Sources for the history of the isleños in Louisiana and Texas

              SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE ISLEROS IN
LOUISIANA AND TEXAS
The history of those cmna3"Eos who uprooted themselves from
their homelands in favor of new lives in Louisiana and Texas, as is
demonstrated by William Hyland elsewhere in this volume, is rich
and fascinating. But as rich as is the history, the historiography is
pathetically poor, almost nonexistent. This paradox is difficult to ,,
comprehend, especially in niew of the abundance of archiva1 sources, E
located both in the Old World and the New. O
Historians in general have tended to neglect the social and eco- -
=m
nomic history of Spanish Texas and Louisiana. In a similar fashion, O E
the history of the immigration, colonization and development of SE isl&o communities in these regions has been ignored by serious E
scholars. The classic nineteenth-century works of Martin, Gayarré
and Fortier al1 failed to cite the contributions of the isleños to the 3
early history of Louisiana l. Similarly the monumental narrative histo- em-ries
of Texas that Bancroft and his contemporaries produced paseed E
over al1 too quickly the canario experience in San Antonio and other O
parts of Texas 2.
Despite increased scholarly interest in social and economic history, E
studies of the isleños in Spanish Louisiana and Texas have been li- a
mited to articles in relatively obscure journals, or brief parenthetical
treatment in larga works. The scant literature that does exist varies
in quality from excellent, objective analyses, to narrow, biased, poorly O3
researched essays. Representative of the more solid efforts is Thomas
Glick's short monograph, The 0ld Wmld Background of tho Irriga
tion System of San Antonio, Toxm 3, a skillful analysis of the deve-lopment
of irrigation systems in the Canary Islands and their im-plementation
by canario settlers in mideighteenth-century Texas. Du-
1. U-L.7-e.n Y..,-.,- 1K.- m.... TL- IJ:-~As.. ,d T...,:-:-..- L.-- a%- En"?:-..& n-.,:..> A Rnu..+"iir z%nrrpin rr-rli. . r ,.u &&'.,'.vry v, L v r u r u r r u , r v r r r *,*o r ; u r r * u r * r Grrv",,
New Orleans, 1829; CHARLEGS AYARRÉ: Histovy of Louisiana. The Spanish Domiltion,
New Orleans, 1854; ALCÉE FORTIER: A Histwy of Louisiana, New York, 1904.
2. HUBERTH OWEB ANCRON~o:v th Mexican States, 2 vols., San Francisco, 1883-
1889; H-RT EUGENEB OLTONT: exas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, Berkeley,
1915.
3. El Paso, 1972.
ring the course of this study, Glick offered insights into the motiva-tion
for the isleños' migration from their horneland, the initial diffi-culties
faced by them in establishing a new settlement in San Anto-nio,
and their contributions to the development of this important
area of the Spanish borderlands.
The bulk of the literature unfortunately tends to fa11 into the
latter category. V. M. Scramuzza's article, ((Galveztown, a Spanish
Settlement of Colonial Louisiana~ was the first to make use of
archiva1 sources to highlight the isleño experience in Louisiana, but
the author's racial biases against the isleños detract greatly from the
usefulness of his work.
Shallow and incomplete research has also plagued the literature
particularly in the case of those who examined their subject from a
genealogical perspective. Alfred Barrios and Marie Barrios Caballero,
in their History of the BawZas Farnilys, for example, confused the
isleño settlement of Galveztown in Louisiana with Galvezton, Texas 6.
Sidney Villere, in The Cana? Islands Migratzon to Louisiancz, 1778-
1783; the History and Passenger Lists of the Isleños Volunteer Re-cruits
and their Families', confounded his readers by neglecting to
cite the legajos in the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba (Archivo General
de Indias) from which he had extracted his data.
The lamentable state of the historiography serves to accentuate
the need for scholars to direct their attention to this important area
of social and economic history. The significante of studying the
history of the isleños in Texas and Louisiana transcends the mere
examination of one ethnic element and its experiences on the fringes
of the northern frontier of Spanish America. The canario immigra-tion
must be studied in the context of the needs and exigencies of
the Spanish Crown in the eighteenth century, and in that of the
ever-changing international rivalry between France, Spain and En-gland
in North America. Moreover, the experiences of the isleños
in Texas and Louisiana must be considered in relation to that of their
cousins who settled in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico and other parts
of the Spanish colonial empire. Why, for example, were the isleños
of Louisiana more successful in planting and sustaining their ethnic
culture than those in other parts of Latin America?
