Adolph F. Bandelier

Forgotten Lessons and Missing Links: Adolph Bandelier as a Pioneering Scientific Historian

By Rick Hendricks, Ph.D.
New Mexico State Historian

Introduction

Santa Fe, 26 March 1888

Had a very bad night. Suffered a great deal, could not sleep. Walking and lying down equally painful. A sitting posture is the only one I can bear. The morning bright and clear, cool, quiet. Drove down and saw the Doctor. In the afternoon, I slept a little. The Dr. came, then Koch. Night cloudy. Much pain. I copied all afternoon, Uncle Ellison having lent me a new batch of documents.[1]

On 6 August 1990, we marked the sesquicentennial of the birth in Berne, Switzerland of Adolph Bandelier, namesake of national park and elementary school. The governor issued a timely proclamation in Santa Fe, Swiss dignitaries visited New Mexico, various and sundry speakers held forth on every aspect of Bandelier's life and work, and a conference presented the results of research old and new.[2] While no one would question Bandelier's scholarly contributions, it seems appropriate to ask what lessons can he possibly teach modern documentary researchers, especially when we stop to consider the momentous advances in Southwest historiography in the last thirty-five years. While Bandelier was usually equipped with nothing more than a pen or, when he was lucky, a cantankerous typewriter, the thoroughly modern archival historian is apt to feel uncomfortable without an armful of indices and finding aids, full text retrieval data bases, and a speedy portable computer to access the Internet. Picturing Bandelier huddled against the winter chill of Santa Fe, fighting a cold and painful rheumatism, all the while copying, one wonders what he would think of paging images of documents from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, that vast treasure trove where he conducted his last investigations, from his computer terminal in the comfort of his own home. In an age when the flourishes of pen and ink have become bits and bytes, of what use is the work of Bandelier? What can a generation of new scholars hope to learn about the scientific approach to archival research? How close can we get to the documents through Bandelier's work? How did he carry out his investigations and under what conditions? What traces of his work are found in archives today?

Forgotten lessons

The first, and perhaps transcendent lesson, Bandelier can teach us is the scientific, multidisciplinary approach to archival history. Writing to his mentor, Lewis Henry Morgan, who has been called the father of American anthropology, Bandelier expressed his dissatisfaction with the scholarship of his day.

Lastly, it becomes clearer & clearer to me that if the history of aborigines in Spanish America rests on a frail and unsatisfactory basis, this is not at all due to any lack of material honestly collected, but much rather to the careless and superficial study of these Spanish sources by modern compilators or so-called historians.[3]

After his first season of field work in New Mexico in 1880, he leveled an even harsher criticism in another letter to Morgan.

The gross neglect to study the Spanish language & its documents has led the Americans widely astray, else the history & ethnography of this country would be further advanced. Let me tell you one single instance. Not one of the many "students," not one of those big-mouthed officials here, or government officers, or agents of the Smithsonian Institution, knows the aboriginal names of the Pueblos!… Had any one taken the trouble to study the documents of the Spanish conquest of 1598 they would have found all these names.[4]

Bandelier sought to remedy what he perceived as a dearth of solid documentary research by conducting historical investigations informed by anthropology, archeology, and ethnology. Further, his vision of Native American peoples and Spanish America implied geographical unity. With this in mind, Bandelier ventured into archives in the American Southwest, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Spain.

At its most basic level, archival research requires skillful handling of the documents in the source language. Bandelier was an autodidact in Spanish and paleography. He evidently had his first prolonged exposure to research in Spanish language sources in the 1870s through his use of the holdings of the Mercantile Library in St. Missouri, not far from his Highland, Illinois home.[5] Close comparisons of photocopies from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University of some of his transcriptions for the Hemenway Expedition reveal him to be meticulous and, in the main, a competent paleographer. Both handwritten and typed transcripts follow a semipaleographic format. Bandelier took care to preserve the orthography, infrequent punctuation, and superscripts of the original document in his handwritten transcripts. His typescripts silently lower superscripts, but otherwise maintain the peculiarities of the original, even to the point of adding handwritten diacritics to the typed manuscript. Only the original line lengths have been compromised. This precision in preserving the integrity of the source would stand Bandelier in good stead with today's textual analysts and linguists. Closer in time to the authors of these documents, the paleography may have been less challenging to Bandelier. It is also worthy of note that Bandelier's tiny, cramped hand is remarkably similar to that of ecclesiastical hands he frequently transcribed.

