Antonio de Remesal, Historia general de las Indias Ocidentales, y particular de la Gouernacion de Chiapa, y Guatemala (Madrid, 1620)
The first history of Chiapas and Guatemala to reach print, built out of municipal cabildo books fetched from every city of the governorship by order of the president of the Audiencia. Its prologue states its method and its limits, it follows a royal provision of 1573 for the ordering of events, and it stops mid-narrative to argue that Las Casas was not an eyewitness to what his printed memorial describes.
Why this wins its question: Remesal is cited in English almost exclusively as a source for the Chiapa years of Las Casas, usually at second hand and usually from the 1932 Guatemala reprint, so what the 1620 Madrid volume actually says about its own making is missing from the record. This object opens those sheets and quotes it: the dedication in which the president of the Audiencia sends for the cabildo archives of every city in his governorship; the prologue's account of two journeys through New Spain reading municipal registers and taking what they said without adding or subtracting; the same prologue's flat refusal to print a catalogue of its sources; the royal provision of 3 June 1573 that dictated the chronological form; the letter of Alvarado cited by its incipit from the archive of San Salvador; and the passage in which a Dominican distinguishes what Las Casas saw from what he inferred. The costs are taken from the same pages rather than left out - Alvarado's return driving people into the mountains, a conquistador's insult to a cacique printed in full, and a friar cutting the braids of Manche men and calling it their greatest mortification.
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 title page of the copy read here reads "HISTORIA GENERAL DE LAS INDIAS OCIDENTALES, Y PARTICVLAR DE LA Gouernacion de Chiapa, y Guatemala. Escriuese juntamente los principios de la Religion de Nuestro Glorioso Padre Santo Domingo, y de las demas Religiones. AL CONDE DE LA GOMERA DEL Consejo del Rey Nuestro Señor, su Presidente, y Capitan General. POR EL PRESENTADO FRAY ANTONIO de Remesal, de la Orden de Predicadores de la Prouincia de España", with the imprint "EN MADRID, Por Francisco de Abarca y Angulo. Año M.DC.XX." The year on the sheets in hand is 1620.
The dedication names the patron and says exactly what the patronage consisted of. It is addressed to Antonio Peraza de Ayala, Castilla y Rojas, Conde de la Gomera, "del Consejo del Rey Nuestro Señor, su Presidente en la Audiencia de Guatemala, y Capitan General de las Prouincias a ella sugetas", and the author writes that such has been the care the dedicatee took "en darme libros, buscar papeles, y embiar por los Archibos de las Ciudades de su Gouernacion, y hazer otras diligencias para que esta obra passasse adelante: que mas se puede llamar Autor suyo, que yo que la ordenè y compuse". The president of the Audiencia had the municipal archives of his own jurisdiction sent in for the writing of the book.
The prologue sets out the method in the first person, and it is archival rather than literary. The author went through "el primer libro del Archiuo de la ciudad de Sãtiago", and in eleven months what had been a grain as small as the table of the chapters of the province had become a tree; then, to give the work more perfection, he "anduue dos vezes toda la Nueua España, en q comuniquè los hombres mas entendidos della, oyendo sus relaciones, y viendo sus memoriales, dando lo q recibia, sin quitar ni añadir, principalmente en los libros de Cabildo, donde estauan las fundaciones y gouierno de ciudades".
He says on the same page that the papers contradicted the printed books, including those of his own order, and he declines to make a quarrel of it: in these and other papers he found things different from what was held "en libros impressos è historias de mi Religion. No cõtradigo de proposito, ni en todas ocasiones a sus autores", excusing their errors by saying that they "hollaron las pisadas de los q yuã delante". He then states the epistemic limit of the whole genre: "Cada vno dize lo q alcança, y no siendo fe diuina lo q se trata en la historia, no ay q vender la mia por mas verdadera, porq contradigo mas a otra."
The prologue also contains the concession that most weakens the book, and it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. He writes: "No hago Catalogo de los Archibos, libros impressos, y de mano, memoriales, relaciones, testamentos, è informaciones que he visto para ordenar esta historia, por euitar vn memorial muy largo. Dexese en mi credito, q todos los papeles fueron fidedignos y autenticos, y auidos de personas de calidad." The apparatus that would let a reader check him is deliberately omitted, and the reader is asked to take his word.
The chronological arrangement is presented as obedience to a royal order, not as an authorial choice. In disposing his materials, he writes, "guardè el orden que dà la Magestad del Rey Don Felipe II. el prudente en vna su Prouision, despachada en S. Lorenço el Real, a los 3. de Iunio de 1573. Secretario Antonio de Eraso, ordenando los sucessos por el discurso del tiempo en q acaecieron", and of the modes of writing history he chose "el laconico, breue, y sucinto". The pages that follow carry the year in the margin, which is what that instruction produces on the page.
