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FAMSI © 2008: Laura Rodríguez Cano |
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Toponymic Analysis of Three Lienzos from the Mixtec Lowlands, Oaxaca The Lienzos Studied In this section I present a brief description of the contents and general characteristics of the lienzos studied, giving consideration to their actual location, copies, publications and previous studies, format, measurements, support, manufacturing technique, theme, etc. The Postcortesan Mixtec Codex No. 36 (CMP36): The CMP36 is currently housed in the repository at the Biblioteca del Museo Nacional de Antropología (BMNAH). Nevertheless, there is an excellent, full-sized photograph at the Museo Regional de Huajuapan de León with which the Board of said museum allowed us to work under the best conditions in which to obtain the graphic and photographic registers, as well as an adequate reading for the paleography of the glosses that appear on the lienzo. The first news of this lienzo, according to Glass (1964) can be found in the inventory of manuscripts of Eduard Seler in 1907. 5 Later the document was reproduced by Rosado Ojeda in 1945, at which time she studied the glosses in Mixtec on the lienzo without translating them, and described the pictographically represented toponyms using the monumental work of Peñafiel 6 for support. Glass, in his guide to ethnohistoric sources from the Handbook of Middle American Indians, adds another reference to a brief description of the same lienzo done by Alcina Franch in 1955. 7 Later, in the 70’s, Mary Elizabeth Smith (1973) included an identification of a central place represented and the translation of the glosses read by Ojeda thirty years earlier. In addition to these studies, we find other commentaries about this lienzo in Glass (1964 and 1975), Smith et al. (1991) and the investigation done for a video by Hermann (1998). It appears that there is also an incomplete copy of this lienzo in the BMNAH, cataloged by Glass (1964) as "Codex No. 20". This anonymous copy was probably made in the second half of the XIX century, although there is no known reference to its history. According to Glass (1964), that copy is similar in material and style in which it was done to the anonymous copy of the Becker II Codex, and for this reason he believes that they must have been made by the same artist. Glass adds that he did not find the original when he made the catalog of codices of said repository and had to base himself only on a photograph, which he did not include in his 1964 catalog. Because of this, it remains an unpublished document. The general characteristics of this copy, according to Glass (1964), consist of a document done in color on modern paper. It measures 0.48m by 0.58m, and is divided into four horizontal bands which have various dates, hieroglyphs and heads that appear in the original PMC. 8 The Postcortesan Mixtec Codex No. 36, cataloged in this way by Glass in 1964, has been classified as part of the historic-cartographic documents of Western Oaxaca, made in the XVI century on European paper adhered on a lienzo. 9 It measures 0.85m by 0.87m, and it is missing a piece of the right side. Smith says that it was made with 24 rectangles of various sizes, and also points out that the lienzo shows fold marks.10 From what we could tell, this codex presents 13 unions, of which 11 and a fragment of a twelfth are made from a material that could be, as Rosado said in 1945, European paper. The union that is left over is made of cloth, which enabled us to tell whether the other 12 unions were adhered to it. In the section where the paper is missing, we can see the warping and its stitching.11 (Plate 5)
In Rosado’s opinion (1945), this document is a codex made a short time after the Conquest with the objective of delimiting and clarifying the territorial properties of the region’s inhabitants. It is very possible that it was originally accompanied by a dossier that specified the litigation, but unfortunately, if it did exist, it has been lost. This same author indicates that, in different places on the lienzo, you can even see traces of Spanish rubric, but its condition is so deteriorated that it does not allow for paleography. Nonetheless, by comparison with other documents of the time, we know that these signatures were a type of "approval" and validation of the pictoral document that was given by the Spanish authorities. The direct observation of a good reproduction permitted us to verify that these four signatures exist. Two are in the lower part at both sides very near to where the division of lands begin. Another is in the upper part of said division of lands in dispute, and surely in the fragment that is missing there was another one completing the symmetry as is the case with the lower section. The three signatures have very similar traits, reason for which they may be considered as having been made by the same person. On the other hand, the last signature that is found between the Mixtec temple at the left and the church is different, and curiously it has been detected that it is very similar to that which appears in another document from the northwest of Oaxaca related