The Spanish Pioneers

In this work, the author, Charles Fletcher Lummis, writes of the southwestern United States and the Spanish Pioneers to which the credit for its discovery and settlement should be given. Much has been written about the Spanish Jesuits and their settlements in the New World and their work with the natives, especially in California, but little has been written of other Spanish pioneers and the extent of their contributions to United States, west of the Mississippi. When Jamestown, the first English settlement in America, was founded, in 1607, the Spanish were already permanently established in Florida and New Mexico, and absolute masters of a vast territory to the south. They had already discovered, conquered and partly colonized inland America from northeastern Kansas to Buenos Aires, and from ocean to ocean. And as in enterprise, they also led the English in humanity, in justice, and kindness in the treatment of the natives. The volume gives first the broad story of the discovery and conquest; then the adventures of notable pioneers - Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Docampo (who walked more than 20,000 miles, under fearful hardships), the brave missionary Brother Juan de Padilla, Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagran and, greatest of all, Francisco Pizarro - with chapters on the church-builders, the sky cities, the missions, etc. In this work, Mr. Lummis declares not only that the Spanish explorers dared and endured infinitely more than did the English who settled our portion of the New World, but that the policy of Spain towards the natives was wise, humane and just and thus in strong contrast to that of the settlers of New England. Paperback, (1909), 2013, Illus., 310 pp.