Bartolomé de las Casas:
What seems certainly to exceed all human ingenuity, and inasmuch as it will be no less new than rare to the other nations of the world, so much more should be admired and esteemed, is the craft and art which those Mexican people know so well and perfectly, of making out of natural feathers with their own natural colors all that they and any other excellent and skillful painters whatsoever can paint with their brushes. They were accustomed to make many things of feathers, such as animals and birds and men, capes and shawls to cover themselves, vestments for the priests and crowns and mitres, shields and moscadores and a thousand other sorts of things that they fancied. The feathers were green, red or ruby, purple, flesh color, yellow, blue or blue-green, black and white, and all the other colors, mixed or pure, not dyed by any human effort - but all natural, taken and had from different birds.
