“Arrival of Cortés in Vera Cruz”Second half of the seventeenth century Mexico

Oil on canvasJay I. Kislak Collection

Rare Book and Special Collections Division (91)

New Laws to Protect IndiansWhen Emperor Charles V (1500–1556) proclaimed important new laws for the Indies in 1542 and 1543, he was addressing Bartolomé de Las Casas’s charges of brutality towards indigenous peoples and trying to regain power for the crown.  The New Laws were intended to ensure better treatment of the Indians, limit Spanish takeover of their lands, and above all, protect them against enslavement by the Spaniards.  The Spanish crown was later forced to rescind the New Laws because colonists resisted them violently.  This book is a rare facsimile reprint of the original Spanish edition with an English translation.

First Dictionary Printed in the

AmericasAlonso de Molina (d.

1585).Vocabulario en lengua castellana y Mexicana

[Vocabulary in the Castilian and Mexican

languages].Mexico: Antonio de

Spinosa, 1571.Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special

Collections Division, Library of Congress (99)

Chronicling the New World

Gonzolo Oviedo sailed in 1514 on the first of his many journeys to America, where he compiled detailed descriptions and woodcut illustrations of products and goods found in the New World.  The Spaniard introduced Europe to an enormous variety of previously unheard of “exotica,” including the pineapple, the canoe, smoking tobacco, the manatee, and hammocks.  Along with Perro Mártir de Angleria and Bartolomé de las Casas, Oviedo was one of the first European chroniclers of New World goods.

Vase with deer hunting procession. Guatemalan Highlands. Chama style. Maya, AD 600–900. Polychromed orange-gloss ceramic. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (16) Photo ©Justin Kerr, Kerr Associates

La Florida MapThis is one of three separate areas printed on a single sheet for Abraham Ortelius’ s Theatrum OrbisTerrarum (the other areas are Peru and the gold-producing areas, and Guatemala).   The map includes a vast area from present-day Virginia to New Mexico and is the first separate printed map of Florida.  It was created for Ortelius by Geronimo Chiaves and was based, in part, on information derived from Hernando De Soto’s 1539–1543 exploration of the region.  It was widely imitated or copied by mapmakers for many decades.

The Spanish Concept of FloridaSecretary to the Council of Brabant (Flanders), Cornelis van Wytfliet was also much interested in geography.  His Descriptionis, considered to be the first atlas devoted to the Americas, includes nineteen maps of the region.  His map designating “Florida” and “Apalache” is based on an earlier map by Jernimo de Chaves and reflects the Spanish concept of Florida as an extensive portion of southern North America rather than being merely an appendage or peninsula.

The Oztoticpac Lands MapThe Oztoticpac Lands Map is an Aztec pictorial document with Nahuatl writing drawn for a court case surrounding the Oztoticpac estate within the city of Texcoco around 1540. The document, written on amatl paper, involves the land ownership of the Aztec ruler Chichimecatecotl, who was executed by Spanish officials in 1539.  It is not clear from surviving information who won the case.  Most of the document consists of black-and-red line drawings showing fields, houses, palaces, trees, and measured plots of land.  In the lower left, twenty trees that have been grafted with European fruit stock in a local orchard are shown.  These include apples, quinces, pears, grapes, and pomegranates.

Choker with nineteen death heads. Mexico. Mixtec, AD 1200–1500. Carved shell. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Library of Congress, Rare Book and

Special Collections Division (66)

A Different View of ConquestIn part as a response to Francisco López de Gómara’s published account of the heroics of Hernán Cortés in Mexico, one of Cortés’s infantry men, Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496–1584), dictated to his grandson “the story of myself and my comrades, all true conquerors, who served His Majesty in the discovery, conquest, pacification, and settlement. . . . of New Spain.”  Full of telling anecdotes, Díaz’s version has become a classic in many languages.

First Romance Language GrammarAntonio de Nebrija, the first modern philologist, published this grammar of Castilian, the language of northern Spain, in 1492. The book was the first printed grammar of any romance language.  By applying the language structure organized in Nebrija’s landmark study to the languages of the indigenous cultures, missionaries were able to learn New World languages and communicate with the peoples they encountered

History of TlaxcalaThe son of a Spanish conquistador and an Indian woman, Diego Muñoz Camargo was educated as a Spaniard, but was also steeped in indigenous culture through his Indian family connections.  An historian and interpreter, he was also a government official and landholder in the Tlaxcala region of Mexico.  In this manuscript, written in the late sixteenth century, Muñoz Camargo covers the history of Tlaxcala, the events of the conquest (and the Tlaxcalan support of Cortés), as well as the natural and geographical background of the area.