Bernardino de Sahagún

(c. 1500 - c. 1590)

A Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún was sent to New Spain in 1529, eight years after Hernán Cortes conquered Tenochtitlán. Sahagún learned Nahuatl and then spent more than half a century studying the culture of the Aztecs, eventually compiling his twelve-volume encyclopedia, General History of Matters in New Spain, which includes a depiction of the invasion of Cortés and many details about pre-Columbian Mesoamerica that could not have been documented without the input of Nahuatl speakers.