¹ A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Tempe, AZ, November 1995. Chris Beekman, Elizabeth Boone, Steve Houston, John Monaghan, Stephanie Wood, and an anonymous reviewer all provided useful comments. J. Richard Andrews provided comments, helped me with the translation, and, most importantly, taught me all that I know about the Nahuatl language. All errors are, of course, my own.

² “Ca mopiaia in jtoloca; Ca iquac tlatlac in tlatocat Itzcoatl, in mexico: innenonotzal mochiuh in mexica tlatoque, qujtoque: amo monequj mochi tlacatl qujmatiz, in tlilli, in tlapalli, in tlatconj, in tlamamalonj, avilqujçaz: auh injn, çan naoalmanjz in tlalli, ic mjec mopic in jztlacaiutl.” de Sahagún, Fray Bernardino, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Anderson, Arthur J.O. and Dibble, Charles E., eds. and trans. (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950–82), vol. 11, p. 191.Google Scholar

³ Several authors have written on the relationship between orality and Mesoamerican writing; see Monaghan, John, “Verbal Performance and the Mixtee Codices,” Ancient Mesoamerica, 1 (1990), 133–40,Google Scholar for a recent example. Calnek, Edward E., “The Analysis of Prehispanic Central Mexican Historical Texts,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, 13 (1978), 239–66,Google Scholar attempts to distinguish pictorial and oral levels within the extant prose accounts. By “inherently flexible,” I do not mean to suggest that oral traditions have no structure (an assertion which would enter into a great body of scholarly discussion and run counter to the main stream of opinion). However, they are clearly more malleable than a fixed written text.

⁴ This is most explicit in the colonial Yucatec books of Chilam Balam, which explicitly pattern events within chronometric cycles. See, for instance, Edmonson, Munro S., trans, and ed., The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of Chilam Balam ofTizimin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar It was also the case with historical texts in other languages.

⁵ Florescano, Enrique, Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994),Google Scholar addresses the use and construction of history in Mexico from the Late Postclassic through the Colonial period. Keen, Benjamin, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press), is the classic treatment of the development of Aztec historiography since the Conquest.Google Scholar

⁶ A good example of this process is provided by Davies, Nigel, who has written perhaps the most thorough account of Postclassic Central Mexican history. He discusses his analytical method in The Toltec Heritage: From the Fall of Tula to the Rise of Tenochtitlán (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), pp. 11–22.Google Scholar

⁷ As with all other investigations into Mesoamerican ethnohistory, Spanish texts have received far more of this sort of scrutiny than native-language ones. Perhaps the first modern historiographical analysis of Mexican sources was Barlow, Robert, ”La ‘Crónica X’: Versiones coloniales de la historia de los mexica-tenochca,” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos, 7 (1945), 65–87.Google Scholar Ramos, Demetrio, “The Chronicles of the Early Seventeenth Century: How They Were Written,” The Americas, 22 (1965), 41–53,Google Scholar and Cline, Howard, “A Note on Torquemada’s Native Sources and Historiographical Methods,” The Americas, 25 (1969), 372–86,Google Scholar have offered more recent assessments of Spanish chroniclers. Gibson, Charles and Glass, John B., “A Census of Middle American Prose Manuscripts in the Native Historical Tradition,” in Cline, Howard F., ed., Handbook ofMiddle American Indians, Vol. 15, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources. Part Four (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975),Google Scholar remains unparalleled for its coverage of authors and their texts, but the descriptive information on each author is limited by the scope of the work. Krippner-Martinez, James, “The Politics of Conquest: An Interpretation of the Relación de Michoacán,” The Americas, 47 (1990), 177–97,Google Scholar provides a thorough analysis of the aims and composition of that idiosyncratic document. In Peru, Adomo, Rolena, Guarnan Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986),Google Scholar examines the influences upon and aims of this most important ethnohistoric source, while Crowley, Frances G., Garcilaso de la Vega et Inca and His Sources in Comentarios Reales de los Incas (The Hague: Mouton, 1971),Google Scholar is a more staightforward historiographical investigation. More recently, scholars have begun to analyze Nahuatl works as well. On the broadest scale, Gillespie, Susan, The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexico History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989),Google Scholar argues that the entire extant dynastic history of Tenochtitlan was molded after the end of that dynasty into a perfectly structured and sym-metrical format. Other analyses have focussed on single authors. Leibsohn, Dana, “The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca: Recollecting Identity in a Nahua Manuscript” (Los Angeles: Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, 1993),Google Scholar analyzes the Historia in its colonial context as a literary creation. Schroeder, Susan, Chimalpahin & the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991),Google Scholar discusses Chi-malpahin’s account of the Chalca domain. A lesser known example, both of analysis and text, is Federico Navarrete Linares’ analysis of Cristóbal del Castillo, , “Estudio introductorio,” in del Castillo, Historia de la venida de los mexicanos y otros pueblos e Historia de la conquista (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Proyecto Templo Mayor, 1991).Google Scholar Navarrete’s analysis, and his accompanying palaeography, were the stimulus and material for this paper.

