Introduction

Ernest J. Burrus, S.J., was born in El Paso, Texas, on April 20, 1907. He grew up on a farm at Ysleta, Texas, downstream from El Paso, where he spoke French and German, the languages of his Alsatian parents, and he learned Spanish and English, the languages of the area. Father Burrus’s multilingual background, reinforced by a classical education in the Jesuit tradition, has made him a most talented textual critic in the field of colonial Mexican history. Educated in the United States, Canada, and Europe, he broadened his knowledge of mathematics and science, learned his philosophy, theology, and history, and expanded his languages to include Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Since 1923, when he entered Spring Hill College High School in Mobile, Alabama, Ernest Burrus has had a distinguished career in Jesuit education, especially in the training and formation of young members of the Order.** Father Burrus first went to Rome in 1925 while a student—the first of many sojourns in Europe over the next six decades. In the mid-1930s he prepared for his ordination in the theologate in Valkenburg, Holland, and in Innsbruck, Austria. He was ordained on July 17, 1938. These were anxious years in Europe for young Burrus, who witnessed the Nazi peril and did what his conscience demanded in alleviating the sufferings of the Jews. Arrested and deported by the Gestapo on March 30, 1939, he watched developments from Italy until he was called home. For the next decade he taught Jesuit juniors in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. During this time, and owing largely to the encouragement of Gabriel Méndez Plancarte (editor of the scholarly Mexican journal Ábside, historian, essayist, and outstanding poet), Burrus developed his knowledge of colonial Mexico, publishing his first work in 1949, a critical edition of the first complete history of colonial Mexico, by the exiled Jesuit Andrés Cavo. This step marked a sort of dividing line or crossroads in his life, one that he had been headed toward from an early age.

Father Burrus recalled learning as a child that his father, encouraged by friends in Albuquerque, had left his native Alsace at the age of twenty to avoid military service under an uncongenial Prussian regime. His mother, invited by relatives in the same city, emigrated some ten years later in order to better her lot in life. There they met and were married. Before the year 1904 came to a close, his father was on strike at the Santa Fe Railroad shops. The couple moved to El Paso, where Mr. Burrus got a job as a machinist at the old Southwestern Railroad and bought a farm in the valley between Ysleta and Socorro, some thirteen miles from the city. Here the boy grew up, inured to hard work as the tract was cleared, planted, and harvested.

After finishing the first year of high school in Ysleta, he decided to go to Spring Hill High near Mobile, Alabama, to study Latin. Although only sixteen at the time, he was giving serious thought to becoming a priest, specifically in the Jesuit order. Such a decision is inspired by many and diverse motives: a desire to help others, in particular to teach young people, the hope of being of service to one’s community, the love of intellectual and moral pursuits. Of course, within the broader vocation to the priesthood, there are particular callings to more specific work, depending on one’s inclinations, abilities, and the needs of the order and the church. During the earlier period of the fifteen years of his training for the priesthood, he devoted most of his time to mathematics and science, chemistry and physics in particular. In 1932, when the Southern Jesuits needed a man to train younger members of the order in Latin and Greek, Father Burrus, after obtaining an A.B. in literature from Santa Clara University and an M.A. in philosophy from Gonzaga University (Spokane, Washington), taught the classics at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, and followed Greek and Latin courses at Loyola University (New Orleans), obtaining his M.A. in that second field in 1933. After ordination to the priesthood, he again taught the classics and several modern languages from 1941 to 1950, when he was called to the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome. At the age of 43, he was asked to abandon the teaching of languages and devote himself exclusively to research and writing of history. Why Mexican history? For the very simple reason that a researcher and writer was needed in that field and it was thought that Father Burrus, with his knowledge of Spanish and interest in the field, would be able to do the work.

In the late 1940s, Father Burrus assisted Fr. Félix Zubillaga of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome to gather in Austin, Texas, materials for the Monumenta Mexicana referred to in the interview that follows. At the same time, Father Ernest was planning to publish his monumental work, a critical edition of Francisco Javier Alegre’s Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España. This pleasant scholarly association led in December 1950 to Burrus’s appointment to the Jesuit Historical Institute, where he served as Secretary (1951-56), Director of its distinguished publications series, and Founder and Director of the American Division (from 1957 on). These posts led to the establishment of the St. Louis University Vatican Library microfilm project—an incalculable boon to researchers ill this country; the Loyola University of New Orleans Spanish Colonial Louisiana Documents Project in the Archives of Spain; and finally in 1975 to the deposit in the University of Arizona Museum of the Ernest J. Burrus Collection of Jesuit History Archival Materials. Lengthy periods of archival research in Spain, Italy, England, and Mexico accompanied these projects.

These three archival projects alone would ensure for Father Burrus a premier place in the historiography of colonial Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest. His scholarly bibliography documents his reputation as archivist, editor, linguist, paleographer, historian, and bibliophile as nothing else can. He is the author or editor of 50 books and 120 articles. Only a selection of his most important works related to the interview can be catalogued here.

Richard E. Greenleaf: Father Burrus, if you were to single out five of your books as the most important contributions you have made to the field, which would you choose and how would you rank these books?

Ernest J. Burrus: If you care, I would point out five books and then give reasons why I would choose them out of the forty or so that I have had the good fortune of editing and publishing both alone and with others. I would certainly put in first place the four volumes of the Alegre Historia (see nos. 5, 6, 7, 11), first of all because they give the mission history of the Society of Jesus in a very important period of colonial Mexico. The second that I would choose would be the five volumes of the writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz (see nos. 24, 28, 33). A more original contribution, these were unavailable until their publication; they were in private possession or in archives and were inaccessible. The volumes establish the tremendous influence that Vera Cruz exerted at the Consejo de Indias on Indian policies. Another of the five that I think most would consider a very original contribution and really a fortuitous find, is the two-volume diary of Rivera y Moncada (see no. 23), who was the comandante of Upper California during the years that Junípero Serra, one of the great missionaries, was in charge of the missions. Rivera y Moncada’s letters to Junípero Seri a were completely unknown. His accounts, for instance, of the destruction of San Diego, his founding of San Francisco, even of places such as Santa Clara and so on, his work on Santa Barbara, and his work in San Carlos near the present Carmel make it a very original contribution. It was saving his diary and then finding hundreds of other pertinent documents that deal with the era that make it, I think, a very important book. Then, many have told me that they consider important Father Kino’s Book of Maps (Kino and the Cartography of Northwestern New Spain), especially the original, his last map, dated 1710, and for which Herbert E. Bolton hunted for so many years. Father Kino drew it to accompany his diary. Then the discovery of numerous other reports, the identification of maps, and so on would certainly put it among the five. Possibly the last volume that I published with Father Zubillaga on the Northern Missions (see no. 34), Misiones mexicanas de la Compañía de Jesús, deserves a place among my five most important books. The Mateu family of Barcelona very generously allowed me to publish every document they held and then I added one important item from a little-known collection, the Gilcrease Collection in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The last is a very important document on the missionary work in Sinaloa. That is all contained in this fifth work that I mentioned.