Bandelier's diminutive handwriting, the technology of writing implements of his day, and his perseverance combined to induce the onset of a serious case of scrivener's paralysis by around 1886.[6] Evidence suggests that Bandelier experimented with a fountain pen as early as 1881, even though the first practical one was not developed for another three years. A professor of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, William Robert Ware, likely furnished Bandelier with a "stylographic" pen designed to use India ink. The pen proved balky and undependable. Bandelier replaced it, likely with a conventional nib and holder.[7]

On 19 November 1886, Bandelier took delivery of a Hammond typewriter, which was described as looking "like a miniature monitor warship." The Hammond was a striking departure from the typewriter we are familiar with today. It featured a rotating wheel on which type was mounted rather than type bars. A cumbersome aspect of Bandelier's model was that he had to return the ribbons to the manufacturer for reinking.[8] This machine was often out of action and did not survive the repairs inflicted upon it by a Santa Fe blacksmith. It was replaced by a Blickensderfer. A typewriter was used extensively in the preparation of transcripts from New Mexico archives and must have alleviated some of Bandelier's suffering.

As with any transcriber, names and dates presented difficulties. The transcription Bandelier made on 16 April 1888, for the Hemenway Expedition of a letter from Capt. Juan de Ulibarrí to Gov. Pedro Rodríguez Cubero about an alleged conspiracy of Zuñi and Acoma Indians bears the incorrect date of 1700 instead of 1702.[9] This type of error is of little concern when the original is still available, but worrisome and misleading when Bandelier's transcript is the only accessible copy. In this case, the original is in the Spanish Archives of New Mexico at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives. Those documents transcribed by his father, Adolphe Eugene, and corrected by Bandelier must be used with even more caution, for the old gentleman, while willing, was often inaccurate.

Some misconceptions in the Southwestern scholarly community about the nature of Bandelier's archival research have grown out of his own use of the documents. Invariably, investigators attempting to reconcile Hopi tradition with the historical record about the destruction of Awatobi in late 1700 or early 1701 have had recourse to Bandelier's 1892 Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, Carried on mainly in the Years from 1880 to 1885.[10] In this work, Bandelier only lightly touched on the subject, citing a 1722 document. The issue may have been further confused because Bandelier refers to the document as an ecclesiastical parecer. Antonio Cobián Bustos, the author of the 1722 parecer was a visitador, or inspector, of the northern presidios, but not a religious. The full text of the document, which is available in the form of a Bandelier transcript and in its original in the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, provides considerably more detail. From the testimony, it is clear that at least as far as the Spaniards were concerned, Awatobi was destroyed by the apostate Hopis because the pueblo had returned to the Catholic fold. This evidence would seem to strengthen the traditional historical interpretation. Moreover, the document summarizes the 1701 Rodríguez Cubero and 1716 Félix Martínez punitive expeditions to Hopi. Bandelier also mentions a 1713 collection of testimony about this matter that was already missing in his day.[11]

The previous example elucidates an important point about Bandelier documents. Limiting ourselves to a period from the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth, what can usefully be defined as the Vargas period in New Mexico, it is important to note that with some patient digging, many–but not all–of the documents transcribed by Bandelier, or contemporary copies can be located. These copies can be vital for comparison purposes. This type of persistence was the very hallmark of Bandelier's archival research and one of his most important lessons for us. His dogged pursuit of access to archives is to be admired and must be emulated by anyone who wishes to mine obscure provincial and parochial archives. 

On 12 September 1889, Bandelier completed the revisions to a long document transcribed by his father that formed a part of the judicial review of Diego de Vargas. Bandelier noted that he was working from a copy, the original of which was unknown to him. This document was in the hands of José Segura, the territorial librarian. In fact, this had to be a copy of a copy, at best. The original documents are found in the Archivo de la Nación in Mexico City in the section Historia. The copy in Segura's possession was ordered made by then governor, Pedro Rodríguez Cubero in 1698. Bandelier's editorial intervention in this document is notable. It is quoted here at some length because it reveals so much about Bandelier's attitude toward Vargas, New Mexico secular saint.

Almost the most important part of the contents of the "Parecer" is that touching upon the action of Vargas in regard to the Indians of Santa Fe, after the storming of the Pueblo. His conduct is fully approved, as having been a MILITARY NECESSITY. I have always considered it as such, basing my opinion upon the behavior of the Indians themselves. THEY it were who attacked and who obliged Vargas to resort to harsh measures. The charges against him by modern writers have not the slightest foundation.[12]

This quote reminds us of another Bandelier lesson the modern scholar must be aware of: given his unenlightened view of the Indian, it is unlikely that he could have drawn any other conclusion from the clash between civilizing European and Native American. Bandelier's philosophy essentially held that the Native American peoples were of a single, as yet uncivilized race, psychologically, morally, and materially behind the levels attained by Europeans by 1492.

