Abstract
When the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico in 1519, they found themselves confronted with a society who regarded the fundamentals of civilization in an entirely different way. Not only did the Aztecs practice mass human sacrifice but, according to many European commentators, they also lacked many of the markers of a civilized society.1 Prominent amongst these indicators was writing. According to the arch critic of the Indians, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, ‘These people possess neither science nor even an alphabet, nor do they preserve their history except for some obscure paintings, nor do they have written laws, but barbarous institutions and customs.’2 In reality, the Aztecs possessed a complex and sophisticated system of recording, but these indigenous ‘books’ were rarely recognized as ‘writing’ by their Spanish conquerors.
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Notes
Throughout this article, the term ‘Aztec’ refers particularly to the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, a group frequently referred to as the ‘Mexica’. I recognize the difficulties and possible anachronisms of the term, but will use it as the most familiar term for a non-specialist audience.
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, ‘Democrates Alter, sive de justis belli causis apud Indos’ in John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith (eds), New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century (New York: Times Books, 1984), vol. 2, p. 325.
There is much controversy regarding the precise nature of Aztec writing and the balance between phonetic and ideogrammatic elements. See especially: Charles E. Dibble, ‘Writing in Central Mexico’, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 10, Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, Part 1 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp. 322–32;
H. B. Nicholson, ‘Phoneticism in the Late Pre-Hispanic Central Mexican Writing System’, in Elizabeth P. Benson (ed.), Mesoamerican Writing Systems: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 30th and 31st, 1971 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1973), pp. 1–46.
Miguel León-Portilla, Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), pp. 4–5.
Even before the devastating intervention of the conquistadors, questions of history were inherently confused by the deliberate creation of a sanctioned state account following a ‘burning of books’ in 1431 during the reign of the tlatoani (ruler) Itzcoatl as the elite aimed to support and perpetuate their authority through the creation of an official state narrative. See Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. and ed. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, 12 books in 13 vols, 2nd edn (Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950–82), 10: 29: p. 191. Hereafter Florentine Codex. To prevent confusion between different editions and enable cross-referencing to alternative versions, references are given in the form of book: chapter: page number. (Page references are to the revised edition where applicable.)
The most significant of this work has come from the research of James Lockhart and the so-called ‘Lockhart School’. For a survey of this field, which is increasingly known as the ‘New Philology’, see Matthew Restall, ‘A History of the New Philology and the New Philology in History’, Latin American Research Review, 38.1 (2003), pp. 113–34.
Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 272.
No pre-conquest Nahua sources survive, but the work of a number of similar traditions has enabled scholars to access pre-conquest iconic tradition and convention. Valuable works of art and history in their own right, such documents also indicate a continuity of visual conventions into the early colonial period and in recent years the interpretation of such colonial documentshas advanced significantly. Iconic script has been increasingly identified and interpreted as its possibilities as a channel to access indigenous thought have been recognized. For recent research on pictorial sources see Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000);
No pre-conquest Nahua sources survive, but the work of a number of similar traditions has enabled scholars to access pre-conquest iconic tradition and convention. Valuable works of art and history in their own right, such documents also indicate a continuity of visual conventions into the early colonial period and in recent years the interpretation of such colonial documentshas advanced significantly. Iconic script has been increasingly identified and interpreted as its possibilities as a channel to access indigenous thought have been recognized. For recent research on pictorial sources see Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Gordon Brotherston, Painted Books From Mexico: Codices in UK Collections and the World They Represent (London: British Museum Press, 1995);
Frances Karttunen, ‘Indigenous Writing as a Vehicle of Postconquest Continuity and Change in Mesoamerica’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom Cummins (eds), Native Traditions in the Postconquest World (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), pp. 421–47;
Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994).
For recent archaeological work see, for example, Leonardo López Luján, The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994);
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Life and Death in the Templo Mayor (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995).
Probably the most prominent exponent of this tradition is Kurly Tlapoyawa. See his ‘Did “Mexika Human Sacrifice” Exist?’, http://www.mexika.org/TlapoSac.htm, accessed 30 November 2007; and his We Will Rise: Rebuilding the Mexikah Nation (Victoria: Trafford, 2000).
Cecelia F. Klein, ‘Wild Woman in Colonial Mexico: An Encounter of European and Aztec Concepts of the Other’, in C. Farago (ed.), Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450–1650 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 263.