⁸ Attempts to explore the structure and reality of the Aztec migration myths, such as Duverger, Christian, L’origine des Aztèques (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983),Google Scholar or Heyden, Doris, The Eagle, the Cactus, and the Rock: The Roots of Mexico-Tenochtitlan’s Foundation Myth and Symbol (Oxford: BAR International Series 484, 1989),Google Scholar tend to treat the various primary texts as equivalent documents, which can be chosen indifferently to buttress various points of the argument. Yet if the agreement between texts can be explained by their processes of authorship, the simple fact that multiple texts agree says nothing definite about pre-Conquest fact (a point made long ago by Barlow, “La ‘Crónica X’ ”) The broadest structuralist studies, such as Zantwijk, Rudolf Van, The Aztec Arrangement: The Social History of Pre-Spanish Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985),Google Scholar are most handicapped by this lack. In the Andes, by way of comparison, Urton, Gary, The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990),Google Scholar has carefully investigated how and why the Inca origin myth was constructed in the early Colonial period.

⁹ “Ca nican mitoa in quenin, in campa huallaque in axcan motenehua mexicà tenochca, ihuan in aquin oquinhualyacantia in huel nelli huei tlacatecolotl motocayotia Tetzauhteotl Huitzilopochtli.” Castillo, Del, Historia, p. 110.Google Scholar All quotations from del Castillo are based on the Nahuatl palaeography of Navarrete Linares. Translations are the author’s. Nahuatl words used within the English text are given in the standardized orthography of Andrews, J. Richard, An Introduction to Nahuatl Grammar Google Scholar (second edition, ms. in the possession of the author), simplified by the omission of length marks.

¹⁰ Throughout this paper I use the ethnic names used by del Castillo, as much as possible in the sense in which he uses them. Thus, “Mexica” is used generally to refer to that group, but specifically to them after their arrival in Tenochtitlan. The name “Mecitin” is used for them prior to their arrival. Del Castillo does actually use the term “Aztec”, but only in reference to the overlords of the Mexica in Aztlan.

¹¹ de León y Gama, Don Antonio, Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras … , second edition, Carlos María de Bustamante, ed. (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1990(1832)).Google Scholar Navarrete Linares, “Estudio introductorio,” pp. 105–7.

¹² Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 33 Google Scholar

¹³ The text is not without grammatical “errors,” and the questions of biological mestizaje and linguistic ability are distinct ones with no a priori relationship.

¹⁴ Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Manuel Carrera Stampa suggests that del Castillo was born in Teotihuacan, within the Acolhua domain, but I am unsure of his source for this data. At the same time, he calls him a Mexica. Stampa, Carrera, “Historiadores indígenas y mestizos novohispanos. Siglos XVI–XVII,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 6 (1971), 206 and 215.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 36.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 89.

¹⁸ The geographic patterning of Mesoamerican historical narrative is addressed by several of the authors in Elizabeth Hill Boone and Mignolo, Walter D., eds., Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994).Google Scholar Specifically, Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words;” John M.D. Pohl, “Mexican Codices, Maps, and Lienzos as Social Contracts;” and Dana Leibsohn, “Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity.”