It is equally important to note that many of the documents Bandelier examined were not in the same location then as now. One illustrative example of this is the disappearance of the Santa Clara archive. An examination of the Hemenway Expedition transcripts provides a listing of numerous documents from Santa Clara Pueblo. A comparison with the holdings of the Archive Archdiocese of Santa Fe indicates that many the documents now form a part of this archive. Others are available in copies in the Catron Collection at the Center for Southwest Studies at the University of New Mexico's Zimmerman Library and among the Hemenway Expedition transcripts. These collections provide raw material for ecclesiastical and social history, including many diligencias matrimoniales, or prenuptial investigations[13]

One searches largely in vain for tracks of Bandelier in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe beyond the considerable contribution to its collection from the Santa Clara archive and the now well-known story of the writing of the Histoire de la colonisation et des missions de Sonora, Chihuahua, Nouveau-Mexique et Arizona jusqu'al'année 1700 for the Golden Jubilee of Pope Leo XIII.[14] There is a brief correspondence, consisting of ten letters, with the Vatican from 1946 and 1947 when local individuals were on the trail of the misplaced opus. From the correspondence, it would appear that the Archbishop of Santa Fe, Edwin V. Byrne, initiated the search on behalf of "the prominent historians of New Mexico" in late October 1946. Most of the letters, however, are to or from Mrs. Lansing B. Bloom, who actively pursued the missing manuscript.[15]

The New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, however, offers another important case of documents that are relocated or missing documents from the period from 1683 to 1685, which Bandelier transcribed for the Hemenway Expedition. Many of the documents that must have once formed a more integral part of the Spanish Archives of New Mexico are now to be found among the collection of miscellaneous Spanish era documents. Comparing the holdings of the two collections is an important initial step in trying to locate originals or other extant copies of Bandelier transcripts before proceeding to an examination of other archives in Mexico and Spain.

Missing Links

If no less importance than Bandelier's lessons for the archival historian are his transcripts of and references to lost documents and the occasional original document that found its way into his papers. An example of such a seventeenth-century original, a 1692 ecclesiastical document, can be found in the Catron Collection.[16] Although only two folios of four written pages, this document contains important details about the Native American peoples in the riverine communities of the El Paso area. Several of the local Indian authorities are named and testimony is taken from Manso and Piro witnesses against two individuals, one of whom was the governor of Senecú del Sur, who usurped the Franciscans rights to hear confession by performing the rite on some of their neighbors.

Taking the rosiest of views, it is possible that one day all of the documents–now-missing-in-action–transcribed by Bandelier over the years may resurface. Until such time, Bandelier provides an irreplaceable missing link to the past. It is important to remember here that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that in this case we have no copies with which to compare the Bandelier transcripts. In most cases, however, documents that have disappeared were in the hands of private individuals at the time Bandelier worked on them, and he carefully recorded their provenance. An examination of a few missing documents will give an idea of the significance of the breadth of and contribution made by Bandelier's work.

The most famous example of a Bandelier link to a missing document is the "Auto de fundación de la misión de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Mansos del Paso del Norte." Bandelier made this transcript from the First Book of Marriages from the El Paso parish archives. Historian France V. Scholes reasoned that Bandelier erred in transcribing the date, suggesting 1657 or 1658 instead of 1659, yet the document is a real contribution to New Mexico ecclesiastical history. It succinctly chronicles the reduction and evangelization of the Mansos in the El Paso area, as well as giving a firsthand account of an aspect of Franciscan ritual in colonial New Mexico.[17]

From the collection of John Gray, Bandelier copied on 3 November 1889 a document regarding an inspection of the villa of Santa Cruz de la Cañada carried out by Gov. Diego de Vargas in February 1704. The document is of particular interest because it describes Vargas's otherwise little-known movements in the months before his death in April 1704 and because it records a listing of families living in Santa Cruz. This document is also indicative of a limitation to the use of the Bandelier transcripts. The inspection tour included other northern pueblos. In a note, Bandelier indicates that he chose not to transcribe all the proceedings of the inspection because they were all similar. His implication that there was, therefore, nothing to be learned is disturbing.[18]

Another missing document that has been often overlooked among Bandelier's transcripts is the campaign journal of Mre. de campo Roque Madrid's 1705 campaign against the Navajos.[19] Those historians who have mentioned this action, usually in connection with Juan de Ulibarrí's 1706 expedition out onto the Plains, have relied on later documents. Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, an eighteenth-century Bandelier, also consulted and transcribed a portion of the journal in his 1778 Extracto de noticias.[20] One suspects that Bandelier would have got on famously and had much in common with the young Franciscan. Fray Silvestre resolutely pressed his examination of the Santa Fe archive despite Gov. Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta's characterization of it as "nothing but old fragments." That they might have been kindred spirits is revealed by the fact that time and again the same documents caught their especial attention. Such was the case with the Roque Madrid document.

