The very wise and detailed ordinances regulating the discovery and annexation to Spain of new territory, promulgated by Philip II, declared that every exploration or conquest (the term "conquest" was subsequently eliminated from Spanish official terminology and that of "pacification" substituted) should be recorded as a journal or diary. Royal decrees operated very slowly in distant colonies. Neither Chamuscado nor Espejo kept journals, but Castano de Sosa, and especially Onate, did. His _diario_ (which is accessible through its publication in the _Documentos del Archivo de Indias_, although there are traces of an earlier publication) was copied for printing by someone manifestly unacquainted with New Mexico or with its Indian nomenclature, hence its numerous names for sites and tribes are often very difficult to identify. But the document itself is a sober, matter-of-fact record of occurrences and geographical details, interspersed with observations of more or less ethnological value. As Onate followed the course of the Rio Grande upward from below El Paso del Norte, and afterward branched off to almost every sedentary settlement in New Mexico and Arizona, the comparison of his diary with previous reports (those of the Coronado expedition included) is highly valuable, indeed indispensable. The _diario_ forms the beginning of accurate knowledge of the region under consideration. Perhaps more important still are the Acts of Obedience and Homage (_Obediencia y Vasallaje_) executed at various villages during the course of the years 1598 and 1599. At first sight, and to one unacquainted with Pueblo idioms, they present an unintelligible list of partly recognizable names. But the confusion becomes somewhat reduced through closer scrutiny and by taking into consideration the circumstances under which each official document was framed. Onate already enjoyed the advantage of interpreters in at least one New Mexican Indian tongue, but the meetings or councils during which the "acts of obedience" were written were not always at places where his interpreters understood the language of the people they were among. These scribes faithfully recorded the names of pueblos as they heard them, and sometimes several names, each in a different language for the same village, hence the number of pueblos recorded is considerably larger than it actually was. Again the inevitable misunderstanding of Indian pronunciation by the Spaniards caused them to write the same word in different forms according as the sounds were uttered and caught by the ear. An accurate copy of these documents of Onate's time made by one versed in Pueblo nomenclature and somewhat acquainted with Pueblo languages would be highly desirable. Onate is not given to fulness in ethnological details. His journal is a dry record of what happened during his march and occupancy of the country. Customs are only incidentally and briefly alluded to.