Agustín de Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano (Mexico, 1698)

A natural history of the New World written by a Mexican-born Franciscan who called himself "Mexicano" on his own title page, printed in Mexico City by a woman, and built around Nahuatl names. Its first part opens by refuting the ancient doctrine that the torrid zone could not sustain life, prints a ledger of what Spain brought and what the land already had, and stops in the middle of a chapter on pearls to record a Spanish soldier tearing an ornament from an Indian woman's face.