with the Coixtlahuaca group and is known by the name "Gómez de Orozco Codex".12 The Postcortesan Mixtec Codex No. 36 is a lienzo that is almost square. At its center there is the representation of a church with two Mixtec temples,13 and pairs of important members of the ruling class. Associated with both are various dates which carry the Mixtec Year Glyph. The pairs and the temples have glosses in Mixtec that identify them. Below in the center there is a drawing of a series of 30 plots or parcels crossed by a river. Fifteen of these (the ones at the top part) are incomplete due to the section that was lost, and have Castilian names (Don Juan and Doña Macarita); the fifteen below, besides having glosses in Mixtec, are associated with human heads (Plate 13. Also see Plate 1). On the top, bottom, right and left borders of the lienzo there are 37 toponyms represented by their glyphs and glosses in Mixtec. They are distributed as follows: 10 at the right, 10 on top, 6 at the left (there were possibly 3 or 4 more which have been lost; some traces can still be seen, but it is impossible to identify them with the existing evidence), and 11 at the bottom. It is possible that by conserving part of some of the stylistic conventions of Mixtec writing, this document also presents an indigenous orientation, in which the East is located along the top borders. Thirty six place names and their glosses will be discussed below. (Plate 1) The study by Rosado consists of a description of the characteristics of this lienzo, and is the first time that the pictographic document was reproduced; however, the town that it may be referring to is not identified. The author justifies this by saying that possibly this information is in the missing piece; this seems questionable to us, since the missing piece is not an important part of the central section. In my opinion, deterioration is the cause of this loss of information of perhaps three or four delimitations at the right side and part of the parcels of lands that have Castilian names. Although the author conducted the paleographic study of the Mixtec glosses, he does not propose a translation, nor does he relate these with the "pictographic" image (Plate 9, Plate 10, Plate 11 and Plate 12). He limits himself to analyzing it through the identification of each image that makes up the place name, using Peñafiel’s work for support regarding the nomenclature of the geographic names of Mexico. In some cases, he even proposes that they are similar to certain names in Náhuatl. I believe that the Rosado’s descriptions of the pictographs that make up the place names are, for the most part, correct. However, I do not believe that the association and comparison that he makes with Náhuatl names is valid. Almost 30 years later, Smith (1973) also studied this lienzo, once again conducting the paleography, since it differs in some readings from that of the previous author (Plate 9, Plate 10, Plate 11, and Plate 12). With the help of Mixtec vocabulary guides such as the one by Alvarado for the Mixtec Highlands and the information gathered in 1800 by José Mariano Tupeus14 for the Mixtec Lowlands, Smith does propose a translation for the glosses in Mixtec, and tries to locate (in space and time) the images represented in the lienzo that she considers to be boundaries of the town that is represented at the center. By the same token, she proposes that the parcels are represented with the names of their owners. In her opinion, the lienzo was made as a copy of an older one for presentation as proof for a land litigation. The author proposes that the dates represented with the Mixtec glyphs written at the center are Year 8 Flint, Day 8 Flower and Year 6 House, Day 7 Grass; this is in difference to Rosado, who had identified this last one as Year 7 Grass, Day 6 House. Smith’s (1973) identification is correct, since the house is associated with the year glyph. She correlates these years to our calendar, considering the first as 1540 or 1592; for the second year date, she proposes 1525 or 1577. In relation to the space represented on the lienzo, she starts by identifying the town that appears at the center, and for this she proposes that over the roof of the temple on the right there is a gloss not studied paleographically by Rosado (1945), and which says "haey ñodi". According to her, the phrase in Alvarado’s guide should be "hauhi ñuu dzai" which means "house of Huajuapan de León". The word "hauhi", besides meaning house, can extend to mean family or governing lineage. "Ñuu dzai" is the name with which Father Reyes registers Huajuapan de León in the XVI century. Smith reinforces her proposal of the reading based on the fact that this name is repeated in some parcels of the bottom central section with the glosses "ñuhu ño diai", and because even today Huajuapan de León is very important in the area. Nonetheless, it can be added that in the revision of this document there are slight differences in some of the paleographic readings that I did with the life-sized reproduction, and these may play a hand in the meaning of these borders (Plate 9, Plate 10, Plate 11, & Plate 12). The second lienzo is that which has been cataloged by the ARANO with the