¹ Foglietta, Uberto, De Ratio Scribendae Wstoriae (Rome, 1574),Google Scholar quoted in Cochrane, Eric, Historians and Historiography of the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981), 485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² The extent of the writing on Garcilaso can be gauged even from the bibliography in de Santa María, Carmelo Sáenz, “Estudio preliminar” to de la Vega, Garcilaso Inca, Obras completas (4 vols.: Madrid, 1960), 1: 68–76.Google Scholar

³ Comentarios reales de los incas (2 vois.: Madrid, 1609-16). The second volume, dealing with the Spanish conquest, is more frequently referred to as Historia General del Perú.

⁴ The penchant for treating as accurate only the most “western” like traditional historical accounts, especially commonplace during the colonial period, has not yet received the treatment it needs in order to recognize the ethnocentric biases that underlie the evaluation of historical accounts based ultimately on oral sources of one kind or another. One such study, hardly even a beginning, is Henige, David, “Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Culture Contact.” Journal of African History, 23 (1982), 395–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Among these are Wedin, Ake, La cronología de la historia incaica: estudio crítica (Madrid, 1963)Google Scholar; idem, El concepto de lo incaico y las fuentes (Göteborg, 1966); Duviols, Pierre, “La dinastía de los Incas: ¿monarquía o diarquía?” Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 66 (1979), 67–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pupo-Walker, Enrique, “Los Comentarios reales y la historicidad de lo Imaginario,” Revista Iberoamericana, 44 (1978), 386–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ de la Vega, Garcilaso Inca, La Florida de Ynca … (Lisbon, 1605).Google Scholar A facsimile of this first edition has recently appeared, accompanied by an introduction by Sylvia-Lyn Hilton (Madrid, 1982). This is the text used in this paper. I refer to the folio numbers and include book and chapter references to facilitate consulting other editions.

⁷ It might be worth noting that the relationship between La Florida and the other sources is not unlike that of the Gospel of John with the three Synoptic Gospels.

⁸ Andrews, D.M., “De Soto’s Route from Cofitachequi, in Georgia, to Cosa, in Alabama,” American Anthropologist, 19 (1917), 55–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; U.S. Senate, Final Report of the U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission (Washington, 1939), 10 Google Scholar; Burgess, Charles E., “The De Soto Myth in Missouri.” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, 24 (1967/68), 304–05Google Scholar; Lankford, G.E., “A New Look at De Soto’s Route Through Alabama,” Journal of Alabama Archaeology, 23 (1977), 12 Google Scholar: Quinn, David B., ed., New American World (5 vols.: New York, 1978), 2: 91.Google Scholar

⁹ E.g. Pupo-Walker, Enrique, “Sobre las mutaciones creativas de la historia de un texto del Inca Garcilaso” in Homenaje a Luis Leal, ed. Bleznick, Donald W. and Valencia, Juan O. (Madrid, 1978), 145–61Google Scholar; Puccini, Darío, “Elementos de narración novelesca en ‘La Florida’ del Inca Garcilaso,” Revista Nacional de Cultura [Caracas], no. 240 (1979), 26–46 Google Scholar; Pupo-Walker, , Historia, creación y profecía en los textos del inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Madrid, 1980)Google Scholar; Rodríguez-Vecchini, Hugo, “Don Quijote y La Florida del Inca,” Revista Iberoamericana, 46 (1982), 587–620 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zamora, Margarita, “Language and Authority in the Comentarios reales,” Modern Language Quarterly, 43 (1982), 228–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jákfalvi-Leiva, Susana, Traducción, escritura ν violencia colonizadora: un estudio de la obra del Inca Garcilaso (Syracuse, 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Durand, José, “Veracidad y exactitud en ‘La Florida del Inca’,” Letras [Lima], nos. 54/55 (1955), 14350Google Scholar; “El proceso de redacción de las obras del Inca Garcilaso, I,” Annales du Faculté des Lettres [Aix], 35 (1962), 247–66; “El proceso de redacción de las obras del Inca Garcilaso, II,” Langues Néo-Latines, no. 164 (March 1963), 18–36; “Las enigmáticas fuentes de La Florida del Inca,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, no. 168 (1963), 597–609; “Los silencios del Inca Garcilaso,” Nuevo Mundo, no. 5 (November 1966), 66–72; “La memoria de Gonzalo Silvestre,” Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien [Caravelle], 7 (1966), 43–52; “El Inca, hombre en prisma,” Studi di Letterature Ispani-Americani, 1 (1967), 41–57; “Entrevista a José Durand,” Debate [Lima], no. 10 ([1981]), 10–22.

