In the words of a Spanish writer, “The history of [Spanish] America, so far as the documents are concerned, is preserved almost completely in Spain. The successive amputations of her American dominions which the mother country suffered have gone on increasing the wealth in documents, for, as her rule has come to an end, she has transported a great part of their archives. . . . The most essential parts of these documents are contained in the Archivo [General] de Indias of Seville.” 120
While some may take exception to the above statement, on the ground that it is too sweeping, it is beyond question that the great Sevillian archive is practically inexhaustible in its wealth of materials on almost every conceivable subject in Spanish colonial administration and is the most valuable single archive on that field in existence. This is so in increasing measure, for laws have been passed and are gradually being executed for the transfer of materials relating to Spain's former colonies from their present repositories in Simancas and Madrid to the archive at Seville. It is true that vast quantities of rich materials have been found in the archives of Spanish American countries, 121 and that they often contain local details of which no account was sent to Spain, but a single great repository, dealing with all of the former colonies, has a decided advantage as against the numerous, scattered archives of the Americas. Many colonial archives have indeed but scant remains of the wealth they once possessed, as a result of the removal of papers to Spain, 122 or due to the yet greater disintegrating forces of foreign war, revolution, and lack of care. 123 Even in the case of those American countries whose archives retain an unusual degree of completeness, 124 the small local materials will usually be present in Spain, as well as in the land of origination, owing to the incessant and systematic accumulation of minute detail, for action by the authorities in Spain. 125
The value of the materials in Seville, as compared with those of other archives, may be illustrated by tracing the documentation of a given case. It may be supposed that Lacy, the Spanish minister to Russia, reports to Grimaldi, the Spanish minister of state, that the Russians are preparing to make conquests in the Californias. Grimaldi, in turn, informs Arriaga, the ministro general de Indias, and the latter asks the viceroy, Bucarely, to strengthen the defences of Alta California. Bucarely orders Governor Rivera of Alta California to report on the state of the presidios in his province. In due time, Rivera writes to the various presidial commanders, and receives their replies, after which he communicates the result to Bucarely. Bucarely writes to Arriaga, who asks Gálvez, as one familiar with Alta California affairs, his opinion about the Rivera report. Gálvez replies, and Arriaga then sends the whole file to the Council of the Indies, with a request for its action. Finally, the Council informs Arriaga of what it has done. In such a case, a great many other documents would in fact be included in the expediente, but the above are sufficient for purposes of illustration. The following would be the usual documentary result in the archives of Salinas (the county-seat of Monterey County, California), Mexico City, and Seville. 126
Salinas Mexico Seville
1. Lacy to Grimaldi .... C. C. of Or.
2. Grimaldi to Arriaga .... C. of Or. Or.
3. Arriaga to Bucarely .... Or. Dft.
4. Bucarely to Rivera Or. Dft. Cer..
5. Rivera to the presidial commanders Dft. Cer. Cer. of Cer.
6. The presidial commanders to Rivera Or. Cer. Cer. of Cer.
7. Rivera to Bucarely Dft. Or. Cer.
8. Bucarely to Arriaga .... Dft. Or.
9. Arriaga to Gálvez .... ...... Dft.
10. Gálvez to Arriaga .... ...... Or.
11. Arriaga to the Council of the Indies .... ...... Dft.
12. The Council of the Indies to Arriaga .... ...... Or.
In some of the above cases the document might be an uncertified copy of an original or certified copy, thus operating more particularly against the technical value of the file at Seville, but such instances are rare. 127 In matters of purely local character or of minor importance, documents like those from 4 to 7 may never have been sent to Spain, although they may appear at Salinas and Mexico, while there is undoubtedly a great body of material like items 5 and 6 that would exist only in a provincial archive. Attention should also be called to the fact that, for such documents as exist in all three archives, the best technical file is that of the province, the next best that of the viceroyalty, and next after that the file in Spain. 128 On the other hand, the documents at Seville have a number of advantages. Documents like those of item 1 are often at Seville in the original, as well as in copies therefrom, and eventually that should be the general rule, when all Spanish colonial materials shall be stored at Seville, as contemplated by law. Furthermore, documents like those of items 9 to 12, always of the highest technical rank, are to be found only in Spain. They may be described generally as intra-departmental (within the Indies department itself), interdepartmental (among the various governmental agencies of Spain in Europe), and private (whether as the result of official requests for an opinion or arising from petitions of individuals) correspondence in Europe (usually in Spain) of which official cognizance was taken by the department of the Indies. Finally, the whole expediente in Spain is the file upon which the highest official action was based.
