The visits of Our Lady to a poor native Mexican in the early years of the Spanish occupation of New Spain, and her gift through him of the miraculous painting, now venerated under the title of ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe,’ have often been recounted, but none of the early traditions, it would seem, bear a greater impress of truth and scrupulous investigation than the account left by the Spanish chronicler Fray Luis Becerra Tanco, Professor of Native Languages in the University of Mexico, and dated in 1666. He says that in the previous year he was invited by the Cathedral Chapter to depose on oath all that he knew on the subject, and he now commits to writing an accurate and circumstantial record of this evidence.

In the first place, he says he has a very clear recollection of the incident as related to him in his youth by three Spaniards of note, one of them his uncle, who had known contemporaries of the Bishop Fray Don Juan de Zumarraga and other personages concerned in the event, and were themselves born within a few years of the date of the miracle. Further, his knowledge of the native language and customs—his favourite study—-has enabled him to examine the native records of this happening before they had disappeared, for he says that, under the influence of Spanish education, the natives are losing the art they possessed of transmitting their traditions by pictures and chants. He adds that it cost him many vigils to correlate their reckoning with his own and separate exaggerations from reality: . . . . y a mi me costó mucho desvelo el ajustar su computo a el nuestro y aportar lo supersticioso de lo natural.’