Juan de Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, book seventeen (Madrid printing of 1723)

A Franciscan provincial in Mexico devoted a whole book of his chronicle to the proposition that the Indians were skilled before anyone taught them. He put the evidence in: goldsmiths who beat the Spaniards at casting, a named Indian sculptor whose work sold above Spanish work, apprentices who reverse-engineered a guarded trade by counting hammer blows. He also printed the papal letter of 1537 declaring them rational men, and the sentence in which Spaniards had denied it.