The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1586

Abstract

THE Relaciones Geogrdficas compiled on order of Philip II have long been recognized by historians as a major group of sources on sixteenth-century Spanish Indies. Surprisingly little, however, is found in the historiographical literature about this body of materials. They are replies by local officials in Middle and South America and apparently the Philippines to a standard questionnaire developed by imperial bureaucrats in Madrid, making 50 broad queries applicable alike to Spanish, Indian, and maritime communities in the overseas realms. Designed to elicit basic information about diverse regions, the questionnaire, a Memoria, was accompanied by printed instructions specifying in detail how alcaldes mayores, corregidores, and others assigned to answer it were to do so. The stipulated procedures required a map of the area as well as the detailed textual report. Hence, in addition to a documentary corpus on the American and Philippine dominions in the years 15781585, there is a lesser but quite significant cartographic and pictorial body of material for the same period. It complements and often extends the written statements. Some indication of the value of the maps may be gleaned from the fact that Alfonso Caso, one of Mexico's major archeologists, was able to begin unravelling the history of the Mixteca region of southern Mexico through intensive study of native genealogies included on the RG [The abbreviation we shall use hereafter for Relaciones Geogrdficas] Pintura of Teozacualco. He calls this map the Rosetta Stone of Mixteca studies. Since 1949 he and others have been able to show conclusively that related native pictorial documents carry detailed Indian histories from about fifth century A.D. to Spanish conquest in the early sixteenth century.' Apart from the useful data