¹¹ Dobyns, Henry, Their Number Becomes Thinned (Knoxville, 1983),Google Scholar

¹² Henige, David, “If Pigs Could Fly,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16 (1985/86), 701–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ de Santa María, Sáenz, “Estudio preliminar,” 26–28,Google Scholar xlv-1, offers a brief but cogent assessment of this issue, although it will be clear that I do not always agree with Sáenz de Santa Maria’s conclusions. Likewise, in their introduction to de la Vega, Garcilaso Inca, The Florida of the Inca (Austin, 1951), 32–34,Google Scholar John and Jeannette Varner succinctly lay out reasons for doubting Garcilaso yet conclude that his testimony has been unfairly devalued by historians.

¹⁴ Gay, John, Fables, “The Elephant and the Bookseller.”Google Scholar

¹⁵ Relaçam verdadeira dos trabalhos q gouernador dõ Fernão de Souto e certos portuguesas passarom no descobriméto da Frolida [sic] (Evora, 1557). This edition is reproduced in Robertson, James A., trans, and ed., True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Hernando de Soto and Certain Portuguese Gentlemen During the Discovery of the Province of Florida, Now Newly Set Forth by a Gentleman of Elvas (2 vols; DeLand, Fla., 1932–33), vol. 1.Google Scholar

¹⁶ For a capsule publication history of these works see U.S. Senate, Final Report, 4–11.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Garcilaso’s Dedication to Maximilian of Austria, dd 12 March 1587, to his translation of Diálogos de Amor, in Garcilaso, , Obras completas, 1: [5].Google Scholar

¹⁸ For present purposes I accept the role of Garcilaso’s informant as he described it, but point out that such an informant, whether Silvestre or another, would not have been a sine qua non for Garcilaso if he was intent on producing precisely what he did produce. For a brief discussion of possible reasons for Garcilaso’s failure to acknowledge his informant by name, see below, pp. 20–21. We know virtually nothing of Silvestre beyond what Garcilaso tells us in La Florida and Historia General del Perú, rather surprising if we are to believe Silvestre’s own account of his manifold activities.

¹⁹ For overviews of the genre see Thomas, Henry, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry (Cambridge, 1920), 1–146 Google Scholar; Stewart, Philip, Imitation and Illusion in the French Memoir-Novel, 1700–1750 (New Haven, 1969), 60–101 Google Scholar; Clements, Robert J. and Giboldi, Joseph, Anatomy of the Novela: The European Tale Collection From Boccaccio and Chaucer to Cervantes (New York, 1977), 84–90 Google Scholar; Adams, Percy G., Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel (Lexington, Ky., 1983),Google Scholar passim.

²⁰ Garcilaso, , La Florida, 4.Google Scholar A possible reading of this statement is that Garcilaso felt that way more than twenty years before he got together with Silvestre. But in another Dedication to the Diálogos de Amor, this one to Felipe II and dated 19 January 1586, he told his hoped-for patron that “until now” the activities of De Soto’s and his men had been “buried in the darkness of the memory.” Garcilaso, , Obra completas, 1: [8].Google Scholar

²¹ E.g., Bourne’s, Edward G. introduction to The Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto (2 vols.: New York, 1904), 1: ixⁿ Google Scholar; Varner and Varner, Florida, xliiⁿ; Durand, “Enigmáticas fuentes,” 598n2, 602; idem, “Proceso,” 34nl2 (from which the quotation comes); Aurelio Miró, Quesada S., El Inca Garcilaso y otros estudios garcilasistas (Madrid, 1971), 149–50Google Scholar; Hilton in Garcilaso, La Florida, xcvii. Castanien, Donald G., El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (New York, 1969), 67–68,Google Scholar keeps an open mind. It appears that the Varners now accept that Garcilaso used both Elvas and even Ranjel: see their Dogs of the Conquest (Norman, Okla., 1983), 207-08n30. Chang-Rodríguez, Raquel, Violencia y subversión en la prosa hispanoamericana, siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1983),Google Scholar 24nl2, believes that Garcilaso “certainly” knew of the Relaçam.