¹⁹ Although this individual or god’s name is generally rendered as Huitzilopochtli, the double “t” is in fact a more accurate representation, since it captures the pronunciation of the “tztz” sequence that results from the compounding process (huitz-tzilin).

²⁰ “Auh ca in yehuatl Huitzilopoch huitzitlin itoca, auh yecê opochmaye huel tiacauh inic za cont-lamelauhcatocayotique Huitzilopochtli ixiptla in tlacatecolotl Tetzauhteotl. Auh inic cenca quimoliniaya in aztecachicomoztoque tlatoque in Mexitin ye quimelleloxitia [sic, for quimellelaxitia] inic ye quinto-linia, ihuan ye quimpopolozquia, qumpehuazquia [sic, for quimpehuazquia]. Auh in yehuatl in itetlaye-colticauh, in ihueyo in tlacatecolotl Huitzilopoch cenca mochipa ixpanchocaya inic quitlatlauhtiaya in tlacatecolotl Tetzauhteotl in ma quimpalehui, ma quimmanahui in imacehualhuan, ca nel quimoteotia ca amo no quimmoteotia in inteohuan in azteca, in chicomoztoca ca centlamantin. Auh inin ca huel yehuatl quimocenteotia in huey tlacatecolotl ma cenca quimonocnelili, ma quimpalehui, ma quimmaquixti inic amo mochtin quimmictizque, inic amo quizcempopolozque, ma za occecca quinhuica macana qualcan yeccan quintlalmaca in oncan cenca quixcahuizque inic quitlayecoltizque.” Castillo, Del, Historia, p. 118.Google Scholar This passage is repeated almost verbatim in Domingo Francisco de Muñón Chimalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin, San Antón, Memorial breve acerca de la fundación de la ciudad de Culhuacan (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1991), pp. 30–2.Google Scholar

²¹ Huei Colhuacan, also known as Teocolhuacan, is an important location in most Aztec migration narratives.

²² Castillo, Del, Historia, p. 130.Google Scholar

²³ According to Siméon, Rémi, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1977), p. 483,Google Scholar“ocean.” This meaning may or may not have been totally lexicalized (Siméon cites Sahagún); if it were, then this passage might be interpreted to mean that Aztlan was on the other side of the (or a) sea. Chimalpahin uses a related phrase (“hueyapan ilhuicaapan”) to refer to the crossing of the waters by Quetzalcoatl after his departure from Tula, Memorial breve, p. 14, as well as copying this specific passage, Ibid., p. 30.

²⁴ Castillo, Del, Historia, p. 126.Google Scholar

²⁵ This, of course, has strong indigenous roots as well. Deity impersonators, or teixiptla, were an important part of Mesoamerican religion. For a thorough investigation of the subject, see Hvidt-feldt, Arild, Teotl and Ixiptlatli: Some Central Conceptions in Ancient Mexican Religion (Copenhagen: Munks-gaard, 1958).Google Scholar Gruzinski, Serge, Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands: Indian Power and Colonial Society, 1520–1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989),Google Scholar chronicles the development of the role over the colonial period.

²⁶ Castillo, Del, Historia, p. 142.Google Scholar

²⁷ Burkhart, Louise M., The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), pp. 40–42.Google Scholar

²⁸ Literally, “The Place where People Become Shorn (of Flesh)”.

²⁹ Ginzburg, Carlo, “The Witches’ Sabbath: Popular Cult or Inquisitorial Stereotype?,”Google Scholar in Kaplan, Steven L., ed., Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin: Mouton, 1984),CrossRefGoogle Scholar explores the evolution of this image. Metamorphosis into animals and the flight to the gathering first appear in the extant record in trials conducted in the Valais in 1428. For a collection of European descriptions of witches’ sabbaths, see Charles Lea, Henry, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939), pp. 170–82.Google Scholar At the end of the sixteenth century, witch trials were increasing in number throughout Europe, to reach their peak in both Europe and North America in the late seventeenth century.