Whatever argument there may be as to the ccmparative value of the documents in Seville and elsewhere as to kind, there can be none as respects their number, in which particular the Archivo General de Indias is far superior to any other in the same field. In 1913 there were nearly 40,000 legajos in the archive. 129 When the transfers from other Spanish archives have been completed, there should be a total of 80,000 legajos. 130 While a number of legajos contain only several hundred pages of manuscript material, and still others have as many as six thousand, the usual size of a legajo is about two thousand pages. The number of documents will vary greatly, from a single huge testimonio or several bound volumes to as many as two thousand documents. Counting testimonios as one item, it is probable that there may be an average of four hundred documents to a legajo. 131 If the separate documents of testimonios 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 manuscript. 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, 132 although many from the Archivo General de Indias have since been added to American libraries. 133
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. 134 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 Contratación. The work was in charge of the elder Herrera (Juan de Herrera), most famous Spanish architect of all time, the builder of the Escorial and other notable edifices in Spain, and the building is one of the most pleasing examples of his style. On August 14, 1598, the work was completed. For over a hundred years, the Lonja was the seat of the busy Casa de Contratación, but in the eighteenth century, with the removal of that institution to Cádiz, it became untenanted. In 1778, the idea of an archive of the Indies was suggested to the king by Juan Bautista Muñoz, celebrated historian and even more celebrated archivist. The project was received with favor, and the Casa Lonja was proposed by José de Gálvez, at that time ministro general de Indias, as the archive building. In 1785, with the arrival of a number of legajos from Simancas, the Lonja was fairly embarked on its new career. From that time forth, other consignments of papers were made to the archive, 135 until at length the upper floor of the building, the only space thus far allotted, could not conveniently house more of the legajos. Laws were passed for the delivery of the lower floor for archive purposes as well, and in 1913 the laws were executed. With this addition, it is believed that there will be enough space, though with little to spare, for the 80,000 legajos which will one day be the completed store of the Archivo General de Indias.
There are practically no formalities attending admission to the archive for purpose of investigation, 136 and, once there, the investigator is allowed wide latitude for the pursuit of his studies. While waiting for a legajo, he has an opportunity to consult the valuable library of over a thousand volumes, which the Archivo General de Indias has accumulated concerning Spanish America. While the archive has no funds for the purchase of books, the library is constantly growing through gifts; incidentally, it is a rule of courtesy that students who use the materials of the archive shall donate copies of their printed works based thereon. The investigator who is unable to go to Seville for his documents is free to arrange for copying through the N. S. G. W. Fellows, when they are present, or he may apply directly to the chiefs of the archive.
In the formation of the legajos, of whatever set, the year 1760 is a kind of twilight zone between the disorder of the older papers and the excellent arrangement of those of later date; the disorder continues through that year in some legajos, while in others that is the date where good order begins. Before 1760, expediente groupings are rarely maintained, and are often completely lost, through the disappearance of documents, or through their having been filed in separate legajos. The excellent arrangement of the post-1760 legajos is admirable. The general rule is for a sub-grouping by individual years, within which the particular year's expedientes appear. The expedientes are conveniently arranged, so that the relationships of the documents are manifest from the very make-up of the file. Occasionally, in legajos that have been used by investigators, but especially in those from which copies have been made, an ante-1760 chaos has made its appearance. Whether the fault be that of an investigator or that of an archive clerk, it cannot be too greatly regretted, and it is to be hoped that the evil practice may be checked or done away with.
