[4] Segunda Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nuño de Guzman, in Coleccion de Documentos, etc., vol. ii. p. 303.
[5] The early literature on this subject will only be fully known when the remarkable collection called Libro de Oro shall have been published by Señor Icazbalceta, its meritorious owner. This valuable collection of manuscripts dates from the sixteenth century, and contains, besides a number of official reports on local matters of Mexico and districts pertaining to it, the chronicles of the tezcucan Juan Bautista Pomar, a copy of Motolinia, and a number of MSS. written between 1529 and 1547 at the instance of the much-abused Bishop Zumárraga. These MSS. contain the results of the earliest investigations on Mexican history and tradition.
The natives of Mexico appear to have had no knowledge, nay, not even the most dim recollection, of the fauna of South-western North America. While their so-called calendar, in the graphic tokens used to designate each one of the twenty days of their conventional "month," contains the forms of all the larger quadrupeds roaming over Mexico and Central America, the tapir excepted, we look in vain for the coyote, the bear, the mountain-sheep, and the buffalo.
[6] Popol Vuh, part iii. cap. iv. p. 216, cap. vi. pp. 226, 228, cap. viii. p. 238, etc.
[7] Hernando Cortés, Carta Quarta, dated Temixtitan, 15 October, 1524, Vedia i. p. 102. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, lib. xxxiii. cap. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 447, lib. xxxiv. cap. viii. p. 576, Madrid, 1853. The information was derived from Gonzalo de Sandoval. See Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano, dec. iii. lib. iii. cap. xvii. p. 106, edition of 1726.
[8] Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, Poblacion y Gobierno de los Indios de la Provincia de Mechuacan, p. 113, from the Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de la España. Tercera Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nuño de Guzman, Coleccion de Documentos, Icazbalceta, ii. pp. 443, 449, 451. Matias de la Mota Padilla, Historia de la Nueva-Galicia, published 1870, cap. iii. p. 27. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap. xxxiii. vol. i. pp. 222, 223.
[9] Quarta Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nuño de Guzman, Coleccion de Documentos, Icazbalceta, ii. p. 475. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap. xxxiii. vol. i. p. 223.
[10] In 1527, Herrera, dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. iv. pp. 26, 27.
[11] He was treasurer of Narvaez' expedition, and subsequently, upon his return, or rather in 1541, became adelantado of Paraguay.
[12] He wrote all from memory. The title of his work is Naufragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, y Relacion de la Jornada que hizo á la Florida. It was first printed in 1555, at Valladolid. My references are to the reprint in Vedia's Historiadores Primitivos de Indias, vol. i.