Part 1: The Uses of the Spanish Imperial Past in the Early American Classroom
Beyond the Anthology: Sources for Teaching Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Colonial Spanish Literature of North America
E. Thomson Shields, Jr.
Roanoke Colonies Research Office
Department of English
East Carolina University
Beyond the Anthology: Sources for Teaching Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Colonial Spanish Literature of North America
E. Thomson Shields, Jr.
During a discussion session called "What is an Early Americanist?" at the 1993 American Literature Association meeting, an audience member asserted that in order to have colonial Spanish materials incorporated into the regular teaching of early American literature, We will have to wait for Hispanic students to do for the Spanish materials what Black students did for the African American materials. Then, during the fall of 1993, an exchange on the Society of Early Americanists’ electronic bulletin board, EARAM-L, concerning what texts might be used in a graduate class on The New Early American Literature, it became clear that many people interested in teaching works outside the colonial British American canon don’t know what primary sources they can turn to. Aside from a few excerpts in recent American literature anthologies, most notably and fully The Heath Anthology of American Literature, much of the primary material needed to incorporate colonial Spanish American documents into early American literature courses has been deemed inaccessible. What both the ALA session and the EARAM-L discussion indicate is that teachers of early American literature need some way to get beyond the anthology, even the best of anthologies, in order to fully incorporate colonial Spanish works about North America into their courses.
In the summer of 1993, I began working on a project that I hope will help correct this perception of inaccessibility. As a member of the NEH Summer Seminar Colonial North America: New Approaches to Its Hispanic Past, directed by David J. Weber of Southern Methodist University, I searched out writings from and about the various parts of seventeenth-century colonial Spanish North America, particularly what is now the United States. I expected to locate a few pieces, maybe ten or twenty at most. Instead, during the seven weeks I spent in SMU’s DeGolyer Library, I examined some sixty primary texts and barely touched the surface. Even for those who do not read Spanish, many of these works are available in English translation (some available only in English translation).
In order for teachers to incorporate these works into the classroom, they should keep two points in mind. First, don’t be afraid of these materials. With just a little background, teachers can explore these materials along with their students, identifying their similarities to and differences from the colonial British literature of North America -- as well as literatures from other traditions and in languages other than English and Spanish. After all, classroom discussion often spawns the most interesting interpretations of texts. One need not approach a class with an interpretation already in hand, ready to dictate to students.
With just a small amount of introductory information, a teacher already familiar with the colonial British North American literary tradition can approach colonial Spanish North American literature, finding noteworthy parallels and contrasts between the familiar and unfamiliar literatures. Knowing that, like colonial British North America, colonial Spanish North America was not a monolithic whole but a group of different colonies, each with its own identity and history, helps readers understand the variety of texts they might encounter. La Florida covered much of what is now the southeastern United States, from the Florida peninsula north to some vague point (anywhere from South Carolina to Canada) and west from the Atlantic to at least the Mississippi River. California included what today is Baja California and went north to at least Cape Mendicino. Nuevo México included not only the present state of New Mexico, but had claims on lands throughout what is today the southwestern United States, from the Colorado River in the west to the Mississippi River in the east. Tejas was a vague area north of the Rio Grande. Pensacola was formed out of the southwestern sections of la Florida, centering on what is today the Florida panhandle. And the Mississippi River region, explored in depth by the Spanish in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was identified only by the Spanish name for the Mississippi, Río del Espíritu Santo.
While each region had its own identity based on the native peoples encountered, the physical geography of the region, the political reasons behind its foundations, etc., the government in Spain often tried to create an image of a unified region, from la Florida to Nuevo México, and even on to California. With just this small bit of information in hand, teachers can work with students to try to figure out how to read the works from and about these various regions. (For those interested in a fuller background on colonial Spanish North America, however, a good, readable, well documented and indexed source is David J. Weber’s The Spanish Frontier in North America [New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1992].)
The second point to keep in mind when approaching colonial Spanish North American literature -- and all literatures from outside the canonical British American literary tradition -- is that by exploring these materials, both teachers and students come to a better understanding of American literature in general. Such studies can help show that there are a large number of important literary traditions from various cultures going back hundreds of years in what is now the United States. American literature should no longer be taught as mainly a branch of British literature with influences from other cultures occurring primarily during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The multi-cultural and multi-lingual nature of the colonial United States needs to be an important part of the literary history we teach. All of us can explore and teach this part of our literary heritage, Hispanic or not.
