US officials did not say who had the 16th-century page that was missing from Mexico’s archives for decades

Nearly five centuries after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés signed it and decades after someone swiped it from a national archives, a priceless manuscript page has been returned by the FBI to Mexico.

The document contains a detailed accounting of the logistics related to Cortés’s journey to what eventually became New Spain – a territory that stretched from Central America to modern-day Washington state.