In 1864 a new series was begun at Madrid,—Coleccion de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas en América y Oceania, sacados, en su mayor parte, del Real Archivo de Indias. Nearly forty volumes have thus far been published, under the editing of Joaquin F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza at the start, but with changes later in the editorial staff.[38]
Mr. E. G. Squier edited at New York in 1860 a work called Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives, in the original, with Translations, Notes, Maps, and Sketches. There was a small edition only,—one hundred copies on small paper, and ten on large paper.[39] This was but one of a large collection of manuscripts relative to Central America and Mexico which Mr. Squier had collected, partly during his term as chargé d’affaires in 1849. Out of these he intended a series of publications, which never went beyond this first number. The collection “consists,” says Bancroft,[40] “of extracts and copies of letters and reports of audiencias, governors, bishops, and various governmental officials, taken from the Spanish archives at Madrid and from the library of the Spanish Royal Academy of History, mostly under the direction of the indefatigable collector, Mr. Buckingham Smith.”
Early Spanish manuscripts on America in the British Museum are noted in its Index to Manuscripts, 1854-1875, p. 31; and Gayangos’ Catalogue of Spanish Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii., has a section on America.[41]
Regarding the chances of further developments in depositories of manuscripts, Harrisse, in his Notes on Columbus,[42] says: “For the present the historian will find enough to gather from the Archivo General de Indias in the Lonja at Seville, which contains as many as forty-seven thousand huge packages, brought, within the last fifty years, from all parts of Spain. But the richest mine as yet unexplored we suppose to be the archives of the monastic orders in Italy; as all the expeditions to the New World were accompanied by Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine, and other monks, who maintained an active correspondence with the heads of their respective congregations. The private archives of the Dukes of Veraguas, Medina-Sidonia, and Del Infantado, at Madrid, are very rich. There is scarce anything relating to that early period left in Simancas; but the original documents in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon are all intact”[43]
Among the latest contributions to the documentary history of the Spanish colonization is a large folio, Cartas de Indias, publicalas por primera vez el ministerio de fomento, issued in Madrid in 1877 under the auspices of the Spanish Government. It contains one hundred and eight letters,[44] covering the period 1496 to 1586, the earliest date being a supposed one for a letter of Columbus which is without date. The late Mr. George Dexter,[45] who has printed[46] a translation of this letter (together with one of another letter, Feb. 6, 1502, and one of Vespucius, Dec. 9, 1508), gives his reasons for thinking the date should be between March 15 and Sept. 25, 1493.[47]
At Madrid and Paris was published, in 1883, a single octavo volume,—Costa-Rica, Nicaragua y Panamá en el siglo XVI., su historia y sus limítes segun los documentos del Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, del de Simancas, etc., recogidos y publicados con notas y aclaraciones históricas y geográficas, por D. Manuel M. de Peralta.
The more special and restricted documentary sources are examined in the successive chapters of the present volume.