Some Spanish-Language Primary Sources from Spain’s Sixteenth-Century Northern Frontiers (Available in English-Language Translation):
E. Thomson Shields, Jr.
Contains Columbus’s letter from his first voyage, various items by various authors about the second voyage, Columbus’s letters from his third voyage, Columbus’s letter from his fourth voyage, and one other contemporary relation from the fourth voyage. Columbus’s letters from his first and fourth voyages were the only works by Columbus printed during his lifetime. Columbus’s letter from his third voyage contains his description of the world’s shape as being that of a pear or a woman’s breast, with what he thinks he has discovered to be the Garden of Eden being on the nipple.
The diario (diary or ship’s log ) presents an interesting bibliographic study as well as literary study. The original Columbus diario has never been found, and all that exists is the Las Casas transcription/abridgement. Dealing with the questions of what Las Casas might have been omitted and what he gave extra emphasis to about Columbus’s voyage is as important a question to treat when discussing the diario as questions of Columbus’s rhetoric and literary technique.
Though I have not yet seen this edition of Núñez’s Relación (or Naufragios, i.e., shipwrecks ), my gut feeling is that this should be the best available translation for the classroom. The University of New Mexico Press translation by Cyclone Covey (done in 1962) is good history, but with its continual interjections of interpretive materials (there are no footnotes -- all notes are placed in brackets within the text itself), it is a poor literary representation of Núñez’s original work. Núñez has become one of the darlings of scholars working with sixteenth-century Spanish materials from what is now the United States, but not without good reason. His trials in going from Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico, to Texas, and then on to Mexico City allow for a number of perspectives. At various points he is a conquistador, a castaway, a slave, a typical member of Native American society, and a shaman. Also part of this work is the character Esteban, a Black slave with Núñez and the first African American literary character.
Contains the narrative of the anonymous fidalgo (gentleman) of Elvas, as well as that by Luis Hernandez de Biedma, both first-hand accounts of the Hernando de Soto expedition throughout what is now the southeastern United States from 1540 to 1542. The Elvas narrative in particular is interesting, for it portrays Soto as a tragic figure, a sharp contrast to the heroic characterization of Soto in the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s 1605 work La Florida del Inca.
Good notes help this translation of Castañeda’s late sixteenth-century first-hand account of the preliminaries to and adventures of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado’s 1542 expedition throughout what are now the southwest and midwest of the United States. In a portrait markedly contrasting with that in Núñez’s Naufragios, the black Esteban reappears in Castañeda’s narrative as part of a preliminary expedition, now seen as avaricious rather than as one of Núñez’s shamans. Winship’s edition also includes several other shorter documents connected with the Coronado expedition.
Includes several of the documents of this less famous expedition sent to find the land route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The documents are translated by Paul E. Hoffman.
Includes the documents which tell the story of a failed attempt to place a Jesuit stronghold on the outer reaches of Spanish la Florida in a place given the name Jacán or Ajacán. This mission was somewhere near where the English Jamestown settlement was established more than thirty-five years later.
E. Thomson Shields, Jr.
(Whenever possible, titles are given in the original Spanish. If only English-language printed editions are available, only the English-language title is given.)
Vizcaíno, Sebastián, attributed. Relacion o Diario Muy circunstanciado del viaje que hizo el General Sebastian Vizcaino con el Armada compuesta de dos navios, una fragata y un barco longo, al descubrimiento de los puertos, bahias y ensenadas de la costa del Mar del Sur desde 5 de mayo de 1602 que salio del puerto de Acapulco, hasta 21 de marzo de 1603 que se restituyo a el, habiendo llegado hasta el Cabo Mendicino en altura de 42 grados.
Translation:
The Diary of Sebastian Vizcaino, 1602-1603. Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706. Ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton. New York: Scribner’s, 1916. 52-103.