4. Louisiana Hktorical Quarterly, voI. XiiI, New Orleans, 1930, pp. 55S-609.
5. MARREROL, ouisiana, 1977. The authors indicate tha t this work is a translation
of MIGUELR ODRÍGUEZD ÍAZD E QUINTANAH: istoria de la familia Barrios, Las Palmas
[no datel.
6. ALFREDB ARRIOS and MARIE BARRIOSC ABALLE:R OH istory of the Barrios Family.
MARREROL, ouisiana, 1977, p. 111.
7. New Orleans, 1971.
The answers to this and to many other key questions may be
found among the wealth of primary documentation contained in ar-chives
on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The manuscript sources
for the history of the isleños of Louisiana and Texas are indeed rich,
diverse, and in many cases, just now becoming available for consul-tation.
By far the wealthiest sources of documentation lie in the Archivo
General of Indias in Sevilla. The Papeles Procedentes de Cuba (Sec-ción
XI) and Gobierno-Audiencias de Guadalajara y Santo Domin-go
(Sección IV) hold a tremendous amount of data concerning the
planning and execution of the migration of isleños to the New World,
as well as the early operations of the fledgling colonies. Pioneer
scholars such as Gilbert Din, Francisco Morales Padrón, Pable Tor- ,,
nero Tinajero and Antonio Acosta Rodríguez utilized the correspon- -
dence between colonial governors, and reports filed by Crown officials E
in Galveztown, San Bernardo and Valenzuela, al1 contained in these o
n -
sections in the AGI, to document the early history of the isleño ex- =m
O
perience in LouisianalO. Other sections of the AGI, such as Contra- £E
tación (Sección III), Estado (Sección IX) and Ultramar (Sección X) S
E hold scattered materials pertaining to the migration and administra- =
tion of the settlementsU, but the Papeles and Audiencias documen- 3
tation emerge as the most lucrative sources. -- 0
While the major administrative records may be found in Spanish m
E
archives, local manuscript repositories in Louisiana and Texas con- o
tain a tremendous amount of material documenting the everyday so-cial
and economic life of the canario settlers in the New World. The n
E bulk of these records are maintained in county and parish cour- -
a
thouses '" and in state, university, museum and church archives. 2
n
Perhaps the richest sources for a collective biography of the 0
Louisiana isleños lie among the parish courthouse records for St. 3
Bernard, Ascension and Ibewille Parishes (corresponding to the co- O
8. SEE ROSCOER . HILL: Descriptive Catalogue of the Documents relating to the
History of the United States in the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba deposited in the
Archivo General de Indias at Seville, Washington, 1916; New York, 1965.
9. CEE: Catálogo de documentos del Archivo General de Indias - Sección V, Go-bierno,
Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 2 vols., New Orleans, 1968.
10. FR.&NCISCMOO RALEPSA DR~NLa: s Canartas y la política emigratoria a Indias,
"Primer Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana", Las Palmas, 1977, pp. 211-291 ;
P.&BLOTO RNEROTI NAJER:O E migración Canaria a América: la expedición civico-militar
a Luisiana de 1777-1779, "Primer Coloquio.. ." , pp. 345-354 : ANTONIOA COSTAR ODRÍ-
GUEZ: Ideas sobre el consumo de inmigrantes canarios en América, "Primer Colo-quio..
.", pp. 338341 ; GILBERTD IN: History of the Isleños in Louisiana (in progress).
11. Dirección General de Archivos y Bibliotecas: Gub de fuentes para la historia
de Ibero-América consentadas en España, 2 vols., Madrid, 1966, pp. 27-61.
12. Parishes in Louisiana are analogous to counties in other states.
lonial settlements of San Bernardo, Valenzuela and Galveztown), as
well as those for Orleans Parish 13. These documents consist primarily
of notarial acts, including property transfers, building and marriage
contracts, mortgages, slave sales, powers of attorney, emancipations
and wills. Judicial records, such as those found in the parish cour-thouses
and in the Judicial Records of the Spanish Cabildo at the
Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, are particularly valuable
in reconstructing the lives and experiences of the isleños. Contained
within these archives are criminal and civil suits, successions, plan-tation
and household inventories, business and personal contracts,
and material relating to slavery.
