This research guide was first conceived to fulfill multiple needs of the research team of the Documentary Relations of the Southwest (DRSW) project at the Arizona State Museum. In performing research tasks, it became evident that reference material was scattered throughout scores of books and monographs. A single complete source book was simply not available. Hence, the editors of the DRSW project compiled this guide. The territory under study comprises all of northern Mexico in colonial times.

Thomas C. Barnes came to Tucson in 1973 with a graduate degree in Western American and Latin American history from Utah State University. His interest in the West and the Southwest began with courses taught by Charles S. Peterson and John Francis Bannon, S.J. Barnes was appointed a research associate with the Documentary Relations of the Southwest in 1975.

Thomas H. Naylor in 1976 received the Herbert E. Bolton Prize in Spanish Borderlands History. He earned graduate degrees in both history and anthropology from the University of Arizona, was appointed associate editor with Documentary Relations of the Southwest project in 1975. His publications and research have spanned such topics as archaeology, dendrochronology, colonial ethnohistory, the Mexican Revolution, and Mormon colonization in northern Mexico.

Charles W. Polzer, ethnohistorian at the Arizona State Museum since 1972, is well known as a specialist in Spanish colonial history, particularly the Jesuit missions. In 1974, with a staff of historians and anthropologists, Polzer began directing the editing of basic documents from U.S., Mexican, and European archives as part of the Documentary Relations of the Southwest project at the University of Arizona.