HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AND FIELD WORK 23 



pretend to see in the nighttime, and serpents and men and every- 

 thing that they see about them." 



In point of time, the next historical narrative to appear was the 

 First of Peter Martyr's Eight Decades, also known as the De Orbe 

 Novo. The first Decade was published in 1511 and is drawn from 

 the accounts of Andreas Morales, who was sent by Governor Ovando, 

 the successor of Christopher Columbus as governor of Santo Do- 

 mingo, to explore the interior of the island. 



Fernandez de Oviedo published his Natural History of the Indies 

 in 1526. Oviedo lived in Santo Domingo shortly after Morales 

 explored the interior of the island. Another interesting and valu- 

 able record is that of Girolamo Benzoni, who visited Santo Domingo 

 in 1541 and remained there for 14 years. His History of the New 

 World was published in English by the Hakluyt Society in 1857. 

 Benzoni's observations regarding native life are first hand, as he 

 lived among them almost as a mendicant. 



Several of the later publications are for the most part extracted 

 from these early writings. Worthy of mention are such books as 

 Jeffery's Natural and Civil History, published in London in 1760; 

 Charlevoix's Historia de I'Isle Espagnole, which appeared in 1730; 

 Herrera's book, in which mention is made of painted aboriginal 

 pottery, also borrowed from the accounts of Las Casas, was published 

 in 1601. Washington Irving's Life of Columbus, first published in 

 1827, was inspired by the publication of the Navarette documents 

 pertaining to the life of Columbus. Irving's treatment of Spanish 

 contacts with native life during the days of Columbus is exhaustive. 



A somewhat different approach is that of J. Walter Fewkes, 

 whose study and compilation of the literature pertaining to the life 

 of the natives of Porto Rico and of Santo Domingo, while exhaustive 

 in itself, is supplemented with archeological data. The " magnum 

 opus " of Fewkes's The Aborigines of Porto Eico and Neighboring 

 Islands, appeared in 1907 in the Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology. This work embodies the results 

 of studies begun in Porto Rico in 1902. Fewkes visited Santo 

 Domingo in 1903. A publication. Preliminary Report on an Arche- 

 ological Trip to the West Indies, describing these early studies, 

 appeared as a Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection number in 1904. 

 In this early report were described earthenware vessels from the 

 Archbishop Merino Santo Domingan collection. Fewkes also 

 studied the Imbert collection at Puerto Plata and other pottery 

 collections in Santo Domingo. Among the several publications of 

 Fewkes pertaining to the archeology of the island of Santo Domingo 

 is his monographic treatment of the Indian Collection from the 

 Greater and Lesser Antilles in the Museum of the American In- 