BEG: In each of these five cases we see that the outstanding characteristic of your work is that you use primary sources, archival materials, usually materials not available in public archives and that your contribution has been to find these materials in private collections and elsewhere, and to make them available to scholars. Is that correct?

EJB: Absolutely. You are entirely right. That is the way I think of my bit of work as a historian; whether in an article or in a book, I try to contribute something original.

REG: Father Burrus, it has often been said that one of your great contributions to colonial historiography is of a revisionist nature. You have revised interpretations that we have previously held because you have given us new documentation. Would you like to comment on this?

EJB: I might indicate various categories of work. There were certain editions that I re-edited: for instance, Cavo (see no. 1). Cavo had been published, as you probably know, at least three times by Carlos María Bustamante, but all were incomplete editions, and not only that, he even had tampered with the documents. When he would hand the manuscripts to the typographer, he would actually hand in manuscripts that he had corrected, and so we were never certain of the accuracy of the printed edition: he would leave out things, put in things. When I had the good fortune way back in 1946 to consult the Genaro García and Joaquín García Icazbalceta Collections at the University of Texas, I saw how these manuscripts had been altered. Because I knew Latin, and because the original had been written in Latin, I was able to furnish quite a bit of background for the Cavo edition. Cavo, as you may know, intended to publish it in Latin, and then when he discerned that many people were no longer reading Latin with facility, he decided to put it into Spanish, hoping to gain a wider audience. So with these ideas in mind, I said, well, these editions should really be corrected and revised. In the case of Alegre, it was even more noticeable where Bustamante had actually taken his pen and corrected the edition. Then, knowing that Alegre, just to take one example, had consulted many documents that normally are not available, I tried to find all of the key documents that he consulted. I was fortunate because when he worked at the AGN in Mexico City, he would often mark them “visto y puesto en su lugar, Javier Alegre”; so that gave me a key and I took what I considered the most important of these documents and I published them in an appendix. Furthermore, I corrected wherever I found a mistake in the light of more abundant documentation. I spent some six or seven years editing Alegre’s work whereas he spent only two years writing it! So I really gave more time to it than he did. Then, too, certain things he said have gotten into the mainstream of Mexican history. Speaking about the early days of the Jesuits in Mexico, he maintained that Pedro Caltzontzin (see no. 3), the grandson of the last of the Tarascan kings, had been a Jesuit. This has been repeated over and over again. I was amused by it; and when I got the manuscript, I saw that it was obviously Bustamante who had written it in the manuscript. It was not in the original. I wrote an article about that. Also, to take a more famous case: that of Francisco Ortega’s third expedition, of 1536, along the East Coast of Lower California (see no. 31). I sort of took it as being correct until I tried to pin down certain historical facts. For instance, he said that the first Jesuit to go to Lower California was a certain Roque de Vega. Well, I had the catalogs of all the Jesuits. There was no Roque de Vega there. That made me suspicious, of course. Then my doubts were confirmed by the fact that I found two contradictory accounts, but both written in the hand of Ortega, and also signed by Father Vega. Evidently, the Vega signature is a forgery because the man never existed. Then I saw in one account that the ship had been wrecked and rebuilt and then went on a long expedition up to what would correspond to San Francisco and beyond on the East Coast, naturally an area that does not exist. The other account said, no, the shipwreck had not occurred until they were just about to recross the Gulf. Well, one of these statements, one of these accounts, is obviously false; and most likely, both are. There was also the famous account added to Zárate Salmerón’s of New Mexico (see no. 15). This was falsified during the suppression of the Jesuit order and was meant to be a series of slanders on the Order by someone who did not like the Jesuits. I found early manuscripts where this forgery did not appear. So it was most likely concocted at the time that Charles III was asking for the documents, and the famous Memorias de Nueva España were compiled in Mexico and sent to Spain; of these there are, as you well know, several copies. I wrote the article and found absolute impossibilities (for instance, when the author claimed that Father Kino was working in Lower California, I looked at the date that the account said he was there, and it turned out to be when Father Kino was nine years old and, of course, a child back in his hometown near Trent). I found out from various documents edited by Adolph Bandelier, that are today in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, that he had discovered the same inaccuracies in Zárate Salmerón’s account of the Yutas, the Indians, and that just about everything he said about New Mexico was incorrect. Then the man to whom Zarate Salmerón attributed the account was a certain Juan Niel. I looked Niel up very carefully; this man had just published a very interesting account of his work in South America before he landed at Acapulco, where he stayed a few days, then took the famous Manila Galleon to the Philippines in order to go to China (and he was actually in China). Zárate Salmerón used the name of a well-known writer. His account was published in the famous Lettres Edifiantes, a very popular mission magazine at the time; something like the Welt-Bott in German; somebody thought he could get away with the forgery. So there has been that bit of revision. What I have been very anxious to do in my history work has been to give a true account of Mexican history through the use of key documents. If they go against somebody’s opinion or even statements that have been made in histories and school texts and so on—well, we do want to find the truth and in that sense, much of my work has been revisionist in nature.

REG: What do you consider to have been your major influence on students?