³⁰ de Olmos, Fray Andrés, Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios, Baudot, Georges, ed. and trans. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990.)Google Scholar

³¹ Alexander Christensen, “Nahuallotl or Nigromancia: Aztec Religion through Spanish Eyes,” paper presented at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Kalamazoo, MI.

³² “… ca ayamo aci in itlapohualpan in aquin icel teotl in ilhuicac onoc in amo iximachoni, in amo macho in tlein itoca, ihuan aie ittoni. Auh ca ye ehuatl in oquinahuatilmacac in axcan toteouh in Tetzauhteotl inic ompa techhuicaz in canin tlamapilhuitiuh in canin tlateneuhtiuh,…” Del Castillo, Historia, p. 146.

³³ Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 92.Google Scholar As indicated earlier, however, Tezcatl-Ihpoca is named as a superior to Tetzauhteotl, and it may simply be he who is intended here.

³⁴ Navarrete L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 93, attempts to reconstruct a complicated indigenous divine hierarchy and its transformation with the Conquest. This is far-fetched, at best.

³⁵ Boone, “Aztec Pictorial Histories,” p. 55.

³⁶ Boone, Elizabeth Hill, “Migration Histories as Ritual Performance,” in Carrasco, David, ed., To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1991).Google Scholar

³⁷ The number 52 clearly has some significance as the length of one Sacred Round. It seems to me most likely, however, that for del Castillo to use it in this context is the equivalent of a western author using a century, as a not-necessarily-exact description of a long period of time. A fragment of a calendrical text is also attributed to del Castillo (Historia, pp. 204–17). If this attribution is true, then he did have some knowledge of pre-Columbian chronometry, but it still plays a minimal role in his history.

³⁸ This is a similar focus to that of Mixtee manuscripts ( Boone, , “Aztec Pictorial Histories,” p. 54).Google Scholar However, del Castillo’s prose narration differs immeasureably from these pictorial texts as well.

³⁹ This point has been explored by Robertson, Donald, “The Sixteenth Century Mexican Encyclopedia of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún,” Cuadernos de Historia Mundial 9 (1966), 617–28.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ On the role of the Bible as exemplar, see Mignolo, Walter D., “Signs and Their Transmission: The Question of the Book in the New World,” in Boone, and Mignolo, , eds., Writing Without Words. One use of chapters within a Nahuatl language text is Olmos, Tratado, written from a staunchly ecclesiastical perspective.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Leibsohn, Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.

⁴² Alford, John A., “The Scriptural Self,” in Levy, Bernard S., ed., The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its Influence on Literature and Art (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1992), p. 6.Google Scholar

⁴³ Durán, Fray Diego. The History of the Indies of New Spain, Heyden, Doris, ed. and trans. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), p. 3.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 7. In her note, Heyden assumes that this is a description of Quetzalcoatl, but it could equally well be one of del Castillo’s Huittzilopochtli.

⁴⁵ This semantic structure is discussed in Christensen, “Nahuallotl or Nigromancia.”

⁴⁶ Andrews, J. Richard and Hassig, Ross, “Editors’ Introduction: The Historical Context,” in Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, Andrews, and Hassig, , trans, and eds. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Keen, The Aztec Image. The identification of Quetzalcoatl and Saint Thomas, which was current through the eighteenth century (Ibid., p. 231ff.), reappears in a fictional context as recently as Jennings’, Gary novel Aztec (New York: Atheneum, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Uchmany, Eva Alexandra, “Huitzilopochtli, dios de la historia de los Azteca-Mexitin,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, 13 (1978), 211–37.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Seler, Eduard, Collected Works in Mesoamerican Linguistics and Archaeology (Culver City, CA: Labyrinthos, 1990–93 [1902–1923]), vol. 2, p. 13.Google Scholar Two of the accounts which he mentions can be seen in the Popol Vuh, Tedlock, Dennis, trans. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 177,Google Scholar and The Annals of the Cakchiquels, Recinos, Adrián and Goetz, Delia, trans. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), pp. 54-55.Google Scholar Tedlock, p. 50, assigns a physical location in Campeche or Tabasco to this event, explaining that there are “lowland Maya sites where causeways pass through flooded areas.”