The papers are divided into twelve (or, if those styled Indiferente General are considered separately from the Audiencia group, thirteen) larger sets, ranging in numbers from the 204 legajos of the Estado group, to the 18,860 of the Simancas papers (including both the Audiencia and Indiferente General sections, of which the former contains over 15,000). Some attempts at cataloguing the materials have been made, but while the inventarios and índices of certain sets, for example the Patronato Real 137 and Estado groups, have been commendably well done, those of others present very meagre guides to the materials referred to. This is particularly true of what is perhaps the richest set of all for general purposes, as well as the greatest in number of legajos, the above mentioned Simancas papers, to which three small inventarios are devoted. In the case of this set, a one or two line description, with inclusive dates, is given for the various groups of legajos, a single item embracing from one to as many as twenty-five legajos,—obviously not a very detailed clue to the contents.
The names of the larger sections will occasionally convey some idea as to the nature of the materials, but the basis of appellation is, not subject-matter, but the office whence the papers came to the archive. Thus, the Simancas papers came from the archive at Simancas. The principal sub-group is called the Audiencia papers, not because it deals with the activities of audiencias, but because the various audiencia jurisdictions were taken as convenient geographical divisions. Similarly, the other sub-group of the Simancas papers is called Indiferente General, because the documents were not easily referable to any single audiencia jurisdiction. 138 The legajos are located by estante (stack), cajón (compartment, or shelf), and legajo (bundle) numbers, and the three together (e. g., 104-3-2) are habitually termed the legajo number. The title of an individual legajo and its inclusive dates will usually give a general indication of subject-matter and the range, in time, of the documents, but neither is a safe clue in all cases. 139
A bibliography of works treating of the Archivo General de Indias is provided in Hill, Descriptive catalogue, 140 p. VII. The following items may be added to Mr. Hill's list:
El Archivo de Indias y la Sociedad de Publicaciones Históricas. [Madrid, 1912.] This is an illustrated thirty-one page pamphlet in two parts. The first part, in fifteen pages, is the work of Dr. Pío Zabala y Lera, referring to the publications, past and prosspective of the Sociedad de Publicaciones Históricas. The second part, written anonymously by Señor Don Pedro Torres Lanzas, chief of the archive, concerns the Archivo General de Indias. It ranks with Shepherd's Guide 141 as the most useful description yet published of the general contents of the archive.
Larrabure y Unanue, Eugenio, Les Archives des Indes et la Bibliothèque Colombine de Séville. [Paris, 1914.] This is a profusely illustrated eighty-eight page pamphlet, of which fifty pages are devoted to the Archivo General de Indias. Practically the entire space deals with the exposition of documents at that archive in 1913, in celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean.
There is an article in Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littèraires, second series, v. II, p. 367, not available to the present writer, cited in Shepherd, Guide, pp. 59, 96.
More popular in character, but often containing material of value, are the various reports of the Native Sons of the Golden West Fellows, published, from time to time, in the Grizzly Bear Magazine of Los Angeles, and articles of like character by Dr. William E. Dunn of the University of Texas in newspapers and magazines of Texas, e. g., Hunting old documents in Spain, in The Alcalde (Austin, Texas), III, 345-354, February, 1915. The most complete and most available description of the archive, for American scholars, especially as regards the inventarios and índices of the different sets of papers, is Shepherd's Guide, supplemented as regards arrangement and archive rules since the publication of Shepherd's work by Hill's Descriptive catalogue. Both of these works, as well as those of Bolton, Pérez, and Robertson, cited in notes 2 and 13, are among the publications of the Department of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
121. See especially Bolton, Herbert E., Guide to materials for the history of the United States in the principal archives of Mexico. Washington, 1913; also Pérez, Luis M., Guide to the materials for American history in Cuban archives. Washington, 1907. See also Chapman, Charles E., South America as a field for an historical survey, in A Californian in South America (ed. by Dr. Herbert I. Priestley. Berkeley, 1917), pp. 41-50.