no. 57 glosses is a copy from 1960 which reproduces a lienzo from the XVI century that is missing today.15 This document, with all the reservations that working with the interpretation of the copyist implies, is the only evidence that remains regarding this lienzo and it is one of the historic documents that makes up the collection previously known as the Archivo de la Reforma Agraria in Oaxaca. This institution is now called the Archivo del Registro Agrario Nacional, also in the city of Oaxaca. This archive classifies the lienzo as a historic document "57 Glosses", done in 1960, no provenience (Plate 2). To date, this is a document for which there is only a brief description of the original published in Smith, et al., 1991, and this copy was printed upside down in a general photograph, for the first time in an edition financed by the "Amigos de Oaxaca" association, Fomento cultural Banamex y el Instituto de Artes Gráficas del Estado de Oaxaca titled "Documentos del Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria en Oaxaca". Said photograph appears on page 68 with the following information: "Cat. 44. Separated from its file, this graphic from 1960 is a copy of some Colonial lienzo and presents similarities with the lienzo of Xochitepec" (Plate 2). Through studying this publication and observing the photograph, it was not possible to distinguish the glosses (since the dimensions of this lienzo do not allow the general reproduction to have the detail that one would like), however, it was possible to distinguish some toponymic glyphs from its borders. I realized that some of them seemed to share the same composition that some of the borders registered in the Postcortesan Mixtec Codex No. 36 have, appropriating its provenience from Huajuapan de León. This led me to propose the supposition that both codices together with the map of Xochitepec with which said publication associates the lienzo 57 glosses are related, since on the one hand they could be registering three important Mixtec seigniories which are very close to one another, and appear as sharing some of the toponymic glyphs of their borders. Also, throughout their history the three lienzos have been documents for which no provenience was known. The proposal is that the information that these contain refers to three chieftainships of the Mixtec Lowlands. Based on this working hypothesis, I dedicated myself to the systematic study of the 57 Glosses lienzo and to the search for other’s opinions of the map of Xochitepec which we will talk more about later. L57 is conserved in ARANO, and this institution thanked me for my interest in this document and for the help that I may be able to provide in finding out about its provenience. This 57 Glosses lienzo is made on papel cartoncillo (paper card stock?), measures 1.93 by 1.16 meters and is delineated in black and sepia ink. Its manufacture consisted in the adhesion of eight sheets of cartoncillo of about 0.63 by 0.49 meters. Throughout the entire document we see the marks of adhesive tape which was used to tape the sections where the folds caused rips. The right bottom corner is completely separated from the rest; this fragment measures 0.29 by 0.28 meters, and in the section that united it with the rest of the lower part, the graphic registers and glosses are in very bad shape (Plate 6).
This lienzo is a large rectangle in which, toward the central edges, two large churches can be seen. These are associated with a series of human heads with important headdresses; in some, one can distinguish the diadem that appears on the Mexica rulers. In the upper building there are 26 heads and two toponymic glyphs placed in a vertical position. The lower church only has 21 associated with it. It is very possible that, due to the types of headdresses, this is a list of the lords of the chieftainship; however, the register that identifies them by their calenderic name is lacking, although due to their disposition in a row it may be making reference to tribute payers or service personnel. Between these two scenes there is a large plot of land delimited by some plants, circles, parcel subdivisions, and a smaller church. Outside of this rectangle toward the bottom left there is another ecclesiastic building of smaller dimensions associated with a plant and other parcel divisions. At the middle of the lienzo, as well as around the outside, there are toponymic glyphs as borders of the settlement in the central section (Plate 7). These borders, 13 on the right, 7 above of which not all appear to be locational icons, 14 on the left side and 10 on the lower border, one of them, the one located at the bottom left, is incomplete because the lienzo is missing its lower left corner. In the central part there are 4 more toponymic glyphs. Some of the borders that run along the edges have glosses in Mixtec; a total of 35 of the 44 glyphs have a register in Latin characters, and only one of these is practically illegible due to the folds and the tear that separated the bottom right corner (Plate 2). The iconographic analysis of the toponymic glyphs and the paleography of the glosses, as well as their classification by toponymic structures will be discussed later.
