The third group, and by far the most complete, is in Spain, but in regard to it I am unable to give any precise information, since every opportunity of completing my investigations concerning the Southwest by studying the Spanish archives, notwithstanding repeated promises, has been withheld.
For the eighteenth century documentary materials pertaining to New Mexico remain, it may be said, almost exclusively in manuscript. A connecting link between the printed sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the Apuntamientos que sobre el Terreno hizo el Padre José Amando Niel, in the early part of the eighteenth century, published in the Third Series of the Documentos para la Historia de Mexico. Father Niel was a Jesuit who visited New Mexico shortly after the reconquest. His observations are of comparatively mediocre value, yet his writings should not be overlooked. The journal of the Brigadier Pedro de Rivera, in 1736, of his military march to Santa Fé, is a dry, matter-of-fact account, but is nevertheless valuable owing to his concise and utterly unembellished description of the Rio Grande valley and of what he saw therein. The book is very rare, and therefore correspondingly unnoticed.[p. 23]
A brief but important contribution to the history of New Mexico is the letter of Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, published in the Third Series of the Documentos para la Historia de Mexico. About the same time, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Brigadier José Cortés wrote an extended report on the territory, but it concerns more the relations with the constantly hostile roaming tribes than the condition of the Pueblos. It also is printed in the Documentos.
The otherwise very important diary of the journey of Fray Francisco Garcés to northern Arizona, published first in the above-mentioned Colección de Documentos, and more recently (with highly valuable notes) by the late Dr Elliott Coues, touches only incidentally on the Rio Grande region. In 1746 Joseph Antonio de Villa-Señor y Sanchez embodied in his Theatro Americano a description of New Mexico, condensed chiefly from the journal of the Brigadier Rivera, mentioned above. The Diccionario Geografico by Murillo is also a source that should not be neglected.
A great amount of documentary manuscript material, mostly of a local character, is contained in the church books of the eighteenth century formerly at the pueblo of Santa Clara and now preserved at Santa Fé through the efforts of the late Archbishop J. B. Salpointe. 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. A careful investigation of the matrimonial and baptismal registers will yield data concerning the clans and indications of the primitive rules of marriage, while the "Libros de Fabrica" contain interesting data on the churches of the Rio Grande valley. Great labor and the utmost scrutiny are required in sifting these time-worn papers for desirable data, and especially is a considerable knowledge of conditions and events necessary; but the result of thorough investigation, especially[p. 24] through literal copying by the student, will amply repay the time and labor bestowed.
What I have stated in regard to the church archives applies, in a still greater degree, to the state and private papers that may be accessible. Of the former the archives of Santa Fé contain a great number, though many of them are only fragmentary. 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.
Before closing this bibliographic sketch with a glance at the earliest literature of the nineteenth century, I must mention two ponderous books of the eighteenth century which, while based on second-hand information and not very valuable in detail, refer occasionally to facts and data not elsewhere found. These are the two volumes of the Crónica Apostólica y Seráfica de la Propaganda Fide de Querétaro. The first volume, written by Fray Isidro Felis Espinosa and published in 1746, is interesting especially on account of its reference to the fate of the first Frenchmen brought into New Mexico, and one of whom, Juan de Archibèque, played an important rôle in the first two decades of the eighteenth century. The second volume, the author of which was Fray Domingo de Arricivita, was published in 1792, and is the chief source concerning the still problematical expedition to the north attributed to two Franciscan friars in 1538. Both of these works are of relatively minor importance, and I mention them here only for the sake of completeness and in order to warn against attaching undue importance to them so far as the Pueblos are concerned.
It is of course understood that I omit from the above account a number of publications containing more or less brief and casual references to New Mexico. Most of them are geographical, and but few allude to historical facts. In the notes to the Documentary History proper I may refer to some of them.[p. 25]
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. It would be too tedious to refer to them in detail, and I therefore dismiss them for the present with this brief mention. If I do not mention here the literature on New Mexico in the English language it is not due to carelessness or to ignorance of it, but because of its much greater wealth in number and contents, its more ready accessibility, and because in matters respecting the history of early times the authors of these works have all been obliged to glean their information from at least some of the sources that I have above enumerated and discussed.
It may surprise students of New Mexican history that I have thus far omitted the very earliest sources in print in which New Mexico is mentioned, namely, the work of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, and that of Gomara. The former was published in part in the first half of the sixteenth century, the entire work appearing at Madrid not earlier than 1850 and 1851. Its title, as is well known, is Historia General y Natural de las Indias. The work of Francisco Lopez de Gomara bears the title Historia de las Indias, and is in two parts. Gomara is more explicit than Oviedo, who gives only a brief and preliminary mention; but even Gomara, while more detailed, and basing his work evidently on the earliest data then accessible in regard to the expedition of Coronado, cannot be compared with the later reports of those attached to the expedition. The value of these books is comparatively slight, so far as New Mexico is concerned. Much more important is the Historia General, etc., by Antonio de Herrera (1601-1615). What authorities Herrera had at his command cannot be readily determined. He may have had access to the report of Jaramillo, and he was certainly acquainted with the letters of Coronado. Perhaps the letter of Coronado which I have as yet been unable to find was consulted by him. In any event Herrera's information is all second-hand, and[p. 26] while by no means devoid of merit, his work cannot rank with sources written by men who saw the country and took part in the events of the earliest explorations. The map accompanying the first volume of Herrera, while scarcely more than an outline, is still in advance of the charts published during the sixteenth century.