Description:
A copy most likely of Vizcaíno’s log of the voyage signed by Diego de Santiago, the voyage’s Escribano Mayor on 8 December 1603 in Mexico City. The log is broken into chapters and has framing materials at the beginning and end obviously inserted after the voyage; however, even though Vizcaíno is referred to in third person, the main body of the work is in first person plural and the action described virtually always follows Vizcaíno, indicating that the major portion of the work was probably taken directly from his original ship’s log. Among the interesting plot twists of the Relacion o Diario is that even as he travels north along the California coast, Vizcaíno knows what will happen, what the plot of the story is. Throughout the final section of the work, Vizcaíno notes that he knows just about how far the expedition can travel before scurvy becomes too much of a problem and they must turn around. They do get as far north as Cape Mendicino, where they turn around as they fight what Vizcaíno believes to be the currents of the Straits of Anian.
Ascensión, Antonio de la. Relacion de la jornada que hizo el Generàl Sevastian Vizcayno al descubrimiento de las Californias el eño [sic] de 1602 por mandado del Señor Excelentisimo Conde de Monterey, Virrey que èra dela Nueva España.
Translation:
Father Antonio de la Ascension’s Account of the Voyage of Sebastian Vizcaino. Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century. By Henry R. Wagner. San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1929. 180-272.
Description:
A first-hand description of the 1602 Vizcaíno expedition along with Ascención’s reflections on the geography of California (he believes it to be an island) and the need to settle the land and peoples of California. Ascención includes materials about the Juan de Oñate expedition from San Gabriel to the Gulf (or in Ascención’s terms, Sea) of California.
Note:
Fernández dates this work as 1603 (255), but Wagner in his Spanish Voyages indicates that this is not the original diary Ascención kept during the journey, but bears every evidence of having been written for publication at some later date (378). He date the work as pre-1611 because it seems to be a source for Torquemada’s Monarchia Indiana (1615), the California section of which was completed by the end of 1611.
Ascensión, Antonio de la. Relación brebe, en que se dá noticia del descubrimiento que se hizo en la Nueva España en la Mar del Sur; desde el puerto de Alcapulco, hasta mas adelante del cabo Mendocino; en que se da quenta de las riqueças y buen temple y comodidades del Reyno de Californias y de como podrá su Magestad a poca costa pacificarle y encorpararle en su Real Corona y hazer que en el se pedrique el Santo Ebanjelio, por el padre fray Antonio de la Ascensión religioso Carmelita Descalo que se halló en el y como Cosmografo lo demarco.
Translation:
A Brief Report of the Discovery in the South Sea, by Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, 1602-1603, Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706. Ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton. New York: Scribner’s, 1916. 104-134.
Description:
An abridgement and revision of the c. 1610 Relacion.
Note:
Portillo y Díez dates the work as 12 October 1620. Bolton, Mathes, and Portillo y Díez cite the 1620 manuscript alone with no mention of the c. 1610 manuscript.
Translation:
Opinion Given by Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención Discalced religious of Our Lady of Carmen, in consequence of the Royal Order of 2 August 1628 communicated to the President and Judges of the Audiencia of Mexico relative to the method and manner which can be employed in the discovery and settlement of California, the said opinion given in his convent of Valladolid, Michoacán on 29 May 1628. Spanish Approaches to the Island of California, 1628-1632. Ed. and trans. W. Michael Mathes. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1975. 17-22.
Description:
The first of several paraceres ( opinions or depositions ) Ascención gave about his ideas concerning California after writing his original 1620 Relación brebe. Though this work concentrates more on Baja California than the northern reaches, it still mentions such things as the Strait of Anian, Quivira, and so forth.
Translation:
Opinion given by Martín de Lezama Accountant of His Majesty on the Accounts Tribunal of New Spain and son-in-law of General Sebastián Vizcaíno, relative to the discovery of the Province of California and the settlement and fortification of the ports of San Bernabé at Cabo San Lucas and Monterey near Cape Mendocino, and its importance to the Manila galleons. Spanish Approaches to the Island of California, 1628-1632. Ed. and trans. W. Michael Mathes. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1975. 23-30.
Description:
Dated June 15, 1629. Lezama, Vizcaíno’s son-in-law, pushes for the colonization of California because he believes it is filled with riches: . . . los reynos de la California, es tierra prospera de perlas, ambar, salinas, oro, plata, y piedras, y que me suegro y todos los que han entrado han sacado perlas . . . (Mathes, Californiana 2: 147; . . . the kingdoms of the California, it is a land prosperous with pearls, amber, salt mines, gold, silver, and stones, and that my father-in-law and all those who have entered have taken out pearls . . . ). Lezama also sees California as a way to connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans via the Strait of Anian and via land routes. It was in part due to the claims Lezama made to California based on the point that his father-in-law had never given up his rights to the region that a Royal Order was issued to take testimony (the paraceres) from the various actors concerning what was known about California and the feasibility of settling the region.
