During the comparatively short time which Espejo had to explore the country as far as the Hopi or Moqui, he collected interesting ethnological data. Customs that appeared new as late as the second half of the last century were noted by him; and while his nomenclature of the Pueblos agrees in many points with that of the Coronado expedition, terms were added that have since been definitely adopted. Espejo's return to Mexico was to be followed by a definite occupancy of the Rio Grande country, but his untimely death prevented it, and the subsequent plan of colonization, framed and proposed by Juan Bautista de Lomas Colmenares, led to no practical results, as likewise did the ill-fated expedition of Humaña, Bonilla, and Leyva, the disastrous end of which in the plains became known only through a few vestiges of information and by hearsay.
Seven years after Espejo's journey, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa penetrated[p. 12] to the Rio Grande near the present village of Santo Domingo. The report thereon is explicit and sober, and in it we find the first mention of the Spanish names by which some of the Pueblos have since become known. From this report it is easy to follow the route taken by Castaño and his followers, but the account is incomplete, terminating abruptly at Santo Domingo, whither Castaño had been followed by Captain Juan de Morlete, who was sent after him by the governor of what is now Coahuila, without whose permission Castaño had undertaken the journey. I have no knowledge as yet of any document giving an account of the return of the expedition.
Seven years more elapsed ere the permanent occupancy of New Mexico was effected under the leadership of Juan de Oñate. Thenceforward events in that province became the subject of uninterrupted documentary record.
The very wise and detailed ordinances regulating the discovery and annexation to Spain of new territory, promulgated by Philip II, declared that every exploration or conquest (the term "conquest" was subsequently eliminated from Spanish official terminology and that of "pacification" substituted) should be recorded as a journal or diary. 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. But the document itself is a sober, matter-of-fact record of occurrences and geographical details, interspersed with observations of more or less ethnological value. 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. The diario forms the beginning of accurate knowledge of the region under consideration. Perhaps more important still are the Acts of Obedience and Homage (Obediencia y Vasallaje) executed at various villages[p. 13] during the course of the years 1598 and 1599. At first sight, and to one unacquainted with Pueblo idioms, they present an unintelligible list of partly recognizable names. But the confusion becomes somewhat reduced through closer scrutiny and by taking into consideration the circumstances under which each official document was framed. Oñate already enjoyed the advantage of interpreters in at least one New Mexican Indian tongue, but the meetings or councils during which the "acts of obedience" were written were not always at places where his interpreters understood the language of the people they were among. These scribes faithfully recorded the names of pueblos as they heard them, and sometimes several names, each in a different language for the same village, hence the number of pueblos recorded is considerably larger than it actually was. Again the inevitable misunderstanding of Indian pronunciation by the Spaniards caused them to write the same word in different forms according as the sounds were uttered and caught by the ear. An accurate copy of these documents of Oñate's time made by one versed in Pueblo nomenclature and somewhat acquainted with Pueblo languages would be highly desirable. Oñate is not given to fulness in ethnological details. His journal is a dry record of what happened during his march and occupancy of the country. Customs are only incidentally and briefly alluded to.
One of Oñate's officers, however, Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagra, or Villagran, published in 1610 a Historia de la Nueva Mexico in verse. As an eye-witness of the events he describes, Villagran has the merits and defects of all such authors, and the fact that he wrote in rhyme called poetry does not enhance the historical merit of his book. Nevertheless we find in it many data regarding the Pueblos not elsewhere recorded, and study of the book is very necessary. We must allow for the temptation to indulge in so-called poetical license, although Villagran employs less of it than most Spanish chroniclers of the period that wrote in verse. The use of such form and style of writing was regarded in Spain as an accomplishment at the time, and not many attempted it, which is just as well. Some of the details and descriptions of actions and events by Villagran have been impeached as improbable; but even if such were the case, they would not detract from the merits of his[p. 14] book as an attempt at an honest and sincere narration and a reasonably faithful description.
The minor documents connected with Oñate's enterprise and subsequent administration of the New Mexican colony, so far as known, are of comparatively small importance to the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos. During the first years of the seventeenth century the attention of Oñate was directed chiefly toward explorations in western Arizona and the Gulf of California. While he was absent on his memorable journey, quarrels arose in New Mexico between the temporal and ecclesiastical authorities, which disturbed the colony for many years and form the main theme of the documentary material still accessible. Even the manuscripts relating to these troubles contain, here and there, references to the ethnological condition of the Pueblos. Charges and counter-charges of abuses committed by church and state could not fail to involve, incidentally, the points touching upon the Indians, and the documentary material of that period, still in manuscript but accessible through the copies made by me and now in the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, should not be neglected by serious investigators. To enter into details regarding the tenor of these documents would be beyond the scope of this Introduction, but I would call attention in a general way to the value and importance of church records, which consist chiefly of registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths. These for the greater part were kept with considerable scrupulosity, although there are periods during which the same degree of care was not exercised. They are valuable ethnologically by reason of the data which they afford with respect to intermarriages between members of distant tribes, through the numerous Indian personal names that they contain, and on account of the many records of events which the priests deemed it desirable to preserve. Examples will be given in the text of the Documentary History to follow.
The Libros de Fabrica, in which are recorded items bearing on the economic side of church administration, are usually less important; still they contain data that should not be neglected, for very often minor points deserve as much attention as salient ones. Unfortunately the church records of the period prior to 1680 have[p. 15] well-nigh disappeared from New Mexico, but some still exist at El Paso del Norte (Juarez), Chihuahua, that date back to the middle of the seventeenth century. The absence of these records may be somewhat overcome by another class of ecclesiastical documents, much more numerous and more laborious to consult. In fact I am the only one who thus far has attempted to penetrate the mass of material which they contain, although my researches have been far from exhaustive, owing to lack of support in my work. 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. These church papers also, though not frequently, include fragments of correspondence and copies of edicts and decrees that deserve attention.
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; but in the meantime, until these treasures are brought to light, we must remain more or less in the dark as to the conditions and the details of events prior to 1692. 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.
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 to[p. 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; but three copies of it exist in the United States, so far as I am aware.
Of greater importance are the notices, of about the same period, preserved by Fray Juan de Torquemada in the first volume of his Monarchia Indiana (1615). In this work we find the first mention of some Pueblo fetishes, with their names, as understood at the time. The letter of Fray Francisco de San Miguel, first priest of Pecos, given in print by Torquemada, is of considerable interest. Torquemada himself was never in New Mexico, but he stood high in the Franciscan Order and had full access to the correspondence and to all other papers submitted from outside missions during his time. It is much to be regretted that the three manuscript pamphlets by Fray Roque Figueredo, bearing the titles Relacion del Viage al Nuevo México, Libro de las Fundaciones del Nuevo Mexico, and Vidas de los Varones Ilustres, etc., appear to be lost. Their author was first in New Mexico while Oñate governed that province, and his writings were at the great convent of Mexico. Whether they disappeared during the ruthless dispersion of its archives in 1857 or were lost at an earlier date is not known.