EJB: I try to get them to go to the sources. If I may, I should like to give you a few examples. Let me mention Stafford Poole. He was very anxious to do work on the Mexican Councils, 1555-65-85 and even to dip a bit into the Fourth Council of 1771. I agreed and asked him if he knew where the main documents were. He did not. I said, “Well, we’re fortunate, we have right here in St. Louis a complete set of the microfilmed documents of the Mexican Councils, which are today in the Bancroft Library and there you have the original accounts. There you will find Saldaña and different participants of the Councils and you have the originals.” He then told me he would never make out the notarial documents; that they were impossible because many of the letters looked alike. I suggested that, at least, he toy with them a while. After studying them, he came to love those documents and became a real specialist. Afterward he went to the Archivo de Indias in Seville and he wrote a very fine dissertation. He has gone into other fields closely allied and so this has been my tremendous satisfaction of seeing him and other scholars consult the sources and find worthwhile material and also interpret them in the way that other scholars benefit. I am just hoping that much of what they have found will ultimately get into more general history and also appear in school texts and other publications. This has been a tremendous satisfaction to me, and I would add that it has been not only students, but also serious scholars, professors at universities, authors, many of whom I have been able to find material for, materials that they knew existed, but probably would not have been able to use except for my help. I will give you one example: I had toyed with the idea for many years of publishing Miguel del Barco’s history of Lower California. Miguel León-Portilla knew that I had a copy of that work, and asked if I would be willing to let his seminar publish the original. I said, “I may never get to it; if I do, I will publish it in my way. You go ahead.” That has been my philosophy. Fortunately, the man with whom I have worked all these years, Father Zubillaga, has been of the same mind: that we would never hang on to something if another scholar wanted to use it. We have tried to encourage others and we, in turn, have been encouraged by others. That has been a great satisfaction: this mutual cooperation and inspiration.

BEG: Do you have some particular remembrances of Mexican and United States historians whom you have known?

EJB: Yes, I certainly have. If I may mention a few specifically: I remember in the early 1950s I was working in the Archives in Seville. The first time was in 1953. Lewis Hanke was also there and we began to discuss the very process of locating specific documents. Nobody ever told me what catalogs had been printed. Many a time I would have been helped, had I known a document was printed. That discussion was the beginning of a very, very fruitful bit of research (see no. 4). Afterward I was asked by the Guggenheim Fellowship committee to submit a topic and I did. I suggested that the bit of work I had done for the HAHR might be of interest. Many scholars had told me that it was. Students, beginning students and professors, who I am sure know very much more about the subject than was reflected in the article, still found my introduction to be a useful tool for depositories in Spain, whether archives, manuscript collections, libraries, or whatever. And so I said that I would love to do the same thing for Italy. Eventually the Guggenheim Foundation funded me for two years. My project was to record Hispanic American documents in Italian centers. Now that was really encouraging, and I have remained friends of the Guggenheim people ever since. I hope that the articles I have written on the subject, and the many, many references I have made to American materials at the Vatican, throughout Rome, in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, in Bologna (where the Jesuits were in exile for many years) have been helpful to other scholars. Not only the main articles I wrote for the HAFIR (see nos. 4, 8), but some of the shorter articles (see nos. 9, 10, 12, 14) and numerous other references will be of use to the scholars; this early project of mine has always put me in contact with scholars wherever I have worked. I have worked in some fifty centers, mainly in the United States, Mexico, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, of course, and Great Britain. Everywhere I have met scholars, and we have become friends. They have helped me and I have tried, in turn, to help them. Lewis Hanke was one; another very notable example, because he helped me in every way, was George P. Hammond. Whenever I worked at Berkeley, he, as director of the Bancroft Library of the University of California, was always most cooperative. I, on the other hand, got for Berkeley very many Roman documents, both from the Vatican and from the Propaganda Fide. Of course, I did the same thing for St. Louis. Then afterward, Dr. Hammond and I published a volume to honor José de la Peña, who, for many years, was director of the Archives of the Indies in Seville.

REG: Father Burrus, what is your view of the state of Mexican and Borderlands history these days?

EJB: Well, very much has been done piecemeal. It still has to be coordinated. Piecemeal, both in getting transcripts and in publishing documents and also in writing about the Borderlands. Of course, as soon as we take up the subject, we think of some of the great names: Bandelier collected a vast number of documents (see nos. 21, 26). They are scattered because of the various groups who funded his research and his publications. Then, as you well know, Bolton worked a long time on gathering, translating, and publishing Borderlands materials. Manuel Orozco y Berra and Joaquín García Icazbalceta also worked on history that would have great influence on border history. We have had men capable of working in various disciplines. Fortunately, a man like Bandelier worked in archaeology, as well as in history, ethnology, and linguistics, among others. Possibly we could learn a lot today by insisting more on interdisciplinary sources. I find that so frequently one comes across an excellent archaeologist who knows little about history. We have historians who do not know enough about archaeology, ethnology, and linguistics. So we should have more, I think, of interdisciplinary interests in our study of the Borderlands. Another man, of course, who has worked on these things, John Bannon, deserves much credit. We have a tremendous amount of material now in St. Louis on the Borderlands. I and several other professors from St. Louis University went on many expeditions to Mexico and not only to the Archivo General de la Nación. Together we obtained documents from many public and private archives. We acquired, for example, all the documents that Father Mariano Cuevas used, as well as all the old Mexican Jesuits’ documents. We collected all the Mexicana from the Central Jesuit archives in Rome. Now all these materials are available. Also, a tremendous number of transcripts has been made. Microfilm has helped. There is an extensive collection in Berkeley. There is also a large body of documents in Austin, both in the way of transcripts from men like Dunn, and on microfilm. We do not have, to my knowledge, any place where all this material is brought together, whether it be in the way of transcripts, microfilms, or publications. Much of the material I collected is on microfilm. It is now in transcription at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Unfortunately, nowhere in the United States has all of this been brought together. No effort has been made to give it, as it were, a central catalog. If I were a young scholar beginning over again, I would work toward that. I would try to inspire others to help me create such a catalog.

REG: You are saying then that we badly need a union list of all these materials?

EJB: We do. So that we don’t just keep repeating and redoing what has already been done, sometimes well, sometimes not so well.

