The Jay I. Kislak Collection

Cortés, Hernán, 1485-1547. Hernán Cortés Power of Attorney, 1526.
Fearing the power that the conqueror had amassed, the Spanish Hapsburg king, Charles V, sent a residencia [judge] to investigate Cortés. In this letter, Cortés somewhat arrogantly proclaims “I cannot attend the hearing,” and he appoints three deputies to act as his agents. Herein he gives them full powers of attorney. The man Charles chose was a young and inexperienced judge, Licentiate Ponce de León (not directly related to the famous explorer of Florida). Licentiate Ponce de León died under very mysterious circumstances shortly after arriving in Mexico and within a fortnight of the signing of this document.
Page Turner - PDF (1.11 MB) - Bibliographic Information

Casas, Bartolomé de las, 1474-1566. Bartolomé de las Casa Statement of Opinion, 1528.
Bartolomé de Las Casas began his lifelong struggle for justice on behalf of the Indigenous in the Indies as a secular cleric after his conversion experience in 1514. Central to this struggle was his conviction that the principal end of Spanish presence and settlement in the New World was the conversion of the Indigenous to Christianity. After becoming a Dominican friar in 1522, Las Casas continued condemning injustices, proposing reforms, and advocating peaceful evangelization methods, as he lobbied for the cessation of the evils and harms inflicted on the Indigenous.
Page Turner - PDF (2.18 MB) - Bibliographic Information

Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro, 1519-1574. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sailing order, 1572 July 3.
In the age of piracy on the high seas, sailing instructions were top-secret documents upon which rested the security of the king's fleet and his treasure.  Here, Menéndez de Avilés, first governor of Spanish Florida, gives Don Cristóbal de Eraso complicated and detailed instructions for sailing to Spain on the Buenaventura with his fleet, via the islands of Flores and San Miguel.  He is admonished not to proceed beyond a designated rendezvous without further instructions from Menéndez “under penalty of paying with his person and his property for any injury to his Majesty or his royal treasury.”  With notary's signed statement of delivery to Eraso on 21 July 1572.
Page Turner - PDF (569.11 KB) - Bibliographic Information

Philip II, King of Spain, 1527-1598. Philip II letter, 1578 Dec. 2.
Philip II complains to the Archbishop of México City about his practice of appointing monolingual priests to Indian benefices. Philip had previously ordered the archbishop not to appoint clergy unskilled in Indian tongues.  Despite the king's command, the archbishop had still allowed many monolingual priests to hold Indian benefices. At best, these ill-prepared priests had memorized formulae and phrases from standard works, but they were in no way bilingual. The king orders this and similar practices to halt so that the genuine conversion and the reformation of the Indians can occur. Counter-signed by the King's secretary, Antonio de Eraso.
Page Turner - PDF (397.57 KB) - Bibliographic Information

Casas, Bartolomé de las, 1474-1566. [Spieghel der Spaensche tyrannye gheschiet in Nederlandt.  French.] Le miroir de la cruelle, & horrible tyrannie espagnole perpetree au Pays Bas. Amsterdam: Ian Evertss.  Cloppenburg, 1620.
Las Casas was born in Seville. In 1502, he emigrated to Hispaniola with his father. He became a priest eight years later, and served as a missionary to the indigenous Taíno Indians in Cuba. In 1522, he joined the Dominican Order. Las Casas became well-known for his advocacy of the rights of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, whose cultures he described with care. In 1550 Las Casas took part in official debates on the Indian question. He used this opportunity to prepare a series of nine essays that subsequently appeared in Seville in 1552 and 1553. The Dominican was keenly aware of the power of the printed word, so much so that he ignored the need to secure royal permissions before publishing these treatises. With their wide-ranging indictment of Spanish atrocities, they exploded onto the European scene. They were widely translated and frequently reissued, especially in anti-Spanish contexts. Thus, Las Casas became Spain’s witness against itself.
Page Turner - Bibliographic Information

Gage, Thomas, 1603?-1656. A New Survey of the West-India's … The Second Edition Enlarged by the Author, and Beautified with Maps.  London: E. Cotes, 1655.
Thomas Gage, an Irishman, spent over a decade in Central America. As a child Gage was sent to Spain to study with the Jesuits. He joined the Dominican order instead, and in 1625 began his travels in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama in violation of the Spanish royal decree excluding foreigners from the new Spanish territories. Gage spent most of the next 12 years living among the Indians and occasionally serving as parish priest or professor of philosophy. He grew tired of the New World, escaped, returned to England and wrote this book based entirely on his own observations. It contains a full account of his travels and rich details of Central American geography and peoples. Gage deplores the cruelties of Spanish rule and exhorts the English crown to invade and seize the Spanish territories. The book caused an immediate sensation for its revelations of the wealth and defenselessness of the Spanish American colonies. He abandoned the Catholic Church and eventually became a priest of the Church of England and married. He apparently settled in Jamaica in 1656 shortly after the English conquest of that island from the Spanish.
Page Turner - Bibliographic Information

England and Wales. Sovereign (1685-1688: James II), By the King, a Proclamation for the More Effectual Reducing and Suppressing of Pirates and Privateers in America. London: Printed by Charles Bill, Henry Hills, and Thomas Newcomb, [1688].
Pirates are a threat to legal trade and to national borders and domains. Their autonomy and freedom from national loyalty threatens the sovereignty of the state. Historically, the ineffectiveness of laws intended to restrict him, elicited repeated denunciation of their criminality.
Page Turner - PDF (1.39 KB) - Bibliographic Information

