Nahua Newsletter

November 2000, Number 30

The Nahua Newsletter
A Publication of the Indiana University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Alan R. Sandstrom, Editor
With support from the Department of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

• Nahua Homepage
• Anthropology Homepage
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Contents

• Nahua Newsletter News
• News Items
• Book Reviews
• Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Culhuacan, and other Nahua Altepetl in Central Mexico. 2 vols. Collected and Recorded by Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuantzin. Edited and translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Vol. 1. Pp. viii+248. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8061-2921-2. Vol. 2. Pp. vi+248/ $48.50 (cloth). ISBN 0-8061 2950-6. Reviewed by Gordon Brotherston.
• Francis, Norbert. 1997. Malintzin: Bilingüismo y alfabetización en la Sierra de Tlaxcala (México). Tomo I. Pp. 257. Tomo II. Pp. 251. ISBN (set) 9-978043-33-0. Collección Biblioteca Abya-Yala, Nos. 54 and 55. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala. Reviewed by Jane H. Hill.
• Commentary
• Illustrations this Issue
• Directory updates

Nahua newsletter news

Welcome to the 30th issue of the Nahua Newsletter, now completing its 15th year of publication in the interests of the culture, history, and language of Nahuatl-speaking and related peoples in the Mesoamerican culture area. In this issue you will find a declaration of religious freedom sent by Nahuas of the Chicontepec region of northern Veracruz, as well as news items, book reviews, a commentary on Nahuatl linguistics, a commentary on flint, and a directory update. Please enjoy this issue and participate in the growing community of scholars and students who read the NN by sending news of your activities, requests for information, comments, or calls for action. We reach nearly 400 readers in 15 different countries so please use the NN to create your own personal network.

The NN was begun in February 1986 by Brad Huber, now Associate Professor of Anthropology at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He assembled the initial list of subscribers and succeeded in creating a community of scholars and students linked by their common interest in the Nahuas and the Nahuatl language. Brad remains a loyal reader, an active researcher, and a key player in Nahua studies.

To uninitiated outsiders, the NN may seem a little obscure. Those in the know realize that more people speak Nahuatl than any other Native American language. They also are aware that the ethnohistorical record for Nahuas is one of the richest in the world. That record documents one of the greatest cataclysms in history as Europeans and Native Americans confronted one another and changed each other in the process. The launch of the NN coincided with a renewed interest in the peoples and cultures of Mesoamerica. The past 20 years have witnessed significant progress in our understanding of the history, languages, and contemporary cultures of the region.

The NN is sent free to subscribers, but it survives on donations to offset the costs of printing and mailing. Our finances are relatively stable right now, and thanks to the generosity of readers we have enough in the account for this issue and the next. Donations are always gratefully received, however. We are a low-pressure operation that has survived for a decade and a half on the generosity and good will of our readers. If you would like to send money to be placed in the NN account, please make checks payable to the Nahua Newsletter and send them to the address below. All funds are used to print and mail the NN. There are no administrative costs.

We can be accessed on the Web at http://www.ipfw.edu/Soc/Nahua.htm. Our NN Webmaster is Richard Sutter, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. His e-mail address is SutterR@ipfw.edu. Eventually all previous issues will be archived on the Web, but at this time only the recent past issues appear there. We are unable to include the illustrations that appear in each issue because of copyright laws. If you or your library would like a complete set of printed back issues, please contact the editor at the address below to make arrangements. We charge $100 for a complete set of back issues (a bargain for the amount of material included) and all proceeds will be applied to printing and mailing of future issues.

Please send your news items, calls for cooperation, or commentaries to:

The Nahua Newsletter
c/o Alan R. Sandstrom, Editor
Department of Anthropology
Indiana-Purdue University
2101 Coliseum Blvd. East
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805

News Items

1. We received the following declaration from Lic. Arturo Gómez Martínez on behalf of Nahuas from Ixcacuatitla, Chicontepec, Veracruz. Arturo is a Nahuatl speaker who recently completed his tesis para licenciado en anthropología at the Universidad Veracruzana, which is entitled "Tlaneltokilli: La espiritualidad de los nahuas chicontepecanos." The declaration was issued in Nahuatl along with a Spanish translation.

Mahtlactli tonalli tlen noviembre metztli tlen 1999 xihuitl.