REG: Father Burrus, everyone feels that the great success that you have had as a historian of colonial Mexico and the Borderlands area has been owing largely to your great abilities in the use of Latin and as a paleographer, and the techniques of historical criticism that you use in your works. Would you care to tell us what you feel that young historians ought to be doing to better equip themselves for their work?

EJB: If anyone is going to work in our field of history, he must have a mastery of Spanish. A speaking knowledge is helpful if you are going to work in the archives, to know the people, to be able to deal with them on a personal basis. Also to get a feel of the language. Many times by reading out loud, you are able to decipher an obscure passage in a written document. It is equally necessary to know the Spanish of various periods. If you are working with the sixteenth century, you should know the Spanish of that period very well. Much of it can be learned simply by practice. There are good books on paleography. I think the very best is the three-volume Album de paleografía hispanoamericana by Agustín Millares Carlo and José Ignacio Mantecón. Much of paleography is practice and application; and also being a hundred percent honest. It is also crucial to know certain distinctions. I might just note one small example. Over and over again I see cap.an written out in the text as capitán. Well, usually it does not mean capitán; it means capellán. So one has to be very, very exact. A high quality of work is demanded, especially if you are going to publish. It is a great responsibility. I think we might underrate the value of an exact text. And hence the paleographer and the young scholar must realize how important it is to be precise: that can be acquired only by hard work, wide reading, and going to the sources. Sometimes it is a question of various elements. We are not able to pick up all the elements from, say, microfilm; it may be necessary to see the document itself. The watermark on paper, for instance, sometimes will provide valuable information. I have been able to determine whether a document really belonged to a given period by checking the watermark. There are other requirements: to know, for example, the spelling of the words during various periods and in different geographic areas. Spanish is not the same in Valencia as in Seville. One has to know the differences, and these differences were often carried over into the colonies. I have come across extremely difficult documents, even ones that I thought could never be deciphered. I had an Inquisition document. It was a plea of Montúfar to have the Inquisition brought to Mexico, and it was carried to Spain by his representative, Gonzalo de Alarcón. This was a key document that I needed for my work and for one reason or another the whole last fourth of it was missing. Well, I stayed with one single page for weeks—until I was satisfied. But I wasn’t really satisfied with my own work; I submitted it to many other scholars in the field.

Then, to come to Latin. It is of no use to the scholar if he has a mere smattering; it does not suffice to know a word here and there. You really must master it. And a great number of documents are still in Latin. Some are at the Vatican, but I would say that they are mainly in the various religious archives because members of the various orders carried on their correspondence largely in Latin. For about a century in Mexico the main work was done by the religious orders; even the bishops and the arch bishops were friars. That was true of Zumárraga, of Montúfar, and of so many, many others of the hierarchy. So certainly Latin is a very important language and can be very difficult. Some of the writers of Latin used a great number of abbreviations, almost a shorthand. To use these documents demands an absolute mastery of the language and it demands hard, and often tedious, work; but it repays.

REG: You have devoted much time to cartography. How do you view developments in that area?

EJB: Cartography, I feel, is a help to history. As you know, the missionary in an area was really the only cartographer, or mapmaker. He was the only one who knew the region. He was the only one who could communicate with the natives and sometimes he was the only non-Indian in a vast region. Often he would make maps for his own use. The effort was often rewarding. A map would sometimes save his life. It might point out to him where the waterholes were, where he could bring the cattle, the horses, mules used to supply his mission. So a map was an important document for him if he were to have an accurate idea of the entire area. Then, too, civil authorities, military authorities, or religious authorities, even the kings, borrowed maps made by missionaries. Of course, not all missionaries were prepared to serve as cartographers, while there were some who were wonderfully skilled. Father Kino was the most outstanding cartographer in all of the Spanish dominions across the sea. He had a specialized training in the making of maps. He earned his licentiate, the equivalent of a doctorate, at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau in Germany and had great mapmakers as his professors, Heinrich Scherer and Adam Aigenler. I was fortunate to find a map by one of his professors made at the very time that Kino was one of his students and I published it in the book Kino escribe a la Duquesa (see no. 16).

There is a temptation to stay exclusively with history; but it is essential to dip into other areas. Cartography is one of them. Ethnology of course would be another. Archaeology would be still another. These are all disciplines that can help us throw light on history and many times actually provide the solutions to crucial issues. Certainly cartography is; because many times an account, a very detailed account of an area, geographical account, is intelligible only in the light of a map. That was how I was able to prove that the map that had been attributed to Father Kino as his first map was a 1662 map that accompanied an account of all the missions in northern Mexico written in that year and became separated from the account. Maps are easily lost, and are frequently stolen.

REG: Father Burrus, how do you feel about some of the new methodologies that we have in colonial and Borderlands history, and particularly, how do you feel about the tendency to impose current ideologies on the past?

EJB: Well, to be perfectly frank on that point, I do think that it is a falsification. We are trying to attribute to men and even institutions ideas that never passed through their minds, ideas they never thought. And I think that is unfair. Just as I do not think that we would want to be judged in the light of what scholars may know in the years 2050, 2060, or something of that sort. They should judge us by the means that we have today. We would not go back and say, well, García Icazbalceta should have been using microfilm instead of the laborious photostats, or something of that sort. Missionaries and bureaucrats often had their own hierarchy of values, a different scale of values. They judged things in a different light. Often their ideas, for instance, of religious freedom were quite different from ours, and therefore we might be overly severe with them, not appreciating their scale of values. They attributed a tremendous importance to everything religious. A man would sacrifice his life for the church, for example.

REG: Father Burrus, what are some of your current projects and the directions of future projects?

