Review of Texas and Northeastern Mexico, 1630-1690 by Juan Bautista Chapa

Authors

Kimberly Henke Breuer, Vanderbilt University

Date of this Version

1999

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

This English translation of two seventeenth- century manuscripts concerning the exploration and settlement of northeastern Mexico and Texas is long overdue. The majority of the book is dedicated to Juan Bautista Chapa's Historia del nuevo reino de León de 1650 a 1690; the other translated manuscript is the revised 1690 expedition diary of Governor Alonso de León (the younger). This is the first widely published translation of Chapa's Historia into English. De León's revised diary is published here for the first time in either Spanish or English. Ned Brierley's translations, from the original manuscripts, are eminently readable and accessible.