This lienzo also has some annotations written after the copy was made. Two are written in pencil one with printed letters that reads "west" and the other in cursive with the word "east". These references are located in the central part of the left and right sides (Plate 7). It is very possible that this data is incorrect, since it is most likely that the person who added this information to the document didn’t know about the orientations of the lienzos and colonial maps of the XVI century, which still maintain the indigenous orientation indicating the East at the top. In my opinion, as with the Postcortesan Mixtec Codex, this lienzo no. 57 Glosses has the East at the top and is a document which, because of the characteristics of its format, very probably had its original accompanied by a file that contained the details of the provenience and the problem that was meant to be cleared up before the Spanish authorities. Nonetheless, unfortunately we don’t have either of the two, which are missing to this day. Also, another of the later annotations on this document is found on the corner that is separated at the lower right side and is some kind of rubric done in blue ink -- perhaps by a former owner? (Plate 7). Currently this map is in the National Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the fundamental problems regarding the study of this document is being able to have a good register of its contents, where one could get the details of the glyphs and glosses that are represented, since the Xochitepec Map was published in black and white at a very reduced scale by Barlow, 1942; Birket, 1946; and, Caso, 1958. This does not allow us to clearly observe the glyphs and their glosses, nor to appreciate the colors associated with the images that are still conserved on the map. The analysis of this lienzo was able to be carried out with the color photographs from the archives of the National Museum of Denmark,16 which allowed a much better look at the details. The graphic register that was made from a copy of said map in black and white, which was perhaps made by Alfonso Caso and is found in the Archivo Histórico del Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, has also been very useful. The glyphs inked on this copy of the Xochitepec Map still have annotations in pencil that perhaps are codes for indicating the areas where pigment is preserved, the color correspondence for which was able to be obtained by color photographs (Plate 3). The measurements of this copy are very exact as compared with those of the original; the scale is nearly 1:1. As to the Xochitepec Map, Glass (1975) tells us that it was acquired in 1840 by the National Museum of Copenhagen (NMC) in Denmark, where it is now housed. The original from the XVI century is on exhibit and the archives of this museum have a photographic record in four sections. As previously mentioned, the first complete black and white photograph that was taken of this lienzo was that by Birket Smith in 1946, who included it in his study of the collections housed in the Denmark Museum. Later Caso presents photographs in 1958, also in black and white. However, it is very probable that he had color photographs provided by the Denmark Museum, as indicated in his article. Nonetheless, the Alfonso Caso collection of the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the UNAM only has one in black and white. There is also another one that appears in the edition of the works of Robert Barlow from 1990, published by the Universidad de las Américas (UDLA) - Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). The Xochitepec Map was commented on for the first time by Gómez Orozco in 1952 and 1955 based on some notes taken by Paso y Troncoso, who visited the museum in Denmark and knew of this lienzo. This same study is reproduced in the article by Barlow that was published by the UDLA-INAH. In 1958, on the occasion of the Congreso de Americanistas, Caso gave a talk about the lienzo. In 1973 Smith included some additional comments, taking the same viewpoint as Alfonso Caso. Then, in 1975 Glass and Robertson incorporated a technical index relating to this lienzo in their guide for the ethnohistoric sources in the Handbook of Middle American Indians. Lastly, Smith and Parmenter (1991) make more comments on the codex as a document from the Mixtec Lowlands. The only publications that deal in detail with the glyphs and the paleography of the respective glosses are those by Gómez de Orozco and Alfonso Caso. The photographs from the National Museum of Copenhagen do not have sufficient detail so as to observe and detect the manufacture. All that can be seen are the folds and the deterioration of the document, but it is said that it is made on amate paper in a lienzo format with dimensions of 1.02m by 0.92m. And it conserves basically two colors (blue and red), although in the annotated color copy and the color photographs other tones such as dark green, gray, black and ochre can be seen. The contents of this lienzo are historical cartography (Plate 8). I agree with the observation of Alfonso Caso when he comments that it is probable that the map belonged to the documents generated during the Colonial Period for the Relaciones Geográficas de 1580, which unfortunately are lost. More precisely, the Relaciones of the District of Huajuapan de León, which surely corresponded to the northwest tip of the State of Oaxaca, where, found among other towns that have been important from Prehispanic to Colonial times, Xochitepec is located.
The church of Xochitepec and some personages are at the center of the document. Over the central spot there is a scene of subjugation and above it is a series of 20 lords seated on icpallis which bear their names in Mixtec and for the last ones on the right side the glosses are in Spanish, with their baptismal names in Castilian. Around the MX there are 24 place names registered that probably function as their limits and which, in difference to the other lienzos under study (PMC and L57), the glosses are in Náhuatl. Also, the 5 toponymic and anthroponymic glyphs for the personages in the mythic-historic section are accompanied by glosses in Mixtec (Plate 3).
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