Serge Gruzinski, The Mestizo Mind: The intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization (London: Routledge, 2002).
For the celebration of children’s first words, see Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, palaeography and trans. Thelma D. Sullivan, completed and revised with additions H. B. Nicholson, Arthur J. O. Anderson, Charles E. Dibble, Eloise Quiñones Keber and Wayne Ruwet (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 89.
The Aztec educational system was critical to establishing this highly developed tradition of rhetoric. See Caroline Dodds Pennock, Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 66–88.
For the pre-conquest origins of the huehuetlahtolli see, for example, Miguel León-Portilla and Librado Silva Galeana, Huehuetlahtolli: Testimonios de la Antigua Palabra (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1991), pp. 7–45;
Joanne Harwood, Disguising Ritual: A Re-assessment of Part 3 of the Codex Mendoza (Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex, 2002), pp. 138–40;
Birgitta Leander, ‘La educación de los jóvenes en la sociedad Azteca, según los hue-huetlatolli – “Platicas de los viejos”‘, in José Alcina Franch (ed.), Azteca Mexica: Las culturas del México antiguo (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario and Lunwerg Editores, 1992), pp. 265–69;
Elizabeth Hill Boone, ‘Pictorial Documents and Visual Thinking in Postconquest Mexico’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom Cummins (eds), Native Traditions in the Postconquest World (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), pp. 150–55.
Miguel León-Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist (Norman: University ofOklahoma Press, 2002), pp. 117–18.
Louise Burkhart, ‘Gender in Nahuatl Texts of the Early Colonial Period: Native “Tradition” and the Dialogue with Christianity’, in Cecelia F. Klein (ed.), Gender in Pre-Hispanic America: A symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 12 and 13 October 1996 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), p. 87.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 22.
On the mestizo nature of colonial texts see Serge Gruzinski, The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization (London: Routledge, 2002).
Luis Nicolau D’ Olwer, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), p. xiv.
In the original, the text is ‘el padre de la antropología en el Nuevo Mundo.’ See also: M. León-Portilla’s Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002).
For detailed information on the earliest chroniclers of Aztec culture, many of whose work is now lost, see Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520–1569 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995).
For more on the varying popularity and perceived reliability of colonial sources see Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), especially pp. 60–129.
Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520–1569 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995), p. 232.
Florentine Codex, 6: 17–22: pp. 87–126.
Ibid., 6: 19: p. 99.
Ibid., 6: 19: p. 100.
Ibid., 6: 18: p. 95.
Ibid., 6: 22: p. 121.
Caroline Dodds Pennock, Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 137–40.
Alonso de Zorita, The Lords of New Spain: The Brief and Summary Relation of the Lords of New Spain, trans. and ed. Benjamin Keen (London: Phoenix, 1965), p. 135.
Inga Clendinnen has argued that suckling and nursing were a fundamental aspect of Aztec ideology, closely associated with conceptions of paradise. See her Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 184–88, 195–97.
Cecelia F. Klein, ‘None of the Above: Gender Ambiguity in Nahua Ideology’, in Cecelia F. Klein (eds), Gender in Pre-Hispanic America (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), pp. 183–253.
Florentine Codex, 6: 19: p. 100.
Ibid.
The obvious exception to such rather dehumanizing approaches is Inga Clendinnen’s unique Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Florentine Codex, 6: 19: p. 101
Ibid., 6: 33: p. 122.
Ibid., 6: 18: pp. 93–94.
Ibid., 6: 17: p. 87.
The importance of the debate over the ‘humanity of the Indians’ in legitimizing the Spanish conquest and the evangelical endeavour is well known. For one helpful overview of the issues impacting on the religious recorders of the huehuetlahtolli see Patricia Seed, ‘Are These Not Also Men? The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 25, 3 (1993), pp. 629–52. The agendas of individual chroniclers also affect the text in highly specific ways at times. For example, the writings of the Dominican friar Diego Durán reflect his conviction that the Aztecs were descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Ibid., Introductions: 6: p. 65.
Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520–1569 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995), pp. 491– 524;
Miguel León-Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), pp. 199–202, 208–12, 216–20.
Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry Into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago: Aldine, 1971).
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Pennock, C.D. (2012). Insights from the ‘Ancient Word’: The Use of Colonial Sources in the Study of Aztec Society. In: Roque, R., Wagner, K.A. (eds) Engaging Colonial Knowledge. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230360075_5
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