Fray Francisco de Alvarado

Fray Francisco de Alvarado

A native of Mexico, where he entered the Dominican order 25 July, 1574. He was vicar of Tamazulapa in 1593. Nothing more is known of him as yet, except that he wrote and published at Mexico, in 1593, a "Vocabulario en Lengua Misteca," one of the languages of the present state of Oaxaca. In the same year Fray Antonio de los Reyes, another Dominican, also published a grammar of that language, and at the same place. It is therefore impossible to determine to which of these works is due the honour of having been the first in and on the Mistecan idiom.

DAVILA PADILLA, Historia de la Fundacion y Discorso, etc. (Madrid, 1596); LEON Y PINELO, Epitome (1628); ANTONIO, Bibliot. Hispana Noca (Madrid, 1783); BERISTAIN, Biblioteca hispano-americana (Mexico, 1816); YCAZBALCETA, Bibliografia mexicana del Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1886); LUDEWIG, Literature of American Aboriginal Languages (London, 1858).

AD. F. BANDELIER