Begin with a claim you can test
A museum visitor reads: “The conquest was a struggle between Spaniards and a single united Indigenous side.” Before accepting this explanation, list the political actors it merges. Read the two source cards and identify the evidence that requires a different account.
This investigation concerns central Mexico. It helps explain Spanish colonial expansion within an Atlantic history course; it is not a substitute for the histories of Indigenous societies in what is now the United States. The packet offers institutional descriptions of historical sources. It does not pretend those summaries are the primary manuscripts themselves.
Separate people, actions and purposes
Make three columns in your notebook: community or author, represented action, and purpose of the account. Use a separate row for each source. Where a card does not establish a motive for a particular individual, write “not established.”
The Mexica perspective described in the first card and the Tlaxcalan representation of alliance in the second cannot be combined into one unanimous voice. Nor should “alliance” be read as agreement with every later colonial demand. Ask what each political actor sought, what choices were available, and how those conditions changed.
Try a causal sketch with these boxes:
Distinct political interests → cooperation or resistance → military actions → later representations and claims
This is a question-generating diagram, not a verified sequence for every community. Beside each arrow, write the document needed to test it: negotiations, testimony about action, a dated account, or a reply to a request. Do not fill a missing link with an invented motive. Military outcomes also require investigation of logistics, disease and other causes beyond this packet; an alliance alone is not a complete explanation of conquest.
Keep three clocks separate
| Clock | What you are dating | Question to ask |
|---|
| Event | An action represented in a source | What supports this date? |
| Composition | Creation of the account | How might later circumstances shape it? |
| Surviving object | The manuscript or copy available now | What connects it to earlier versions? |
Place the dates supplied by the cards under these headings. A later source may preserve testimony or an earlier composition, but that connection needs investigation. A contemporary source can also be selective or inaccurate. Age alone is not a reliability score.
Check the date distinction
The first card separates the events of 1519–1521 from the 1577 manuscript. The second separates a mid-sixteenth-century commission from a 1773 surviving copy. These are different transmission histories. Neither permits treating every scene as a diary entry made while the event occurred.
Repair the exhibit
Use the fictional-label card. For each label, write a replacement of two or three sentences with a source ID. Include one supported correction and one limit. Avoid replacing a universal claim with a different universal claim.
For Label A, name the distinct perspectives rather than saying that all communities welcomed or all resisted Spaniards. For Label B, distinguish the represented event, copy and political request. A commission seeking a royal favor establishes neither a favorable reply nor its implementation.
Test a stronger inference
Suppose an authenticated reply granting a favor is added to the packet. You can now report the grant within its stated scope. You still need evidence about implementation. If instead a refusal is found, revise the outcome while retaining the original request as evidence of what its authors sought. These are hypothetical additions, not historical findings about the lienzo.
Test source dependence
Imagine two modern websites repeating the same catalog description. Do they provide two independent witnesses? Draw arrows from each website back to its source. Then specify what a genuinely additional source could contribute: a different community’s account, a separate administrative record, or evidence about copying. More repetitions do not automatically strengthen the historical claim.
Write a short explanation answering the opening visitor: identify distinct actors, one political purpose, one dating distinction and one missing causal link. Cite both source cards. Save your draft in the source notebook before checking the practice question.
High school: use the supplied matrix and revise both labels. AP practice: connect political differences with conquest while acknowledging the packet’s causal limits. College inquiry: consult a specific passage or scene through the linked institutions, record its exact location and language, and compare its interpretation with the supplied summary. That independent reading remains additional work, not an achievement awarded by this guide.
For an unfamiliar transfer, a fictional 1810 copy depicts a 1700 alliance and requests a tax exemption. No reply survives in the packet. State three separate claims and what would establish each. Missing evidence in this packet is not proof that no reply ever existed.
Continue with colonial labor and the New Laws to distinguish an imperial rule from a lived outcome. This lesson does not complete the history of conquest, epidemiology, Indigenous diplomacy or colonial society.
