A Michoacan historian's prologue of 1766: Tarascan annals by an anonymous Indian author, a residencia with folios missing, and a stated reason why Indians would not lend their papers
The prologue to the 1766 life of Vasco de Quiroga lists what its author read: five printed authorities, the title deeds of Patzcuaro and Tzintzuntzan, a testament, a damaged residencia file, a dean's manuscripts, and annals in the Tarascan language by an anonymous Indian author. It also says why such material was hard to get: the Indians were almost its only custodians, they held that tracing antiquities preceded the loss of their lands, and - his words - the distrust was not ill founded.
Why this wins its question: Prologues are the part of an old book nobody quotes, and this one carries three things that are hard to find stated anywhere else. It names a set of annals in the Tarascan language by an anonymous Indian author as a working source of a printed history - not as a lost title in a bibliography, but as something the author had and used. It shows an eighteenth-century Mexican historian reconstructing the original size of a judicial file from the folios missing from it, and stating his rules of criticism as a matter of routine. And it puts on the record, in the words of a man with every reason to phrase it otherwise, that the Indians of Michoacan were the almost sole custodians of the region's documents, that they would not show them, and that their fear of being dispossessed once the extent of their titles was known was - his phrase - "no mal fundada". That sentence is worth more to a reader trying to weigh the colonial record than a chapter of argument, and it is sitting unquoted in the front matter of a devotional life.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The prologue names its printed authorities, and the list is a snapshot of what a Michoacan library held in the 1760s. Referring the reader to chapter 9 of book 2 for the rest, it names Juan Diez de la Calle, who wrote his Memorial de Noticias Sacras e Imperiales in 1646; Fr. Agustin Betancurt, who wrote his Theatro Mexicano in 1697 and 1698; Ignacio de Salazar y Olarte, who continued the history of Antonio de Solis in 1742; Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, for his Idea de la Historia General de Indias published in 1746; and finally Juan Joseph de Eguiara, for the first volume of his Bibliotheca, brought out in 1755 - besides others which supplied a loose notice here and there. Four of the five are American works and three of them were less than twenty-five years old when this prologue was written.
The manuscripts are listed separately and one of them is an indigenous chronicle in an indigenous language. The prologue records that although its author obtained many, he had as originals the titles and mercedes of the cities of Patzcuaro and Tzintzuntzan; that what chiefly cost him was Quiroga's testament, preserved in the college and authorised in due form, and the autos of his residencia in the cathedral archive; that much was owed to three manuscript volumes of the licenciado Matheo de Hijar y Espinosa, dean of that church; to an extract he obtained of the history of the college of Patzcuaro written by its rector Francisco Ramirez; and to "los Annales en lengua Tarasca de un Author Indio anonimo". A set of annals in the language the prologue calls Tarasca, by an unnamed indigenous writer, is named here as a working source of a printed book, which is a different kind of record from a mention in a list of lost works.
The residencia papers were already damaged when he used them, and he says how he knows. The autos of Quiroga's residencia in the cathedral archive are described as preserved "aunque diminutos"; in them thirty-five witnesses appear presented for the descargos, "pero serian muchos mas, los que de hecho se presentaron, respecto a las foxas, que les faltan". An eighteenth-century reader inferring the original size of a judicial file from its missing folios, and printing the inference rather than the round number, is doing the same arithmetic a modern archivist would. What the residencia found is not stated in the pages read here and is not asserted.
The most consequential sentence in the prologue is about why the documents were hard to get, and it concedes the indigenous side of the argument. Those who have attempted work of this kind, the author writes, are well qualified witnesses of the difficulty it costs in the kingdom to obtain these monuments, "parte por la escasez de ellos, y parte por la desconfianza, no mal fundada, de los Indios, casi unicos depositarios de ellos. Piensan estos pobres, que el fin, que se lleva en rastrear las antiguedades, solo es despojarlos de sus tierras, y que para esto no faltara cabilosidad a los Espanoles, una vez que ayan visto hasta donde se estienden sus titulos." Three things are on the record in one sentence: that the Indians of Michoacan were the almost sole keepers of the region's historical documents; that they withheld them from researchers as a matter of policy; and that a Spanish-descended cleric writing under his college's imprint judged their reason sound and named the mechanism - that once the extent of a title is known, Spaniards will find the quibble to break it.
The same prologue states a method, and it is a method of criticism rather than of praise. Occupied entirely with the truth of the history, its author says he took no care of the language; that he holds to the laws of history in fixing his geography and, so far as possible, his chronology; that he does not heap up symbols or panegyrical discourses, nor divert himself in the episodes "que hazen tan molestos a nuestros Escritores de este genero de obras"; that disputes belonging to the substance of the facts he relates are kept in the text, as Baronio and others did, while those that are not are sent to the marginal notes; and that where in those notes he departs from known authors it has been to come closer to the truth, guided by others of equal name or by incontestable grounds, "las reglas de critica, que me han servido para preferir el dicho de unos respecto de los otros" being set down where the occasion offers. The second declared use of the notes is to illustrate American antiquities, and of Michoacan he says almost nothing has been written, "no digo de la antiguedad gentilica; pero ni aun de la christiana".
The counterpoint is that the man recording the distrust was one of the people it was directed at. The author of this prologue was rector of the college Quiroga founded, the book was published by that college, and its purpose was to advance the memory and cause of its founder; he is describing a collecting effort of which he was the beneficiary. The pages read say nothing about how the títulos and mercedes of Patzcuaro and Tzintzuntzan came into his hands as originals, whether the communities that held them consented, on what terms, or whether they were returned. A record of indigenous distrust written by a party with an interest in overcoming it is good evidence that the distrust existed and weak evidence about how it was overcome, and this entry treats it as the first and not the second.
The limits of this entry. Everything above is read from two pages of the front matter of the Mexico 1766 imprint, opened as page scans on 2026-08-30. None of the manuscripts named has been seen: nothing here establishes that the Tarascan annals survive, who wrote them, what period they covered or whether the extract of Ramirez's history is the text now known under that name; nothing establishes the present whereabouts or extent of the residencia file; and the count of thirty-five witnesses is reported as the prologue reports it. The judgement that indigenous fears of dispossession were well founded is quoted here as the testimony of an eighteenth-century witness, not proved by it; the corpus records elsewhere, from royal instructions, the legal machinery by which Indian land titles were examined and sold, and the reader who wants the other half of this should go there.