Andres Perez De Ribas, Pioneer Black Robe of the West Coast, Administrator, Historian (Monograph Series XXV) by Peter Masten Dunne - 1951

New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1951. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good +/good. A very good plus first edition in a plain brown paper dust jacket. Deep green cloth boards with gilt title stamping on cover and spine. Mild damp stain to front cover. From the private library of Larry Southwick, collector's marginalia pencilled near front hinge. Binding is sturdy and square. Unknown if good dust jacket is the original wrapper, but it is now protected in a clear, removable, archival cover. 178 pp. Octavo, 6 x 9 1/4 inches tall. Students of Northwest Coast history and cultures have more reasons for enthusiasm about this publication than Keats had about Chapman’s Homer, since it is not merely a language barrier that has been transcended by Iris Wilson’s translation of Mozilio’s eighteenth century Spanish, it is every kind of textual, historical, and ethnographic difficulty that would otherwise stand in the way of the complete utility and enjoyment of this extraordinary document. Noticias de Nutka is largely ethnographic reporting which, although of a rudimentary observational character, nonetheless forms an invaluable record of the first period of contact in the area. Moziiio’s account is based upon his sojourn in Nootka Sound for four months in 1792 as the scientist (botanist-naturalist) of the expedition of Bodega y Quadra. The work with which he was specifically charged is represented in a catalog of animals and plants of the area (Appendix B), but, for whatever reasons-his capacities and broad education for his day, his knowledge of the detailed ethnographic and linguistic reporting of such men as Sahagh in Mexico-Noticias seems to havebeen produced out of a certain, and absolutely correct conviction that what the people of Nootka Sound were like and what they did were all matters of importance, and that an accurate review of the visits of the various exploratory, political, and commercial expeditions to the North Pacific Coast from 1774 on, and the dealings of the Europeans concerned with the Indians were equally so. ...In short, Noticias de Nootka is a gift of scholarship, labor, and scientific Sense to the student of the area by both Mozifio, who produced the original and unique document, and Wilson, who has made it as open and easy to understand and use as if it had been produced in the 1970s rather than in the 1790s. -- AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST