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Excerpt from Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, Vol. 3: Studies in Spanish Colonial, History and Administration
While the papers here published are historical in their treat ment, they contain much that should be of interest to the ethnolo gist and to the student of actual government in the Spanish provinces. It is only through a detailed study of such episodes as those which are treated here that we shall be able to determine the true character of Spanish colonial government. This con sideration has led the writer to give full space to administrative as well as to narrative history. In the same way, since most of the subjects treated are to a large extent questions of Indian policy, due attention has been given to matters of importance regarding the Indian situation.
The special studies here presented are based almost ex clusively upon manuscript sources, chie¿y in the archives of Mexico, Spain, and Texas, and for the most part hitherto un known and unused. The assembling of these materials, during a period of thirteen years, has been the greater part of my task. My quest has been as romantic as the Search for the Golden Fleece. I have burrowed in the dust of the archives of Church and State in Mexico City, in a dozen Mexican state capitals, in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and in numerous places in Texas. The distance travelled in my pursuit of documents would carry me around the globe. I have lived with the padres in ruinous old monasteries in out of the way villages in the mountains of Mexico. I count among the treasures of my personal archive the letters of introduction from ambassadors, secretaries of state, and gov ernors; cardinals, archbishops, bishops, friars, and parish priests, who have smoothed my way.
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