The Gilded Man (El Dorado)/Publisher's Note
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
As compared with the peopling of our Atlantic seaboard, the first explorations of our Southwest by a white race have received comparatively slight attention, the minor consequences of the latter, and the inaccessibility of the early Spanish records, being the sufficiently obvious causes which have combined to prevent minute and exhaustive studies until within the past few years.
Dramatic and intensely interesting conditions have been revealed as Mr. Bandelier—whose work under the auspices of the Archæological Institute of America and on the Hemenway Survey has entitled him to stand first as the documentary historian of this region, and also to rank as the most exhaustive of its explorers has brought the facts of this long-hidden history once more to the light. It is the history of a search for the Golden Fleece, which was full of strange and romantic episodes; a history of the progress of the cross and the sword, which was accompanied by deeds of superhuman endurance, dauntless courage, and a pitiless bigotry and ravening cruelty that drove even the gentle Pueblos to revolt, and to the attempted destruction and concealment of all traces of their conquerors. The Southwest is the land of romantic history, albeit the history is often dark and bloody, and the pictures of Spanish exploration and domination which Mr. Bandelier presents in this volume are of profound interest. The legends of the mysterious Seven Cities of Cibola, and of the elusive Gran Quivira, are set forth clothed in no other romantic garb than that due to the truth ascertained by a learned explorer and archæologist; but the bare truth is so strange and moving that it has needed no adornment. Directly from the records we have the final facts in the afterlife of one of La Salle's murderers. In the true story of El Dorado that is to say, The Gilded Man there is settled definitely a matter that has undergone indeterminate dispute through three hundred years. These several papers, with the others here presented, selected from the records of Spanish conquest on both continents of America, do not constitute a continuous nor a complete history. Each, however, is complete in itself; each probably crystallizes the subject that it embraces; and the interest and historical value of the collection as a whole make it a necessary part of every library in which American history is adequately represented.
Owing to Mr. Bandelier's absence in Peru while this volume was passing through the press, he has been unable to revise the proofs a duty which Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier, utilizing her familiarity with Mexican and Spanish historical literature, very obligingly has performed in his behalf. In accordance with her wish we add that to the inability of the author to give his work this final revision must be attributed any errors which may be found in the text.