NOTICE.

Since the Royal Academy of History assumed the position of Senior Chronicler of the Indies, this body has viewed it as one of its primary obligations to attend, by every means within its reach, to the clarification of the history of that rich part of the globe. The publication of the early historians, whose works had not come to light—either because they were not considered objects of profit by those who traded in books in previous centuries, or because the codices containing them had not been preserved together—vividly captured the attention of the Academy, which dedicated its efforts to this purpose. Among the writers to whom it gave preference, those who had lived for a long time on the soil of the New World deserved special attention, as they appeared clothed with the authority of witnesses to the events they narrated. Their works should therefore be regarded as irrefutable testimonies of the conquest, a glorious badge of Spanish arms, which emulation and envy tried in vain to cloud.

Three works most directly excited the zeal of the Academy: the General and Natural History of the Indies, written by Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, the first chronicler of America; the History of the Indies by Don Fray Bartolomé de las Casas; and the History of New Spain, by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. It was truly difficult to decide which of these productions should be published first, especially regarding the histories by Oviedo and Las Casas. The importance of both works, even though directed toward different ends, and the trust their authors deserved—who spent the greater part of their lives in those regions, exercising no small influence on public affairs—rightfully caused the Academy to hesitate. Ultimately, it inclined toward heading the Collection of Historians of the Indies with the General and Natural [History] of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, attending mainly to chronological order, among other powerful reasons. However, work on the History of the Indies by the Bishop of Ciudad-Real de Chiapa was not abandoned.

Nor were the difficulties presented by the acquisition of Oviedo’s manuscripts of little weight. His General History was divided into fifty books, the first nineteen of which, although published by the author in 1535 1, had subsequently received great additions and amendments at his hands. It was an undertaking all but

1 In the first edition of the first part of the General History of the Indies, a portion (and not the whole, as has generally been believed) of the book of the Shipwrecks Naufragios was also included, which was the last of the fifty that Oviedo left written. As will be noted in its place, Book XX, the first of the second part, was also printed in 1557; it is the only one of this [part] and the third that has seen the light of day.