The book cites archival originals by their opening words. Narrating the return of the Adelantado Pedro de Alvarado, it reports a letter written from the villa of San Pedro in Honduras to the villa of San Salvador, "cuya fecha es a catorze de Mayo de mil y quinientos y treynta y nueue", and adds "en cuyo archiuo està la carta original, que comiença: Ya creo que por cartas mias, que yo escriui desde Valladolid, sabreys señores mi venida, y el sucesso de mi buen despacho, &c." Elsewhere on the same page it argues from "los libros de Cabildo de ciudad real" and the entries found there for 1539.
A Dominican historian of the Dominican province here performs source criticism on Las Casas, which is the least expected thing in the volume. Having quoted the printed memorial - "cuyas lastimas llora el Señor Obispo de Chiapa don Fray Bartolome de las Casas, quando con mucho sentimiento dize en el memorial de la destruycion de las Indias, q anda impresso. Matò infinitas gentes con hazer nauios, &c." - he immediately qualifies it: "No vio el Señor Obispo esta segunda flota, porque en el tiempo que se hizo estaua en España: habla como testigo de vista de la primera que fue al Piru, y colige della lo q seria desta segunda, ò refiere lo q le dixerõ de lla." The distinction between eyewitness and inference is drawn in 1620, by a member of Las Casas's own order.
The cost of the conquest is in the book and not softened. Of the Adelantado's return the text says that with it "se inquietò y alterò toda la tierra, y los miserables naturales pedian a los montes, que cayessen sobre ellos, y los cubriessen; y a la tierra, q los recogiesse en sus entrañas para escaparse de la furia del Adelantado, q los amenazaua", and that even so "no le faltò gente que maltratar". The chronicler is describing the acts of the man the crown had made governor.
The narrative of the friars' journey to Chiapa in 1545 prints a Spaniard's contempt in full. A cacique had received the party with an avenue of flowers and given them food; a layman travelling with them, in fulfilment of what the friars had been telling him, "estendio los braços, y formando dos higas con los dedos selas puso en los ojos, diziendo: Toma para ti vellaco, q mas que esto nos deues". The friars were "afrentados del termino del hombre", and the text identifies him: Francisco Gil, one of the first conquistadors of Yucatan "y vno de los muy crueles que los Indios", who died soon after in debt and misery. The same page records that the Spaniard's household officer, "vn mayordomo, o guarda casa que en lengua Mexicana llaman Calpixque", entertained the bishop's party "a costa de los tristes Indios".
The book is a source for printed grammars of Mayan languages that are otherwise very thinly recorded. To ease the teaching of a language "que se llama Mãme, vsada en vno destos partidos", it reports, "el año de 1607. en Mexico imprimio vna Arte della el Padre Fr. Geronimo Larios de la Cruz, q fue el primero q predicò en ella, y despues le hã imitado algunos discipulos". In the obituaries of the last book it records that fray Francisco de Viana, who had lived more than fifty years at Coban, "Compuso el Arte, porque se deprende la lengua de la Verapaz", and that fray Pedro de Cespedes "deprendio tres lenguas, y todas las hablaua, y predicaua en ellas, con la facilidad que en la Castellana".
The last book describes the Manche country, and it prints the coercion alongside the baptisms. The towns "q hasta el año de 1606. se descubrieron, y se Bautizo la gente dellos" are given as eight, each under a saint's name paired with the local one - S. Felipe Cahal, S. Pablo Yaxha, San Iacinte Matzin, S. Vicente Yxil, S. Maria Assuncion Chocahao, S. Domingo Secupalò, S. Miguel Manchè, S. Iosef Yxbon - with five more known of by report, "Yool, Cequichã, Noquichã, Mopàm, Yxòmo". The men wore their hair long, cut over the forehead "a modo de las coletas q trayan nuestros aguelos en Castilla", braided with cotton ribbons and dressed with flowers and feathers of many colours; and the friar Salvador Cipriano "les cortò los trançados, q fue la mayor mortificaciõ para ellos". The text then reports the change of dress - shirts, breeches and hats for the men, naguas and huipil for the women - as an accomplished fact.
What this volume is, and is not, has to be said in the same breath as its method. It is the history of one religious order in one province, dedicated to the president of the Audiencia who supplied its papers, and its final books are not history at all but obituary and miracle narrative - the last page of the Tabla de los Capitulos runs through "Muertes de algunos Religiosos", "Muertes de Religiosos" and "Religiosos que se anegaron", and lists as chapter headings both "Como desengañaron a los Indios, de los miedos del demonio" and "Los Padres queman vn Templo del Demonio". The indigenous people of Chiapas and Guatemala enter it as caciques, towns and numbers of baptisms, not as named informants, and the author, having declined to list his sources, cannot be checked on most of what he reports.