The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947 Page: 181
582 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
traders, the early nineteenth century has been almost totally
neglected. Therein lies one of the principal merits of the present
work and the chief justification for its translation and reprint-
ing.
It is, as the subtitle indicates, a composite affair. Pedro
Bautista Pino, a genial and well-to-do ranchero, who was New
Mexico's delegate to the Spanish Cortes in 1811, began it as a
report for the information of that congress. He supplied the
data, but he relied on a Cadiz journalist, Juan L6pez Cancelada,
to put them into good literary form. Two decades later, An-
tonio Barreiro, a lawyer who had been briefly a resident of
New Mexico, slightly amplified the Pino-Cancelada text and
published it at Puebla. After seventeen more years, another
lawyer, Jose Agustin de Escudero, brought out another edition
at Mexico City, with additional notes, some drawn from his
own observations and others abstracted from Josiah Gregg's
Commerce of the Prairies.
The present translation takes this latter version as the point
of departure. A preface and an introduction are inserted to
prepare the reader for what is to follow. The Escudero opus
then is presented, rendered into smooth-flowing English, and
appropriately keyed so that with alertness one can distinguish
the contributions of Pino, Barreiro, Escudero, and Gregg. The
Pino and Barreiro printings are supplied in facsimile, and the
whole is elucidated in some 395 notes, some of which are thor-
ough explorations of interesting bypaths.
Out of this diversity of contributors a perfectly unified work
could hardly result. It is, furthermore, a somewhat hazardous
book for the unwary reader, who might follow one or another
of the authors into the error of supposing that New Mexico
was discovered by Fray Agustin Ruiz [Rodriguez] (p. 6), that
Oviate brought with him sixty-five Franciscans (p. 10), that
converts by 1631 numbered 500,000 (p. 17), or that the prin-
cipal Indian revolt occurred in 1644 rather than 1680 (p. 7).
On some of these matters the editors might have supplied a
more explicit correction, though since the book's use will doubt-
less be primarily by those who are measurably versed in New
Mexico history, this criticism may be unjust.. In its earlier
forms the trilogy has functioned since Bancroft's day as "the
greatest single source" for New Mexican history from the
closing years of Spanish control to the end of the Mexican181
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947, periodical, 1947; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101117/m1/198/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.