?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
(PERU.) Rocha, Diego Andrés. Tratado unico, y singular del origen de los Indios occidentales del Piru, Mexico, Santa Fè, y Chile. [6], 84, [12], 15 leaves. 4to, later 1/4 calf, moderate wear; moderate dampstaining and worming, early manuscript notes (some cropped); early owner's signature on leaf 7. Lima: Manuel de los Olivos por Joseph de Contreras, 1681
Rocha proposed that the Indians of Latin America were descended from Europeans. Their connection with the lost tribes of Israel is explored on leaves 67-69: "What proves that the Indians of America are the seed of the Sons of Israel . . . is that they greatly resemble the Jews by their gestures, their bodies, their noses, and their pronunciation of many sounds in the glottis" (as translated in Wachtel, Chaos in the Contact Zone, page 30). Rocha also listed 71 European place names which seemed to have carried over into the pre-contact New World. An interesting appendix consists of a letter of the sighting of a comet in 1680, illustrated with a crude woodcut of the comet. The collation of the preliminaries is a bit complex here. This copy is lacking the Calva de la Vanda approbation leaf immediately following the title page, as called for in Medina and found in the John Carter Brown Library copy. However, it also has a leaf of verse headed "Ascensii Perez de Lizardi Rectoris," not called for in Medina or Palau but present in the John Carter Brown Library copy. It also includes the additional 15-leaf appendix, "Adiciones a los capitulos del origen de los Indios," not called for by Medina or Palau, and available at the John Carter Brown only in facsimile. Medina, Lima 526; Palau 271817 ("este libro se ha hecho raro"); Sabin 72290.
