Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century Papyras Classics

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Chapter 20

Critical Essay on the Documentary Sources of Mexican History

MR. H. H. BANCROFT, in speaking of the facilities which writers of Spanish American history now have in excess of those enjoyed by the historian of thirty years ago, claims that in documentary evidence there are twenty papers for his use in print to-day for one then. These are found in part in the great Coleccion of Pacheco and others mentioned in the Introduction. The Mexican writer Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta (born 1825) made a most important contribution in the two volumes of a Coleccion de documentos para la historia de México which passes by his name and which appeared respectively in 1858 and 1866. He found in Mexico few of the papers which he printed, obtaining them chiefly from Spain.

Of great interest among those which he gives is the Itinerario of Grijalva, both in the Italian and Spanish text. Of Cortés himself there are in this publication various letters not earlier made public. The quarrel between him and Velasquez is illustrated by other papers. Here also we find what is mentioned elsewhere as “De rebus gestis Cortesii” printed as a “Vida de Cortés,” and attributed to C. Calvet de Estrella. The recital of the so-called “Anonymous Conqueror,” held by some to be Francisco de Terrazas, is translated from Ramusio (the original Spanish is not known), with a fac-simile of the plan of Mexico. There is also the letter from the army of Cortés to the Emperor; and in the second volume various other papers interesting in connection with Cortés’ career, including the memorial of Luis de Cárdenas, etc. Two other papers have been recognized as important. One of these in the first volume is the Historia de los Indios de Nueva España of Fray Toribio Motolinia, accompanied by a Life of the Father by Ramirez, with a gathering of bibliographical detail. Toribio de Benavente—Motolinia was a name which he took from a description of him by the natives—had come over with the Franciscans in 1523. He was a devoted, self-sacrificing missionary; but he proved that his work did not quiet all the passions, for he became a violent opponent of Las Casas’ views and measures. His labors took him the length and breadth of the land; his assiduity acquired for him a large knowledge of the Aztec tongue and beliefs; and his work, besides describing institutions of this people, tells of the success and methods secured or adopted by himself and his companions in effecting their conversion to the faith of the conquerors. Robertson used a manuscript copy of the work, and Obadiah Rich procured a copy for Prescott, who ventured the assertion, when he wrote, that it had so little of popular interest that it would never probably be printed.

Bancroft 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.

The next most important collection is that published in Mexico from 1852 to 1857, 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, which was published in Mexico in 1847; 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, 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. 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.

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. 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. Indeed, these lists show an extremely full equipment of the manuscript documentary stores relating to the whole period of Mexican history, 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.