: Szilágyi és Káldy by E Tv S K Roly - Szilágyi Dezső 1840-1901; Káldy Gyula 1838-1901

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Archaeological Institute of America

Papers of the School of American Archaeology

Number Thirteen

ADOLPH F. BANDELIER

BY ADOLPH F. BANDELIER

Seventeen years have elapsed since I was in the territory in which the events in the early history of the Rio Grande Pueblos transpired, and twenty-nine years since I first entered the field of research among those Pueblos under the auspices of the Archaeological Institute of America. I am now called upon by the Institute to do for the Indians of the Rio Grande villages what I did nearly two decades ago for the Zu?i tribe, namely, to record their documentary history.

I shall follow the method employed by me in the case of the documentary history of Zu?i, by giving the events with strict adherence to documentary sources, so far as may be possible, and shall employ the correlated information of other branches only when absolutely indispensable to the elucidation of the documentary material.

The geographical features of the region to be treated are too well known to require mention. Neither can folklore and tradition, notwithstanding their decisive importance in a great many cases, be touched upon except when alluded to in the sources themselves. I am fully aware, as I stated in presenting the history of the Zu?i tribe, that a history based exclusively on documents, whether printed or written, must necessarily be imperfect because it is not impartial, since it summarizes the views of those who saw and understood but one side of the question, and judged it only from their own standpoint. This defect cannot be remedied, as it underlies the very nature of the task, and the greater therefore is the necessity of carefully studying the folklore of the Indians in order to check and complete as well as to correct the picture presented by people acquainted with the art of writing.

In this Introduction I forego the employment of quotations, reserving such for the main work. Quotations and footnotes are not, as it has been imagined, a mere display of erudition--they are a duty towards the source from which they are taken, and a duty to its author; moreover, they are a duty towards the reader, who as far as possible should be placed in a position himself to judge the value and nature of the information presented, and, finally, they are a necessary indication of the extent of the author's responsibility. If the sources are given clearly and circumstantially, yet happen to be wrong, the author is exonerated from blame for resting upon their authority, provided, as it not infrequently happens, he has no way of correcting them by means of other information.

In entering the field of documentary research the first task is to become thoroughly acquainted with the languages in which the documents are recorded. To be able to read cursorily a language in its present form is not sufficient. Spanish, for example, has changed comparatively less than German since the sixteenth century, yet there are locutions as well as words found in early documents pertaining to America that have fallen into disuse and hence are not commonly understood. Provincialisms abound, hence the history of the author and the environment in which he was reared should be taken into account, for sometimes there are phrases that are unintelligible without a knowledge of the writer's early surroundings. Translations as a rule should be consulted only with allowance, for to the best of them the Italian saying "Traduttore, tradittore" is applicable. With the greatest sincerity and honesty on the part of the translator, he is liable to an imperfect interpretation of an original text. There are of course instances when the original has disappeared and translations alone are available. Such is the case, for instance, with the Life of Columbus, written by his son Fernando and published in Italian in 1571; and the highly important report on the voyage of Cabral to Brazil in 1500, written by his pilot Vas da Cominho and others. These are known only through translations.

The sources of the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos, both printed and in manuscript, are numerous. The manuscript documents are as yet but imperfectly known. Only that which remained at Santa F? after the first period of Anglo-American occupancy--a number of church books and documents formerly scattered through the parishes of New Mexico, and a very few documents held in private hands--have been accessible within the United States. In Mexico the parish and other official documents at El Paso del Norte up to the beginning of the eighteenth century have been examined by me to a certain extent, and at the City of Mexico the Archivo Nacional has yielded a number of important papers, though the research has been far from exhaustive, owing to the lack of time and support. Hence much still remains to be done in that field. Some destruction of papers of an official character appears to have taken place at Mexico also, yet with the present condition of the archives there is hope that much that appears to be lost will eventually be brought to light; in any event we still have recourse to the Spanish archives, principally at Sevilla. It was the rule during Spanish colonial domination to have every document of any importance executed in triplicate, one copy to remain at the seat of local government, another to be sent to the viceregal archives, and the third to the mother country. Hence there is always a hope that, if the first two were destroyed, the third might be preserved. So, for instance, the collection of royal decrees is imperfect at the City of Mexico. There are lacunae of several decades, and it is perhaps significant that the same gaps are repeated in the publication of the "Cedulas" by Aguiar and Montemayor. In regard to ecclesiastical documents the difficulty is greater still. The archives of the Franciscan Order, to which the missions on the Rio Grande were assigned almost until the middle of the nineteenth century, have become scattered; the destruction of the archives at the great Franciscan convent in the City of Mexico in 1857, though not complete, resulted in the dispersion of those which were not burned or torn, and the whereabouts of these remnants are but imperfectly known. The documentary history of the Rio Grande Pueblos, therefore, can be only tentative at present, but it is given in the hope that it will incite further activity with the view of increasing and correcting the data thus far obtained.

The report of Cabeza de Vaca, commonly designated as his "Naufragios," is as yet the earliest printed source known with reference to the Rio Grande Pueblos, concerning whom it imparts some vague information. The briefness and vagueness of that information calls for no adverse criticism, for Cabeza de Vaca plainly states that he writes of these people from hearsay and that his information was obtained near the mouth of the Rio Pecos in western Texas. What he afterward learned in Sonora with respect to sedentary Indians in the north is hardly connected with the Rio Grande region. The same may be the case with the information obtained by Nu?o de Guzman in 1530 and alluded to by Casta?eda. That Nu?o de Guzman had gained some information concerning the Pueblos seems certain, but everything points to the Zu?i region as the one mentioned by his informant. The same is true of the reports of Fray Marcos de Nizza and Melchor Diaz, which clearly apply to the Zu?i Pueblos, the most easterly settlement of sedentary Indians alluded to being the Queres pueblo of Acoma. It is to the chroniclers of the expedition of Coronado, therefore, that we must look for the earliest definite information concerning the Rio Grande valley and its inhabitants.

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