Religious archives also hold a considerable amount of material
concerning the lives of Louisiana isleños. The Archives of the Dio-cese
of Baton Rouye hold the baptismal, marriage and burial records
D from the parish churches of Valenzuela and Galveztown; the parish
church records for San Bernardo still remain in the archives of Our
Lady of Lourdes Church in Violet, and those for St. Louis Cathedral -
among the Cathedral Archives of the Ursuline Convent in New Or- o"
E leans. In addition, chancery records, held partly in the New Orleans ; Archdiocesan Archives and partly at Notre Dame University in In- mE
diana Id, contain correspondence between civil and ecclesiastical offi-
-
cials, dispensations for marriage, instructions to clerics from superiors $
in Spain and Havana, and financia1 accounts 15.
- -
0
Several other repositories in Louisiana hold material pertaining
to early isleño settlement. The minutes and fiscal records of the
Cabildo, as well as the nineteenth-century records of the Civil District !
Court, are located at the New Orlenas Public Library. The Pintado -2
family papers, housed at the Louisiana State University Archives in $
Baton Rouge, contain several references to isleño settlement in GaI-veztown
and Valenzuela, including surveys of plantations held by
canarios in these areas. The libraries of Loyola University (New
Orleans), Louisiana State Universiq, and the University of Southwest
Louisiana (Lafayette) al1 maintain microfilm copies of selected lega-jos
from the Archivo General de Indias (Papeles de Cuba and Au-diencia
de Santo Domingo) that pertain to Louisiana.
It is strongly suspected that Cuban archives contain significant
13. Microñim copies of these notarial rewrds are available for consultation at the
Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge.
14. Microñim copies of the Records of the Diocese of LouZsiana and the Floridas,
1576-1803 are avaiiable for wnsultation at the Louisiana State Museum and other
repositories in Louic'ia.
15. CHARLESE . NOLAN:A Southern Catholic Heritage, Volume I, Colonial Period,
17041813, New Orleam, 1976.
materials relating to the Louisiana isleños. Included among the re-cords
of the Archivo Nacional de Cuba in Havana are correspon-dence
between Bernardo de Gálvez, Governor of Louisiana, and José
de Gálvez, Visitador General of New Spain (containing severa1 letters
not found in the Papeles de Cuba or the Audiencia de Santo Domin-go),
and eight legalos concerning commerce between Havana and
New Orleans le.
Local archiva1 sources documenting the history of the isleños of
Texas are no less replete with documentation. The most valuable
body of records evolve from the archives of Bexar County17, divided
in 1899 into two sections: the ((Bexar Archivesu located in Austin;
and the ((Bexar County Archives)) housed in the courthouse at San
Antonio. The latter collection includes such vital material as land
grant and property transfer records, probate proceedings, powers of
attorney, business and marriage contracts, civil suits, military reports,
and other relevant governmental records from the founding of San
Antonio by the isIeños in 1731 through the early years of the twen-tieth
centuryls. The Bexar Archives, located at the Barker Texas
History Center in Austin, houses most of the administrative records
pertaining to the isleño settkments in and around San Antonio, such
as decrees and correspondence from Spain, Mexico City and Coa-huila,
proceedings of the Cabildo, administrative records of the gover-nors
of the province of Texas, military, records and census reports
from 1717 to 1836 19. Also located at the Barker Texas History Cen-ter
is the Louis Lenz Collection, consisting of severa1 important or-ders,
letters and reports pertaining to the migration of the Canary
Islanders from Veracruz northward to San Antonio in 1731.
The Texas State Library, also in Austin, holds two collections
that are of interest to scholars of isleño history. The Pérez de Alma-zán
Papers contain information pertaining to the division of land
in the Presidio of San Antonio among canario settlers. Found among
the papers of the Valentine O. King Collection in documentation
reiating to isieño famiiies and their settiement on lanas arounci San
Antonio.
Texas is also blessed with a wealth of religious documentation
pertaining to the canarios. The Archives of the Diocese of San An-
16. LUIS MARINO PÉREZ: Guide to Materials fw Arnerican Histwy in Cuban
ArckZves, Washington, 1907; JOAQU~LNL AVER~AY SM ART~NEZH:i storia de los avchivos
de Cuba, La Habana, 1912.
17. San Antonio is the govemmental center for Bexar County.
18. ROBERTD . G~ E ENA: Guide to the Bexar County Archives, San Antonio, 1972.
19. GREEN: A Guide to the Bexar County Archives: CHESTERV . KIELMAN:G uide
to the Mimofilm Edition of the Bexav Archives, 1717-1836, 3 vols., Austin, 1967-1971.
tonio contain the baptismal, marriage and burial records for the
isleño parishoners of the Cathedral of San Fernando, as well as seve-ral
volumes of administrative records dealing with missionary, mili-tary
and Indian affairs. The Catholic Archives of Texas, Tocated in
Austin, holds an extensive microfilm collection that includes films of
isleño documentation from Spanish and Mexican archives.
