Editors Scholes and Adams present two documents. The second and less significant one is a report by Antonio de León Pinelo describing attempts to subdue and convert to Christianity the Indians of the northern provinces of Guatemala and thus to establish direct and secure communication between Guatemala and Yucatan. Published first in 1639, León Pinelo’s essay also attracted publishers in 1932 and 1958. Working from the initial publication, the editors include the essay because it places the important Tovilla document within the chronology of Spanish effort in this area.
We know little about Tovilla’s life, but the editors have learned that his ancestors served the crown in the Reconquest and that he was soldiering in the Low Countries in 1623. Perhaps as a reward for service rendered, Philip IV commissioned Tovilla alcalde mayor of the provinces of Verapaz, Golfo Dulce, Sacapulas, and El Manché. He left Cádiz in late July, 1930, and arrived in Trujillo on October 14. In March, 1631, Captain General Diego de Acuña authorized Tovilla to found a village in El Manché to protect the Itzaes, Yoles, and Lacandones, who had accepted Christianity and Spanish lordship. On May 13, 1631, Tovilla founded Toro de Acuña. Then trouble began; the town was destroyed; and Tovilla failed to establish lines of communication in the hostile country. He concludes his account with a brief and extremely superficial description of different areas of the Indies. These are the bare bones of his experience, more ably presented by the editors in their excellent introduction.
But the bare bones do not convey the spirit or value of the document. It is a grab-bag, not much different in substance from a nineteenth or twentieth-century travel account written by an Iowa farmer after three months “on the earthquake line.” The journey from Cádiz was painful, spare in comfort. But it was not singular, not comparable to those described in Irving Leonard’s Books of the Brave, in Priestley’s The Coming of the White Man, or, indeed, to life aboard a troopship in 1942. And it is impossible to muster much sympathy for a man who complains of thirst and pipes of Spanish wine. Ashore, Tovilla gapes at the natives and uses Spain as a standard for judging his surroundings. Then, following the now familiar pattern of the travel account, he used writings of predecessors to give his own work the smell of history, rendering his work worthless in exact proportion to his reliance on others. Tovilla, in fact, took about half of what he wrote from Antonio de Remesal, as the editors show.
The value of the document, then, comes when Tovilla sticks to his own activity. He allows us to watch Dominican Father Morán’s enthusiasm for saving souls extending beyond the prudent, humane approach to Las Casas. The Indians’ hostile response would not have surprised their former Protector. Indian dress, ceremony, weapons, idols, and temples attracted Tovilla, as did fruit and crops. Sufficiently self-centered to write the account, he also includes some of his correspondence. In short, the document adds to Remesal, was known to Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán, and shows a good deal that Domingo Juarros failed to see. The editors could have facilitated its use by including an index and by rendering place names modern.
