Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/11



PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

As compared with the peopling of our Atlantic seaboard, the first explorations of our Southwest by a white race have received comparatively slight attention, the minor consequences of the latter, and the inaccessibility of the early Spanish records, being the sufficiently obvious causes which have combined to prevent minute and exhaustive studies until within the past few years.

Dramatic and intensely interesting conditions have been revealed as Mr. Bandelier—whose work under the auspices of the Archæological Institute of America and on the Hemenway Survey has entitled him to stand first as the documentary historian of this region, and also to rank as the most exhaustive of its explorers has brought the facts of this long-hidden history once more to the light. It is the history of a search for the Golden Fleece, which was full of strange and romantic episodes; a history of the progress of the cross and the sword, which was accompanied by deeds of superhuman endurance, dauntless courage, and a pitiless bigotry and ravening cruelty that drove even the gentle Pueblos to revolt, and to the attempted destruction and concealment of all traces of their conquerors. The Southwest is the land of romantic history, albeit the history is often dark and bloody, and the pictures