For Students
Most students hate history and find it very boring. But for the Mexicas alive when the Spaniards arrived in year one-Reed in the Mexica calendar, preserving their version of the past became an all-consuming passion. The Spaniards found it easier to conquer the Mexicas's land than their minds, so we still have some of their accounts of what happened. All of the documents found on this Web site were a product of a fight to control subsequent generations' understandings of the past. There are few "facts" in these documents. They were put together to show you how "messy" history is, that what seems like "facts" in textbooks were produced by interpreting documents which disagree. To help you work your way through the project, I have put together some guides for you to use. Before anything else, you should read my introduction to these primary sources.
Using the Web and Citing Sources Found on the Web
Step 1: Find Out What the Secondary Sources Say
Step 2: Understand the Primary Sources
Step 3: Analyze the Primary Sources
Step 4: Identify Preliminary Questions