PRELIMINARY INVENTORY
Prepared by Guillermo Náñez Falcón, October 1981.
The first cataloguers --Bailey and Benítez-- maintained the order in which the Collection was found. They assigned letters to the large "bundle" of material and Arabic numerals to the separate folders in each bundle. Individual pieces in folders were also given Arabic numerals. Folders usually have a list of contents written on the front.
Bailey and Benítez analyzed the material in each folder and placed the information on cards, which were then arranged into subject categories. The cataloguers prepared the existing collection guide from the cards and noted a location symbol after each entry: e.g., A-2 #10; d-4, #8; F-15 #1.
Under the NEH cataloguing project a cataloguer started to go through the guide and to pull materials from folders and arrange them in the same order as the guide. Soon it was obvious that the arrangement of the Bailey-Benítez guide was overly complex and impractical. The subject breakdown was particularly cumbersome and resulted in overlapping of categories. Entries for large colonial dossiers often did not describe the contents or subject matter. The cataloguers decided that the present division into Legajos by types of material was a more workable arrangement, but at least a partial calendar was necessary. Since there was no time to complete the work, the preliminary inventory that follows was prepared for the use with the Bailey-Benítez guide, and for reference in cataloguing.
Box 2
Bailey-Benítez index entries D-8 (p.6)-E-15 (p.9);
28.
Box 3
Legajo A: Various 17th-19th century documents.
Legajo B: re. Codices-printed, tracings, photos.
Box 4
Legajo C: Correspondence A) of Nicolás León; b) of Alfonso Duges et al. c)
18th century ecclesiastical correspondence; d) Miscellaneous late 18th and
early 19th century (to ca. 1860's) correspondence, much of noted political
and military figures, some clerics.
Legajo CL: 1) printed a)clippings, b) ephemera, 18th and 19th century, including religious pamphlets; 2) Typescript of [León?] manuscript and correspondence.
Box 5
Legajo D. Folder 1. León ms. on ethnology; vocabulary list of Indian
languages; miscellaneous notes on Indian languages.
Legajo D. Folder 2. León mss., notes and correspondence on the compilation of demographic statistics for Mexico (1924); a few miscellenous pieces.
Legajo D. Folder 3. León mss. biographical sketches of clerics and history of certain churches in Mexico.
Legajo D. Folder 4. León ms. on anthropology, ethnology, and archaelogy of Michoacán; ms. statistical charts of Michoacán; ms. of verse-play in German, playwright unknown, Moslem setting.
Legajo D. Folder 5. Report of tour of inspection of the Museo Nacional de Mexico, 1888-1890; León ms., notes on the Nahuatl language.
Legajo D. Folder 6.
1) Guillermo Prieto manuscripts:
2) Notes on the history of medicine in Mexico and miscellaneous other note fragments in León's hand.
3) Typed biographical sketches of Epigmenio González, Independence hero from Querétaro.
Box 6
Legajo E. Folder 1. Typed trancriptions of documents inthe Archivo General
de la Nación about creation of a regiment of dragons, 1790's.
Legajo E. Folder 2. Typed transcriptions of documents relative to the
participation of priests in the Wars of Independence (marked "Museo
Nacional").
Legajo E. Folders 3-6. Types transcriptions of documents relative to Wars of Independence, royalist troops, one about an insurgent priest (marked "Museo Nacional").
Box 7
Legajo E. More transcriptions of documents relative to the Wars of
Independence. [Nb: the typed documents in Box 2 are part of the Legajo
E series and all should be brought together.]
Box 7
Legajo F. Miscellaneous: colonial documents, woodcut of coat of arms of
Philip II; typed notes [of León?] on philosophy.
Box 8
Visual materials
Legajo G. Folder 1. Photographs of various title pages.
Legajo G. Folder 2. Architectural and landscape photographs, chiefly Pátzcuaro and also Michoacán, Mexico City, Cholula, and unidentified.
Legajo G. Folder 3. Photos of artifacts and curiosities.
Legajo G. Folder 4. Photos of religious paintings, sacred images, clerics. Legajo G. Folder 5. Individual and group photos of Indian people, some copies from the American Museum of Natural History, others unpublished.
Legajo G. Folder 6. Portraits of individual (mostly udentified0, many members of the Academy of Medicine, Mexico. Included are photos, engravings, prints. Also photo of group of nuns nad novices from an unidentified convent.
Legajo G. Folder 7. Prints and engravings of holy images, clerics, mythological scenes form 18th century French work and from an [18th century] Dutch work.
Legajo G. Folder 8. Prints and photos of drawings and engravings showing Indian and mestizo dress.
Legajo G. Folder 9. Pencil sketches of Palenque with English captions, date and artist unknown; miscellanea.
Legajo G. Folder 10. Pen and ink drawings of "danzantes" carved in stones in Monte Albán; prints of coats of arm; prints of colonial buildings.
Box 9
Miscellaneous
Folder 1. Printed announcements of the Viceroys of New Spain.
Folder 2. Odds and ends: loose pages from manuscripts, some in León's hand; title pages torn from books.
Folder 3. Odds and ends: manuscript fragment; letter to Guillermo Prieto; brief colonial documents.
Folder 4. Miscellaneous printed fragments. Nicolás León manuscript: Lecture notes for course that León gave in Ethnology at the Museo Nacional de México, 1906-1907.
Box 10
Note card file index of León Collection compiled by Bailey and Benítez for
Ross Parmenter.
In addition to the above, there are two manuscript volumes that are in the Latin American Library's rare book collection, catalogued with Dewey classification numbers.
972.34/L579d. Nicolás León, compiler. "Documentos para la Historia de Michoacán." A collection of some sixty 17th and 18th century documents bound together with annotations in León's hand. Described in Arthur E. Gropp, "Manuscripts in the Department of Middle American Research", in MARI Publications no. 5 (1933), 242-43.
971.34/L579n. A notebook in León's hand entitled "Noticias para la Historia de Michoacán (de 1654) colegidas por el Dr. N. León, no. 2." Ibid., 243-44.
Also ALS Leonardo Gassó to Nicolás León n.d. tipped inside back cover of RARE/497.2144/G254/LAL.
Latin American Library Home Page
Last updated: July 15, 1998