events that are of great
importance.

The third group, and by far the most complete, is in Spain, but in
regard to it I am unable to give any precise information, since every
opportunity of completing my investigations concerning the Southwest by
studying the Spanish archives, notwithstanding repeated promises, has
been withheld.

For the eighteenth century documentary materials pertaining to New
Mexico remain, it may be said, almost exclusively in manuscript. A
connecting link between the printed sources of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries are the _Apuntamientos que sobre el Terreno hizo el
Padre Jose Amando Niel_, in the early part of the eighteenth century,
published in the Third Series of the _Documentos para la Historia de
Mexico_. Father Niel was a Jesuit who visited New Mexico shortly after
the reconquest. His observations are of comparatively mediocre value,
yet his writings should not be overlooked. The journal of the Brigadier
Pedro de Rivera, in 1736, of his military march to Santa Fe, is a dry,
matter-of-fact account, but is nevertheless valuable owing to his
concise and utterly unembellished description of the Rio Grande valley
and of what he saw therein. The book is very rare, and therefore
correspondingly unnoticed.

A brief but important contribution to the history of New Mexico is the
letter of Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, published in the Third
Series of the _Documentos para la Historia de Mexico_. About the same
time, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Brigadier Jose
Cortes wrote an extended report on the territory, but it concerns more
the relations with the constantly hostile roaming tribes than the
condition of the Pueblos. It also is printed in the _Documentos_.

The otherwise very important diary of the journey of Fray Francisco
Garces to northern Arizona, published first in the above-mentioned
_Coleccion de Documentos_, and more recently (with highly valuable
notes) by the late Dr Elliott Coues, touches only incidentally on the
Rio Grande region. In 1746 Joseph Antonio de Villa-Senor y Sanchez
embodied in his _Theatro Americano_ a description of New Mexico,
condensed chiefly from the journal of the Brigadier Rivera, mentioned
above. The _Diccionario Geografico_ by Murillo is also a source that
should not be neglected.

A great amount of documentary manuscript material, mostly of a local
character, is contained in the church books of the eighteenth century
form