EJB: In many ways I am continuing the type of work that I have done for the past forty years or so. Mainly, searching for, trying to find, and then use, original materials. The areas in which I am working right now are various. I am working on a history of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. I will not find overly original materials because I simply haven’t the time. I should go to numerous provincial archives. This area was dependent on Durango, Mexico, for two and a half centuries. Many of those documents were lost or destroyed in the numerous revolutions, wars, and so on. I will have to depend in great part on secondary sources in reconstructing the history of the diocese. But that is something that I am very anxious to do. I am using whatever manuscript materials I can find, like church records, baptismal records, administration of the sacraments, and so on. That is one work to which I am giving quite a bit of my time and I hope to finish that within two years. Then there are other projects that I have already begun that I simply cannot let go. I have right now two volumes at the National University of Mexico to be edited and printed, and of course that will take some of my time. I will have to check some of the materials. Then I am also doing along with another professor at the University, Dr. Gloria Grajales, a very complete bibliography of the Guadalupan History and Devotions. That means finding the manuscripts and identifying them. I will need help there because many of them are in Nahuatl, a language I do not know. I regret it very much. If I were a young man, I would get down and study it as I have other languages, but I simply don’t feel that I can do that; and so this is a rather difficult project. Alfons Cardinal Stickler, prefect of the Vatican Library, has asked me to complete a series of volumes on Bandelier; two were edited (see no. 26) and three more are to appear. Then I am helping out at the Jesuit Institute. I am a full-time member of the Jesuit Institute in Rome; that is, a full member of the Institute although I am not there in Rome the entire year. I still carry on the same work as any other member. I review books; I write articles. I prepare volumes to be published, and though I am stationed here in El Paso for at least nine to ten months every year, I go to Rome for at least two months and I then carry out my work there besides what I have been doing for it during the year. Right now we have an enormous project. It was started by Dr. Charles O’Neill, at one time a professor at Loyola University. We are now putting out a Jesuit encyclopedia in various volumes and we are editing it at the same time in Spanish and also in English. To date I have written 120 articles and reviews of various lengths, some only two pages; some six, seven, eight or more—general articles; like, for instance, Jesuit work in Lower California, the exploration, the cartography. All these general topics demand much of my time. The most immediate project that I am working on is a small volume in honor of José Porrúa, the father of the present publisher and manager of the Porrúa House in Madrid. I just finished a rather lengthy study of all the Mexican Jesuit linguists and what works they wrote and for whom those works were destined. This is being published in Rome at present and also being issued by the National University of Mexico under the editorship of Miguel León-Portilla.

REG: Father Burrus, what do you think remains to be done on the history of the Society of Jesus in Mexico and in the Borderlands area?

EJB: What has been started should be continued. The greatest work that has been done that needs to be continued is the series called Monumenta Mexicana, edited by Father Zubillaga, who first published his dissertation on the Jesuits in Florida; the seventh volume just came off the press and there will be at least thirty more volumes to that series. This is an enormous task, and we are looking for somebody willing to, and also capable of, continuing the project. It will require someone who knows Mexican history, who knows the documents of the era, and who is dedicated. These materials are, of course, found mainly in Seville. Some are also found in Mexico City and in the Central Jesuit Archives in Rome.

REG: How do you feel about the frequent assertions that Borderlands mission history is completely finished and that there is not much new to be done?

EJB: Well, I am one of those who believes that every phase of history is rather poorly and meagerly represented. And as soon as I ask some very specific questions about Borderlands history, I don’t get the answers even from the specialists; so, evidently, a lot is still to be known. More documents have to be found. Often we don’t even know the dates of the founding of many of our missions, or how many missions were in a given town. Recently Dr. W. H. Timmons, just to give you one example, found a new document that will change our history of San Elizario, Texas. It will also change our history of sequence of the churches built in Ysleta, Texas. The archaeological work of Rex Gerald in Socorro, Texas, will completely change the series of churches that were built there. We have found a monastery in that little town, which we did not even suspect of being there. There is a vast amount to be done. That assertion, of course, could be made about nearly every phase of history. It can be made about the history of colonial Mexico, the sixteenth century; I have heard people over and over again say, why in the world say anything more; don’t we know everything about the sixteenth century? No, we do not. Not even of the great figures. I think that is one reason why you, Professor Greenleaf, are working on Zumárraga, because you do not feel that enough is known about him.

REG: How do you feel about new themes on the expulsion of the Jesuits and the writings of the Jesuits who were expelled? I am sure that this is a topic of great interest to you.

EJB: Well, you have probably noticed that very little was published on the two key dates of the Jesuits: on 1767, which marks the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the Spanish dominions, practically nothing has been said. Again, on the anniversary, the bicentennial of the suppression of the Jesuit Order, 1973. In that year we did not publish a single article and the reason is this: the amount of material is so vast. That is the first difficulty. Second, it is the interpretation of the material. It is scattered all over. It is found in Mexico, in Spain. Some Jesuits were expelled to Bologna, others to other areas of Italy. We have this physical difficulty of finding all their records. Another issue is that sometimes you ask yourself if you are simply stirring up animosity. For instance, take the royal house of Spain. Today it is in no way responsible for the injustice done by colonial Spaniards. I would prefer to concentrate on certain aspects that can be studied in a positive way. For instance, pointing out the good that was being done at the time and that might have continued. As an example, take education; I have been through Sonora and Sinaloa with a list of where there once were small schools for children. Today in many areas there are two-thirds fewer schools than existed in the eighteenth century. I think that that is a great tragedy. So I look at the good that was not continued. Maybe we could learn something from the methods of the missionaries and their assistants. It seems that the method of instruction at the time was very successful. They not only had to teach their students various subjects, including reading and writing and arithmetic, but they had to teach them in Spanish; so it was extremely difficult. They could teach us a lot about bilingual education. I would say that we can learn from their work and also from their expulsion. As you well know, when the Jesuits were expelled from Sinaloa, Sonora, Chihuahua, Lower California, and so on, they had to be replaced overnight. That was not easy. There were dozens of different languages and dialects in these areas. Just getting to know the people physically was difficult. Knowing where the missions were, where the stations were. Who owned this, who owned that. There were colonists at the time who were very anxious to take over the best land by trying to force the Indians into the mines. Obviously the Jesuits had a policy that seemed to work. Then an entirely new group of people arrived. Thus I would say that as far as possible, one should avoid sterile controversy. If you are going to take up controversy, face it squarely and as far as possible without anger, hatred, or bigotry; and that is not easy.

REG: There is a considerable amount of material in the bibliographical introduction on your work with the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome, with the American Branch in St. Louis, and with the Arizona Project. Would you like to give us some more views on the validity of these projects and what their contributions have been?

