A monumental work—one of the key texts on the Spanish conquest and colonization of northern New Spain. . . an unparalleled account of the early contact period from a man who experienced many of the events of that period first-hand. . . an absolutely essential volume for anyone who wants to understand the colonial encounter in southwestern North America.


What else but monumental? Oversize, ponderous, and carefully presented in a readable, annotated edition, this indisputably basic work on seventeenth-century ethnohistory should revive interest in the benefits of painstaking scholarship. . . . The accomplishments of the team of scholars who produced this volume cannot be underestimated. It will stand as one of the great landmarks in the historiography of the Americas.


A major primary source [for] historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars who work on colonial themes of Ibero-America . . . Father Andres Perez de Ribas would be please.


This translation of the single most comprehensive ethnohistorical source on northwest Mexico in the first half of the seventeenth century is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature of the region. . . . Perez De Ribas's chronical of the Jesuit missionary enterprise among a number of northwestern indigenous groups offers a wealth of information to those able to read knowledgeably and imaginatively enough to sift the Indian ethnographies from the Jesuit worldview. . . . A superior translation.