Yet what has been commonly considered, retrospectively, the most important 16th-century writing in the Americas is the chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World. This group of documents includes narrative accounts, legal documents (depositions, reports, arguments, etc.), and full-fledged histories. Because of their foundational aura, the most celebrated of the texts are Columbus’s letters and reports to the Catholic Monarchs and their functionaries. There is an added charm in Columbus’s awkwardness of style (Spanish was not his native tongue), his difficulties in describing objects unknown to Europeans, and his huge mistakes. In spite of these often attractive flaws, his accounts constitute a substantial legacy in the discourse of the West. The most egregious of Columbus’s errors was, of course, his belief that he had arrived somewhere in Asia, which led to his adopting the name “Indies” for the lands he “discovered.” Hence the misnomer “Indians” for all the natives of the American continent.

Columbus’s letters and reports were quickly disseminated in the original and in Latin translations. Using these and other early accounts, the Italian humanist Peter Martyr d’Anghiera wrote, during the last years of the 15th and early years of the 16th century, the first history of the New World: De Orbe Novo decades (1516; De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera). Whereas Columbus was a navigator who could write a little, Peter Martyr was steeped in culture; during the 16th century his elegant Latin tract enjoyed a wide readership all over Europe.

While the discovery of the Caribbean was an astonishing event to Europeans, the discovery of Mexico was dazzling. Here were hitherto unknown civilizations that not only were populous and spread over vast territories but also had splendid cities and complex forms of government, arts, crafts, and religious practices. Knowledge of the conquest of Mexico was provided by its Spanish protagonist Hernán Cortés, whose Cartas de relación (1519–26; Letters from Mexico) told of the tortuous campaign by which a few hundred Spaniards took over the powerful Aztec empire, aided by gunpowder, horses, cunning, and the resentful peoples who were subject to Aztec rule. Cortés was a vigorous writer, with a flair for the dramatic and an eye for the kind of details that would captivate the European reader. He described battles but also customs, costumes, rituals, and the elaborate protocol of the Aztec court. Cortés was a master at self-dramatization and self-promotion. His haughty attitude provoked one of his soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, to write a prolix account of the conquest 50 years after the event. He wanted to give the common soldier’s perspective. Díaz del Castillo’s prodigious memory allowed him to recall vividly many of his companions, down to the names and colours of their horses. The Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (1632; The True History of the Conquest of Mexico) is a monumental volume written by a man who claimed to have little formal education, which may explain the book’s particular immediacy and charm. It is an invaluable source of information on both the common lives of the soldiers and the customs of the natives they defeated. Most memorable is Díaz del Castillo’s description of the astonishment Spaniards felt at the sight of Mexico City, which he likens to the marvels found in the romances of chivalry. While not literary in the formal sense of Renaissance poetics, the Historia verdadera is literature in a modern sense in that it places authenticity above all rules of style or decorum. Nothing escapes the author’s gaze; no detail is too insignificant or even repulsive. Of all the books to have come out of colonial Latin America, his is the one still most read.

But no book coming from the Spanish dominions attained a wider readership at the time than Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1542; A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies). Originally a Spanish settler, Las Casas was appalled at the treatment of the Indians by the rapacious Spaniards. He became a Dominican friar, steeped himself in the law, and began to write bitter denunciations of the conquistadors’ actions; these he directed to the Spanish crown, whom he considered innocently unaware of what was being perpetrated in the monarch’s name. In 1526 Las Casas also commenced the Historia de las Indias (selections appear in History of the Indies), a voluminous history of the conquest of the New World. It was not published in his lifetime, but Las Casas did publish a summary, the Brevísima relación, as a polemic, hoping that it would have an immediate and telling impact. It did, probably beyond his expectations. Las Casas’s accusations were a factor in the issuance of the “New Laws” that went some way toward ending hereditary Spanish grants of land and Indians, thus limiting the Spaniards’ use of natives for labour. His little book took on a life of its own abroad, being translated into several European languages and used by Spain’s enemies to elaborate what has come to be known as the “Black Legend,” a lurid account of what occurred to the Indians at the hands of the Spaniards. Brevísima relación became, in short, part of the religious polemics and wars between Spain and countries under the sway of the Protestant Reformation. Written in a dramatic style and perhaps exaggerating the atrocities perpetrated on the Indians, it was both a polemic and an appeal. Las Casas is known as “the Apostle of the Indians” and is revered in Latin America. He remained a controversial figure in Spain until the 20th century.