The History of Puerto Rico

The History of Puerto Rico
Author: Rudolph Adams Van Middeldyk
Publisher:
Total Pages: 382
Release: 1903
Genre: Puerto Rico
ISBN:

Van Middledyk's work was the first major historical study of Puerto Rico in English. Van Middledyk advanced Puerto Rican historiography by building on the works of Brau, Coll y Toste, and Acosta, and by consulting early Spanish chronicles. A librarian at the Free Public Library of San Juan, Van Middledyk possessed knowledge of and access to considerable primary source material. His history is sympathetic to the Indians and highly critical of Spanish colonial administration. Coming in the wake of American military occupation, the book sought to explain and justify control of the island by the United States.

Monthly Bulletin

Monthly Bulletin
Author: San Francisco (Calif.). Free Public Library
Publisher:
Total Pages: 154
Release: 1899
Genre: Classified catalogs (Dewey decimal)
ISBN:

The Aborigines of Puerto Rico and Neighboring Islands

The Aborigines of Puerto Rico and Neighboring Islands
Author: Jesse Walter Fewkes
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2009-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 081735574X

A valuable recounting of the first formal archaeological excavations in Puerto Rico Originally published as the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1907, this book was praised in an article in American Anthropologist as doing “more than any other to give a comprehensive idea of the archaeology of the West Indies.” Until that time, for mainly political reasons, little scientific research had been conducted by Americans on any of the Caribbean islands. Dr. Fewkes' unique skills of observation and experience served him well in the quest to understand Caribbean prehistory and culture. This volume, the result of his careful fieldwork in Puerto Rico in 1902-04, is magnificently illustrated by 93 plates and 43 line drawings of specimens from both public and private collections of the islands. A 1907 article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland described the volume as “a most valuable contribution to ethnographical science.”