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Broken Spears or Broken Bones: Evolution of the Most Famous Line in Nahuatl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

John F. Schwaller  and
Miguel Leon-Pórtilla
John F. Schwaller
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Potsdam, Potsdam, New York
Miguel Leon-Pórtilla
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigations Históricas, Universidad National Autonoma de México
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Extract

Arguably the line “Broken Spears” is the most famous in Nahuatl. Any undergraduate student who has taken a course in Latin American history, literature, or anthropology has in all likelihood come across the line. It, of course, comes from the title of Miguel Leon-Portilla's book of the same name. The line appears in a description of Tlatelolco following the destruction of the city by the Spanish in the conquest of Mexico:

      Broken spears lie in the roads
      We have torn our hair in our grief
      The houses are roofless now, and their walls
      Are red with blood.

This evocative image has dominated much of the imagination of two generations of college students.

Type
Research Note
Information
The Americas , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , October 2009 , pp. 241 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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References

1. The exhibit may be visited electronically as well: http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/earlyamericas/Pages/default.aspx.

2. León-Portilla, Miguel, La visión de los vencidos (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1959).Google Scholar

3. Garibay first translated the passages as additional material in his edition of the Spanish version of Sahagún’s, Historia general, 4 vols. (Mexico: Porrúa, 1956), pp. 818–819.Google Scholar

4. While the two manuscripts cover some of the same details, as will be seen, the specific line that ended up in English translation as “broken spears” happens to appear in Manuscript 22bis.

5. Mengin, Ernst, ed., Anales de Tlatelolco (Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard, 1945);Google Scholar Mengin, Ernst, “Unos annales históricos de la nación mexicana,” Baessler-Archiv, vol. 21 (1939–1940), pp. 69–168.Google Scholar

6. Moreno, Wigberto Jiménez, “Foto copias hechas por orden del señor Paso y Troncoso que se conservan en la dirección del Museo Nacional,” in Zavala, Silvia, ed., Francisco del Paso y Troncoso—su misión en Europa, 1892–1016 (Mexico: Museo Nacional, 1938), pp. 555–563.Google Scholar

7. Berlin, Heinrich and Barlow, Robert, Anales de Tlatelolco (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autònoma de México, 1948), p. 71.Google Scholar

8. Garibay K., Angel Maria, Historia de la literatura Náhuatl, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1971), vol. 1, p. 452–454.Google Scholar

9. Sahagún, Bernardino de, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, Angel María Garibay K., ed., 3rd ed. (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1975), pp. 818–819.Google Scholar The first edition of this work appeared in four volumes, also published by Porrúa, in 1956. The selection from 22bis is curiously presented on the page, left justified in short phrases, a formatting which implies poetry.

10. Glass, John and Robertson, Donald “A Census of Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Wauchope, Robert, ed. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1975), vol. 14, pp. 173–174,Google Scholar

11. Prem, Hanns J. and Dyckerhoff, Urusula, “Los Anales de Tlatelolco: Una colección hetreogénea,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, vol. 27 (1997), pp. 181–207.Google Scholar

12. Lockhart, James, ed. and trans., We People Here: Náhuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 266–267, 313.Google Scholar Lockhart notes that Garibay incorrectly translated the word “ontitl” “even though both previous translators had correctly rendered the word as ‘bones.’”

13. “Broken spears [or lances, arrows] lie İn the roads; we have torn our hair in grief.” León-Portilla, Miguel, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, trans. Kemp, Lysander (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1962), p. 137.Google Scholar

14. Using the “New philology” Lockhart argues that the current form of Manuscript 22 had to come from the 1540s. Lockhart, , We People Here, p. 42.Google Scholar

15. Diccionario de la lengua española (Madrid: Real Academia de la Lengua Española, 1732), D E F, p. 28. Interestingly enough, this is essentially the same definition found in the 2001 edition.

16. One can argue that “dardo” and “saeta” are more closely synonymous, since both can refer to the bolts shot from crossbows.