⁵⁰ Davies, Nigel, The Aztecs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), p.9.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Davies, Nigel, The Aztec Empire: The Toltec Resurgence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

⁵² King, Jaime Litvak, “La introducción posthispánica de elementos a las religiones prehispánicas: un problema de acculturación retroactiva,” in King, Jaime Litvak and Tejero, Noemi Castillo, eds., Religión en Mesoamérica, XII Mesa Redonda (Mexico: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1972).Google Scholar

⁵³ Boone, Elizabeth Hill, Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society vol. 79, pt. 2, 1989), p. 57.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 3.

⁵⁵ Adomo, Rolena, “Arms, Letters, and the Native Historian in Early Colonial Mexico,” in Jara, René and Spadaccini, Nicholas, eds., 1492–1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing (Minneapolis: The Prisma Institute, Hispanic Issues 4, 1989), pp. 211 Google Scholar and 217. Although Ixtlilxochitl’s extant works are in Spanish, some, at least, may have been translated from Nahuatl (Gibson and Glass, “A Census of Middle American Prose Manuscripts,” p. 338).

⁵⁶ Ferrante, Joan M., “The Bible as Thesaurus for Secular Literature,” in Levy, , ed., The Bible in the Middle Ages, p. 49.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Alford, “The Scriptural Self,” gives a lengthy passage from an eighth-century Life of Bishop Wilfrid that models almost every event on a biblical predecessor.

⁵⁸ Of course, sixteenth-century Spaniards were quite good at holding things against contemporary Jews, but then those Jews (and, to a degree, their converso descendants) were seen as those who had rejected Christ when they had had a chance to do otherwise. That was not the case with the Mexica any more than it had been with Abraham or David.

⁵⁹ Olmos’ third chapter is headed “Ypan mitoa ca yn iuhqui ytechca Sancta Yglesia yn Sanctos Sacramentos, no yuhqui yn ichan Diablo in Execramentos” (“In which is said that just as there are Holy Sacraments in the Holy Church, so also there are Execramentos in the Devil’s home.”). Olmos, Tratado, p. 33. The writings of those priests most actively engaged in stamping out heresy and backsliding show a definite interest in, and perhaps sometimes an obsession with, the seizure of written texts. See, for instance, de Alarcón, Ruiz, Treatise, , and Berlin, Heinrich, “Las antiguas creencias in San Miguel Sola, Oaxaca, México,” in Idolatría y superstición entre los indios de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo, 1988), pp. 28–9,Google Scholar speaking of the campaign carried out by Gonzalo de Balsalobre in the 1650s.

⁶⁰ The native vocabulary for such purposes did still survive, and is visible in the prayers collected by Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise, in Morelos in the 1620s, but was clearly not acceptable in a Christian context.

⁶¹ Even if the students at the Colegio de Tlatelolco did speak Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin, one doubts that they translated, or even read, much Virgil or Ovid.

⁶² “En contrepoint, le militarisme exacerbé d’un Cristobal del Castillo, son hymne à la gloire du sacrifice humain écrit près de quatre-vingt ans après la Conquête peut s’expliquer par un réflexe antiespagnol, par une ultime volonté de défendre les anciennes valeurs indigènes offertes à la vindicte par la nouvelle religion.” Duverger, , L’origine des Aztèques, p. 347.Google Scholar

⁶³ Adorno, , Guarnan Poma, p. 142.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See Mignolo, , “Signs and Their Transmission,”Google Scholar for a discussion of the relationships between Mexican, Peruvian, and European means of recordkeeping.

⁶⁵ Adomo, , Guarnan Poma, chapter 2.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Ibid., p. 43, etc.

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 65. mIbid., p. 88.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 35.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 27ff.

⁷¹ Ibid., pp. 100–2.

⁷² Ibid., p. 76.

