Francisco Ximénez, Las historias del origen de los indios de esta provincia de Guatemala (written c. 1701–1722; first printed 1857)

A Dominican parish priest in the K'iche' town of Chichicastenango copied out, word for word, the book his parishioners kept, and put a Spanish translation beside it. He did it to expose their errors, and says so in his prologue. The manuscript sat unread in Guatemala for 130 years; a passing Austrian naturalist found it in the university library in June 1854 and printed the Spanish text in London in 1857. It is the only reason the text survives at all.