Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction | Page 8

although my

researches have been far from exhaustive, owing to lack of support in
my work. These documents, commonly called "Diligencias
Matrimoniales," are the results of official investigations into the status
of persons desiring to marry. From their nature these investigations
always cover a considerable period, sometimes more than a generation,
and frequently disclose historical facts that otherwise might remain
unknown. These church papers also, though not frequently, include
fragments of correspondence and copies of edicts and decrees that
deserve attention.
The destruction of the archives and of writings of all kinds in New
Mexico during the Indian revolt of 1680 and in succeeding years has
left the documentary history of the province during the seventeenth
century almost a blank. Publications are very few in number. There is
no doubt that the archives of Spain and even those of Mexico will yet
reveal a number of sources as yet unknown; but in the meantime, until
these treasures are brought to light, we must remain more or less in the
dark as to the conditions and the details of events prior to 1692. A
number of letters emanating from Franciscan sources have been
published lately in Mexico by Luis Garcia y Pimentel, and these throw
sidelights on New Mexico as it was in the seventeenth century that are
not without value. In the manuscripts from the archives at Santa Fé that
survived the Pueblo revolt, now chiefly in the Library of Congress at
Washington, occasional references to events anterior to the uprising
may be found; and the church books of El Paso del Norte (Juarez)
contain some few data that should not be neglected.
In 1602 there was published at Rome, under the title of Relación del
Descubrimiento del Nuevo Mexico, a small booklet by the Dean of
Santiago, Father Montoya, which purports to give a letter from Oñate
on his occupancy of New Mexico and journey to the Colorado river of
the West, thus covering the period between 1597 and 1605. It is
preceded by a notice of Espejo's exploration, but it is entirely too brief
to afford much information. The little book is exceedingly rare; but
three copies of it exist in the United States, so far as I am aware.
Of greater importance are the notices, of about the same period,

preserved by Fray Juan de Torquemada in the first volume of his
Monarchia Indiana (1615). In this work we find the first mention of
some Pueblo fetishes, with their names, as understood at the time. The
letter of Fray Francisco de San Miguel, first priest of Pecos, given in
print by Torquemada, is of considerable interest. Torquemada himself
was never in New Mexico, but he stood high in the Franciscan Order
and had full access to the correspondence and to all other papers
submitted from outside missions during his time. It is much to be
regretted that the three manuscript pamphlets by Fray Roque Figueredo,
bearing the titles Relacion del Viage al Nuevo México, Libro de las
Fundaciones del Nuevo Mexico, and Vidas de los Varones Ilustres, etc.,
appear to be lost. Their author was first in New Mexico while Oñate
governed that province, and his writings were at the great convent of
Mexico. Whether they disappeared during the ruthless dispersion of its
archives in 1857 or were lost at an earlier date is not known.
After the recall of Oñate from New Mexico, not only the colony but
also the missions in that distant land began to decline, owing to the
bitter contentions between the political and the ecclesiastical authorities.
The Franciscan Order, desirous of inspiring an interest in New Mexican
missions, fostered the literary efforts of its missionaries in order to
promote a propaganda for conversions. It also sent a special visitor to
New Mexico in the person of Fray Estevan de Perea, who gave
expression to what he saw and ascertained, in two brief printed but
excessively rare documents, a facsimile copy of which is owned by my
friend Mr F. W. Hodge, of the Bureau of American Ethnology. A third
letter which I have not been able to see is mentioned by
Ternaux-Compans, also a "Relacion de la Conversion de los Jumanos"
by the same and dated 1640.
Much more extended than the brief pamphlets by Fray Perea is the
Relaciones de todas las cosas acaecidas en el Nuevo Mexico hasta el
Año de 1626 (I abbreviate the very long title), by Fray Geronimo de
Zárate Salmerón, which was published in the third series of the first
Colección de Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, and also by Mr
Charles F. Lummis in The Land of Sunshine, with an English
translation. This work, while embodying chiefly a narrative most

valuable to the ethnography of western Arizona and eastern California,
of the journey of Oñate to the