Nochi tlen tech tlacakiliah:

Ni tomasehualteotlahtol tlahuel yehyectzi huan itech ahcoketza, tech cahuiltehtokeh tohuahcapayohua ihuan mehcatza maneltic ica teotlahtolli catalica, tohuanteh tihpia totlaneltokil ica tlen titlanescayotiah tlen tlaelli pilsintzih, nohkia tihtlacualtiah atl, ehecatl, tlitl huan tlalli, nochi ya ni yehyectlahtolli tlen tech yolcui huan tech tlamaca, yeca titlatlacualtiah, titlatenohnotzah huan titlatlaliah ica se tlacualiztli huan piotzih. Tihmahtokehya ica ni totiotzitzih tlanahuatiltlatilanah, amo nesih, amo mopanextiah; inihuanteh chanitztokeh cahcampahuelli pan ni semanahuactli huan tech mocuitlahuiah, kitlachiliah totekih huan tech tlatzacuitiah kemah ax titlatlepanitah huan kemah ax titlatlacualtiah. Tech yocuitokeh totiotzitzih, kichihkeh ni semanahuac huan nochi tlen tlaohonca, yeca no kinekih tlen titlaeliltiah huan kinekih se tlatzotzontli, tlanohnotzalli, copalli, tlacualli huan tlaihtotilli. Yeca tohuanteh timasehualmeh titlatlacualtiah ica amo icatomosisinihtoseh ni totecohuah, amo ma tech tlatzacuilticah, yeca tikintlepanitah huan ica titlaneltocah, mehcatza tech cocoliah, mehcatza tech ahuah ne totahtzitzih católicos, ne Testigos tlen Jeohován huah sekimeh tlaneltokilmeh. Totiotzitzih tech palehuiah, inihuanteh kimahcahuah atl ica ma tlaelli pan ni tlaltepactli yehyectzi itlahca se tlacualistli, ihkino amo ancas mayantli, amo titlaihyohuiseh; tlahuel cualli ma tihtlepanitacah ni tlen huahcapatl mochihua, ihkino amo tikincualaniseh totiotzitzi ihkino huelis tech palehuihtiaseh, tlen ki ahcocuih Chicomexochitl ma amo kimahcahuacah, ma kitlacualticah ica se tlacualli, xochitlatzotzontli, xochitl huan tlaihtotilli.

Itztokeh tlacameh tleh tech cuatotoniah ica ni totlaneltokil, tohuanteh amo ma tikintlacakilicah, pampa tohuante no itechmoneki ma tih panexticah tlen titlaneltocah, tlen hueli tech ihiliah panpa ni totiotzitzih amo tlacuah kemah se se kintlamanilia, amo xikintlacakiliacah, inihuanteh tlahuel cuatlapolohtokeh, toteco kineki ma timotlacuapilicah, ax san mech titlahtlanicah, nohkia ma tih macacah se achi tlen tech maca; inmohuanteh tomasehualpoyohua xikihlamihkicah ica tlen tikinmacah ni totiotzitzih no kiseliah huan ininhuaya timonechcahuiah ica copalpoctli, tlatzotzontli huan tlanohnotzalli. Tohuanteh tihchihuah se cualli tlatlacualtiliztli, yeka tlaahuetzi kemah titlahtlanih, yeca achi momanahuia tomilah.

Yehyectzi totlaneltokil huan mopanextia pan teoamatlatectli huan sekimen teotlanahuatianeh tlen nohkia tikintocaxtia espíritus ni kinpalehuiah tlen huehueyih totiotzitzih. Nohkia ma tikintlepanitacah campa titlatlacualtiah, tepemeh malhuilmeh, nohkia amelli, tlaoztocomeh huan tzacualmeh tlen antiguatl. Tlatlacualtilizmeh ma tikin ahcoketzacah, ma ti mo panoltilicah tlahtolli tlen kenehcatza mochihua ni tlamantli ica ma ax polihui huan ma mopanexti yeyehca. Nitotlaneltokil moneki ma tihtlepanitacah huan tohuantia ma tihyolpachocah, san yahyaya ni tihpia tlen tomasehulpo, tlan tohuanteh ax tihtlepanitah sekinokeh tlen kiahuakeh amo kitlepanitaseh.

Ni xihuipahtli huan nochi tlen masehualpahtli tlatemoliztli tlahuel cualli para tohuanteh ti masehualmeh, no tihpiah tohuaya to itztolis ihuan tlehaya ica timopahtiah. Cualli timopahtiseh ica masehualtepatihketl, ya tech pahtis toyolcocolishua tlen mopa coyotepahtihketl amo huelli kichihua pampa amo ki ixmati ni tlamantli, nohkia amo.

Tohuanteh timasehualmeh ma tih manelocah ipahui coyotepahtihketl ihuan tlen masehultepahtihketl, ihkino achi cualli timochicahuaseh. Kemah ticocoxquetih ma tikitacah tlachixketl, ya tech ihlis tlen tlamantli tihchihuaseh tlan se tlapahtiliztli o tiaseh ne caltepahtiloya.

