After the recall of Oñate from New Mexico, not only the colony but also the missions in that distant land began to decline, owing to the bitter contentions between the political and the ecclesiastical authorities. The Franciscan Order, desirous of inspiring an interest in New Mexican missions, fostered the literary efforts of its missionaries in order to promote a propaganda for conversions. It also sent a special visitor to New Mexico in the person of Fray Estevan de Perea, who gave expression to what he saw and ascertained, in two brief printed but excessively rare documents, a facsimile copy of which is owned by my friend Mr F. W. Hodge, of the Bureau of American Ethnology. A third letter which I have not been able to see is mentioned by Ternaux-Compans, also a "Relacion de la Conversion de los Jumanos" by the same and dated 1640.
Much more extended than the brief pamphlets by Fray Perea[p. 17] is the Relaciones de todas las cosas acaecidas en el Nuevo Mexico hasta el Año de 1626 (I abbreviate the very long title), by Fray Geronimo de Zárate Salmerón, which was published in the third series of the first Colección de Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, and also by Mr Charles F. Lummis in The Land of Sunshine, with an English translation. This work, while embodying chiefly a narrative most valuable to the ethnography of western Arizona and eastern California, of the journey of Oñate to the Colorado river of the West, followed by an extended report on De Soto's expedition to the Mississippi river, contains data on the Rio Grande Pueblos and on those of Jemez that are of permanent value. The author gives the numbers of Pueblo Indians officially converted during his time.
We come now to a book which, though small in compass, has had perhaps greater circulation in languages other than Spanish, with the exception of the Destruycion de las Indias by the notorious Las Casas, than any other. This is the work of Fray Alonso de Benavides, on New Mexico, first published in 1630 under the misleading title of Memorial que Fray Juan de Santander de la Orden de San Francisco, Comisario General de Indias, presenta a la Magestad Catolica del Rey don Felipe cuarto nuestro Señor, etc., Madrid, 1630. Benavides was custodian of the Franciscan province of New Mexico for some time, and therefore had good opportunity of knowing both the country and its natives. He gives a very precise and clear enumeration of the groups of Pueblo Indians, locating them where they had been found by Coronado ninety years before and adding those which the latter had not visited, as well as giving the number of villages of each group and the approximate number of people therein contained. No writer on New Mexico up to this time had given such a clear idea of its ethnography, so far as the location and the distribution of the stocks are concerned. While somewhat brief on manners and customs, Benavides is fuller and more explicit than any of his predecessors, and informs us of features of importance which no other author in earlier times mentioned. In short, his book is more valuable for New Mexican ethnography than any other thus far known, and it is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that it was translated into[p. 18] several European languages. That the Rio Grande Pueblos receive an abundant share of attention from Benavides is natural. 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. In the case of Benavides the shadow is found in the exaggerated number of inhabitants attributed to the New Mexican Pueblos, exaggerations as gross and as glaring as those of Espejo. 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. New Mexico was in a state of neglect, spiritually and politically; the political authorities had been denouncing the Franciscans in every possible way, and there was danger, if this critical condition continued, that the Order might lose its hold upon the northern territories and its mission be turned over to the Jesuits, who were then successfully at work in the Mexican northwest and approaching New Mexico from that direction. To prevent such a loss it was deemed necessary to present to the faithful as alluring a picture of the field as possible, exploiting the large number of neophytes as a result already accomplished and hinting at many more as subjects for conversion. Hence the exaggerated number of Indians in general attributed by Benavides to what then comprised the religious province of New Mexico. In this respect, and in this alone, the Memorial of Benavides may be regarded as a "campaign document," but this does not impair its general value and degree of reliability.[p. 19]
For the period between 1630 and the uprising of 1680 there is a lack of printed documents concerning New Mexico that is poorly compensated by the known manuscripts which I have already mentioned as existing in New Mexico and Mexico. Still there appeared in 1654 a little book by Juan Diez de la Calle, entitled Memorial y Resúmen breve de Noticias de las Indias Occidentales, in which the disturbances that culminated in the assassination of Governor Luis de Rosas in 1642 are alluded to. The national archives at the City of Mexico contain a still fuller report of that event, in a royal decree of 1643 and other papers concerning the deed, all of which are yet unpublished. The archives of Spain have as yet been only meagerly investigated. The publication of the report of Father Nicolas de Freytas, Portuguese, on the expedition attributed to Diego de Peñalosa Brizeño into what is now Kansas or Nebraska, is of no importance in the study of the Rio Grande Pueblos. The authenticity of the document has been strongly doubted, though probably without just cause. Equally unimportant to the subject of the Documentary History to follow is the letter of Captain Juan Dominguez de Mendoza, published in the appendix to the criticism of Cesareo Fernandez Duro on the report of Father Freytas. The otherwise very interesting letter on New Mexico, written by Fray Alonso de Posadas, also printed in the work of Duro, is meager in its allusions to the Rio Grande.