122. For example, in the case of Cuba.
123. For example, in the case of Peru.
124. For example, several of the archives of Mexico.
125. See Chapman, The founding of Spanish California, p. 170, n. 63, especially the second column of page 170.
126. The abbreviations used are the following: “Or.” for an original, signed with the name and rubric of the writer; “Dft.” for the draft or file copy of the writer; “Cer.” for a certified copy; “C.” for uncertified copies. These abbreviations are also used in combination.
127. Many documents which seem to be copies are really originals, such, for example, as petitions, which it was the practice not to sign, and letters of some of the religious, who occasionally omitted the rubric. In the case of ordinary copies it is not always possible to be certain that they were made from originals or certified copies, although they are almost invariably made from one or the other.
128. Much material relating to the Spanish period of regions now within the United States is still to be found in various local archives, as may be seen from the following account of the local archives of Texas, New Mexico, and California.
One of the most valuable archives of the northern Spanish frontier is that which accumulated in the old Spanish province of Texas. In the early years of its history the district was a part of Coahuila. For half a century, from 1722 to 1772, the capital was at Los Adaes (now Robeline) in the present state of Louisiana. Thenceforward, to the end of the Spanish period, the seat of government was at San Antonio de Bexar. In the course of time, the provincial records became somewhat scattered. The bulk of them, however, found their way into the County Court House of Bexar County (at San Antonio), where they remained until, some eighteen years ago, they were transferred to the University of Texas, at which place they have formed the basis for much of the notable historical work done at that university. Fragments of the archives are at the State Historical Library, Austin, where they are known as the Nacogdoches Archives. Still other fragments were found in the Lamar Papers, which were purchased by the state of Texas, a few years ago. These, too, are now at the State Library. The provincial records at the University of Texas are well known as the Bexar Archives. They comprise about 300,000 pages of original documents, consisting mainly of the correspondence of military and civil officials.
When the United States government acquired New Mexico in 1848, fairly complete records were found in the provincial archives at Santa Fe for the period since 1692. Few documents were of prior date to the latter year, due to the fact that in the revolt of 1680 all the records, covering the period from 1598, were burned, and it was not until 1692 that the Spaniards were able to return to New Mexico. In 1903, the Secretary of the Interior, acting for the United States government, took charge of the Spanish archives of the territory of New Mexico. During the preceding fifty-five years of American occupation, however, the archives had not been properly cared for, and in 1870 an American governor was even guilty of the vandal act of selling documents to the merchants of Santa Fe for wrapping paper. After the Secretary of the Interior assumed control in 1903, the papers still remaining at Santa Fe were, with the exception of a few that were retained in the Surveyor General's office in that city, removed to the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress. There they have been arranged in chronological order, the sheets have been cleaned, and a catalogue in English has been made of them. For more detailed accounts, see Vaughan, J. H., A preliminary report on the archives of New Mexico, in American Historical Association, Annual report for the year 1908, 465-494; Twitchell, Spanish archives of New Mexico (Cedar Rapids, Ia. 1914. 2 v.), Prefatory Note.
Unfortunately, the Spanish provincial archives of Alta California have not been kept intact, and probably the greater part of them has been destroyed. After the conquest of California by the United States, the archives were placed in charge of the United States Surveyor General for California. Some of the papers were later taken elsewhere, but the majority were still in possession of that official at the time of the San Francisco fire of 1906. In over three hundred volumes of Spanish records, scarcely more than a score escaped the conflagration. Fortunately, however, sixteen volumes of original documents dating from 1781 to 1850, had been transferred, in 1858, to the Monterey County archive, in the recorder's office at Salinas, and there they still remain. Five of the volumes relate to criminal matters; the others are miscellaneous, containing official correspondence, private letters, public addresses, and petty court papers. They comprise, without doubt, the most valuable source material for the Spanish and Mexican periods of California history to be found in any of the archives of California. Other records of a more local nature exist in the archives of cities which were the former pueblos of Spanish California, as at Los Angeles, San Jose, and Santa Cruz (Branciforte), and still others at many of the missions, especially at Santa Barbara, where an attempt has been made to collect the files of all the missions.
