General Alonso De León's Expedition Diaries Into Texas
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GENERAL ALONSO DE LEÓN’S EXPEDITION DIARIES INTO TEXAS (1686-1690): A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE SPANISH MANUSCRIPTS WITH SEMI- PALEOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTIONS AND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS A Dissertation by LOLA ORELLANO NORRIS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2010 Major Subject: Hispanic Studies General Alonso de León’s Expedition Diaries into Texas (1686-1690): A Linguistic Analysis of the Spanish Manuscripts with Semi-paleographic Transcriptions and English Translations Copyright 2010 Lola Orellano Norris GENERAL ALONSO DE LEON’S EXPEDITION DIARIES INTO TEXAS 1686-1690: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE SPANISH MANUSCRIPTS WITH SEMI- PALEOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTIONS AND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS A Dissertation by LOLA ORELLANO NORRIS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Brian Imhoff Committee Members, Nancy Joe Dyer Jose Pablo Villalobos Jerry D. Thompson Manuel Broncano Head of Department, Alberto Moreiras December 2010 Major Subject: Hispanic Studies iii ABSTRACT General Alonso de León’s Expedition Diaries into Texas (1686-1690): A Linguistic Analysis of the Spanish Manuscripts with Semi-paleographic Transcriptions and English Translations. (December 2010) Lola Orellano Norris, Dipl Uebersetzerin, Dolmetscherschule Zurich, M.A., Texas A&M International University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Brian Imhoff From 1686 to 1690, General Alonso de León led five military expeditions from Northern New Spain into modern-day Texas in search of French intruders who had breached Spanish sovereignty and settled on lands claimed by the Spanish Crown. His first two exploratory journeys were unsuccessful, but on the third expedition, he discovered a Frenchman living among Coahuiltec Indians across the Río Grande. In 1689, the fourth expedition finally led to the discovery of La Salle’s ill-fated colony and fort on the Texas Coast and to the repatriation of two of the French survivors. On his fifth and final expedition, De León established the first Spanish mission among the Hasinai Indians of East Texas and rescued several French children who had been abducted by the Karankawa. Through archival research, I have identified sixteen manuscript copies of De León’s meticulously kept expedition diaries. These documents form a distinct corpus and hold major importance for early Texas scholarship. Several of these manuscripts, but not all, have been known to historians and have been addressed in the literature. However, never before have all sixteen manuscripts been studied as an interconnected body of work and submitted to iv philological treatment. In this interdisciplinary study, I transcribe, translate, and analyze the diaries from two different perspectives: linguistic and historical. The linguistic analysis examines the most salient phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical phenomena attested in the documents. This synchronic study provides a snapshot of the Spanish language as it was used in Northern Mexico and Texas at the end of the 17th century. An in-depth examination discovers both conservative traits and linguistic innovations and contributes to the history of American Spanish. The historical analysis reveals that frequent misreadings, misinterpretations, and mistranslations of the Spanish source documents have led to substantial factual errors which have misinformed historical interpretation for more than a century. Thus, I have produced new, faithful, annotated English translations based on the manuscript archetypes to address historical misconceptions and present a more accurate interpretation of the historical events as they actually occurred. v DEDICATION To my dad and to Tigre, sempre en lo cor vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the people who walked with me through the long process of writing this dissertation. Foremost, I would like to thank my committee members. I am greatly indebted to my dissertation director, Dr. Brian Imhoff, for opening my eyes to the fascinating world of paleography and archival research. I would like to thank Dr. Imhoff for his expert advice and patience. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Nancy Joe Dyer for her thorough and superb teaching of Spanish Linguistics. I would also like to thank Dr. José Pablo Villalobos for his wise counsel and guidance throughout my graduate studies and to Dr. Jerry Thompson and Dr. Manuel Broncano for their support, patience, and encouragement throughout the course of this project. This dissertation could never have been completed without their assistance. Special thanks go also to the Hispanic History of Texas Project at the University of Houston and the Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University for funding my travels to the archives. I would also like to thank Dr. Donald E. Chipman, Mr. William C. Foster, and Mr. Robert S. Weddle for their feedback and suggestions. In addition, I also would like to thank my colleagues, Agustín Martínez-Samos, José Cardona-López, Irma Cantú, and Lynda Brown, for their friendship and understanding as well as my classmates, Deb Cunningham and Travis Sorensen, for their moral support. Finally, thanks to my Spanish-Swiss-Native-American family for their unconditional love and encouragement across international boundaries: my mother, Vicenta Fernández Soriano; my brothers, Dr. José Vicente Orellano and Dr. Christian Orellano and their families; my children, Tinskua, Tekuani, Tsapki, Eraani, Quanah, and Ashuni Pérez, and my most caring husband, Dr. James A. Norris. I would have never been able to finish writing this dissertation without Jim’s unwavering support and his excellent cooking. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ...................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................... vii 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Presentation .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Present Study ........................................................................................... 6 1.3 Literature Review ........................................................................................... 11 1.4 Historical Background: The Earliest Exploration of Texas ............................ 20 1.5 Biographical Sketch of General Alonso de León ........................................... 25 1.6 De León’s Five Expeditions into Texas .......................................................... 27 1.7 Description of the Manuscripts ....................................................................... 40 2. SPANISH MANUSCRIPTS ........................................................................................... 59 2.1 Transcription Methodology ............................................................................ 59 2.2 The Beinecke MSS S-327, Folios 46r-53r Manuscript (86-A) ....................... 61 2.3 The Beinecke MSS S-327, Folios 53r-53v Manuscript (87-A) ...................... 79 2.4 The Benson LAC WBS 2053, Folios 17r-22v Manuscript (88-A) ................. 81 2.5 The AGI, Mexico 616, Folios 37v-50r Manuscript (89-B) ............................ 96 2.6 The AGI, Mexico 617, Folios 4v-18r Manuscript (90-B) .............................. 123 2.7 The Beinecke MSS S-327, Folios 1r-12v Manuscript (90-D) ........................ 153 3. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS ............................................................................................. 182 3.1 The Spanish Language: From Spain to the Americas ..................................... 182 3.2 The Study of American Spanish ..................................................................... 189 3.3 The Spanish of New Spain ............................................................................. 193 3.4 The Language of De León Expedition Diaries ............................................... 198 3.5 Orthography .................................................................................................... 200 3.5.1 Orthography versus Phonology ............................................................. 201 3.6 Phonology ....................................................................................................... 204 3.6.1 Seseo ...................................................................................................... 205 3.6.2 Yeísmo .................................................................................................... 207 3.6.3 Weakening of Dentoalveolar Consonants /d,n,s,r,l/ .............................. 207 3.6.4 Loss of Medial Voiced Fricatives /b,d/ .................................................. 209 viii Page 3.6.5 Aspiration of /x/ ..................................................................................... 210 3.6.6 Merger of /b/ and /β/ .............................................................................. 210 3.6.7 Aspiration or Loss of