17. Hassig, Ross, Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), pp. 75–79.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 81–85.

19. Garibay, Angel María, La Have del Náhuatl (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1940).Google Scholar

20. Garibay, Angel Maria, La poesía Náhuatl, 3 vols. (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1964–68);Google Scholar Garibay, Historia de la literature Náhuatl.

21. Lockhart, James and Karttunen, Frances, “La estructura de la poesía náhuatl vista por sus variantes,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, Vol. 14 (1980), pp. 15–64.Google Scholar

22. Scholars might quibble as to whether some of the expressions used in the Anales are in fact metaphors. At present we simply do not know enough about the full range of metaphorical devises to determine that unequivocally.

23. Leander, Briggita, In xochitl, in cuicatl: Flor y canto (Mexico: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1972), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

24. Lockhart, James, We People Here, p. 313.Google Scholar

25. Klaus, Susanne, Anales de Tlatelolco (Schwaben, Germany: Verlag Anton Saurwein, 1999), p. 145.Google Scholar

26. It is interesting that Klaus uses the word “espaciada,” which means spread-out or literally “spaced out,” as opposed to “esparciada,” which means scattered.

27. Tena, Rafael, Anales de Tlatelolco (Mexico: Cien de Mexico/Conacuita, 2004), p. 115, n. 62.Google Scholar

28. The key phrase is “omitl xaxamantoc.” The adjective here, “xaxamantoc” means broken. It is theoretically possible that the entire word was meant to be “omithcaxamantoc.” In Nahuad verbs in the past or completed tenses can take a prefix which is the letter “o.” This thinking posits that the noun is then embedded into the verb, and potentially meaning “to arrow break” in the past tense. Unfortunately, this hypothesis does not stand up. When nouns are embedded, they routinely lose their “-tl” ending, making “omixaxamantoc.” Similarly the sound combination represented by “-tlx” is essentially impossible in Nahuatl.

29. At this point the editions vary as the different authors attempt to correlate how Manuscript 22 and 22bis form a single narrative text. In general, I have, for the purposes of this essay, focused more on Manuscript 22bis which contains the iconic phrase, and was the basis for Garibay’s work.

30. The Nahuatl word is “moyacatlamina” which can be considered something like “went nose-wise.”

31. I have chosen to arrange the phrases in a poetic format so that the parallel structure can be seen more easily. This in fact might be part of the explanation why Garibay chose to present it as poetry. Yet, in other nearly identical instances he stayed with a prose format.

32. The earliest translation was into German by Mengin, Ernst, “Unos Anales Históricos de la Nación Mexicana. Die Manuscrits Mexicains nr. 22 und 22 bis der Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris,” Baessler-Archiv: Beitrage zur Volkerkunde, 22, pp. 69–168 Google Scholar. The earliest into Spanish was Toscano, Salvador, ed., Anales de Tlatelolco … y Códice de Tlatelolco (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1948). Both translated the word as “bones.” Garibay did not cite these translations.Google Scholar

33. Lockhart, James, We People Here: Náhuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

34. Portilla, Miguel León, Visión de los Vencidos, Relaciones indígenas de la Conquista (Mexico: UNAM, 1959).Google Scholar

35. Portilla, Miguel León, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962).Google Scholar The book has enjoyed several reprints and two expanded editions.

36. Lockhart, , We People Here, p. 333.Google Scholar

37. Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1956.

38. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1945. The line in which the reparation between “o” and “miti” is visible appears in the facsimile provided by Schwallcr himself (see p. 245).

39. Baessler Archiv (Berlin), vol. 21 (1939–1940).

40. Lockhart, James, We People, p. 313.Google ScholarPubMed

41. Andrews, Richard, Introduction to Classical Náhuatl (Austin, TX: Texas University Press, 1975), p. 206.Google Scholar

42. Sullivan, Thelma D. Compendium of Nahuatl Grammar (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1998), p. 29.Google Scholar