"It is exciting to have a translation of these important early documents finally available. Feldman is widely regarded as one of the foremost scholars in Central American ethnohistoric studies. His grasp of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish and paleography is superior, his translations are accurate and faithful to the documents while being understandable to the nonspecialist, and the amount of cultural, geographic, and economic information contained in these documents is amazing."--Karen Olsen Bruhns, San Francisco State University

Long after the Aztecs and the Incas had become a fading memory, a Maya civilization still thrived in the interior of Central America. "Lost Shores, Forgotten Peoples" is the first collection and translation of important seventeenth-century narratives about Europeans travelling across the great "Ocean Sea" and encountering a people who had maintained an independent existence in the lowlands of Guatemala and Belize.
In these narratives--primary documents written by missionaries and conquistadors--vivid details of these little known Mayan cultures are revealed, answering how and why...