²² The question of Garcilaso’s knowledge of the Relaçam is only made more vexed by the inventory of his library, in which are mentioned “four books on Florida” without further details. Durand, José, “La biblioteca del Inca,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 2 (1948), 254.Google Scholar It is hard to imagine what these might have been, but it does suggest that Garcilaso had made an attempt to research his work making it all the more unlikely that Elvas’ Relaçam would have escaped his notice.

²³ Durand, “Proceso,” 34nl2, is content to assert that “it can be put in doubt” that Silvestre needed the Relaçam to “refresh” his own memories.

²⁴ Durand, “Preceso,” 34nl2, argues that the proximity of Elvas to Silvestre’s area is immaterial since the Relaçam was published in Evora (all of 75 miles away), but this hardly makes sense. In the sixteenth century—perhaps even more than now—the place of publication would have been less important that the locale of the author in terms disseminating information.

²⁵ del Castillo, Bernal Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, ed. de Santa Maria, Carmelo Sáenz (Madrid, 1982), 33–36 (eh. 18)Google Scholar

²⁶ Gay, John, Fables, “The Painter.”Google Scholar

²⁷ Garcilaso, La Florida, 84^r-84^v (IIⁱ, 27). John Varner, El Inca Garcilaso (Austin, 1968), 337η., considers that this declaration may have been no more than a sop to the intellectual temper of the times, which had begun to react to the excesses early in the sixteenth century. On the pervasive influence of the chivalric romances in the New World and the writings about it see Leonard, Irving, Books of the Brave (New York, 1964), 13–74 passim Google Scholar; Schevill, Rodolfo, “La novela histórica, las crónicas de Indias y los libros caballerias,” Revista de las Indias, 2d ser., 19 (1943), 173–96Google Scholar; Thomas, , Spanish and Portuguese Romances, 82.Google Scholar More specifically, Johnson, Julie G., “Three Celestinesque Figures of Colonial Spanish American Literature,” Celestinesca, 5(1981), 41–46.Google Scholar Compare Garcilaso’s expressed view of this literature with those of Oviedo, who even though (or perhaps because) he had himself written a chivalric romance, hastened to assure his readers that, when describing the many wonders of the New World, he was not retailing “the absurdities of the books of Amadís and those that depend on them.” de Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández y Valdés, , Historia general y natural de los Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del Mar Océano, ed. de los Ríos, José Amador (4 vols.: Madrid, 1851–55), 1: 179 (6/8).Google Scholar

²⁸ Durand, , “Veracidad y exactitud,” 145–49Google Scholar; Brain, Jeffrey P. et al, “Ethnohistoric Archaeology and the De Soto Entrada into the Lower Mississippi Valley” in The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers , 7 (1972), 242 Google Scholar; Hilton in Garcilaso, La Florida, xcv-vi. On promising the truth as a special form of fiction see Adams, , Travel Literature, 81–102.Google Scholar

²⁹ de Kurlat, Frida Weber, “Estructura novelesca del Amadís de Gaula,” Revista de Literaturas Modernas, 5 (1967), 29–54 Google Scholar; Eisenberg, Daniel, “The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry,” Quaderni Ibero-Americani, no. 41 (1972), 81–102 Google Scholar; Fogelquist, James D., El Amadís y el género de la historia fingida (Madrid, 1982), esp. 9–27.Google Scholar

³⁰ For Geoffrey’s immense and durable influence, both in and out of Britain, see among many others Kendrick, Thomas P., British Antiquity (London, 1950), 4–17, 89–95Google Scholar; Tetlock, J.S.P., The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley, 1950)Google Scholar; Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Margaret Schlauch, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Early Polish Historiography: A Supplement,” Speculum, 44 (1969), 258–63, and sources cited there. For his effect long after the Tudor period (when political considerations gave his work a cachet) see Jones, Ernest, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1640–1800 (Berkeley,1944).Google Scholar

³¹ The buried-book and allied motifs in antiquity receive comprehensive treatment in Speyer, Wolfgang, Bucherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike (Göttingen, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar One can hardly read Speyer’s almost endless litany, especially as it relates to the often very belated discovery of the deceptions, without some disheartenment.