EJB: If I may, I would like to begin with St. Louis. Now, that was not limited to my own particular field, which I consider Spanish American history and particularly the Jesuit phase of it. I was asked there to cooperate with what might be called a world project—documents of world interest. I was first brought into it because of my residence in Rome and the fact that they were microfilming at the Vatican manuscript library. We did some 30,000 volumes, or approximately 11 million pages, of the most important materials. The key to that project was the manuscript collection of the Vatican Library. The scope was then extended to take some archival material (like the Propaganda Fide, the Secretariat of State, and so on). I got materials from Spain, from Great Britain, from France, from Austria, from Germany, and then I spent three years in Mexico gathering materials. I found wonderful cooperation from our American centers. We received permission from the Holy See to put this project of microfilming rare printed editions on a paying basis. For the microfilming of the manuscripts, we had a grant, a very large grant from the Knights of Columbus; of $400,000. That took care of the manuscript microfilming project. We made three copies, three sets, of which we kept two in the United States; one was put at the disposition of scholars that come to St. Louis, and one was put aside, a back-up, as it were. And we gave one to the Holy See. So that now when a person goes to the Vatican Library, if the Codex is in very wretched condition—the paper would fall to pieces in your hands—they will give you the microfilm rather than the original. Now when we come to the rare books, we put that on a paying basis. We sent out a list every two or three months. We tried to get at least four to five lists out every year to potential subscribers. Usually, if there were books on bibliography, everyone wanted them. For instance, if a university had a faculty of medicine, it would subscribe to publications of interest to doctors. Other places might be mainly interested in history. With the money from sales, we were able to carry on our project. We installed an enormous laboratory at the Vatican. When I started there, they had nothing but a single Leica. I said, “My heavens, Gabriel is going to blow his trumpet before we ever finish this project.” So we brought in the very best equipment, and experts from the United States. We even flew in a huge developer so that they could develop the film rapidly. I was a very strong young man then. I carried one of those large cameras, which weighed over a hundred pounds. I carried it to different countries, because in those days, many depositories did not have their own equipment. I did my own microfilming, even in little mission towns. Some towns had only a Delco generator, and I put that on and operated the equipment. So that was the Vatican project. The film is now available to all scholars, to any scholar who comes to St. Louis University. We have exactly the same indices that they have at the Vatican, the same means of finding materials. And I would say that many times it is easier to find them in St. Louis than it is at the Vatican. We have imposed certain limitations, which are very sensible. We are not to publish something without the Vatican’s knowing about it, because somebody may be working at the Vatican on a book—and, well, someone here might beat him into print. So we have that understanding, to let them know what is being done here. We also filmed rare books from many places. For instance, collections in France. We got books in Mexico, and in the main libraries of Rome. So St. Louis is a center of research today because of this cooperation with the Jesuit Historical Institute. I happen to be the one who was asked to represent St. Louis University, which gave me in 1961 an honorary LL. D. If you care, I might mention the influence that this Vatican work also had on the Jesuit Institute in Rome because it received a copy of everything I was acquiring of interest to Hispanic American scholars. One project that we have not spoken about very much is my collection, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. I have worked on this project for thirty-two years, and I have gathered a very important library. I obtained some of the most important books, many of them rare. Many were sold to me by José Porrúa, Sr. In three years in Mexico City I obtained a tremendous number of transcripts, which I had checked against the originals there. I know how mistakes can creep in very easily in transcripts. Very generous microfilming permission was given us in Berkeley by the Bancroft Library, also by the Latin American Collection at Austin, and at many other places. I have a goodly number of documents from Harvard University, and from the Peabody connected with it: transcripts and documents that Bandelier gathered. So all these materials are now on deposit in Tucson, made available to scholars, and I had an agreement with the Jesuit Conference, which represents all the Jesuits of the United States, that all this will remain on deposit as long as it is available to scholars. I did not want to keep it in my room since I did not feel that I would be able to make full use of it. My only regret is that not more and better use is being made of these materials. Possibly this will improve in the future when better indices are available.

REG: You have had a career-long interest in Eusebio Kino. Let’s talk a little bit about Kino.

EJB: I first became interested in Kino when I edited Andrés Cavo’s complete Historia de México. This was the first time I had really learned much about Kino; Cavo gives a lot of attention to him as the man responsible for colonizing northern Mexico and the vast area of Lower California. Then I went on and edited the four volumes of Alegre’s Historia. Especially in the last volume, I saw the very important part Kino played in various parts of northern Mexico. For instance, although serious charges of negligence of his missions were brought against him, all of a sudden he was sent back to his missions and nothing but honors were heaped on him. Well, lo and behold, in Rome I found many unknown manuscripts, written by Father Kino. And of course I published them. Then in Mexico City itself in private collections I found a series of letters from the General defending Father Kino, who had been summoned to Mexico City and called on the carpet and was henceforth to be kept in Mexico City and never allowed to return to his missions. Then, again suddenly, he was defended by the General and even compared to St. Francis Xavier, which is a rather magnificent comparison. He was sent back to the missions and given high positions; and the explanation of what happened is contained in those letters that I was fortunate enough to discover. No merit of mine, it was the generosity and alert attention of a friend of mine. So I was able to publish many new data that added to knowledge of his life and certainly explored many questions unanswered by Bolton. Each state, as you know, is allowed two representatives in the Hall of Fame, the Statuary Hall, which is the official name. When Father Kino was chosen for Arizona, I was asked to write a book for that occasion, a book that would break new ground with original documents, new material, and at the same time be a fairly general history. So I chose his cartography (see no. 19). I had found a new map, which, as I noted earlier, Bolton had searched for most of his life, and which was meant to illustrate Kino’s diary. One day I was working in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and I asked for the Kino maps. I had a catalog of them, including all those listed by Bolton. They came and told me that the maps I had just asked for had been transferred to the Naval Department. But there was one that did not seem to be listed anywhere. It was by Kino. I looked at it and recognized it immediately as the long-lost map. It was a copy of the map he had made just a few months before he died. He made it to illustrate his latest discovery. The map shows the latest terminology that he used, and he is the only one who ever used the term “Nueva Navarra” to indicate that northern Mexico was a link between New France and New Spain, just as Navarra in Europe was the link between Spain and France. So there was no doubt that this was his latest map; furthermore, he had dated it. It was an early copy that was made for the printers, and it was beautiful. Maps were not normally printed in Spain because the Spaniards did not want enemies to know what they might reveal. Mexico was not printing maps because it did not have engravers. France was the map-publishing country of Europe at the time. I do not know why the “lost map” was never published. I found many other Kino maps, among the wonderful maps in the Central Jesuit Archives, and also the reports that accompanied them. Kino’s notion of the cartography of northwestern New Spain was the official cartography and geography well into the 1800s. Modern accurate maps date only from the 1850s. Many of Kino’s maps are far more accurate than Humboldt’s of the same area because Humboldt did not have Kino’s best maps. I found it interesting to publish an entire volume, nearly a thousand pages, of Kino’s expeditions with various explorers, particularly with Manje.

