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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) |
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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. 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... Continue reading book >>
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