Tlatlacualtilismeh tlen tih chihuah ma tikintlepanitacah huan ma tikin ahcoketzaca para ma ax polihui, ni ya ni tlen tech masehualnextia, huan tlahuel tech palehuia ica titlacakiseh tlen cualli tlahtolli huan comuntlatlepanitalistli. Namictilismeh kin olochoa insenchanitztocah, nohkia momasehualnamictiah pampa tlen tlanamictihketl huehuetlacatl. Elotlamanaliztli tlahel yehyectzi huan ica tihtlascamatilia toteco huan tlalli huan atl. Atlatlacualtiliztli moneki ma mochihua, tlan amo se kichihuas ni tonatih tech tlamis kemah tlamis totlacualis.

Ni totiotzitzi tlen tikinescayotiah pan amatl moneki ma tikintlepanitacah huan ma tikintlacualticah, tlen tech cocoliah amo ma tikintlacakilicah, san panimah sekimeh nohkia masehualmeh huan ax kimatih tlen kichihuah, kineltokah kiahuac tlahtolli, amo kicuamachiliah huan tlahuel axtlen kipiah, ax ki itah tlan san kintekihuah ica tlen ax cualli.

Ni teoamatlatecmeh ma cualli tikin ahcocuicah, ma tikintlacualticah, ma tikinpopochuicah, ma tikintlamacacah huan kemah huelis ma tikintlatzotzonilicah. Tlen kipiah ininxochical o calli tlen costumbre ma kimocuitlahuicah huan ma kitlachpanicah huan tlen amo kipiah ma kichihuacah se, amo moneki ica tetl, mehcatza san ica cuahuitl kineltoca.

Ixcacuatitla, Chicontepec, Ver., 10 de noviembre de 1999.

A la opinión pública:

Las creencias que tenemos nosotros los indígenas son muy ricas, es herencia ancestral y aunque combinamos cosas de la iglesia católica, tenemos nuestros propios cultos, basados fundamentalmente en el maíz y su cultivo, también rendimos culto al agua, al viento, a la lumbre y a la tierra; son todos ellos expresiones sagradas que nos dan vida y sustento, por eso hacemos rituales, les rezamos y les ofrendamos nuestros comestibles y aves. Sabemos que nuestros dioses son poderosos, invisibles e impalpables; ellos habitan en diferentes partes del universo y andan observando nuestras conductas, nuestros trabajos y nos castigan cuando nos portamos mal o cuando no les ofrecemos ceremoniales. Los dioses nos han creado, crearon el mundo y todo lo que existe en ella, ellos quieren que les entreguemos un poco de lo que nosotros producimos, además exigen un poco de música, rezos, copal, comidas y danzas. Estas son las razones por lo que nosotros los indígenas celebramos los rituales, para que los dioses no se enojen, no envíen castigos, por eso los respetamos y creemos en ellos aunque nos critiquen, nos regañen los sacerdotes católicos, los testigos de Jehová y otras religiones. Nuestros dioses son los que más ayudan, ellos envían las lluvias para que la tierra sea fértil y para que las plantas comestibles crezcan y den buenos frutos, de esta manera no habrá hambrunas, no sufriremos; es importante que respetemos nuestras antiguas tradiciones, para no provocar la ira a las divinidades y así continúen ayudándonos; los que custodian el Chicomexóchitl que no lo abandonen, es prioritario que le ofrezcan rituales, comidas, música, flores y danzas.

Existen personas que nos reprimen por nuestros cultos y creencias pero no debemos hacerles caso, porque también tenemos derecho de manifestar nuestra fe, lo que más nos critican es que los dioses no comen las viandas que les ofrecemos, pero no les pongan atención, ellos son ilógicos, dios quiere reciprocidad con nosotros, no únicamente debemos de pedirle, sino que también debemos ofrecerle un poco de lo que recibimos; ustedes compañeros indígenas piensen que las deidades si reciben lo que les ofrendamos y nos comunicamos a través del humo del copal, la música y los rezos. Nosotros hacemos buenos rituales por eso llueve cuando pedimos y se protege nuestra cosecha.

Nuestras creencias son hermosas y lo más palpable de ello tenemos los recortes donde figuramos las deidades y demás fuerzas sobrenaturales, que también llamamos espíritus, que también son ayudantes de los más principales dioses. Es importante también que respetemos nuestros sitios sagrados, los cerros son lugares delicados, al igual que los manantiales, las cuevas y las ruinas arqueológicas (antiguas). Los ceremoniales debemos reforzarlos transmitiéndonos el conocimiento en torno a su realización para que de esta manera podamos preservarlas lo más original posible, sin modificaciones. Nuestras creencias tenemos que comenzar a respetarlos y valorarlos nosotros mismos, que es lo único que nos queda como indígenas, si no lo hacemos, personas ajenas no lo harán.

La medicina tradicional y todo el sistema terapéutico indígena es muy importante para nosotros los indígenas, pues tenemos nuestra propia cultura y nuestros propios mecanismos de curación. Siempre es importante que nos atendamos con los curanderos, él nos puede curar enfermedades espirituales que el médico alópata no lo puede hacer, porque no conoce sobre esto, además tiene otras creencias.