⁷³ Gruzinski, Serge, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western World, 16th–18th Centuries (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), p. 62.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Lockhart, James, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992);Google Scholar Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico; Leib-sohn, Historia Totteca-Chichimeca. There has recently been an explosion of interest in native títulos and related works, with much of the work being conducted by James Lockhart and his students at UCLA. Restali, Matthew, “Yaxkukul Revisited: Dating and Categorizing a Controversial Maya Land Document,” UCLA Historical Journal, 11 (1991), 114–30,Google Scholar and Terraciano, Kevin and Sousa, Lisa, “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Mixtee and Nahua History and Myth,” UCLA Historical Journal, 12 (1992), 29–90,Google Scholar provide examples from outside the Nahua area. Wood, Stephanie, “Don Diego de García de Mendoza Moctezuma: A Techialoyan Mastermind?,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, 19 (1989), 245–68,Google Scholar examines the authorial process behind one group of “historical” texts. Her study can be supplemented by Alexander Christensen, “The Codices of San Cristóbal Coyotepec, San Miguel Te-pexoxouhcan, and San Nicolás Totolapan: A Techialoyan Subgroup,” paper presented at the 1993 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Bloomington, IN.

⁷⁵ Schwaller, John F., “Nahuatl Studies and the ‘Circle’ of Horacio Carochi,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 24 (1994), 387–98,Google Scholar discusses the slightly later group of Nahuatl scholars formed around that renowned Jesuit and grammatician.

⁷⁶ These passages are the primary content of Chimalpahin’s second entry for 1064. Memorial breve, pp. 23–35.

⁷⁷ The term indio itself, or related forms, is quite rare in Nahuatl texts in the sixteenth century, and did not become a standard part of the native vocabulary during the colonial period. When a generic term was needed for native person, macehualli, or “commoner,” was the preferred word. Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 115–6.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Robertson, Donald, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).Google Scholar Borrowing the term may not be that uncalled for, as there was clearly some relationship between writers and painters.

⁷⁹ On Chimalpahin, see Schroeder, Chimalpahin.

⁸⁰ Admittedly, we are missing the sections of his work that connect the migrations to the conquest; however, this conclusion does seem likely, given the lack of focus on names and identities of individuals in the Historia.

⁸¹ Sell, Barry D., “ ‘The Good Government of the Ancients’: Some Colonial Attitudes About Precontact Nahua Society,” UCLA Historical Journal 12 (1992), 155.Google Scholar

⁸² For Central Mexican examples, see Gruzinski, Man-Gods. For the Maya area, see Bricker, Victoria R., The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁸³ Gruzinski, , Man-Gods, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Ibid., pp. 84–85.

⁸⁵ Leibsohn, , Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, p. 192.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 33.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ “Christoval del Castillo, a Mexican Mestee. He wrote the History of the Travels of the Aztecas, or Mexicans, to the country of Anahuac; which manuscript was preserved in the library of the college of Jesuits of Tepozotlan.” Clavigero, , The History of Mexico (London: G.G.J, and J. Robinson, 1787), vol. 1, p. 17.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ “There still exist in Mexico and Spain several historical manuscripts of the 16th century, of which the publication by extract would throw much light on the history of Anahuac. Such are the manuscripts of Sahagún, Motolinia, Andrea [sic] de Olmos, Zurita, Josef Tobar, Fernando Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl, Antonio Motezuma, Antonio Pimenti [sic] Ixtlilxochitl, Taddeo de Miza, Gabriel d’Ayala, Zapata, Ponce, Christophe de Castillo, Fernando Alba Ixtlilxochitl, Pomar, Chimalpain, Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Guttierez [sic]. All these authors, with the exception of the five first, were baptized Indians, natives of Tlascala, Tezcuco, Cholula, and Mexico.” Humboldt, , Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (New York: J. Riley, 1811), vol. 2, p. 48n.Google Scholar As far as I know, several of these authors remain unpublished, almost two centuries after Humboldt’s observation. Humboldt himself may simply have copied this list from Clavigero who gives a brief description of all of these authors in largely the same order.

⁸⁹ Navarrete, L., “Estudio introductorio,” p. 20.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ See Gama, León y, Descripción histórica, p. 7.Google Scholar