Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/155





THE NARRATIVE OF CASTEÑEDA

A perusal of the narratives of the expeditions of Coronado and of Friar Marcos of Nice, which were translated by Henri Ternaux-Compans for the ninth volume of his Collection de Voyages, convinced me that the style and the language of these narratives were much more characteristic of the French translator than of the Spanish conquistadores. A comparison of Ternaux's translations with some of the Spanish texts which he had rendered into French, which were available in "the printed collections of Spanish documents in the Harvard University library, showed me that Ternaux had not only rendered the language of the original accounts with great freedom, but that in several cases he had entirely failed to understand what the original writer endeavored to relate. On consulting Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, in the second edition, I found that the Spanish manuscript of the Castañeda narrative, from which most of our knowledge of Coronado's expedition is derived, was in the Lenox Library in New York City. The trustees of this library readily granted my request, made through Dr Winsor, for permission to copy the manuscript. The Lenox manuscript is not the original one written by Castañeda, but a copy made toward the end of the sixteenth century. It contains a number of apparent mistakes, and the meaning of many passages is obscure, probably due to the fact that the Spanish copyist knew nothing about the North American Indians and their mode of living. These places I have pointed out in the notes to my translation of the narrative, and I have called attention also to the important errors and misconceptions in Ternaux's version. Diligent inquiry among the custodians of the large Spanish libraries at Simancas, Madrid, and at Seville where the Lenox manuscript was copied in 1596, has failed to bring me any information in regard to the original manuscript. The Lenox copy is the one used by Ternaux.

The Spanish text of the Relación Postrera de Sívola is printed now for the first time, through the kindness of the late Señor Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, who copied it for me from a collection of papers in his possession, which formerly belonged to the Father Motolinia, the author of a very valuable description of the Indians of New Spain. In the preface to this work, dated 1541, Motolinia says that he was in communication with the brethren who had gone with Coronado. The Relación Postrera appears to be a copy made from a letter written to some of the Franciscans in New Spain by one of the friars who accompanied Coronado.