Bancroft[1088] calls the Relacion of Andrés de Tápia one of the most valuable documents of the early parts of the Conquest. It ends with the capture of Narvaez; recounting the antecedent events, however, with “uneven completeness.” It is written warmly in the interests of Cortés. Icazbalceta got what seemed to be the original from the Library of the Academy of History in Madrid, and printed it in his second volume (p. 554). It was not known to Prescott, who quotes it at second hand in Gomara.[1089]
The next most important collection is that published in Mexico from 1852 to 1857,[1090] under the general title of Documentos para la historia de México. This collection of four series, reckoned variously in nineteen or twenty-one volumes, is chiefly derived from Mexican sources, and is largely illustrative of the history of northwestern Mexico, and in general concerns Mexican history of a period posterior to the Conquest.
There have been two important series of documents published and in part unearthed by José Fernando Ramirez, who became Minister of State under Maximilian. The first of these is the testimony at the examination of the charges which were brought against Pedro de Alvarado, and some of those made in respect to Nuño de Guzman,—Procesos de residencia,[1091] which was published in Mexico in 1847;[1092] the other set of documents pertain to the trial of Cortés himself. Such of these as were found in the Mexican Archives were edited by Ignacio L. Rayon under the title of Archivo Mexicano; Documentos para la historia de México, and published in the city of Mexico in 1852-1853, in two volumes. At a later day (1867-1868) Ramirez discovered in the Spanish Archives other considerable portions of the same trial, and these have been printed in the Coleccion de documentos inéditos de las Indias, vols. xxvi.-xxix.
The records of the municipality of Mexico date from March 8, 1524, and chronicle for a long time the sessions as held in Cortés’ house; and are particularly interesting, as Bancroft says,[1093] after 1524, when we no longer have Cortés’ own letters to follow, down to 1529. Harrisse has told us what he found in the repositories of Italy, particularly at Venice, among the letters sent to the Senate during this period by the Venetian ambassadors at Madrid.[1094] Three volumes have so far been published of a Coleccion de documentos para la historia de Costa-Rica at San José de Costa-Rica, under the editing of León Fernández, which have been drawn from the Archives of the Indies and from the repositories in Guatemala. A few letters of Alvarado and other letters of the Conquest period are found in the Coleccion de documentos antiguous de Guatemala published at Guatemala in 1857.[1095]
No more voluminous contributor to the monographic and documentary history of Mexico can be named than Carlos Maria de Bustamante. There will be occasion in other connections to dwell upon particular publications, and some others are of little interest to us at present, referring to periods as late as the present century. Bustamante was a Spaniard, but he threw himself with characteristic energy into a heated advoracy of national Mexican feelings; and this warmly partisan exhibition of himself did much toward rendering the gathering of his scattered writings very difficult, in view of the enemies whom he made and of their ability to suppress obnoxious publications when they came into power. Most of these works date from 1812 to 1850, and when collected make nearly or quite fifty volumes, though frequently bound in fewer.[1096] The completest list, however, is probably that included in the enumeration of authorities prefixed by Bancroft to his Central America and Mexico, which shows not only the printed works of Bustamante, but also the autograph originals,—which, Bancroft says, contain much not in the published works.[1097] Indeed, these lists show an extremely full equipment of the manuscript documentary stores relating to the whole period of Mexican history,[1098] including a copy of the Archivo general de México, as well as much from the catalogues of José Maria Andrade and José Fernando Ramirez, records of the early Mexican councils, and much else of an ecclesiastical and missionary character not yet put in print.[1099]
Of particular value for the documents which it includes is the Historia de la fundacion y discurso de la provincia de Santiago de México, de la orden de predicadores, por las vidas de sus varones insignes y casos notables de Nueva España, published in Madrid in 1596.[1100] The author, Davilla Padilla, was born in Mexico in 1562 of good stock; he became a Dominican in 1579, and died in 1604. His opportunities for gathering material were good, and he has amassed a useful store of information regarding the contact of the Spanish and the Indians, and the evidences of the national traits of the natives. His book has another interest, in that we find in it the earliest mention of the establishment of a press in Mexico.[1101]
One of the earliest of the modern collections of documents and early monographs is the Historiadores primitivos de las Indias occidentales of Andres Gonzales de Barcia Carballido y Zuniga (known usually as Barcia), published at Madrid in 1749 in three volumes folio, and enriched with the editor’s notes. The sections were published separately; and it was not till after the editor’s death (1743) that they were grouped and put out collectively with the above distinctive title. In this form the collection is rare, and it has been stated that not over one or two hundred copies were so gathered.[1102]
First among all documents respecting the Conquest are the letters sent by Cortés himself to the Emperor; and of these a somewhat detailed bibliographical account is given in the Notes following this Essay, as well as an examination of the corrective value of certain other contemporaneous and later writers.