³² Some of the most successful fantasy fiction of the twentieth century, most notably the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, had adopted just this technique, which, if nothing else, holds out textual hope to the heroically credulous. Perhaps two thousand years hence, as context and immediacy fade, scholars will accept the Middle-Earth stories as history.

³³ Frazer, Richard M. jr., ed. and trans., The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares and Phrygian (Bloomington, 1966)Google Scholar; Olsen, Birger Munk, L’étude des auteurs classiques latines auxXle elXlie siècles (Paris, 1982), 363–82, 413–20.Google Scholar

³⁴ This literature is quite extensive. For a summing up of the beginnings and of the loss of historians’ innocence see Syme, Ronald, Emperors and Biography. Studies in the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1970), esp. 266–80Google Scholar; Birley, A.R., “The Augustan History” in Latin Biography, ed. Dorey, T.A. (London, 1967), 113–38Google Scholar; Béranger, Jean, “Mommsen et Y Histoire Auguste,” Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium (1977/78), 17–34.Google Scholar

³⁵ Adams, Percy G., Travellers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 (Berkeley, 1962), 105–17Google Scholar; Burch, Charles E., “British Criticism of Defoe as a Novelist,” Englische Studien, 67 (1932/33), 178–98Google Scholar; Baine, Rodney M., “Daniel Defoe and Robert Drury’s Journal,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 16 (1974), 479–91.Google Scholar

³⁶ Most recently Chapman, Malcolm, The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture (London, 1978), 29–52 Google Scholar; Grobman, Neil R., “James Macpherson, Ossian, and the Revival of Interest in Oral Bardic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore, 6/1-2 (Spring-Fall 1980), 51–56 Google Scholar; Manning, Susan, “Ossian, Scott, and Nineteenth Century Scottish Literary Nationalism,” Studies in Scottish Literature, 17 (1982), 39–54.Google Scholar

³⁷ Numerous examples are given in Wilhelm, Friedrich, “Uber fabulistische Quellenangaben,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 33 (1908), 286–339 Google Scholar; Tieje, Arthur J., “A Peculiar Phase of the Theory of Realism in Pre-Richardsonian Fiction,” Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 28 (1913), 216–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, William, Fact or Fiction. The Dilemma of the Renaissance Storyteller (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stewart, , Imitation and Illusion, 13–31.Google Scholar Significantly, given the intellectual tides of the times, the author of Amadís de Gaula, the paradigmatic Spanish chivalric romance, claimed that he was simply passing along the contents of an ancient manuscript discovered in a recently-excavated tomb. de Kurlat, Weber, “Estructura novelesca;” Fogelquist, Amadís, 9–27.Google Scholar

³⁸ This vast literature is surveyed in Speyer, Wolfgang, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum (Munich, 1971).Google Scholar

³⁹ Briefly but with a useful bibliography, Haywood, Ian, “The Making of History; Historiography and Literary Forgery in the Eighteenth Century,” Literature and History, 9 (1983), 139–51.Google Scholar Also Piggott, Stuart, William Stukeley, An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary (Oxford, 1950), 154–63Google Scholar; Randall, H.J., “Splendide Mendax,” Antiquity, 7 (1933), 49–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Birley, Robert, “George Psalmanazar,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, 23/6 (1982), 376–89Google Scholar; Morgan, Prys, loto Morganwg (Aberyswyth, 1975), 24–74.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Not that Spain had previously been exempt from such works. Earlier examples are discussed in Tate, Robert B., “Mythology in Spanish Historiography of the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” Hispanic Review, 22 (1954), 1–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Colin, “Per Abbat and the Poema de mio Cid,” Medium Aevum, 42 (1973), 1–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richthofen, Erich von, “The Problem of Fiction Alternating With Historical Documentation in the Old Epics and the Castillan Chronicles,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 6 (1981/82), 359–76.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Kendrick, T.D., “An Examply of the Theodicy Motive in Antiquarian Thought” in Fritz Saxl, 1890–1948, ed. Gordon, Donald J. (London, 1957), 309–25Google Scholar; Rodríguez, Darío Cabanelas, El Morisco Granadino Alonso del Castillo (Granada, 1965), 177–232 Google Scholar; Monroe, James T., Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Leiden, 1970), 14–16.Google Scholar

⁴² Alcantara, José Godoy, Historia crítica de los Falsos Cronicones (Madrid, 1868),Google Scholar remains the most thorough study of these materials.

