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Four full narratives that were produced in the years following the De Soto expedition have survived. One of these is known simply as the Elvas account because its author only identified himself as a Portuguese gentleman from Elvas. A second is that of Rodrigo Rangel, private secretary to De Soto. The third, "presented in the year 1544 to the King of Spain in Council," was written by Luis Hernandez de Biedma, factor for the king. The fourth account , La Florida, was completed by the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, in 1591, although it was not published until 1605. It is generally thought to have been based on interviews with Gonzalo Sylvestre, an officer under De Soto and a survivor of the expedition. These four accounts are customarily referred to as Elvas, Rangel, Biedma, and Garcilaso (or the Inca). The four accounts have had an erratic publishing history and an even less orderly translation history. The classic translation of Elvas, by Dr. James Alexander Robertson, was published in 1933 by the Yale University Press for the Florida State Historical Society. It was a limited edition of only 360 copies. It is still the most recent translation. Garcilaso's La Florida is currently available in a translation by John and Jeannette Varner, published by the University of Texas Press in 1951. Recently, there have been expressions of concern by scholars that most of the available translations were not literal enough to be really satisfactory, particularly for the needs of archaeologists and anthropologists. We have tried to meet this concern by being more literal in these translations. Accordingly, we use the Robertson version of Elvas. This account, written originally in Portuguese, is currently out of print. It was completed by Robertson, then secretary of the Florida State Historical Society, in 1933 for that society and was published by the Yale University Press. It had excellent reviews at the time of its publication, and we see little likelihood of improving on it. At the time it appeared, Lesley Byrd Simpson wrote (Hispanic American Historical Review 14, no. 3 (August 1934): 346-48), "Dr. Rob- ertson's method is to preserve the style of the original by reproducing in English as closely as possible, word for word, the Portuguese text.... This book is a monument of patient and thorough scholarship." To bring Robertson 's material up to the current state of De Soto scholarship, Robertson's notes have been updated for this volume by Dr. John H. Hann. For our version of the Garcilaso chronicle, we have identified in the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution a previously unpublished translation. Garcilaso's La Florida is the longest of the four accounts and occupies most of our second volume. This new translation was done by Dr. Clair Charmion Shelby for the 1935 U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission. In the final report of that commission, Dr. John Swanton, chairman of the commission, wrote, "The Commission employed Dr. Charmion Shelby, of Austin, Tex., an experienced translator of documents in sixteenth century Spanish, to provide an accurate translation of La Florida of the Inca. This translation covers 910 typewritten pages, double-spaced" (Swanton, John R., Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission, Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1939; reprint the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, p. viii). Dr. Shelby was indeed an experienced translator. She had earned a doctorate in Spanish history under Professor Charles Wilson Hackett at the University of Texas. She was cotranslator with him of Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits ofLouisiana and Texas, a two-volume work, and was translator of the original documents for Professor Hackett's monumental Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Dr. Shelby worked for thirteen years, until her death in 1955, as a reference librarian for the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. Shelby's translation of La Florida was not published because Congress did not fund many of the projects of the 1935 Commission. At a later date (1950), the Hakluyt Society of England proposed to publish her translation and had it scheduled for publication when the Varner edition was published by the University of Texas Press. In the light of that, the Hakluyt Society dropped its plans for publication. We believe interested parties should have both translations available. The Varners performed a great service to scholars in publishing the first complete English translation of La Florida, but Dr. Shelby was an expert in sixteenthcentury Spanish, and her translation will give...

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