Another of the Rio Grande Classics, consisting of reissue of items concerned with the American Southwest or written by individuals associated with the Rio Grande area, this work was first published in 1893. The reprinted version is from the fifth edition, Chicago, 1912, containing a brief foreword by Adolph F. A. Bandelier. The author, Charles Fletcher Lummis, one of the first to “discover” the Spanish Southwest, was a romantic, pro-Spanish writer. In his great enthusiasm for the then relatively untilled field of the Hispanic contributions to American history, Lummis had none of the sophistication of modern writers. In his late nineteenth century philosophy things were either black or white, and he was quick to pass favorable judgment on the Spanish Pioneers. His opinions were colored by his romanticism, with his glorification of manly feats of daring refreshingly expressed in his statement: “We love manhood, and the Spanish pioneering of the Americas was the largest and longest and most marvellous feat of manhood in all history.” By modern standards some of his heroic images seem inverted, with Cortés depicted as traitorous and Pizarro as a paragon of virtue.
Divided into three sections, the book is frankly an eulogy of Hispanic pioneering activity. Section I treats the familiar, broad story of Columbus, Núñez de Balboa, Cortés, Magellen, Coronado and includes some detail concerning New Mexico. Section II, entitled Specimen Pioneers, details the feats of Cabeza de Vaca, of little known Andrés Docampo, of the siege and fall of the sky city of Ácoma, of the Spanish missionaries, and of Alvarado’s prodigious leap. Section III chronicles the heroic aspects of “the greatest conquest,” that of the Inca Empire. Particular attention is given to Francisco Pizarro, Diego Almagro, and Atahualpa, with a chapter devoted to the great ransom of the latter.
Lummis as a writer was never wholly objective, and in his outspoken apology for everything Hispanic, he frequently fell into error. Notwithstanding this lack of objectivity, he became a significant contributor to his self-appointed task of replacing the “black legend” with a “white legend” about the nobility of Hispanic conquering efforts. Accompanying his early efforts at writing, collecting, and gaining support for his ideas, was Lummis’ foundation of the Southwest Museum, a Los Angeles landmark to an early Hispanicist and professional Southwesterner.
