Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources comprises Volumes 12 through 15 of the Handbook of Middle American Indians, published in cooperation with the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University under the general editorship of Robert Wauchope (1909-1979). The Guide has been assembled under the volume editorship of the late Howard F. Cline, Director of the Hispanic Foundation in the Library of Congress, with Charles Gibson, John B. Glass, and H. B. Nicholson as associate volume editors. It covers geography and ethnogeography, especially the Relaciones Geograficas (Volume 12); sources in the European tradition: printed collections, secular and religious chroniclers, biobibliographies (Volume 13); sources in the native tradition: prose and pictorial materials, checklist of repositories, title and synonymy index, and annotated bibliography on native sources (Volumes 14 and 15). Volume 12, which is Part One of the Guide, contains the following: Introduction: Reflections on Ethnohistory,
Introductory Notes on Territorial Divisions of Middle America,
Viceroyalty to Republics, 1786-1952: Historical Notes on the Evolution of Middle American Political Units,
Ethnohistorical Regions of Middle America,
The Relaciones Geograficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1648,
A Census of the Relaciones Geograficas of New Spain, 1579-1616, and The Relaciones Geograficas of Spain, New Spain, and the Spanish Indies: An Annotated Bibliography, all the foregoing by Howard F. Cline. In addition it includes: Colonial New Spain, 1519-1786: Historical Notes on the Evolution of Minor Political Jurisdictions by Peter Gerhard; The Pinturas (Maps) of the Relaciones Geograficas, with a Catalog by Donald Robertson; The Relaciones Geograficas, 1579-1586: Native Languages by H. R. Harvey; and The Relaciones Geograficas of Mexico and Central America, 1740-1792 by Robert C. West. The Handbook of Middle American Indians was assembled and edited at the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University with the assistance of grants from the National Science Foundation and under the sponsorship of the National Research Council Committee on Latin American Anthropology.