A crónica de Indias is a Spanish chronicle (crónica) whose subject matter is the New World (the Indias) during the Age of Discovery or time of Spanish conquest, colonisation, or Catholic proselytisation. These crónicas were especially known in the 16th century, and, like Spanish crónicas generally, constitute an historical genre of Spanish non-fiction with popular and scholarly relevance today. The author of such a work is known as a cronista de Indias, though from 1526 onwards, said term was also an official position bestowed upon select chroniclers (cronistas) by royal appointment. The office was later termed cronista mayor de Indias from 1571.
Background
The cronistas were men of the Spanish Empire who, during a time of great illiteracy in said region, happened to be literate. These included clergy and laity, conquistadors or other martial men, officials or office-holders, and even those born in Spanish America (including criollo, Amerindian and Mestizo men). Some of them wrote first-hand accounts (of things which they themselves witnessed or participated in), some wrote second-hand accounts (based on oral or written accounts by eyewitnesses or direct participants), whilst others still wrote accounts even further removed from their subject. Some of them published their work themselves, whereas some left theirs as manuscripts (often posthumously published for them, sometimes centuries later). Virtually all were beholden to personal biases or ideologies (providencialismo, Spanish monarchism, so on), or some other authorities (a caudillo, a Spanish institution, their family, so on), often resulting in heavily skewed crónicas.
The crónicas, then, do not invariably agree in their accounts, and do not necessarily present only facts. But as modern scholars may account for such shortcomings, they therefore remain a mainstay of academic work (in history, anthropology, so on) on the period and area. In addition to strictly chronicling historical events, some crónicas further included descriptions of natural geography (features, flora, fauna, so on) and of human geography (peoples, their politics, customs, languages, so on). Most crónicas were written in Spanish, whilst some were wholly or partly written in other Romance or Amerindian languages (Latin, Italian, so on). Most were written in the Latin script, though a few further featured Mesoamerican scripts. Most were written in prose, though a few were laid out in verse (as epic poems).
The earliest crónica was the logbook kept by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage in 1492–1493. The first crónicas were either Peter Martyr's Decades, written by 1525, or else Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo's Historia, written by 1542. The latest crónicas were written or published in the 18th century.
List
The following is a list of cronistas and their crónicas. It includes any work so identified by modern or contemporary literature, along with pertinent dates and information. , it listed 26 works.