For the material of the preceding paragraphs, the writer is indebted to Professor Herbert E. Bolton, Dr. Charles W. Hackett, and Mr. Owen C. Coy, secretary of the California Historical Survey Commission.
129. Hill, Roscoe R., Descriptive catalogue of the documents relating to the history of the United States in the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba deposited in the Archivo General de Indias at Seville (Washington, 1916), p. VII, says “about 35,000,” and in a list on page IX gives a more nearly exact estimate of 35,731 legajos. Shepherd, William R., Guide to the materials for the history of the United States in Spanish archives (Washington, 1907), p. 55, says “some 40,000 legajos,” and those are the figures given by Señor Torres Lanzas, head of the archive, to the writer. The two estimates may be reconciled by the fact that there are some groups of papers in which the legajos are so large as to be unwieldy, and it has long been planned to reduce them to a more convenient size. In 1913, after Mr. Hill's departure from Seville, this work began on the 1194 bundles of the Escribanía de Camara del Consejo de Indias papers, which are expected to yield about 3,000 legajos of the usual size.
130. This is the estimate of Señor Torres Lanzas.
131. Hill, Descriptive catalogue, p. XXIX, estimates that there are an average 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.
132. Robertson, James A., List of documents in Spanish archives relating to the history of the United States which have been printed or of which transcripts are preserved in American libraries. Of the 5332 items, 1075 concern printed documents, but the transcript entries often include more than a single document.
133. Through 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 California, 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.
134. See especially the already cited works of Shepherd and Torres Lanzas.
135. Hill, Descriptive catalogue, p. IX, gives a table showing the different larger groups of papers, their inclusive dates, the number of legajos in each, the origin of the papers, and the dates when they came to the Casa Lonja.
136. On this point, see Shepherd, Guide, p. 59, and Hill, Descriptive catalogue, pp. IX-XI.
137. The most famous of all the sets of materials at the archive is that of the Patronato Real. The title of these papers would lead one to expect them to deal with the royal patronage with regard to the church, but the name has no relation to the subject-matter; they are so called, because they are stored in a room which was formerly the office of that branch of royal administration. They represent the selections of Juan Bautista Muñoz of the materials which he considered the most valuable of the archive. As such, they have been used by investigators more than many other equally valuable sets, and they constitute the principal source for the much-cited Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía (Madrid, 1864-1884. 42 v.). Cf. Chapman, The Founding of Spanish California, p. 438. The documents of the Patronato Real are particularly rich in materials for the era of the conquistadores; they contain little or nothing for the eighteenth century. There is still much of value in this set that has not been used, e. g., the six hundred page manuscript account of the Coronado expedition by Baltasar de Obregón, which was virtually unknown until found by the writer and copied for the Newberry Library of Chicago, but, as a general rule, other sets will now yield far more to the investigator in search of new materials. The inventarios and índices of the Patronato Real are the type which has been followed with more or less success in the cataloguing of other sets. The inventarios of this set (of which there are two) list the materials, sometimes by expedientes, and at others document by document. The índices (of which also there are two) provide an alphabetical index, usually by names of persons, but in some cases by names of places and institutions as well, to the inventarios. Where possible, the alphetical index is applied within geographical units.
138. This section has also served as a category for materials which came to the archive, not necessarily from Simancas, after the inventarios of other groups had been made up. It is, therefore, a growing set. Shepherd, Guide, p. 67.
139. It is a temptation to write a general account of the various larger groups of papers, for which the writer has notes available, but it is doubtful if much that is useful could be added to the concise statements appearing in Shepherd's Guide.
140. See supra, n. 10.
141. See supra, n. 10.
How to cite:
Chapman, Charles E., "THE ARCHIVO GENERAL DE INDIAS ", Volume 021, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 145 - 155. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v021/n2/article_3.html
[Accessed Sun Nov 23 2:40:29 CST 2008]
