ively small importance to the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos.
During the first years of the seventeenth century the attention of Onate
was directed chiefly toward explorations in western Arizona and the Gulf
of California. While he was absent on his memorable journey, quarrels
arose in New Mexico between the temporal and ecclesiastical authorities,
which disturbed the colony for many years and form the main theme of the
documentary material still accessible. Even the manuscripts relating to
these troubles contain, here and there, references to the ethnological
condition of the Pueblos. Charges and counter-charges of abuses
committed by church and state could not fail to involve, incidentally,
the points touching upon the Indians, and the documentary material of
that period, still in manuscript but accessible through the copies made
by me and now in the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, should not be
neglected by serious investigators. To enter into details regarding the
tenor of these documents would be beyond the scope of this Introduction,
but I would call attention in a general way to the value and importance
of church records, which consist chiefly of registers of baptisms,
marriages, and deaths. These for the greater part were kept with
considerable scrupulosity, although there are periods during which the
same degree of care was not exercised. They are valuable ethnologically
by reason of the data which they afford with respect to intermarriages
between members of distant tribes, through the numerous Indian personal
names that they contain, and on account of the many records of events
which the priests deemed it desirable to preserve. Examples will be
given in the text of the Documentary History to follow.

The _Libros de Fabrica_, in which are recorded items bearing on the
economic side of church administration, are usually less important;
still they contain data that should not be neglected, for very often
minor points deserve as much attention as salient ones. Unfortunately
the church records of the period prior to 1680 have well-nigh
disappeared from New Mexico, but some still exist at El Paso del Norte
(Juarez), Chihuahua, that date back to the middle of the seventeenth
century. The absence of these records may be somewhat overcome by
another class of ecclesiastical documents, much more numerous and more
laborious to consult. In fact I am the only one who thus far has
attempted to penetrate the mass of