"Professor Bolton in a measure clears up the obscurity of Jumano history after the middle of the seventeenth century." -The American Historical Review, 1912"'The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771,' was written by Dr. Bolton...the Jumanos were a tribe of Indians which...left Texas about the year 1650." -Austin American-Statesman, July 23, 1911The Jumanos, first seen by Cabeza de Vaca in 1535 on the Rio Grande, were a prominent indigenous tr...

Herbert Eugene Bolton’s classic of southwestern history, first published in 1949, delivers the epic account of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s sixteenth-century entrada to the North American frontier of the Spanish Empire. Leaving Mexico City in 1540 with some three hundred Spaniards and a large body of Indian allies, Coronado and his men—the first Europeans to explore what are now Arizona and New Mexico—continued on to the buffalo-covered plains of Texas and into Oklahoma and Kansas. With...

Father Escalante, who was born in Treceno, Cantabria, Spain around 1750, became a Franciscan in the Convento Grande in Mexico City at the age of 17. In 1774, he came to present-day New Mexico in the Mexican province. He was first stationed at Laguna pueblo and then in January 1775 assigned as a minister to the Zuni.In June 1776, he was summoned by Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, who had arrived in Santa Fe on March 22, 1776, for the expedition to California and remained in New Me...

Herbert E. Bolton (1870-1953) was a distinguished historian who received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1899. He was a Harrison Fellow while at Pennsylvania. Bolton quickly became an expert on Spanish colonies in the New World. Professor Bolton began his pioneering work on the Spanish Borderlandsan area that begins in Florida and extends along a "crescent shaped" land mass between Georgia and Californiaas a professor at...

A gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century, from a Bancroft Prize-winning historian.**“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -**Washington PostIn 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a despe...

The New World story of the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in his own wordsThis riveting true story is the first major narrative detailing the exploration of North America by Spanish conquistadors (1528-1536). The author, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking Spanish nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition sent to claim for Spain a vast area of today's southern United States. In simple, straightforward prose, Cabeza de Vaca chronicl...

The Historia del Nuevo Mundo, set down by Father Bernabe Cobo during the first half of the seventeenth century, represents a singulary valuable source on Inca culture. Working directly frorn the original document, Roland Hamilton has translated that part of Cobo's massive manuscripts that focuses on the history of the kingdom of Peru. The volume includes a general account of the aspect, character, and dress of the Indians as well as a superb treatise on the Incas—their legends, hi...

This book combines a new English translation of La Relacion (“The Account”) by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with the translator’s analysis and commentary.La Relacion is Cabeza de Vaca’s first-hand account of the Narvaez Expedition – Spain’s failed attempt to colonize Florida in 1528. It tells the story of the first non-indigenous people to visit a large part of the present-day United States and Mexico and documents their first contacts with a number of pre-Columbian...

John L. Kessell’s Spain in the Southwest presents a fast-paced, abundantly illustrated history of the Spanish colonies that became the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. With an eye for human interest, Kessell tells the story of New Spain’s vast frontier--today’s American Southwest and Mexican North--which for two centuries served as a dynamic yet disjoined periphery of the Spanish empire.Chronicling the period of Hispanic activity from the time of Colum...

Prepare to embark on a journey back in time into the realm of the unknown with the conquistadores and Francisco Pizarro as "Inca Gold" relates the fascinating and engrossing story of an indigenous people, their social structure, culture, religion, military, administration, myths, legends and conquest. With the aid of historical resources gain knowledge of unfathomable and unparalleled events that transpired during this epoch of pillaging, looting, kidnapping, torture, murder, rape, and des...

The Spanish Conquest: What Really Happened?Conquistador Voices is for readers who might like to learn more about events related to the 15th-century “discovery” of the Americas by Europeans, events that were likely broad-brushed and sanitized in their schoolbooks. This two-volume set tells the stories of four important Spanish explorers or military leaders—Columbus and Cortés in vol I, and Pizarro, Soto, and Cabeza de Vaca in vol II.The two volumes ...

This copious collection of reminiscences, reports, letters, and documents allows readers to experience the vast and varied landscape of early California from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. What emerges is not the Spanish California depicted by casual visitors—a culture obsessed with finery, horses, and fandangos—but an ever-shifting world of aspiration and tragedy, pride and loss. Conflicts between missionaries and soldiers, Indians and settlers, friends and neighbors spill from these p...