What the Indians were thinking when they first had Christian doctrines to them has long been a matter of great interest

What the Indians were thinking when they first had Christian doctrines to them has long been a matter of great interest. Generally, Europeans have made their own assumptions without much evidence. At first friars enthusiastically reported that the indigenous were deeply moved and that they, the friars, had been able to baptize many thousands right away. Later, they walked back their assertions that all the Indians had been devout converts from the moment they were sprinkled with holy water, but the friars also remained generally confident in their overall success. They convinced the whole world that they had successfully converted Mexico to Catholicism in relatively short order. Only in the 1990s did it become commonplace for scholars to argue that this premise was indeed false - that in fact the indigenous had not simply rejected generations of belief and accepted Christian teachings without question.

C. Townsend, Fifth Sun (2019), 135