Translation:
Opinion given by Enrico Martínez Cosmographer of His Majesty, at Hueuetoca, works of the drainage, on 30 July of 1629 relative to the advantages or disadvantages which can be expected from the exploration, conquest and pacification of the Provinces of the Californias, with information on the customs, and uses of its natives, etc. Spanish Approaches to the Island of California, 1628-1632. Ed. and trans. W. Michael Mathes. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1975. 34-40.
Description:
In his paracer or opinion, Martinez answers the excessively positive picture of California drawn by Ascención, noting that people must . . . distinguir primero la diferencia que hay entre las dichas tierras de la california, y entre las que vió el Padre Fray Antonio de la Ascencion . . . (Portillo y Díez 447; . . . distinguish first the difference that exists between the said lands of California, and between those which Father Fray Antonio de la Ascencion saw . . . ). Martinez portrays the native peoples of California as being peaceful in some places and as being violent in others. He believes that the coasts of California ought to serve as pearl fisheries, but that settlement of the region would be inadvisable.
Cardona, Nicolás de. Relacion del Descubrimiento de Reino de la California. Geographicas, e Hydrographicas de muchas tierras y mares del Norte, y Sur, en las Indias, en especial del descubrimiento de Reyno de la California hecho contrabajo e industria por el capp.an y Cabo Nicolas de cardona con orden del Rey Nro. S.r D. Phelipe III, de las Españas dirigidas.
Translation:
Report of the Exploration of the Kingdom of California. Geographic and Hydrographic Descriptions of Many Northern and Southern Lands and Seas in the Indies, Specifically of the Discovery of California (1632). Trans. and ed. W. Michael Mathes. Los Angeles, CA: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1974. 95-106.
Description:
A manuscript book, opened with an introductory note dated 24 June 1632. Cardona took one voyage to California in 1615, sailing through the Gulf of Mexico. The Relacion tells mostly about that voyage, but in explaining the importance of his discoveries in the context of the wider Spanish American empire in North America, Cardona tells about the connection of his discoveries to a lake in Florida with much gold, the connection of California to the Strait of Anian, and so forth.
Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca. La Florida del Inca: Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Governador y Capitan General del Reino de la Florida, y otros Heroicos Caballeros, Españoles y Indios. Lisbon: Pedro Craasbeck, 1605. Madrid: La Oficina real, 1723.
Translation:
The Florida of the Inca: A History of the Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governor and Capitan General of the kingdom of Florida, and of other heroic Spanish and Indian cavaliers, trans. and ed. John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner (Austin: U of Texas P, 1951).
Description:
The story of the Hernando de Soto expedition told as a prose epic with Soto as the epic hero. Garcilaso de la Vega was a mestizo of mixed Spanish and Peruvian (Incan) heritage, making this work one by a Native American, but not by a Native North American; the result is that he portrays Native North Americans as indios barbaros (barbarian Indians), an implied contrast to the civilized native peoples of Peru.
Escobedo, Alonso de. La Florida.
Translation:
Pirates, Indians and Spaniards: Father Escobedo’s La Florida, trans. A. F. Falcones, ed. James W. Covington (St. Petersburg, FL: Great Outdoors Publishing, 1963).
Description:
A lengthy narrative poem telling of the Franciscan clergyman Escobedo’s adventures on the way to and in la Florida. Along with his tale of being held by pirates and surviving tempests at sea, Escobedo includes descriptions of both the deaths of five missionaries, killed by the Guale what is today Georgia, as well as ethnographic descriptions of the native peoples of la Florida.
Note:
The exact date of composition is unknown, though is probably sometime around 1609. The Falcones and Covington prose translation of the poem is the only publication of this work in any language, but is incomplete, omitting some of the non-Florida materials as well as most of the theological asides to the central narrative.
Pareja, Francesco de. Confessionario en Lengua Castellana y Timuquana. Mexico: Diego Lopez Daualos, 1613.
