1. William Hickling Prescott,History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Modern Library, 1980; orig. publ., 1843), p. 153.
2. Ibid.,, p. 154.
3. Though it is not without its critics, the best introduction to many of these issues remains Walter J. Ong,Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, (London: Routledge, 1982).
4. On this point, see Richard Lee Marks,Cortes: The Great Adventurer and the Fate of Aztec Mexico (New York: Knopf, 1993), pp. 48–49. Still useful in placing Cortes in his own context is Howard Mumford Jones,O Strange New World: American Culture, the Formative Years (New York: Viking, 1952), pp. 137–139.
5. Hugh Taylor, “‘My Very Act and Deed’: Some Reflections on the Role of Textual Records in the Conduct of Human Affairs”,American Archivist 51 (Fall 1988): 456–469. I have also explored some of these issues in James M. O'Toole, “The Symbolic Significance of Archives”,American Archivist 56 (Spring 1993): 234–255.