WHEN France Vinton Scholes received the Serra Award of the Academy of American Franciscan History in 1956, one of his distinguished colleagues remarked to me that “Scholes is a historian's historian.” Those of us who had the privilege to work with him, students and colleagues, also knew him as a master teacher and an ideal university administrator. In 1969 when the University of New Mexico administration building was named for its former Academic Vice President and Graduate Dean, we told him that it had always been “Scholes Hall ” for us.

A FEW months ago the Board of Directors of the Historical Society of New Mexico agreed that the Society should, from time to time, recognize outstanding men and women who have worked toward the same goals as the Society: to increase public understanding and knowledge of history, and, in particular, the history of New Mexico. Tonight we are honoring the distinguished historian Dr. France Vinton Scholes, whom I have known for more than thirty-five years, since the autumn day when I first walked past the shrunken heads on the fifth floor of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University to the end of a crooked office corridor–and, all unsuspecting, into my life work. Into the profession of history by the back door! This short journey into a long future led not only to many satisfying years of collaboration with Dr. Scholes, but to an abiding interest in New Mexico and the Spanish Southwest.

THE state of Morelos in today's México comprised two rich and important provinces within the Aztec Confederacy when Spanish forces penetrated it for the first time in March of 1521. In that year of conflict, the Tlahuica and Xochimilca peoples who dominated the numerous settlements and fertile, well-watered, volcanic soils of its mountain-surrounded valleys were producing large quantities of valued agrarian and other goods. For generations, dating back 8,000 or more years, they and their predecessors had done so. The laborers among them—the commoners or macehuales, the serf-like, soil-bound mayeques, and the slaves—used valleys in the high-altitude, temperate to semitropical and semi-arid north and in the less-elevated, tropically hot and humid south to grow maize, beans, chile, tomatoes, peppers, squashes, some fruits, chía (a species of sage), huautli (amaranth), cotton and, perhaps, cacao.

THROUGH the late fall and early spring of 1560, a Spanish official, Diego de Madrid, under authority of the Royal Audiencia of New Spain, travelled to twenty-five settlements within the provincia of Huexotzinco. This area, presently located in the Mexican state of Puebla, extended from the modern site of San Juan Texmelucan, in the north, to Atlixco, to the south. Madrid, named as juez de comisión, visited a region over 155 square miles in extent. The purpose of Madrid's inspection concerned a census of all persons living in the jurisdiction. Numerical totals were not the sole objective of the survey; ultimately all manner of census categories comprised the population listing: old persons, widows, widowers, deceased individuals, youths, children, artisans, church workers, “nobles,” “commoners.”

AFTER the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Mexico in 1571, one of its functionaries, Antonio de Espejo, became a wealthy cattle rancher and entrepreneur in the Bajío (lowlands) region north of Mexico City, an area which today stretches from San Juan del Río through Querétaro to Aguascalientes. During November 1582 until September 1583, Espejo made a reconnaissance of New Mexico and he became a strong contender for the royal contract to colonize New Mexico as the Spanish king and the Mexican viceroy began to screen suitable applicants. It is probable that Antonio de Espejo would have been awarded the New Mexico patent had he not fled central Mexico for the north in the spring of 1581, because there was a warrant out for his arrest on a murder charge. As a Familiar of the Inquisition Espejo attempted to claim immunity from criminal persecution. His uncle and legal representative, Francisco de Santiago, handled his affairs during the civil trial and as the Inquisition investigated the murder charges, because Espejo had already gone to the Nueva Vizcaya frontier.

THE Mexican Revolution was almost two and a half years old when General Victoriano Huerta captured the presidential chair. The chaotic period between November, 1910 and February, 1913 witnessed an ever-increasing militarization of the country which just a few years earlier had prided itself as the most stable republic and lucrative investment field in Latin America. When the military campaigns of the anti-Díaz movement began to assume serious proportions early in 1911, the government in Mexico City set out to increase at once the size and efficiency of the federal army and the rurales. Although Díaz efforts were for naught, the preparations themselves augured ominously for the immediate future. When the rebel general Pascual Orozco captured Ciudad Juárez in May of 1911, the die was cast. A small but effective revolutionary army, adept at guerrilla warfare, had humbled a professional fighting force schooled in the nineteenth-century German tradition.

PERHAPS the most vexing problem in the historiography of Michoacán is the question of the authorship of the Relación de las ceremonias y ritos y población y gobernación de los indios de la Provincia de Michoacán, commonly known as the Relación de Michoacán. This small volume, conserved in the Library of the Escorial in Spain (MS. Ç. IV.5.), is our principal source of information regarding the pre-conquest history and culture of the Tarascan Indians of Michoacán and their first contacts with the Spaniards. It originally consisted of three parts, which the author described in his introductory letter as follows:

IN the early fall of 1969, I agreed to write an article for a special issue of The Americas honoring France V. Scholes. My contribution would be an essay on the status of biography in the literature of New Spain. Within a week after the selection of a topic, I was invited, as a last-minute replacement, to attend the Third Meeting of United States and Mexican Historians in Oaxtepec, Morelos. I served as discussant in a session devoted to Mexican biography since 1800. Ideas brought out in the discussion and commentary at the Oaxtepec meeting are gratefully acknowledge in this essay. An additional source for this paper is a questionnaire mailed to leading scholars of the United States in the field of colonial Mexican history. Several friends and colleagues have been kind enough to offer positive encouragement for this project. I have made no attempt here to survey all biographies of colonial personalities in New Spain, nor will I inflict my judgment of each study on the scholarly community. Book reviewers, past and present, have done their work. Generally, emphasis is on New Spain proper rather than the peripheral areas of the viceroyalty. I shall approach the subject of biography in a rather broad and unorthodox context. Interpretations and conclusions are mine, not the responsibility of trusting colleagues who gave me permission to quote them.