Translation:
Francisco Pareja’s 1613 Confessionario: A Documentary Source for Timucuan Ethnography. Trans. Emilio F. Moran. Ed. Jerald T. Milanich and William C. Sturevant. Tallahassee: Division of Archives, History, and Records Management, Florida Department of State, 1972.
Description:
At first glance, Pareja’s Confessionario seems to be simply a list of confessional questions in both Spanish and Timucua used to help priests learn Timucua. However, by reading the list of questions, a portrait of the concerns Pareja had concerning Timucuan converts comes across. For example, one question reads, [[questiondown]]Has consentido que estando algun enfermo en tu casa le rezasen con el polesimo del Demonio? (52; Have you consented that someone being sick in your house people may pray for him or her with the council of the Devil? ), illustrating Pareja’s belief in an incarnate Satan as much as a Timucuan belief in such a power. Many of the other questions are aimed at people of specific occupations and/or social ranks, including shamans, herbalists, ball game players, chiefs, women, midwives, and so on.
Note:
According to Sabin and Briton, Pareja published at least three other works on Timuqua linguistics and on the use of Timucua to present Catholic doctrine: Grammatica de la Lengua Timuquana (Mexico, 1614); Catecismo de la doctrina Cristiana en lengua Timuqua . . . (Mexico: n.p., 1617); and Catecismo en Lengua Castellana, y Timuqua, En el qual se contiene lo que se les puede enseñar a los adultos que han de ser baptizados (Mexico: La Viuda de Pedro Balli, 1617). Milanich and Sturevant ‘s translation of Pareja’s Confessionario is incomplete.
Oré, Luís Gerónimo de. Relacion de los martyres que ha havido en la Florida. [Madrid(?): n.p., c. 1617.]
Translation:
The Martyrs of Florida (1513-1616), trans. Maynard Geiger, Franciscan Studies 18 (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1936.)
Description:
A progessivist narrative history which portrays the movement of Catholicism in la Florida as going from martyrdom for, first, Jesuits and then for Franciscan missionaries to the successful Christianization of the entire region. Oré’s narrative treats a variety of places throughout what is now the southern United States, discussing missionary efforts in Saint Augustine, in amongst the Guale of what is now southern Georgia, in the region of Jacán along the Chesapeake Bay, and among the Apalachee of what is now the Florida panhandle.
Note:
Brinton lists this work as having been published in 1604, Sabin in 1612; however, as Geiger points out in his introduction to his translation, there has been much bibliographic confusion concerning the work’s date of publication. Geiger deduces from internal evidence that the work must have been published between 1617 and 1620, soon after the Franciscan Oré returned to Spain following his own visitation in 1616 which he writes about in his final chapter.
Calderón, Gabriel Diaz Vara. Lo que ay está descubíerto en todo el distríto de la florida assí por la costa de la mar como por la parte de tíerra es lo siguente . . . .
Translation:
A 17th Century Letter of Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón, Bishop of Cuba, Describing the Indians and Indian Missions of Florida. Trans. Lucy L. Wenhold. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 95.16 (1936): 1-26.
Description:
A description of la Florida by the Bishop of Cuba based on his observations while visiting the region. He portrays la Florida as a poor regions with a well meaning, though not impressive, Christianized population of native peoples. The tone of the entire letter is set in the first paragraph, where describing Saint Augustine, Calderón writes, Its climate is somewhat unhealthful, being very cold in winter, with freezes, and excessively hot in summer, both of which extremes are felt the more as there is no protection nor defense in the houses, they being of wood with board walls. The soil is sand and therefore unproductive; no wheat grows, and corn only sparsely and at the cost of much labor (7). Interestingly, much of this bishop’s letter is taken up in detailed descriptions of geography, telling about distances and directions between villages, and so forth.
Paiva, Juan de. Origen y principio del juego de pelota que los Indios Apalachinos y Yustacanos an estando jugando desde su infidelidad asta el año de 1676.
Translation:
Origin of the Game of Ball that the Apalachee and Yustagan Indians Have Been Playing since Pagan Times until the Year of 1676, trans. John H. Hann, Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers, Ripley P. Bullen Monographs in Anthropology and History 7 (Gainesville: U of Florida P-Florida State Museum, 1988), 331-353.
