This chapter surveys the incipient histories of the New World by looking at how the Spanish conceived of New World history, and ultimately what these histories broadcast to Europe. These New World writings fall into four broad categories: eyewitness accounts of the ‘discovery’ and ‘conquest’; the work of armchair historians (who never left Spain) who sought to make sense of the New World; ethnographies by the friars who carried out the spiritual conquest; and the great literature that fuelled the debate about the moral, philosophical, legal, religious, and ethnographic implications of the conquest, written by official historians and religious men, not all of whom had set foot in the New World. By examining the key texts of this New World historiography, and focusing on the themes and genres that these new kinds of works addressed, the chapter traces how historical writing took part in the changing influences and image of the New World, revealing that the significance of these works resides more with the authors, methods, and purpose of the accounts than what they were relating.