Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction Papers of the School of American Archaeology, No. 13   By: Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier (1840-1914)

Papers of the School of American Archaeology

Number Thirteen

DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE RIO GRANDE PUEBLOS OF NEW MEXICO

I. BIBLIOGRAPHIC INTRODUCTION

by

ADOLPH F. BANDELIER

1910

DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE RIO GRANDE PUEBLOS OF NEW MEXICO

BY ADOLPH F. BANDELIER

I. BIBLIOGRAPHIC INTRODUCTION

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 Archæological 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 Zuñi tribe, namely, to record their documentary history.

I shall follow the method employed by me in the case of the documentary history of Zuñi, 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 Zuñi 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.