Description:
Paiva’s description of the ball game played by the native peoples of what is today western Florida uses as its framing device the local myth of how the ball game came into being. Because he describes not only how the game is played, but also the myth that gives the game ritualistic significance, Paiva’s text both the most complete description of the game extant as well as being an interesting literary work. Adding to the interesting rhetorical technique of the work is the fact that Paiva describes the game in such detail in order to condemn it as being a pagan and simply physically dangerous activity that needs to be stopped.
Note:
Hann indicates that there is a variant spelling of Paiva’s name as Paina.
Delgado, Marcos. Route Followed by Marcos Delgado designated by the Senor Captain and Sargento Mor, Don Juan Marquez Cabrera, Governor and Captain General of the provinces of Saint Augustine of Florida sent to endeavor to discover and observe the provinces and territories lying betwen [sic] Apalache and the port and bay of Espirito Santo in the Gulf of New Spain going as leader of 13 soldiers and 40 Indians with firearms in compliance with the orders and instructions which the said governor gave me for the journey from san Luis of Apalache, day of the glorious Saint Augustine, August 28, 1686, which is in the following manner, trans. Mark F. Boyd, The Expedition of Marcos Delgado from Apalache to the Upper Creek Country in 1686, Florida Historical Quarterly 16 (1937): 21-32.
Description:
Delgado tells of his expedition from near modern day Tallahassee starting August 28, 1686, to someplace near the Coosa River in modern day Alabama, probably somewhere just north of Montgomery in October 1686. The report is written before returning to the Spanish settlement from which he left and is dated October 30, 1686. In the first part of the report, Delgado simply gives the direction and distance of each leg of his journey; however, in the last part of the report, Delgado tells of how he won the allegiance of the Creek and Mobile Indians to the Spanish and away from the English. What makes the mention of the English even more interesting is that the purpose of the expedition was to reconnoiter the rumored settlement of French along the Mississippi River, a fact known from the orders Delgado received but not mentioned in the report because the orders are to keep that purpose secret.
Note:
Boyd’s The Expedition of Marcos Delgado . . . includes not only Delgado’s report, but several of the other documents associated with the expedition, including the orders under which Delgado traveled.
Torres y Ayala, Laureano de. Governor Torres y Ayala to the King. San Augustín, April 15, 1696.
Translation:
Governor Torres y Ayala to the King. San Augustín, April 15, 1696, Here They Once Stood, by Mark F. Boyd, Hale G. Smith, and John W. Griffin (Gainesville, FL: U of Florida P, 1951), 21-22.
Description:
A letter describing the efforts to build a wooden blockhouse in the Province of Apalachee (in and around the present-day Florida panhandle) using Native American labor. The letter is written as the project is underway but not completed.
Translation:
Don Patricio, Cacique Of Ivitachuco, and Don Andrés, Cacique of San Luis, to the King. February 12, 1699, Here They Once Stood, by Mark F. Boyd, Hale G. Smith, and John W. Griffin (Gainesville, FL: U of Florida P, 1951), 24-26.
Description:
A letter asking for a missionary to come to the region to act as an advocate on their behalf. In order to convince the king of their need for a missionary, these Native American officials use the rhetoric of deference. For example, speaking of the abuses they have had at the hands of Spanish settlers, Patricio and Andrés write, Although we have sought redress from various sources, we have not had it, since they [the settlers] are so powerful, and we are without a person to protect and defend us (25). The major abuse is being forced to provide labor with little or no compensation; however, Juana Caterina, the regional governor’s wife, is also noted by name because she gave two slaps in the face to a cacique . . . of San Luis, because he had not brought her fish one Friday . . . (25). Interestingly, one of the authors’ complaints is that because they are afraid of abuse, many of their people go Guale, where many die without confession, because they do not understand the language of the missionaries of that province (25).
Note:
This and the following letter, as well as one mentioned by Amy Turner Bushnell in her article Ruling ‘the Republic of Indians’ in Seventeenth-Century Florida (Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, ed. Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hately, [Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989], 134-150) as well as several noted by Hann in Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers, indicate that there is a literary tradition among the native peoples of la Florida going back to at least the second half of the seventeenth-century.
Translation:
Don Patricio Hinachuba to Don Antonio Ponce de León. Ivitachuco, April 10, 1699, Here They Once Stood, by Mark F. Boyd, Hale G. Smith, and John W. Griffin (Gainesville, FL: U of Florida P, 1951), 26-27.
