José de Evia, or as he is better known in Louisiana, Josef de Hevia, was born in La Graña in the north of Spain during 1740. His father had sailed and mapped the gulf coast of Louisiana in 1736, and Josef entered the Royal naval school at El Ferrol in 1753. He spent most of his life as a pilot and chart maker and took part in the naval activities of Spain during the War of the American Revolution. Since he was an experienced explorer, Bernardo de Gálvez commissioned him to chart the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from Tampico to Florida to correct the inaccurate naval charts used for navigation. This Evia did between 1783 and 1786. He was also active in the expedition commanded by Rousseau to apprehend William Augustus Bowles and bring him to New Orleans in 1792. Later Evia was captain of the part of New Orleans. Despite his half-century in the service of Spain, he never reached any higher position. His maps were good and were used when Lángara’s map was made in 1799, on which the Spanish commissioners later relied in the border diplomacy between Spain and the United States.
The volume under review is not a biography of Evia. It is a collection of documents relating to Evia’s charting of the coasts and ports along the Gulf coast from Tampico to Florida. The volume is divided into six chapters, the first devoted to a few facts about the life of Evia most of which the editor had published earlier. The latter part was somewhat confusing to this reviewer, for Holmes writes of the sons of Evia, and it is at times unclear whether he is writing of Evia or his sons. Nor is sufficient emphasis given to the importance and effect of José de Evia’s work. In the latter respect Holmes did better in his earlier published account of Evia’s work at Tampa Bay, which he published in Tequesta.
Chapters Two to Five deal with Evia’s work of charting and exploring and constitute the most important part of the volume. Dividing his work in sections, the author gives the “diary” of Evia drawn chiefly from the archives of Mexico and supports each section with correspondence taken chiefly from the archives of Spain. The diaries in Chapters Three and Four were taken from the Talamantes documents in the Sección Histórica of the Archivo General de la Nación. Most of those materials in the original diaries given here are also published (out of order) in English translation in Hackett’s Pichardo: Limits of Louisiana and Texas (volume I, part 2, chapters 3 and 4). Chapter Five deals with the well-known expedition to apprehend Bowles and bring him to New Orleans. There follows an appendix describing the services of Hevia, a number of Evia’s maps, charts, and illustrations, plus an index. The volume is number 26 of the Colección Chimalistac, a valuable but very limited and expensive group of books and documents relating to New Spain.
