The image of America as an Amazonian warrior woman was reproduced widely in Renaissance art and thereafter. As a central feature of a global archive and an iconic symbol, she conveys a range of Eurocentric anxieties intertwined with the dominant vision of indigenous extreme primitivism. Travel and captivity accounts with marvelous encounters became foundational discourses enticing early modern readers as they legitimated Iberian imperial expansion. The archive has been a patriarchal, geographical, and historical project dominated by political and economic interests biased toward regions with rich resources and populations. When considering the Iberian world and the global nature of colonialism, contingencies of time, place, and gender need to be considered in turn. A profoundly conflictive undertaking emerged in the creation of archival spaces, collections, and historical discourses on precolonial societies. In Mexico, historians, collectors, and bibliophiles depended greatly on surviving indigenous painted books in European collections and the missionary archive.