The campaign was of little military consequence, consisting as it did of a lone, inconclusive battle. Nevertheless, the document is a rare find in that it details a miracle of the waters whereby the Spaniards and their mounts, at peril of dying of thirst, were delivered by Heaven-sent rains. It also indicates that the newly arrived, interim governor, Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, was eager to address the Navajo problem.

The Roque Madrid document was in the possession of José Segura when Bandelier borrowed it in August 1889. Although he apparently began to work on it, he passed it his father to transcribe, despite the document's poor condition, difficult hand, and severe fading. The resulting transcript, though corrected by Bandelier, is fraught with transcription errors.[21]

A final selection from among the lost documents is an exceptionally informative source for the history of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles of Pecos.[22] Bandelier transcribed this document in Santa Fe on 23 November 1887. It is an inventory of paintings on canvas and hide, and dated 16 December 1717. The listing was prepared by fray Carlos José Delgado. The document is important for a number of reasons. First, is establishes that the church was erected by December 1717, since it is an inventory of objects in situ in the church. Second, it confirms the reasoning of Eleanor B. Adams and Fray Angélico Chávez, who correctly concluded from fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez's discovery of an inscription, Frater Carolus, on the beam facing the nave that the builder was Father Delgado.[23] Third, the document contains one of the earliest mentions of the painting by Mexican Baroque painter, Juan Correa, of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, which has become the object of such veneration by the parish of San Antonio at the town of Pecos.[24] Finally, the inventory of paintings provides some additional information on the provenance of items appearing later in the colonial period.
 

A translation of the document follows:
 

Inventory of the paintings on canvas and elk hides found in the church of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Pecos in the year 1717. Priest and minister fray Carlos Delgado, notary of the Holy Office

Book of the building at Pecos

First, a canvas of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción with gilt frame 9 palms long and 6 wide, which the king gave as alms. It is in the middle of the altar as the titular saint.

Also, a canvas of Nuestra Señora de la Redonda, 2 varas long and 1 1/2  vara wide.

Also, a canvas of Santa María Magdalena painted on elk hide.

Also, a small, framed engraving on calfskin of San Joaquín.

Also, another small, framed engraving of Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas, on fine paper.

Also, an image of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción painted on hide, which I placed on the High Altar.

Also, another image of Santa Bárbara, which I placed on the High Altar, painted on elk hide.

Also, a large, painted elk hide on the cabinets in the sacristy.

Also, a painted elk hide on an altar.

Also, a painted elk hide on the altar of San Antonio.

Also, a canvas of Las Llagas of Nuestro Padre San Francisco, which is in the room off the sacristy. Also added is another two painted elk hides painted in use in the sacristy.

Date of the inventory, 16 December 1717.

Fray Carlos Delgado [rubrica]

Copy: Santa Fe, NM 23 November 1887.

Ad. F. Bandelier [rubrica]

Conclusion

If this brief look at a single historical period–the Vargas era of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries–explored by Bandelier is at all representative, it should be abundantly clear that he still has much to offer, both in reminding us of forgotten lessons and as a missing link to the past. Bandelier admonished scholars of his day to go to the documents, to rely on primary sources for their investigations, and to apply multidisciplinary criteria. In putting his preaching into practice throughout the course of his life, Bandelier lived an archival historian's dream. Writing to another of his mentors, noted Mexican scholar, Joaquín García Icazbalceta, Bandelier captured the essence of the experience. "I had been able, despite my trouble, to obtain copies of beautiful documents which I pulled from the tomb of oblivion and mud that the gringos had made of the archives of Santa Fe."[25]

In the fall of 1913, Bandelier traveled to Seville, Spain to continue his investigations. Though in failing health, in December he reported exciting finds to Dr. Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

I have already unearthed material here that…is unpublished, nay unknown (except now to me) and must be used…The changes and additions … are of great importance to the subject … Both the material at Mexico and that in the United States is most incomplete, as well as what has already been published in Spain. We are working daily, and even at night, and uncovering real treasures for the object we have in view.[26]

Though faced with major revisions of his previous work, Bandelier experienced for a final time that special exhilaration of the archival historian hot on the trail, following a promising lead. Within three months, on 18 March 1914, Bandelier was dead.