Fray Jose Arlegui

Fray José Arlegui

A Spaniard from Biscay, first attached to the Franciscan province of Cantabria, then transferred to Zacatecas in Mexico. He wrote a number of works and treatises on theological subjects, some of value to the student of Indian ethnology. His most important work was the "Cronica de Zacatecas", which was published in 1737. He gives an account of the missions in his province, and embodies many valuable facts about the aborigines. The book is the main source both of our knowledge of the Indians of Zacatecas, otherwise hardly touched by published documents, and of the first attempts to bring them to Christianity.

Cronica de la Provincia de Zacatecas, 1737. Very rare. Beristain de Souza, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana setentrional (Mexico, 1816), I; Casual mention also in the Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, first and second series (out of print).

AD. F. BANDELIER