The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 21, July 1917 - April, 1918 Page: 150
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
usual size of a legajo is about two thousand pages. The num-
ber of documents will vary greatly, from a single huge testimonio
or several bound volumes to as many as two thousand documents.
Counting testimonies as one item, it is. probable that there may
be an average of four hundred documents to a legajo.12 If the
separate documents of testimonies are included, the number may
easily reach double that figure. On this basis, the ultimate
wealth of the Archivo General de Indias is from 32,000,000 to
64,000,000 documents, aggregating 160,000,000 pages of manu-
script. The vastness of these numbers and the possibilities that
await the American investigator can best be appreciated, when
one considers that an estimate made in 1907 by a competent
scholar, with the financial backing of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, revealed only 5332 copies in the United States of
documents from the archives of Spain,18 although many from the
Archive General de Indias have since been added to American
libraries.14
II. The Archive Building
The history of the Casa Lonja, as the archive building is
called, has been told by most of the writers who have dealt with
the material it contains.15 In brief, it may be stated that a law
was passed, on October 30, 1572, calling for the erection of the
building for the use of the Casa de Contrataci6n. The work was
in charge of the elder Herrera (Juan de Herrera), most famous
12Hill, Descriptive catalogue, p. XXIX, estimates that there are an aver-
age of five hundred documents in the legajos forming the basis of his work.
In the legajos investigated by the present writer, most of them in the
Guadalajara and Mexico sections of the Audiencias group and the Estado
papers, it is doubtful if the average is over three hundred, owing to the
great number of testimonios, -and it may be less.
a8Robertson, James A., List of documents in Spanish archives relating to
the history of the United States which have been printed or of which trans-
cripts are preserved in American libraries. Of the 5332 items, 1075 con-
cern printed documents, but the transcript entries often include more than
a single document.
"IThrough the efforts of Native Sons of the Golden West Fellows and of
Dr. William E. Dunn of the University of Texas, thousands of documents
have been procured for the Bancroft Library of the University of Cali-
fornia, the Library of the University of Texas, the Newberry Library of
Chicago, and the Library of Congress. Thus, students in the Spanish-
American field have an opportunity to carry on extensive work in any one
of four widely separated cities of this country.
1'See especially the already cited works 'of Shepherd and Torres Lanzas.150
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 21, July 1917 - April, 1918, periodical, 1918; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101073/m1/156/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.