I have been able in other ways to bring a tremendous store of new data to the life of Father Kino. I was able, for example, to find the account of his ordination, which had puzzled everyone because he was not ordained with his group, and the reason he was sent off to work for a licentiate at the University of Freiburg, not the one in Switzerland, where he wished to work on cartography and science because he had ambitions of going to China. I was also able to find very much about his life that was then unknown. People who had known him had jotted down very frankly then-ideas, their evaluations of him. I published those data in this volume. Also, I was able to find many new manuscripts by Manje, and I devoted some 400 pages to his explorations of the area and the key role that he played in the organization of northern Mexico, his work among the mines, very much also on his life that was completely unknown up to the present. There are also the volumes of his correspondence with the Duchess of Aveiro (see nos. 16, 18), and I think that I reveal for the first time that she had the idea of the Pious Fund of the Californias. She submitted to the king in her own handwriting a plan that is the basis of the Pious Fund. I was so fortunate as to find that and I published it in these two volumes.

REG: It is my understanding that you have had a very long interest in the career and writings of the interdisciplinary savant, Adolph Bandelier, and that you were instrumental in the discovery of the important Bandelier materials in the Vatican Archives.

EJB: I had known of course that Bandelier had written a large work on the Southwest, particularly on the four southwestern states of New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua, and most likely that it was in French. It was written at the request of Archbishop Salpointe of Santa Fe and sent to Pope Leo XIII on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. That was in December of 1887. Now in compiling that work, Bandelier thought it would be well to write the history from the best sources available, documentary records in Mexico when he went to Mexico City, Santa Fe itself, and the various churches. He also worked a long time in the Juárez archives, those in the old mission church there. He tried to get the very best picture that he possibly could. He wrote the account in seven volumes, to which he added five volumes containing 502 illustrations (maps and sketches). He felt that the language the pontiff could follow most easily was French; so he wrote it in French and had it revised by a native Frenchman, Father Navet. I knew that this history had been written, and many requests had come to the Vatican asking that the manuscript be located. It was placed among the reserved materials because it was handwritten; and usually such materials may not be consulted until at least a hundred years after their composition. Well, I knew that this section was being catalogued and at least was being put in order, and so I asked one of the librarians working there, a certain Alberto Magistri, to keep his eyes open for a large work in French. One day he came to me and assured me that he had found such a document. I said that I would like to see it, so he brought me one of the volumes. As we were talking about it, the librarian came along, Father Raes, and I told him what Magistri had discovered. He said, “Father Burrus, I consider that you have discovered it because you pestered me for so long about it and you are the one who mentioned to this worker the manuscript, and whoever finds the manuscript is obliged to publish it.” That is how I got into publishing the Bandelier materials. Because of health problems, I have to date published only two volumes (see no. 26). I hope someday to publish all the projected volumes of the text. Recently, the Vatican Librarian begged me to do so. In the first volume I give an account of Bandelier’s life; also of his two wives, particularly the tragic life of Fannie Ritter, his second wife. I have also given a rather detailed account of all the illustrations that he drew, the maps that he made, the photographs that he took. The Supplement is a selection of all his maps; all eleven maps and the most important excavations that he undertook. That, for me, was the most fascinating part of his work. He excavated, for instance, Casas Grandes down in Mexico, the old Paquimé, all by himself. He found many materials and, unfortunately, lost them, which would be of great value to us today. So much so that when Charles Di Peso, who was the United States representative of the Casas Grandes dig, excavated on the part of the United States with Ignacio Bernal, the representative of the Mexican government, he asked me for the illustrations that had not yet been published. Now the thing that fascinates me most as I go through the writing of Bandelier, especially his letters, is that here is an early pioneer. He went to Santa Fe in August 1880. He spent twelve years there and in Mexico; then he went down to South America. He tried to teach for a while at Columbia University and for five months he went to Spain as the representative or employee of the Carnegie Institution, and while there, he worked in the archives. He also went to the trouble of learning the language of the Indian people, their mythology, and so on. Here was an early scholar, early archaeologist, early historian, early ethnologist, early linguist, and in every one of these writings he used one discipline to bring light to the other. So that he has a tremendous message for us today. Also, of course, he was a cartographer, judging from the maps he made.

REG: By way of summing up your many scholarly contributions to the history of Mexico and the colonial Southwest, do you have some final words for us?

EJB: I would say that we need to keep up our hard work, because what we have been talking about amounts to just that—hard work. That is the word I give to my colleagues, both historians and professors of history. Sometimes they are doing both teaching and research. Each one of those jobs might claim their full time. They should not be discouraged by the difficulties. They realize it is not a profession that is going to bring them the greatest monetary reward; obviously not; but it is one that will bring them satisfaction. To have the right attitude of mind—they must have that and I feel they do. That all of us are searching for the truth. That we also have an international task in bringing about better understanding between different scholars whether they be in Mexico, Europe, Spain, or South America; and that we should try to encourage them. If we have fallen down on any one phase of our cooperation, it has been in not knowing enough about what is being done and accomplished elsewhere and in not letting others know what we have done and are doing. There is the common complaint: I attend, say, a congress in Italy and am asked what we are doing in the United States; why the Italians don’t know more about it. Sometimes I am asked, too, why it is that our books are so expensive, our journals so hard to acquire, and why they often learn about our research and our publications so long after they are either published or our research has been accomplished. I feel that our profession and its accomplishments are healthy. There is always, of course, room for improvement.