⁴³ Monroe, , Islam, 8–11 Google Scholar; Tichnor, George, A History of Spanish Literature (3d ed, 3 vols.; Boston, 1866), 1: 193–94.Google Scholar Cf. Luce López Baralt, “Las problemáticas ‘profecías’ de San Isidoro de Sevilla y de cAli ibnu Yebir Alferesiyo en torno al Islam español del siglo XVI,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 29 (1980), 343–60. The role of the Moriscos, culturally marginal déracinés like Garcilaso, is prominent in these works.

⁴⁴ Festugière, Paul, “Ginés Pérez de Hita: sa personne et son oeuvre,” Bulletin Hispanique, 46 (1944), 146–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiegman, Neal A., Ginés Pérez de Hitay la novela romántica (Madrid, 1971)Google Scholar; Carrasco-Urgoiti, Maria S., The Moorish Novel (Boston, 1976), 87–123.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Wardropper, Bruce W., “Don Quixote: Story of History?” Modern Philology, 63 (1965–66), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is perhaps of interest to note that João de Barros, the premier Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century, as well as Oviedo, apprenticed for historical work by composing a chivalric romance. See Boxer, C.R., João de Barros: Portuguese Humanist and Historian of Asia (New Delhi, 1961), 38–46 Google Scholar (for Clarimundo, published in 1520), and Merrim, Stephanie, “The Castle of Discourse: Fernández de Oviedo’s Don Claribalte (1519), or ‘Los correos andan más que los caballeros’,” Modern Language Notes, 97 (1982), 529–46.Google Scholar At least one of Oviedo’s nineteenth-century editors accepted his assertion that Claribalte was really only a Spanish translation of yet another long-lost and newly-discovered manuscript. See Oviedo, , Historia general, 29.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Durand, , “Proceso,” 18–36.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Riley, E.C., Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel (Oxford, 1962), 163–99, 205–12Google Scholar; Forcione, Alban K., Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles (Princeton, 1970), 155–66Google Scholar; Villanueva, Francisco Márquez, Fuentes literarias cervantinas (Madrid, 1973), 211–15Google Scholar; Lathrop, Thomas A., “Cide Hamete Benengeli y su manuscrito” in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo (Madrid, 1981), 693–97.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Mostoles, Angel Ligero, “Autenticidad histórica de personajes citados en Quijote y otras obras de Cervantes” in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo, 183–95Google Scholar; de Riquer, Martín, “Cervantes y las cabellescas” in Suma Cervantina, ed. Avalle-Arce, J.B. (London, 1973), 273–92Google Scholar; Clements/Giboldi, Anatomy of the Novela, 84–90.

⁴⁹ For more on the technique see Leonard, , Books of the Brave, 30–35 Google Scholar; Thomas, , Romances of Chivalry, 147–79Google Scholar; and Acera, Fernando M., “Verdad y objetivismo en la Historia de Rebus Hispaniae de Juan de Mariana,” Durius, 6 (1975), 15–28.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Just how obsessive the device became may be seen in Antonio de Guevara’s hypocritical use of it in his Relox de príncipes (Seville, 1529); Lucas, Florentino Zamora and Cuevas, Victor Hijes, El bachiller Pedro de Rua, humanista y crítico (Madrid, 1957), 57–80 Google Scholar; Jones, Joseph R., Antonio de Guevara (Boston, 1975), 63–64, 71–72, 133–37.Google Scholar

⁵¹ 2 Corinthians 13:1. Cf. Oviedo, , Historia, general, 1: 10 (1/1)Google Scholar

⁵² On encyclopedia informants in oral historiography (a field into which Garcilaso’s research techniques for La Florida places him) see Henige, David, Oral Historiography (London, 1982), 51–53 Google Scholar; Wright, Donald R., “Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants,” History in Africa, 8 (1981), 205–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵³ Quesada, Miró, El Inca Garcilaso, 152.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Durand, , “Enigmáticas fuentes,” 598.Google Scholar Durand pursues his argument in “La memoria de Gonzalo Silvestre,” in which he discusses Silvestre’s success at recalling the names of many of his fellow veterans by comparing La Florida with the information in the list of passengers for De Soto’s voyage. But need this success have been a matter of memory? It is noteworthy that Silvestre seems to have recalled only data—name and place of birth—that could be found in these very passenger lists, and no more. Could not Silvestre have had access to these lists? While this can only be conjecture, it is well to bear in mind that, although these are archives now, in the sixteenth century they were working documents that may have been available to interested parties in the same way, if not to the same degree, as the writings of Elvas, Ranjel, and Biedma. Nor is it inconceivable that once back in Spain Silvestre took pains to communicate with other survivors and in the process gathered such information; that is, much of it may have resulted from applied research rather than belated recollection.

