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Should we trust eye-witness evidence?
If we wish to progess in terms of history, then yes.
However, we must account for the bias of the times if we wish to reach the truth.
However, when looking at eye-witness accounts we must account for the different types of biases and compare the account with physical evidence that there may be.
As historians do, we must also ask ourselves: Does the information presented to us make sense in the context of the time?
In other words, how do we determine the validity of the history presented to us?
Do we simply put faith in so called "experts"?
Or do we approach history from many different angles to determine what really happened?
We must also ask ourselves if the lens from which our society looks at history can ever be sufficiently objective as to arrive at a reasonable conclusion of what life was like for different past societies.
Can our present society ever be juxtaposed to other, past societies in such a fashion as to fairly analyze both?
Do we as humans naturally believe that our current beliefs are the correct ones? And if so can we ever break the bonds of our trains of thought in order to fairly compare our beliefs to others' beliefs?
For example, there is still great controversy about who fired the first shots of the American Revolution.
The British say that the rebels shot the first shots while the rebels said that the British shot first.
Both are eye-witness accounts of the same event, albeit since both are biased by their beliefs we cannot know for certain which of them is telling the truth.
Without a definite account we must then evaluate which of the two sides had more of a reason to fire first.
Did the rebel's discontentment with the British oppression outweight the British reason to shoot first?
History
To understand history we must rely to a great extent on eye-witness accounts.
But
In history, first hand accounts play a vital role in discovering what has happened in the past.