Sixty-eight years after Benavides' time the Teatro Mexicano of the Franciscan Fray Agustin de Vetancurt was published. The third and fourth parts of this important work, namely, the Cronica de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de Mexico and the Menologio Franciscano, are of the highest value to the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos and of New Mexico generally. Although printed eighteen years after the New Mexican missions had been destroyed by the Pueblo Indians, the Cronica contains a terse description of the missions and Indian villages as they had been previous to 1680, and gives data in regard to the population that are commendable in their sobriety and probability. The work of Vetancurt is in this respect a great improvement upon Benavides, and it is interesting to note how his approximate census approaches the figures given by Zárate Salmerón seventy years before. Vetancurt had at his disposal[p. 20] much more precise data than Benavides. During the seven decades separating the three authors much information had been accumulated, and with greater chances of accuracy than before. Vetancurt made good use of this accumulation of material, and his books are in fact the most reliable sources from which to ascertain the status of the Pueblos at the time the insurrection commenced. 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.
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. He made the best possible use of his materials with the help of my late friends David Miller and Samuel Ellison of Santa Fé, but the archives of Santa Fé had already been depleted through neglect and criminal waste, and what was and is left (as I know from having handled it frequently and thoroughly) is a mass of fragments, sometimes long, sometimes short, often disconnected and therefore unsatisfactory. I shall refer to this material later. 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 the[p. 21] hands of the Pueblo Indians on August 10, 1680. The original of this tragic list is in manuscript in the national archives of Mexico, where Vetancurt made use of it in his Teatro. The memorial sermon preached and published in Mexico in 1681 (a copy of which exceedingly rare print was procured by my friend the Honorable L. Bradford Prince of Santa Fé) rests for its information upon the obituaries preserved by Father Ayeta. That these obituaries are of direct value to the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos is apparent.
The sermon alluded to is the earliest print, so far as known, concerning the great Indian uprising of 1680. Next in date comes a publication touching the various attempts made by the Spaniards to reconquer New Mexico prior to 1693. In that year Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora published in the City of Mexico a kind of irregular newspaper bearing the title El Mercurio Volante, in which appears a concise and tolerably reliable sketch of the insurrection and the various attempts to reconquer the territory, including the successful one in 1692 by Diego de Vargas. Sigüenza is brief, but reasonably accurate. Part of the documents concerning the Indian uprising were published in the nineteenth century in the Third Series of the Colección de Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, but no complete print of the voluminous papers concerning those events has yet appeared, and indeed the most important documents still remain in manuscript. In 1701 Villagutierre y Sotomayor published his voluminous Historia de la Conquistay Reducciones de los Itzaes y Lacandones en la America Septentrional, in which appears a brief description of the Indian uprising in New Mexico. His data are of course gathered at second hand, although from contemporary sources.
I know of no other publications concerning the Indian uprising, so often mentioned, between the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. The manuscript material, which has been much scattered, may be divided locally into three groups. The one, originally at Santa Fé, New Mexico, is now in the Library of Congress at Washington; it had been much neglected, hence for the greater part seriously reduced, in former times, but it still contains most valuable information on the condition of the Rio Grande Pueblos immediately after the uprising and during the time the[p. 22] Pueblos were left to themselves, attempting to return to their primitive condition. This information, embodied in interrogatories of Indians subsequent to 1680, I made the subject of a closing chapter to my Documentary History of the Zuñi Tribe, but it was withheld from publication for some cause unknown to me. The military reports on the expeditions of Diego de Vargas and the final reconquest of New Mexico are reduced to disconnected but still bulky fragments. Almost unique of their kind are the so-called "Pueblo grants" emanating from Governor Domingo Gironza Petros de Cruzate in 1688. The term "grant" is a misnomer, since it refers in fact to a limitation to the innate tendency of the Indians to arbitrarily expand their tribal range. These documents have become the legal basis of landholding by the Pueblos and the first step toward eventual single tenure.
The second group of manuscripts, in the national archives in the City of Mexico, is more complete than the first. It contains information on the beginnings of the rebellion and on later events that are of great importance.