Vega, Garcilaso de la, 1539-1616. [Florida del Inca.  French] Histoire de la Conquete de la Floride.  Lille: Jean Musier, 1711.
Garcilaso de la Vega, more commonly known as "El Inca," was the son of Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas and an Inca princess, Isabel Suárez Chimpu Ocllo. Garcilaso was educated in Spain and became an author in the European sense, employing the technology of print and the discipline of classical history in order to publish histories of the Spanish and the Incas. This work contains the chronicles of de Sotos's expedition according to information Garcilaso gathered during various years, and defends the legitimacy of imposing the Spanish sovereignty in conquered territories and submit them to Christian jurisdiction. It was first published in Lisbon in 1605, becoming better known as the La Florida del Inca. This is the first French edition.
Page Turner, (Two Volumes) - Bibliographic Information

León y Gama, Antonio de, An Historical and Chronological Description of Two Stones Found Under Ground, in the Great Square of the City of Mexico, in the Years 1790. Mexico City: Felipe de Zúniga y Ontiveros, 1792.
Antonio León y Gama, an astronomer sometimes considered the first Mexican archaeologist, provided the first European account of Aztec archaeology. His description of the discovery of the "two stones -- the Coatlicue and Sun Stone (a massive sacrificial stone and calendar) emphasized the sophistication and high scientific and artistic achievements of the Aztecs, responding to and quickening the stirring of Mexican nationalism.
Page Turner - PDF (72.14 KB) - Bibliographic Information

Great Britain.  Army. Regiment of Foot, 66th (Berkshire). AM Orderly Book of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot, stationed in Haiti.   Port-au-Prince, and Elsewhere. February 16 – October 10, 1796.
Written at headquarters during the English expedition against the French in the West Indies.  There is some evidence to suggest that the volume is written in the hand of the British commander-in-chief, General Sir Ralph Albercromby.
The renewal of war between Britain and France in 1793 was a continuation of a century-long conflict between these two aggressive imperial powers. During 1794 the British seized several of the smaller French islands in the Caribbean, but at an extremely heavy cost in terms of troops dying of yellow fever. In 1801, the peace of Amiens ended the war between France and Britain.
Page Turner - Bibliographic Information

Collection of Drawings Copied from the Original Figures...Discovered in the...Pueblo of Palenque. [Palenque, Mexico: 1787]
In 1787, the military governor of Guatemala sent soldier Antonio del Río to excavate a Mayan ruin near Palenque, marking the dawn of scientific archaeology in the Americas. Del Río and his men spent five weeks clearing the site and studying, drawing, and exploring. Del Río recounted the work in a remarkable report that was illustrated with thirty drawings made by Ricardo Almendáriz. Del Río's manuscript has been preserved in Madrid, but the drawings were only recently found in a private European collection.
Page Turner - PDF (19.57 MB)

Charnay, Désiré, 1828-1915.

Ruines du et México and Méxicans. 1862-1863. [Ruins of Mexico and Mexican Types; Album of Fifty-Two Photographs: Forty-Two of Mexican Ruins by Charnay, and Ten “Tipos Mexicanos” by Julio Michaud.]
Page Turner - PDF (15.08 MB) - Bibliographic Information

Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde: Voyages d’Explorations au Mexique et dans l’Amérique Centrale; Ouvrage Contenant 214 Gravures et 19 Cartes ou Plans. [Ancient Cities of the New World], Paris: Librarie Hachette et cie, 1885.
Page Turner - PDF (245.79 MB) - Bibliographic Information

The Charnay images have handwritten captions in French; Michaud images have printed captions in Spanish.
The portfolio of albumen prints of the ruins at Mitla, Izamal, Chichén Itzá, and Uxmal and book are the result of the first systematic photographic expedition to Mesoamerican ruins made by the French photographer and explorer Désiré Charnay during two seasons of fieldwork in 1859 and 1860. Charnay's work was instrumental in attracting serious scholarly interest in pre-conquest México, thus setting the stage for later intensive archaeological studies of Mesoamerican civilization. Charnay's systematic approach to photographing ruins and his triumph over tremendous logistical problems places him in the grand tradition of 19th century expeditionary photography.

Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826. Thomas Jefferson Letter, 1813 Nov. 30
Topics include sheep industry and the manufacture of cloth in the United States as opposed to England ("our progress in manufactures is far beyond the calculations of the most sanguine . . . This revolution in our domestic economy was well worth a war"); the war on land in Canada; the alliance of Indians and the British; the naval war and Perry's victory on Lake Erie; and views on the emancipation of South America.
Page Turner - PDF (881.70 KB) - Bibliographic Information

Ellicott, Andrew, 1754-1820. The Journal of Andrew Ellicott… During Part of the Year 1796, the Years 1797, 1798, 1799, and Part of the Year 1800 for Determining the Boundary Between the United States and the Possessions of His Catholic Majesty in America. Philadelphia: William Fry, 1814.
George Washington appointed Ellicott commissioner to determine the boundary between the United States and Spanish Florida.  His work required four years of travel through the forests, swamps and bayous of the Mississippi Valley and West Florida. The fourteen maps and plans that resulted are the earliest American account of this region and undoubtedly contributed to the growing interest of the United States government to acquire the territory from Spain, which it did with the signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty in February 1819
Page Turner - PDF (162.41 MB) - Bibliographic Information