In two decades of traveling throughout Mexico, Central America, and Europe, French priest Charles tienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-1874) amassed hundreds of indigenous manuscripts and printed books, including grammars and vocabularies that brought to light languages and cultures little known at the time. Although his efforts yielded many of the foundational texts of Mesoamerican studies--the pre-Columbian Codex Troana, the only known...