Excerpt from Illustrated History of New Mexico

The author of this work entered public life some years ago, as a school teacher, filling for the first time the honored post of preceptor of the College of the Christian Brothers, Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the year 1876 and continuing thereafter for several years in charge of the various public schools of the Capital. Thus it was that he came through personal observation, and after many and very careful examinations of the several writings on history, to notice that remarkable differences and striking contradictions exist among some of the English speaking authors, in their respective narratives of historical events whenever it is a question of the discovery of America by Columbus, the conquest, colonization and christianization of Mexico by Cortes, and of South America by Almagro and the Pizarro brothers. The author of this work attributes the discrepancies and contradictions of the authors mentioned rather to the fact that they had, perforce, to depend absolutely on the translations which are supposed to have been made from the original works and original documents by translators who, by reason of their never having seen the said originals and also because of their not being Spanish scholars, have not, in almost every instance, rendered into correct English the spirit of the original texts, changing quite often, the substance of the language of the first authors, whence the result has been that no two works of the same history, translated from the Spanish into English, by different translators can be found to agree with one another and much less with the original works. This statement is easily proved by simple comparisons of the works of these writers, with the original accounts given by the conquerors and first authors. Upon comparison it will be readily seen that, although they give long lists of the first authors, and even of the discoverers and conquerors of New Mexico, they have simply had former translations retranslated.

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