Gaspar de Villagra, Historia de la Nueva Mexico (Alcala, 1610)

An epic poem, printed at Alcala in 1610 and dedicated to Philip III, written in Virgilian verse by a captain who marched with the 1598 expedition to New Mexico. It is the earliest printed book devoted to that country, it stages the defenders of Acoma as a deliberating council with named speakers, and in the middle of a canto it stops the verse to print, in prose, the friars' written opinion on what makes a war just. The same sheets carry the cost and the poet's own bid for payment.