Pedro de Oña, Primera parte de Arauco domado. Lima, 1596.
Pedro de Oña’s Arauco Domado is the earliest book of poetry written by an American author and published in America. Oña wrote it as a piece of propaganda on behalf of Peruvian viceroy don García Hurtado de Mendoza, who had led the Spanish campaigns against Chile’s Araucanian Indians, but who felt that his role had been slighted in Alonso de Ercilla’s famous poem about the wars, La Araucana, published in Madrid a generation earlier. The portrait of Oña in his book, a woodcut by the printer Ricardo or by one of his assistants, is thought to be the first book illustration produced in Peru for a Peruvian book.
