Credit for Prescott

As an historian, William H. Prescott performed due diligence in securing the information to write the History of the Conquest of Mexico.  Having contacted those in Spain, England, Italy and Mexico, he gathered, as he himself delineates, 8,000 folio pages. (4)  From these materials he constructed his History.  There is the persuasion that he did not do his utmost since he remained in Boston, Mass.  Let it not be forgotten, however, that Mr. Prescott was fully blind in one eye, and occasionally blind in the other.  The History was written using a writing-case, which prevented him from actually seeing his own manuscript. (8)  In these circumstances, he produced a fully sourced narrative of events.  Excluding perhaps real artifacts, the sources that he employed are the same for modern historians.  Rather than classify his work as an example, it deserves credit as an actual history of the conquest.

As for silences, Prescott is clear to identify the conquerors, Hernan Cortés and followers, the conquered, Montezuma and followers, and the involved agents, Charles V and others; but in the sense that Trouillot advocates, the viewpoint of the Aztecs is a case in point.  Prescott includes the Historia Chichemeca by Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who was descended from the sovereigns of Tezcuco. (152)  Ixtlilxochitl accompanies Prescott's narrative as a constant reference until the abrupt ending of his own Historia during the cannonade of 1521. (748, footnote 10)  No doubt his continued accompaniment would please Trouillot as a native voice.