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Updated: September 26, 2025
The "History of the Indies" is intended to give a brief view of the whole range of Spanish conquest in the islands and on the American continent, as far as had been achieved by the middle of the sixteenth century. For this account, Gomara, though it does not appear that he ever visited the New World, was in a situation that opened to him the best means of information.
The powder of the Guajiros is an article of commerce, as was anciently, according to Gomara, that of the Indians of Paria. The Chaymas, like almost all the native nations I have seen, have small, slender hands. Their feet are large, and their toes retain an extraordinary mobility.
Gomara received and wrote such accounts of these events as tended to enhance the fame and merit of Cortes exclusively, neglecting to make mention of our valiant captains and brave soldiers; and the whole tenor of his work shews his partiality to that family, by which he is patronized.
In 1551, Gomara, the author of the "History of the Indies," proposed the union of the oceans by three of the very same lines toward which, to this hour, the eye turns with hope.
Gomara is more explicit than Oviedo, who gives only a brief and preliminary mention; but even Gomara, while more detailed, and basing his work evidently on the earliest data then accessible in regard to the expedition of Coronado, cannot be compared with the later reports of those attached to the expedition. The value of these books is comparatively slight, so far as New Mexico is concerned.
Wilson receives literally, and makes it a rule of measurement, applying it with more or less exactness, not, however, to the statements of Gomara, with whose work he is acquainted only at second hand, but to those of Cortés and of Bernal Diaz himself!
After this declaration, it is somewhat remarkable, that, throughout his narrative of the Conquest, while continually quoting from Diaz, he makes not a single reference to Gomara; and he even censures Mr. Prescott for having pursued a different course. How shall we explain this fact?
Alas for Gomara! he wrote in his native Castilian, no Lockhart or Folsom had done him into English, and so he missed his chance of having his statements cited, and, possibly even, though we should not like to hazard an assertion on this point, of having his name correctly spelt, by the author of the "New History of the Conquest of Mexico."
It may surprise students of New Mexican history that I have thus far omitted the very earliest sources in print in which New Mexico is mentioned, namely, the work of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, and that of Gomara. The former was published in part in the first half of the sixteenth century, the entire work appearing at Madrid not earlier than 1850 and 1851.
Another chronicler, to whom I have been frequently indebted in the progress of the narrative, is Francisco Lopez de Gomara. But as the remarks on his writings are there confined to his Cronica de Nueva Espana, it may be well to add here some reflections on his greater work, Historia de las Indias, in which the Peruvian story bears a conspicuous part.
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