Exciting Book Forthcoming: Juan Domínguez de Mendoza
It's official, the University of New Mexico Press is publishing the long-delayed book, 'Juan Domínguez de Mendoza: Soldier and Frontiersman of the Spanish Southwest, 1627-1693,' by France V. Scholes, Eleanor B. Adams, Marc Simmons, and José Antonio Esquibel.
In 1928, Scholes, then a professor of history at UNM, found a remarkable collection of fifty-one personal records of Juan Domínguez de Mendoza (b. 1627, Mexico City) in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. The records document almost fifty years of Domínguez de Mendoza’s military service in New Mexico. There is no other individual of seventeenth-century New Mexico for which we have this amount of documentation spanning so many decades.
Scholes intended to write a book centered on the fifty-one records and enlisted Eleanor B. Adams as the translator of the documents. The book was slated to be Volume 7 of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publication series (UNM Press) planned for publication in 1940. For a variety of reasons, Scholes and Adams did not complete the book, although Adams did produce translations for almost all of the records. If you are familiar with this series, you'll find that Volume 7 still does not exist.
Copies of some of the Scholes-Adams material on Juan Domínguez de Mendoza ended up as part of the Scholes Collection at the University of New Mexico. However, the bulk of material remained in the possession of Scholes and Adams until acquired by Marc Simmons.
My collaboration with Marc began in the spring of 2000 when we met at his place and discussed our various research and writing projects. Marc planned at some time to work on the "Johnny Domínguez" project, but had not started. Because of my interest in seventeenth-century New Mexico history and familiarity with seventeenth-century Spanish documents, we came to the exciting conclusion that we could collaborate to get the project completed.
We catalogued and organized all the documents, I entered all of the translations made by Adams into MS Word, and we completed translating the documents that Adams did not get to. At that point, we studied the documents in-depth, updated and added notes, and then we were ready to writing the historical summary, guided by several early and incomplete drafts by Scholes and written primarily by Marc. I contributed and translated additional, relevant archival documents, and wrote a history of the Domínguez de Mendoza and related families.
It took us ten years to have the manuscript ready for submission to UNM Press and Marc and I are both pleased that the book will be available in 2012. The book will represent the most comprehensive account of seventeenth-century New Mexico history since the publication of 'Kiva, Cross and Crown,’ by John L. Kessell (1979).
I’ll continue to provide updates on the book, as well as my other research and writing projects. I have five other books in the works.
In 1928, Scholes, then a professor of history at UNM, found a remarkable collection of fifty-one personal records of Juan Domínguez de Mendoza (b. 1627, Mexico City) in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. The records document almost fifty years of Domínguez de Mendoza’s military service in New Mexico. There is no other individual of seventeenth-century New Mexico for which we have this amount of documentation spanning so many decades.
Scholes intended to write a book centered on the fifty-one records and enlisted Eleanor B. Adams as the translator of the documents. The book was slated to be Volume 7 of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publication series (UNM Press) planned for publication in 1940. For a variety of reasons, Scholes and Adams did not complete the book, although Adams did produce translations for almost all of the records. If you are familiar with this series, you'll find that Volume 7 still does not exist.
Copies of some of the Scholes-Adams material on Juan Domínguez de Mendoza ended up as part of the Scholes Collection at the University of New Mexico. However, the bulk of material remained in the possession of Scholes and Adams until acquired by Marc Simmons.
My collaboration with Marc began in the spring of 2000 when we met at his place and discussed our various research and writing projects. Marc planned at some time to work on the "Johnny Domínguez" project, but had not started. Because of my interest in seventeenth-century New Mexico history and familiarity with seventeenth-century Spanish documents, we came to the exciting conclusion that we could collaborate to get the project completed.
We catalogued and organized all the documents, I entered all of the translations made by Adams into MS Word, and we completed translating the documents that Adams did not get to. At that point, we studied the documents in-depth, updated and added notes, and then we were ready to writing the historical summary, guided by several early and incomplete drafts by Scholes and written primarily by Marc. I contributed and translated additional, relevant archival documents, and wrote a history of the Domínguez de Mendoza and related families.
It took us ten years to have the manuscript ready for submission to UNM Press and Marc and I are both pleased that the book will be available in 2012. The book will represent the most comprehensive account of seventeenth-century New Mexico history since the publication of 'Kiva, Cross and Crown,’ by John L. Kessell (1979).
I’ll continue to provide updates on the book, as well as my other research and writing projects. I have five other books in the works.
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