⁵⁵ Garcilaso, La Florida, 66r (2/19). Dobyns, Number, 198, makes much of this datum.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 326v (6/11)

⁵⁷ Ibid., 226v (4/2)

⁵⁸ The whole issue of eyewitness credibility is inextricably bound up in all exercises that base themselves on the testimony of the early Spanish chroniclers. Recent studies of such testimony do not encourage those who would rely heavily on such testimony even when it is offered straightaway after the event witnessed. For more on this see Loftus, Elizabeth, Eyewitness Testimony (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar; The Recall Method in Social Surveys, ed. Moss, Louis and Goldstein, Harvey (London, 1979)Google Scholar; and Evaluating Witness Evidence, ed. Lloyd-Bostock, Sally and Clifford, Brian R. (New York, 1983).Google Scholar Perhaps not irrelevant to the present discussion in the interesting case of the height of Niagara Falls, which early observers overestimated by three or four times. These are presented and discussed in Dow, Charles M., Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls (2 vols.: Albany, 1921), 1: 21–65.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Adams, , Travellers, 132–41,Google Scholar is germane here.

⁶⁰ Livy, , History of Rome, 26,Google Scholar xlix, 6, where he refers to differences among his sources ranging from 300 to 3724 in one matter, between 2,000 and 10,000 in another, 10,000 and 25,000 in a third, and 60 and 19,000 (!) in a fourth, all with respect to Carthaginian troop and armament numbers mentioned in Roman records.

⁶¹ Garcilaso, La Florida, 27 r, 348r (1/15; 6/22)

⁶² Robertson, True Relation, ixr [600]; Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 545 Google Scholar (17/22) [570]; Biedma, “Relación del sucesos de la jornada del capitán Soto a la Florida …” in Madrid, Museo Naval, Colección de documentos y manuscritos compilados por Fernández de Navarrete (32 vols, in 38: Nendeln, 1971), 14: 213 [620].Google Scholar

⁶³ Robertson, True Relation, I: xxxvi^v–xxxvii^r

⁶⁴ Garcilaso, La Florida, 76v (2/24)

⁶⁵ Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 553 (17/24)Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Museo Naval Madrid, Collección, 14: 233

⁶⁷ Robertson, , True Relation, 1: lxxx^v Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Garcilaso, La Florida, 204^r–204^v (3/30), where we are told, with the attention to every odd detail that invests La Florida with such verisimilitude, that forty-seven Spaniards died in the battle while a further thirty-five died later from wounds received there; a nice touch.

⁶⁹ Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 569 (17/27)Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Museo Naval Madrid, Colección, 14: 229–30.

⁷¹ Robertson, True Relation, 1: lxxx^v

⁷² Garcilaso, La Florida, 205^v (3/31)

⁷³ Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 569 (17/27)Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Museo Naval Madrid, Colección, 14: 233

⁷⁵ Robertson, True Relation, 1: lxxxi^r

⁷⁶ Garcilaso, La Florida, 202^v (3/29)

⁷⁷ Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 569 (17/27)Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Museo Naval Madrid, Colección, 14: 236

⁷⁹ Robertson, , True Relation, 1: lxxxvii^r Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Garcilaso, La Florida, 219^v (3/37)

⁸¹ Oviedo, , Historia general, 1: 572 (17/27)Google Scholar

⁸² Museo Naval Madrid, Colección, 14: 237–38

⁸³ Robertson, , True Relation, 1: xc^v Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Garcilaso, La Florida, 221^r (3/38)

⁸⁵ Museo Naval Madrid, Colección, 14: 259

⁸⁶ Robertson, , True Relation, 1: clx^v Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Garcilaso, La Florida, 319^r (6/7)

⁸⁸ Rather more serious, I think, than Quesada, Miró, El Inca Garcilaso, 149 Google Scholar (“some discrepancies in the details of the number of participants”) would suggest.

