Noticias Sacadas de un Mss Intitulado Relaciones de todas las cosas que en el Nuevo Mexico se han visto y sabido asi por mar como por tierra desde el año 1538 el de 1626

44 pages. Octavo (8" x 6") issued in wrappers. Edited by Jose Fernando Ramirez. From the library of professor George M Foster. Biblioteca Aportacion Historica, second series. First edition limited to 100 copies of which this is number 57.

With the fourth supply caravan, which left Mexico City in 1620 and arrived in New Mexico early in 1621, came fray Gerónimo Zárate Salmerón. Like all of the 250 or so Franciscans sent to New Mexico during the seventeenth century, Zárate Salmerón was not born in the province, although he was a native of the New World. His birthplace was Río Alvarado, south of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico coast, where he was born probably in the middle 1550s. The decade of his birth is inferred from the year of his profession as a priest at the Franciscan Convento Grande in Mexico City, 1579, and the usual minimum age of a new priest of 25. Fray Gerónimo was assigned as priest to the people of Jemez. He got to work almost immediately, founding the mission San José de Guísewa during fall or winter 1621. Not long afterward, Zárate Salmerón established a second mission among the Jemez, one eventually known as San Diego de la Congregación. Unlike most Franciscan missionaries in colonial New Mexico, Zárate Salmerón learned the language of his parishioners, Towa, and gave it a written form for the first time. Using the newly alphabetized language, he wrote a doctrina, a book recording the principal Catholic beliefs and ceremonies, for use in instructing his Jemez charges. At least in his view, that instruction was very successful. He claimed in 1629 to have "baptized in that nation 6,566 souls." Zárate Salmerón continued his missionary labors among the Jemez and the Keres for six years. But when the mission supply caravan of 1626 headed back toward Mexico City, he was evidently among its passengers. By early 1629, he submitted to his superiors a relación, or narrative account, about New Mexico, as part of an appeal for support of further mission work in Mexico's far north. Zárate Salmerón's account of New Mexico contains some fascinating firsthand reportage. For example, he spent significant effort in trying to track down Pueblo reports of Mexican Indians in New Mexico before establishment of the Spanish colony. Those reports probably represent glimmers of observations of some of the Indian allies that accompanied the Coronado expedition of 1539-42.

Jose Fernando Ramez (1804-1871) was a distinguished Mexican historian in the 19th century. Ramez was born in Parral, Chihuahua but grew up in Durango, where he became a prominent liberal politician. After graduating with a degree in law from San Luis Gonzaga he was elected several times to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. He chaired the Ministry of Foreign affairs under three different administrations and became a minister in the Supreme Court of Justice. Ramez specialized in Pre-Columbian and 16th century Mexican history and excelled as a biographer. He headed the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Literature during the Second Mexican Empire, directed the National Museum (1852) and built an impressive collection of historical documents. Among his works are Fray Toribio de Motolin and several Amerindian codex translations such as The Quinantzin and The Aubin. The original of these Exploraciones are located the the Manuscript section of the Instituto Naciona de Arqueologia Antropologia e Historia Museum Library in volume 226, which are part of the collection of Jose F Ramirez.

George McClelland Foster, Jr born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on October 9, 1913, died on May 18, 2006, at his home in the hills above the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as a professor from 1953 to his retirement in 1979, when he became professor emeritus. His contributions to anthropological theory and practice still challenge us; in more than 300 publications, his writings encompass a wide diversity of topics, including acculturation, long-term fieldwork, peasant economies, pottery making, public health, social structure, symbolic systems, technological change, theories of illness and wellness, humoral medicine in Latin America, and worldview. The quantity, quality, and long-term value of his scholarly work led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1976. Virtually all of his major publications have been reprinted and/or translated. Provenance from the executor of Foster's library laid in.

Condition:

Foster's stamp to front wrapper. Corners bumped, edges and spine wrappers age toned, pages age toned else a very good copy.