**

A sketch of his career is found in Charles E. O’Neill, S.J., Ernest J. Burrus, S.J.,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 52 (1983), 190-206.

Selected bibliography

Ernest J. Burrus has published 50 books and 120 articles. Thirty-five of the most important works are listed here chronologically and by number. The numbers are referred to in the text of the interview.

1.
Cavo Andrés,
Historia de México
. Paleografiada del texto original y anotada por Burrus Ernest J. S.J. (
Mexico City
,
1949
).
2.
Kino Reports to Headquarters
(
Rome
,
1954
).
3.
Was Pedro Caltzontzin (+ 1576), Grandson of the last Tarascan King a Jesuit?
Archivum Historicum Societatis lesu (AHSI)
(
Rome
),
24
(
1955
).
4.
An Introduction to Bibliographical Tools in Spanish Archives and Manuscript Collections Relating to Hispanic America
,”
HAHR
,
35
(
Nov.
1955
).
5.
Alegre Francisco Javier S.J.,
Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España (1566-1766)
. Nueva edición por Burras Ernest J. S.J. y Zubillaga Félix. Vol.
I
(
Rome
,
1956
).
6.
Alegre Francisco Javier S.J.,
Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España (1566-1766)
. Nueva edición por Burras Ernest J. S.J. y Zubillaga Félix. Vol.
II
(
Rome
,
1958
).
7.
Alegre Francisco Javier S.J.,
Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España (1566-1766)
. Nueva edición por Burras Ernest J. S.J. y Zubillaga Félix. Vol.
III
(
Rome
,
1959
).
8.
Research Opportunities in Italian Archives and Manuscript Collections for Students of Hispanic American History
,”
HAHR
,
39
(
Aug.
1959
).
9.
Clavigero and the Lost Sigüenza y Góngora Manuscripts
,”
Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl
(
Mexico City
),
1
(
1959
).
10.
Hispanic Americana in the Manuscripts of Bologna, Italy
,”
Manuscripta
(
St. Louis
),
3
(
1959
).
11.
Alegre Francisco Javier S.J.,
Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España (1566-1766)
. Nueva edición por Burras Ernest J. S.J. y Zubillaga Félix. Vol.
IV
(
Rome
,
1960
).
12.
Cristóbal Cabrera (c. 1515-1598), First American Author: A Check List of His Writings in the Vatican Library
,”
Manuscripta
,
4
(
1960
).
13.
Correspondencia del p. Kino con los Generales de la Compañía de Jesús, 1682-1707
(
Mexico City
,
1961
).
14.
Cristóbal Cabrera on the Missionary Methods of Vasco de Quiroga
,”
Manuscripta
,
5
(
1961
).
15.
A Forged Commentary on Zárates Relaciones del Nuevo México
,”
HAHR
,
42
(
Nov.
1962
).
16.
Kino escribe a la Duquesa. Correspondencia del p. Eusebio Erancisco Kino con la Duquesa de Aveiro y otros documentos
(
Madrid
1964
).
17.
A Cartographical Mystery in Kino’s Diary
,”
Neuezeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft (NZM)
(
Beckenried, Switzerland
),
20
(
1964
).
18.
Kino Writes to the Duchess. Letters and Reports of the Missionary Explorer to the Duchess of Aveiro in Spain (1680-1687)
(
Rome
,
1965
).
19.
Kino and the Cartography of Northwestern New Spain
(
Tucson
,
1965
).
20.
Wenceslaus Linck’s Diary of his 1766 Expedition to Northern Baja California
. Translated into English, edited and annotated by Burras Ernest J. S.J. (
Los Angeles
,
1966
).
21.
The Bandelier Collection in the Vatican Library
,”
Manuscripta
10
(
1966
).
22.
La obra cartográfica de la provincia mexicana de la Compañía de Jesús (1567-1967)
.
2
vols. (
Madrid
,
1967
).
23.
de Rivera y Moncada Fernando,
Diario del capitán comandante Rivera y Moncada
. Edición, prólogo y notas por Burras Ernest J. S.J.
2
vols. (
Madrid
,
1967
).
24.
The Writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz. I. Spanish Writings: Sermons, Counsels, Letters. II. Defense of the Indians: Their Rights. Latin text and English translation. III. Defense of the Indians: Their Rights
(
Rome
,
1968
).
25.
Mexican Historical Documents in the Central Jesuit Archives
,”
Manuscripta
,
12
(
1968
).
26.
Bandelier Adolph F.,
A History of the Southwest. I. A Catalogue of the Bandelier Collection in the Vatican Library. Supplement to vol. I. Reproduction in Color of Thirty Sketches and of Ten Maps
(
Rome
,
1969
).
27.
The Impact of New World Discovery upon European Thought of Man
. In Nelson J. R., No Man is Alien (
Leiden
,
1971
).
28.
The Writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz. V. Spanish Writings: Letters and Reports
(
Rome
,
1972
).
29.
Pius V. and Francis Borgia: Their Efforts on Behalf of the American Indians
,”
AHSI
,
41
(
1972
).
30.
Key Decisions of the 1541 Mexican Conference
,”
NZM
,
28
(
1972
).
31.
Two Fictitious Accounts of Ortega’s ‘Third Voyage’ to California
”,
HAHR
,
52
(
May
1972
).
32.
Religious Chroniclers and Historians: A Summary and Annotated Bibliography
,” in
Handbook of Middle Amerwan Indians
,
XIII
(
1973
).
33.
The Writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz. IV. Defense of the Indians: Their Privileges
(
Rome
,
1976
).
34.
Misiones mexicanas de la Compañía de Jesús. 1618-1745: Cartas e informes conservados en la “Colección Mateu”
. Edición preparada por Burras Ernest J. S.J. y Zubillaga Félix S.J. (
Madrid
,
1982
).
35.
Jesuit Relations: Baja California, 1716–1762
. Translated and edited with an introduction by Burrus Ernest J. S.J. (
Los Angeles
,
1984
).