of culture, written records, applied not only to historic incidents and common facts, but to abstract subjects of philosophic, scientific, and poetic nature, as instanced in my Native Races.
It needed not the official investigation instituted by the Spanish government to confirm the mute testimony of relics, and the vivid declaration of chronicłers. Native records exist in sufficient abundance to speak for themselves; records written by and for the people, and therefore free from any suspicion of misrepresentation; records used by a number of writers for obtaining that insight into esoteric features of Nahua institutions which could not well be acquired by Spaniards. The translation of these records, as reproduced in the volumes of Sahagun, Ixtlilxochitl, Kingsborough, and others, with copies of original paintings, have been carefully used both for the Native Races and the histories of Mexico and Guatemala, and introduced indeed more thoroughly in this series as evidence than by any modern writer on the subject, not excepting the learned Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, though unlike this enthusiast I have not allowed myself to accept this evidence with the same non-critical bias. I have merely used it for what it is worth, after applying severe analytic tests. Certain points may be covered by merely one or two authorities; but even then the erudite student will readily determine the value of the testimony from internal evidence, while in the generality of cases he will find a number of versions by natives and Spaniards, by partisans and rivals, whose contradictions will aid him in determining the truth.
In a previous bibliographic note I have pointed out the many internal evidences furnished by the letters of Cortés, of undoubted reliability on most points, in their minuteness, their frank soldierly tone, and other features. They are besides confirmed in all the more essential points by the contemporaneous letters from the municipality of Villa Rica and the army, the sworn depositions before the royal notary by leading officers, the narratives of Andrés de Tápia, and others. Still stronger confirmation is given in the complaints and memorials issued by enemies and rivals of the great captain, who in their efforts to detract from his character and achievements provide the historian with material that enables him to avoid the pitfalls abounding even in the honest narratives of partisans, either from sympathy, from lack of thorough knowledge, or from hearsay. Such testimony is abundant in the residencia investigations of Cortés, Alvarado, Guzman, and others, all which contain voluminous testimony on the most important questions. Prescott's opportunities for consulting new material were vastly superior to those of his predecessors. If mine have been correspondingly greater, it may perhaps to some extent be due to the example set by him in his earnest researches, and because since the publication of his volumes, private individuals and learned societies have striven with increased enthusiasm to bring to light hidden material, notably from the rich archives of Spain and certain Latin-American states.
From this mass of what may be termed documentary evidence we turn to the regular historians and narrators, beginning with Peter Martyr and Oviedo, who both adhere chiefly to Cortés, though the latter adds other versions by different eye-witnesses. Sahagun's account contains a strange admixture of native absurdities and vague recollections of converted soldiers. A more com-