitled: Relation des quatres voyages entrepris par Ch. Colomb pour la découverte du Nouveau Monde de 1492 à 1504, traduite par Chalumeau de Vernéuil? et de la Roquette. It is in three volumes, and is worth about twenty francs. An Italian version, Narrazione dei quattro viaggi, etc., was made by F. Giuntini, and appeared in two volumes at Prato in 1840-1841.[28]
Navarrete’s literary labors did not prevent much conspicuous service on his part, both at sea and on land; and in 1823, not long before he published his great Collection, he became the head of the Spanish hydrographic bureau.[29] After his death the Spanish Academy printed (1846) his historical treatise on the Art of Navigation and kindred subjects (Disertacion sobre la historia de la náutica[30]), which was an enlargement of an earlier essay published in 1802.
While Navarrete’s great work was in progress at Madrid, Mr. Alexander H. Everett, the American Minister at that Court, urged upon Washington Irving, then at Bordeaux, the translation into English of the new material which Navarrete was preparing, together with his Commentary. Upon this incentive Irving went to Madrid and inspected the work, which was soon published. His sense of the popular demand easily convinced him that a continuous narrative, based upon Navarrete’s material,—but leaving himself free to use all other helps,—would afford him better opportunities to display his own graceful literary skill, and more readily to engage the favor of the general reader. Irving’s judgment was well founded; and Navarrete never quite forgave him for making a name more popularly associated with that of the great discoverer than his own.[31] Navarrete afforded Irving at this time much personal help and encouragement. Obadiah Rich, the American Consul at Valencia, under whose roof Irving lived, furnished him, however, his chief resource in a curious and extensive library. To the Royal Library, and to that of the Jesuit College of San Isidro, Irving also occasionally resorted. The Duke of Veraguas took pleasure in laying before him his own family archives.[32] The result was the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus; and in the Preface, dated at Madrid in 1827,[33] Irving made full acknowledgment of the services which had been rendered to him. This work was followed, not long after, by the Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus; and ever since, in English and other languages, the two books have kept constant company.[34]
Irving proved an amiable hero-worshipper, and Columbus was pictured with few questionable traits. The writer’s literary canons did not call for the scrutiny which destroys a world’s exemplar. “One of the most salutary purposes of history,” he says, “is to furnish examples of what human genius and laudable enterprise may accomplish,”—and such brilliant examples must be rescued from the “pernicious erudition” of the investigator. Irving’s method at least had the effect to conciliate the upholders of the saintly character of the discoverer; and the modern school of the De Lorgues, who have been urging the canonization of Columbus, find Irving’s ideas of him higher and juster than those of Navarrete.
Henri Ternaux-Compans printed his Voyages, relations, et mémoires originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la dècouverte de l’Amérique, between 1837 and 1841.[35] This collection included rare books and about seventy-five original documents, which it is suspected may have been obtained during the French occupation of Spain. Ternaux published his Archives des voyages, in two volumes, at Paris in 1840;[36] a minor part of it pertains to American affairs. Another volume, published at the same time, is often found with it,—Recueil de documents et mémoires originaux sur l’histoire des possessions Espagnoles dans l’Amérique, whose contents, it is said, were derived from the Muñoz Collection.
The Academy of History at Madrid began in 1842 a series of documentary illustrations which, though devoted to the history of Spain in general (Coleccion de documentos inéditos para la historia de España), contains much matter of the first importance in respect to the history of her colonies.[37] Navarrete was one of the original editors, but lived only to see five volumes published. Salvá, Baranda, and others have continued the publication since, which now amounts to eighty volumes, of which vols. 62, 63, and 64 are the famous history of Las Casas, then for the first time put in print.
In 1864 a new series was begun at Madrid,—Coleccion de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas en América y Oceania, sacados, en su mayor parte, del Real Archivo de Indias. Nearly forty volumes have thus far been published, under the editing of Joaquin F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza at the start, but with changes later in the editorial staff.[38]
Mr. E. G. Squier edited at New York in 1860 a work called Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives, in the original, with Translations, Notes, Maps, and Sketches. There was a small edition only,—one hundred copies on small paper, and ten on large paper.[39] This was but one of a large collection of manuscripts relative to Central America and Mexico which Mr. Squier had collected, partly during his term as chargé d’affaires in 1849. Out of these he intended a series of publications, which never went beyond this first number. The collection “consists,” says Bancroft,[40] “of extracts and copies of letters and reports of audiencias, governors, bishops, and various governmental officials, taken from the Spanish archives at Madrid and from the library of the Spanish Royal Academy of History, mostly under the direction of the indefatigable collector, Mr. Buckingham Smith.”
Early Spanish manuscripts on America in the British Museum are noted in its Index to Manuscripts, 1854-1875, p. 31; and Gayangos’ Catalogue of Spanish Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii., has a section on America.[41]
Regarding the chances of further developments in depositories of manuscripts, Harrisse, in his Notes on Columbus,[42] says: “For the present the historian will find enough to gather from the Archivo General de Indias in the Lonja at Seville, which contains as many as forty-seven thousand huge packages, brought, within the last fifty years, from all parts of Spain. But the richest mine as yet unexplored we suppose to be the archives of the monastic orders in Italy; as all the expeditions to the New World were accompanied by Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine, and other monks, who maintained an active correspondence with the heads of their respective congregations. The private archives of the Dukes of Veraguas, Medina-Sidonia, and Del Infantado, at Madrid, are very rich. There is scarce anything relating to that early period left in Simancas; but the original documents in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon are all intact”[43]
Among the latest contributions to the documentary history of the Spanish colonization is a large folio, Cartas de Indias, publicalas por primera vez el ministerio de fomento, issued in Madrid in 1877 under the auspices of the Spanish Government. It contains one hundred and eight letters,[44] covering the period 1496 to 1586, the earliest date being a supposed one for a letter of Columbus which is without date. The late Mr. George Dexter,[45] who has printed[46] a translation of this letter (together with one of another letter, Feb. 6, 1502, and one of Vespucius, Dec. 9, 1508), gives his reasons for thinking the date should be between March 15 and Sept. 25, 1493.[47]
At Madrid and Paris was published, in 1883, a single octavo volume,—Costa-Rica, Nicaragua y Panamá en el siglo XVI., su historia y sus limítes segun los documentos del Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, del de Simancas, etc., recogidos y publicados con notas y aclaraciones históricas y geográficas, por D. Manuel M. de Peralta.
The more special and restricted documentary sources are examined in the successive chapters of the present volume.
NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL
HISTORY OF AMERICA.