⁸⁹ This would seem to imply, of course, that neither had access to the three earlier accounts and indeed this disparity of all things numerate may be the strongest single argument for believing that neither Silvestre nor Garcilaso knew of their predecessors’ work. Yet it is not very hard to imagine, knowing what we do of Garcilaso’s literary corpus and of Silvestre’s undoubted gift for rodomontade, that either or both of them gave way to hyperbole, perhaps expecting that their readers, primed by the chivalric romances, would allow themselves to be persuaded by the more circumstantial, picturesque, and Amadís-like version of events they were offering. Perhaps they sensed that the threshold of credulity in Spain was at an all-time high, partly as a result of the discovery of a wholly unsuspected New World and the conquest and exploration of much of it within a few generations. Surely this helped to imbue the Spanish public with a feeling that all things were possible.

⁹⁰ Dobyns, , Number, 138–44.Google Scholar

⁹¹ For more on Garcilaso’s creative impulses see Pupo-Walker, Enrique, La vocación literaria del pensamiento histórico en América (Madrid, 1982), 96–122 Google Scholar; idem., Historia, creación y profecía, 27–84, 149–64; idem., “Mutaciones;” Puccini, “Narración.”

⁹² I forego discussion of other implausibilities and discrepancies in La Florida: the anachronistic chivalry displayed by Indians and Spanish alike and unique in the Spanish records of the New World; the polished speeches that so many Indians and Spanish found themselves able to deliver extemporaneously as if they too had read their Thucydides and Livy; the complex political organization and ceremonial panoply of the various Indian groups.

⁹³ Recent studies on Cabeza de Vaca’s writings include Lewis, Robert E., “Los Naufragios de Alvar Núñez; historia y ficción,” Revista Iberoamericana, 48 (1982), 681–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lagmanovich, David, “Los Naufragios como construcción narrativa,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 25 (1978), 27–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Molloy, Sylvia, “Formulación y lugar del yo en los Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca” in Actas del VII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (2 vols.: Rome, 1982), 2: 761–66Google Scholar; Bost, David H., “The Naufragios of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: A Case of Historical Romance,” South Eastern Latin Americanist, 27/3 (December 1983), 3–12 Google Scholar; Franzetti, Luisa, “Il Naufragio como metafora,” Letteratura d’America, no. 1 (1980), 5–28 Google Scholar; Merrim, Stephanie, “Historia y escritura en las crónicas de Indias: ensayo de un metodo,” Explicación de Textos Literarios, 9 (1981), 196–98Google Scholar; López, Trinidad Barrera and de Mora Valcárcel, Carmen, “Los Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: entre la crónica y la novela” in Andalucía y America en el siglo XVI. Actas de las II Jornadas de Andalucía y America (2 vols.: Seville, 1983), 2: 331–64.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ de Santa María, Carmelo Sáenz, “Introducción crítica a la ‘Historia verdadera’ de Bernal Díaz del Castillo,” Revista de Indias, 26 (1966), 323–465 Google Scholar (now published with some changes as the introduction to the critical edition of Diaz del Castillo cited in note 25 above); Wagner, Henry R., “Three Studies on the Same Subject,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 25 (1945), 155–211 Google Scholar; Fernández, Mario Rodríguez, “Bernal Díaz del Castillo y su concepto de verdad y realidad,” Anales de la Universidad de Chile, no. 137 (1966), 17–34 Google Scholar; Marcus, Raymond, “La conquête de Cholula: conflit d’interprétations,” Iberoamerikanisches Archiv, 3 (1977), 193–213 Google Scholar; Grunberg, Bernard, “El universo de los conquistadores en la Historia verdadera de Bernal Díaz del Castillo,” Revista de Indias, 39 (1979), 105–22Google Scholar; Martínez, José Luis, “Una muestra de la elaboración de la ‘Historia verdadera’ del Bernal Diaz del Castillo,” Revista de la Universidad de México, 36/7 (November 1981), 5–8 Google Scholar; Cascardi, Anthony J., “Chronicle Toward Novel: Bernal Díaz’ History of the Conquest of Mexico,” Novel, 15 (1981/82), 197–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eberenz-Gréoles, Rolf, “Literariedad y estructura textual en la historiografía de Indias: análisis de fragmentos paralelos de Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz de Castillo y Francisco López de Gomara,” Travaux de Linguistique et de Littérature [Strasbourg], 17 (1979), 295–318 Google Scholar; Loesberg, Jonathan, “Narratives of Authority: Cortés, Gomara, Díaz,” Prose Studies, 6 (1983), 239–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Unfortunately for Díaz del Castillo’s cause, three manuscripts of his work survive, allowing us to plot the differences among them, which are many, if generally slight. While we know that Garcilaso spent about as much time editing and re-editing La Florida as Diaz del Castillo spent on his work, we have only the published version and so lack the opportunity to understand how his thought developed. For evidence of Oviedo’s tinkering see Turner, Daymond, “The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 46 (1983), 112–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁵ Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller, “To the Reader.”

