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59 introduction L ate in July 1536 four survivors of the pánfilo de narváez expedition reached the ciudad de méxico with news of wealthy and populous places to the north of nueva españa. within months viceroy Antonio mendoza had decided to send an expedition north to investigate . His first choice to lead the expedition was Andrés Dorantes, one of the survivors. As late as December 1537 that was still his plan. 1 for unknown reasons the arrangement fell apart, even though outfitting for such an expedition had already begun. in June of the same year pope paul iii had proclaimed in his bull Sublimus Deus that “indians and other peoples should be converted to the faith of Jesus christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living.” 2 in Guatemala, fray Bartolomé de las casas had anticipated the papal bull with a lengthy treatise titled “the only method of Attracting All people to the true faith,” in which he asserted that “those who wage war saying that they are not forcing the infidels to accept the faith . . . are making . . . absurd and foolish claims.” 3 And in that very year of 1537 Las casas launched his attempt to demonstrate the practicality of conversion without arms in vera paz, Guatemala. thus, in the spirit of the times, when Dorantes withdrew from leadership of the viceroy’s reconnaissance, mendoza decided to entrust the enterprise to a franciscan friar, marcos de niza, who would travel ostensibly without armed support, 4 guided by Dorantes’s former slave, esteban. marcos, a french-speaking savoyard, probably in his early to middle forties, was a correspondent of Las casas’s. 5 indeed, a version, probably edited, of his account of conquistador abuse of peruvian natives was appended several years later to the great Dominican’s famous indictment of common conquistador practices, Brevissima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A brief account of the devastation of the indies). 6 marcos went to spain from savoy around 1530 and was in peru about the time of or shortly after the conquest of cajamarca,ledbyfranciscopizarroinlate1532. 7 fraymarcos himself testified that he made a voyage to peru with pedro de Alvarado in January 1534. 8 it is possible, therefore, that he made two different trips to peru. During his time in peru and ecuador, which may have lasted about three years, marcos was selected as custodio, or superior, of the small contingent of franciscans there. 9 According to the late-eighteenth-century Jesuit priest and historian Juan de velasco, during his tenure in peru marcos wrote a series of manuscripts outlining the prehistory and conquest of peru and ecuador. the existence of those manuscripts has not generally been credited by historians , because no researcher either before or after velasco’s time is known to have seen them. 10 Having left peru, marcos was present in september 1536 in the town of santiago de Guatemala, testifying on behalf of pedro de Alvarado. 11 it is possible that during the franciscan’s stay in Guatemala he met Las casas there, for the great apostle to the indians was in Guatemala from 1535 Document 6 The Viceroy’s Instructions to Fray Marcos de Niza, November 1538, and Narrative Account by Fray Marcos de Niza, August 26, 1539 AGi, patronato, 20, n.5, r.10 60 DocuMent 6 to 1540. But marcos’s time in Guatemala was short. By April 1537 he had already been in the ciudad de méxico for some time, staying with the bishop, fray Juan de Zumárraga. 12 Less than 12 months later the head of the franciscan provincia del santo evangelio (province of the Holy Gospel), fray Antonio de ciudad rodrigo, and viceroy mendoza were agreed that marcos was the person to perform the reconnaissance to verify the reports of Dorantes and the others. 13 Departing from the ciudad de méxico late in 1538 with fray onorato, another franciscan, and francisco vázquez de coronado, who was to take the residencia of the late governor of nueva Galicia, marcos was back from the north by the end of August 1539. on or about August 26 of that year he seems to have dictated the relación that is published here. what was said in nueva españa about marcos’s statements regarding what he had seen and heard, both written and oral, created a sensation. As a consequence, “in a few days more...

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