"An inestimable contribution to the historiographic endeavor"
Chronological Digest of the "Documentos ineditos del Archivo de las Indias" (Unedited Documents of the Indies")
Notes: A curious book, essentially an English translation of the index for the 42-volume set of documents related to the European discovery of the Americas published between 1864 and 1884. However, this work offers insight into Read's work as a historian and promoter of Spanish history. The purpose of the book seems to have been to promote Read's work as a freelance historian.
For a fee, he offers other historians certified copies of any document in the index (Read was proud to own the only complete set of the Documentos ineditos in New Mexico), in the original Spanish or in Read's English translation. He also offers the hope that a full history of the "discovery of the New World and the conquest and civilization of ... the American continent" will one day be written by a New Mexican—in other words, by someone who, like Read, was heir to both the Anglo and Spanish cultures and historical traditions. Erlinda González-Berry called it, "an inestimable contribution to the historiographic endeavor" (Recovering The U.S Hispanic Literary Heritage, Volume VI).
Benjamin Maurice Read (Las Cruces, NM, 1852 – Santa Fe, NM, 1927) was the leading Latinx historian in New Mexico. His father, Benjamin Franklin Read, arrived in New Mexico as a soldier during the Mexican American war and soon married Maria Ignacia Cano. (The origins of Read's mother is somewhat obscure. In the 1860 and 1870 censuses, her birthplace is given as New Mexico; in Read's Historia ilustrada de Nuevo Mexico (p. 456) he says she immigrated with her parents to New Mexico from Sonora [Mexico]. In the 20th century, Read reported her birthplace as Spain to census officials). Benjamin F. and Maria had four boys in quick succession, the last after Benjamin F. died in 1857. Maria soon remarried a nuevomexicano farmer, Meteo Ortiz, who raised the boys.
Read became a lawyer and served in the territorial legislature and as speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives. In 1910, he began publishing a series of historical works looking at New Mexico history from the viewpoint of its residents of Spanish origin. His view of history, as a story that needed to consider ethnic and cultural viewpoints, was rare at the time. He was implicitly, and sometime explicitly, arguing that most histories of the Southwest were Anglo histories, a viewpoint he intended to counter, in part by writing books on the Southwest first in Spanish and only later in English.
161 pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). Very good in tan cloth. This copy, like most, is inscribed by the author, in this case generically, "With my compliments. Benjamin M. Read. Santa Fe, N.M., Jany. 1914."
Publication: Albuquerque: Albright & Anderson, 1914.
Item No: #35476
Price: $150