Description:
A letter to one of the chaplains at San Agustín complaining about the abuses of the Spanish settlers in and around Apalachee. The abuses outlined in this letter include the murder of non-Christian Native Americans (interesting especially because the complaint is lodged by a Christian Apalachee cacique), the overrunning of Native American villages by Spanish cattle, the sexual mistreatment of Native American women by Spanish men, and so forth.
Note:
Boyd, Smith, and Hale indicate that this letter was not forwarded to the King until 1702 (98 n41).
Relacion Verdadera de los sucesos de la entrada que hizo el gobernador D. Juan de Oñate en las poblaciones de Nueva Megico hacia el norte. 1601.
Translation:
True Account of the Expedition of Oñate Toward the East, 1601, Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton (New York: Scribner’s, 1916), 250-267.
Description:
An anonymously written narrative of the Oñate expedition from Neuva México as far east as the Arkansas River; Oñate himself signed a statement attached to the narrative attesting to its veracity. The narrative begins by describing a rich flat land reached once the expedition has crossed the mountains near San Gabriel (just north of present-day Santa Fe). The only reason the expedition turns around is that it encounters hostile native Americans. Oñate’s reaction to having to turn around is described as being a hard blow to the governor’s courage and bravery, and . . . he was very sorry to curtail his journey . . . (Bolton 263). The interesting conclusion to this account is not an apologia for failure, but rather a hopeful statement of success: The carts went over the country to the settlements very nicely, and so far as the nature of the land was concerned they could have gone as far as the North Sea [i.e., the Atlantic Ocean], which could not have been very far, because some of the Indians wore shells from it on their foreheads (Bolton 265). In other words, the narrative makes the Atlantic Ocean an easy ride across the plains from Neuva México.
Montoya, Juan Martinez de. Relacion del descrvbrimiento [sic] del Nvovo Mexico: Y de otras muchas Prouincias, y Ciudades, halladas de nueuo; Venida de las Indias, à España, y de alli mandada à Roma. Rome: Bartholame Bonfadino, 1602.
Translation:
Account of the Discovery of New Mexico and Many Other Provinces and Cities Newly Found, Sent From the Indies to Spain and Thence to Rome, in New Mexico in 1602: Juan de Montoya’s Relation of the Discovery of New Mexico, ed. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1938; New York: Arno Press, 1967), 37-75.
Description:
Montoya’s work is made up of four main parts. The opening section portrays Neuva México as a land of great riches; as Montoya repeats several times, Es el nuevo Mexico tierra muy fertil de frutas, y semillas, y muy rica de Minerales de oro, y plata . . . (88; The land of New Mexico is very fertile with fruits, and seeds, and very rich with Minerals of gold, and silver . . . ). The second major section is an abstract of Oñate’s own 1598 relation concerning the original entrance of his expedition into Neuva México. Oñate’s story shows Neuva México as a rich land, and any failure of the expedition to show the true vastness of the wealth is to be blamed on soldiers who expected silver bars to be lying on the ground waiting to be picked up without any work. The third section is the testimony of Vincente de Zaldíbar Mendoza, Oñate’s sergeant major, concerning an expedition he led in a failed attempt to round up buffalo in hopes of herding them in a manner similar to that used for domestic cattle. The final section is Montoya’
Vargas Zapata Luján Ponce de León, Diego de. Governor Vargas to te Viceroy, Letter of Transmission of Autos and Reports, June-July, Santa Fe, July 31, 1696.
Translation:
Governor Vargas to the Viceroy, Letter of Transmission of Autos and Reports, June-July, Santa Fe, July 31, 1696, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696 and the Franciscan Missions in New Mex the various seventeenth-century Spanish expeditions from Neuva México to the east. After presenting this background concerning the source of his information, Posada gives what he believes to be an accurate geographical description of the lands north and east of Neuva México. The resulting picture is of two sets of mountains, one east of Neuva México and the other running east to west across what would be today the central portion of the United States. In effect, Posada portrays Florida and the Mississippi River valley as being separated from Neuva México by mountains, while Labrador can be reached by land from Neuva México by traveling north and then east, and by water via the Strait of Anian.
Note:
The Thomas translation also includes the 1585 royal orders that gave charge to Posada’s writing his report.