Researchers would be remiss to neglect the wealth of documen-tary
materials in Mexican archives. The Archivo General de la Na-ción
(Mexico City), Ramos de Historia and Provincias Internas, are
replete with accounts of the expeditions of the canarios from Vera-cruz
to San Antonio in the early eighteenth century, of problems
between the isleños and other settlers in Texas, and of plans to at-tract
more immigrants from the Canary Islands. Similar administra-tive
documentation may also be found in Saltillo, Coahuila, in the 2
Archivo de la Secretaría de Gobierno del Estado N
E The time is opportune for scholars of Canary-American history O
to make use of these wealthy manuscript sources to reconstruct the n--
history of the isleños in Texas and Louisiana. After nearly two hun- m
O
E dred years of abuse and neglect, many of these records have just E
2 recently become availabIe for consultation. The Louisiana State Mu- E
seum in New Orleans is in the midst of a project to calendar and
-
microfilm its Iarge holdings of French and Spanish judicial records. 3
Similar projects are either recently completed or are in progress at - -
0
repositories in both states. m
E
The wealth of documentation begs for historians to address a O
multitude of viable research topics. A collective biography of the
n Canary Island inmmigrants to Texas or Louisiana in the eighteenth -E
century, comparative studies on the development of isleño commu- a
nities in different parts of Latin America, or the evolution of isleño 2
n
culture in areas thousands of miles from its origins, are al1 possible n
areas of investigation. Scholars in Louisiana and Texas are just now 3
O realizing the potential of local archiva1 sources for the development of
social and economic history. It is hoped that students of canario
history will also utilize these sources in order to gain a deeper un-derstanding
of the isleño experience in Louisiana and Texas.
20. BOLTOX: Guide to Materials for the History of the United States in tke
Principal Archives of Mexico, Washington, 1913.
3 60
A P P E N D I X
DIRECTDRY OF MAJOR ARCHIVAL REPOSITORIES CONTAINING
ISLEÑO MATERIAL IN LOUISIANA AND TEXAS
1. LOUISIANA:
A) New Orleans Area:
1. Louisiana State Museum
Louisiana Historical Center
Old U. S. Mnt
400 Esplanade Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70116
2. Archive of St. Louis Cathedral and of the Archdiocese of New
úrieans m
D
Ursuline Convent
E 531 Ursulines Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 701 16 O
n--
3. New Orleans Notarial Archives m
O
Civil District Court Building E
E
421 Loyola Avenue 2
New Orleans, Louisiana 70 112 -E
4. New Orleans Public Library 3
219 LoyoIa Avenue -
New Orleans, Louisiana 701112 -
0
m
E
5. Tuiane University O
Howard-Tilton Library
Special Collections Division n
7001 Freret Street 70118 -E
a
6. Loyola University l
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118 n
n
7. St. Bernard Parish Archives 3
Courthouse O
Chalmette, Louisiana 70043
8. Our Lady of Lourdes Church
P. O. Box 217
St. Bernard Highway
Violet, Louisiana 70092
E) Baton Rouge:
1. Department of State Archives and Records
P. O. Box 44125
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70804
2. Archives of the Diocese of Baton Rouge
P. O. Box 2028
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70821
3. Louisiana State University Archives
Library
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
C) Lafayette:
1. University of Southwest Louisiana
Center for huisiana Studies
Lafayette, Louisiana 701504
11. SEXAS: 2
E
A) San Antonio: O
n 1. Bexar County Archives =m
Office of the County Clerk O
E
San Antonio, Texas 782015 E 2
2. Archives of the Church of San Fernando and of the Diocese E
of San Antonio
P. O. BOX 32648 3
San Antonio, Texas 78284 -
0m
3. Archives of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas E
The Almo O
San Antonio, Texas 78205
n
E
B) Austin: a
n
1. Barker Texas History Center n
University of Texas
Austin, Texas 78712 O3
2. Texas State Library
T nrnnnri A- 7 q . r - 1 - C.+-+- A V ~ L : . ~ - C --A T ; k r l ~ m r Rn;lA;n-
YVL'U"" UC Y U I U l U Y L U C C lYClll.C.7 -U YIYIYI, YUl'UIllb
Box 12927, Capitol Station
Austin, Texas 78711
3. Catholic Archives of Texas
Box 13327, Capitol Station
Austin, Texas 78711