⁹⁶ Dedication of Maximilian, Obra completas, 1: [5]. By one-quarter Garcilaso probably meant that he had covered roughly the first year of De Soto’s travels, which seems to be the only way he could have sensibly estimated the likely eventual size of his manuscript. This raises questions about Garcilaso’s method and the path his progress towards completing La Florida took. For instance, he may already have essentially completed his interviewing by 1586, unless he attempted to take Silvestre through his Florida adventures chronologically, an unlikely way of extracting information if not of arraying it.

⁹⁷ That is, assuming that Silvestre was in his early twenties when he signed on. To judge from the responsibilities he said De Soto thrust at him before they had scarcely cleared their Spanish port of embarkation, we might reasonably feel that he was even older.

⁹⁸ de Santa María, Sáenz, “Estudio preliminar,” 46.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Botwinick, Jack and Storandt, Martha, Memory, Related Functions, and Age (Springfield, Ill., 1974)Google Scholar; Talland, G.A., “Age and the Span of Immediate Recall” in Human Aging and Behavior, ed. Talland, G.A. (New York, 1968), 93–129 Google Scholar; Neuenschwander, John A., “Remembrance of Things Past: Oral Historians and Long-Term Memory,” Oral History Review (1978), 45–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Garcilaso, La Florida, 83^v (2¹/27)

¹⁰¹ Durand, , “Redacción,” 301–02,Google Scholar discusses the causes and some possible effects of these. See also Quesada, Miró, El Inca Garcilaso, 146–48, 346–50.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Castanien, , El Inca Garcilaso, 68 Google Scholar; Durand, , “Enigmáticas fuentes,” 601–02Google Scholar; Quesada, Miró, El Inca Garcilaso, 148–50, 344–47Google Scholar; Durand, , “Veracidad y exactidud,” 145–47;Google Scholar Durand, , “Los silencios,” 67–68.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ For instance Durand, , “Los silencios,” 69,Google Scholar dismisses the matter in a few sentences, concluding rather opaquely that Garcilaso “must have” preferred to accord Silvestre “the honor of the sword” while reserving to himself (which of course is precisely what he did not do) the literary laurels.

¹⁰⁴ Sáenz de Santa María, “Estudio preliminar,” xlviii. Quesada, Miró, El Inca Garcilaso, 149,Google Scholar agrees

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 346. Again the similarities with the Gospel corpus mentioned earlier in striking.

¹⁰⁶ On the overabundance of irrelevant detail as a device to induce belief see Morgan, J.R., “History, Romance, and Realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus,” Classical Antiquity, 1 (1982), 250–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Heliodorus, whose work was the culmination of the historical romance in antiquity, was an accomplished practitioner of the plot. Two editions of the Aithiopika were inventoried in Garcilaso’s library, Durand, , “Biblioteca,” 253, 255.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ This essential sameness can be grasped most easily in the “Parallel Itinerary of the Expedition” chart in U.S. Senate, Final Report, 305–36.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Durand, , “Enigmáticas fuentes,” 600.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Giovanni Giolitti, Prime Minister of Italy, on refusing to open the Turin archives, quoted in Smith, D.Mack, Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento (London, 1971), 9 Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ A recent study that deals explicitly with this need is Walsh, P.G., “Livy and the Aims of ‘Historia’: An Analysis of the Third Decade” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der rdmische Welt (Wiesbaden, 1982), 30/2: 1058–74.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Zamora, “Language and Authority,” stresses the importance of firmly setting Garcilaso into his wider cultural and literary context.