Nosotros los indígenas debemos de combinar las medicinas del médico profesional y del curandero para que tenga más eficacia y sanemos pronto. Cuando nos sentimos débiles consultemos al adivino (de maíz) para que nos diga que debemos hacer, si un ceremonial de curación o acudir a la clínica.

Los rituales que nosotros celebramos, debemos de respetarlos y perpetuarlos para que no se pierdan, ya que son parte de nuestra identidad, además nos ayudan mucho en ciertos aspectos como la de unir formas de pensar y respeto mutuo. Los ceremoniales de boda cohesionan a la familia y además se unen en matrimonio conforme la tradición, debido a que los casa el sacerdote indígena o huehuetlácatl. La ceremonia del elote llamado elotlamanaliztli, es muy hermosa y con ello agradecemos el fruto a las divinidades y principalmente a la tierra y al agua. El ritual para pedir lluvias llamado atlatlacualtiliztli es digno de celebrarse, por el contrario el sol nos exterminaría, en tanto que nuestros alimentos se acaben.

Las deidades que figuramos en papel ceremonial tenemos que respetarlos y rendirles culto, a los que nos critican no les hagamos caso, finalmente algunos de ellos también son indígenas y no saben lo que hacen, profesan credos que ni son de ellos, ni los entienden y además están más humildes que nosotros, no se han dado cuenta de que los están usando y explotando.

Nuestras deidades figurados en papel tenemos que guardarlos bien, rendirles culto, sahumarlos, ofrecerles alimentos y en ocasiones música. Los que tienen su "xochicalli o casa de costumbre" que lo cuiden y que lo aseen y los que no la tienen procuren edificar una, sin importar los materiales de construcción, ya sean de madera o de concreto.

2. Jonathan D. Amith writes to alert readers to the Nahuatl Summer Language Institute IV at Yale University, Summer 2001:

"Now entering its fourth year, the Nahuatl Summer Language Institute is part of a comprehensive project to provide learning and research tools in this language and to bring together experts in the field of Nahuatl language and culture. In addition to discussing the institute's progress to date and its plans for the immediate future, this short report will hopefully encourage scholars who have worked on Nahuatl to contact the institute and perhaps assist in its development. We welcome participation by anyone interested in helping us meet the goals of advancing Nahuatl studies.

"One of the primary objectives of the institute is to create a learning environment that will meet the needs of a wide range of students, including historians, art historians, anthropologists, linguists, and heritage language speakers. Besides receiving intensive instruction in modern Nahuatl (15-20 hrs/week for eight weeks), students have attended invited lectures, workshops, and one-week supplementary seminars by leading Nahuatl scholars from a variety of disciplines. Last year, James Lockhart (emeritus, UCLA) conducted the one-week seminar on colonial Nahuatl. Shorter invited lectures were presented by Louise Burkhart (SUNY, Albany), Willard Gingerich (St. John's University), and Alan Sandstrom (Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne).

"This coming summer the basic introductory course will again by taught by Jonathan Amith. The basic text for the course, a reference/pedagogical grammar and lexicon of the modern dialect spoken in Ameyaltepec, Guerrero, is organized to facilitate comparison with colonial Nahuatl and to provide a basic understanding of Nahuatl morphology and syntax that will be of utility to those studying any variant of Nahuatl.

"This summer will also be marked by the completion of the first draft of a 10,000-entry lexicon of the Nahuatl spoken in Ameyaltepec. This will be used in the course and provide a significant addition to the colonial sources already available. It will also provide a lexical base for working with the modern grammar and learning exercises. The dictionary will be placed online in the Fall of 2001 by the Linguistic Data Consortium of the University of Pennsylvania. Guest lectures and workshops for the 2001 introductory course will be offered by Louise Burkhart, Willard Gingerich, and John Justeson (SUNY, Albany). Michel Launey will give the special one-week invited lecture.

"Given the interest shown for the first three institutes (nine students in 1998, 13 in 1999, and seven in 2000), we are excited to announce that for 2002 we are now planning to offer, with funding from the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Chicago, a five- or six-week institute for advanced instruction in Nahuatl. This unique course will comprise a series of three workshops, each conducted by a leading expert in Nahuatl. To date, James Lockhart and Michel Launey have agreed to participate; each will be in charge of intensive instruction for two weeks. A third individual will be invited to complete the team. Enrollment will be open to anyone who has completed the introductory course during the first four years or to scholars who can demonstrate a proficiency in Nahuatl equivalent to one year of study. The goal of this new course is to provide, for the first time we are aware of, advanced instruction in Nahuatl, thus enabling students to attain a high level of proficiency in this language through direct intensive work with experts in the field. Details of this workshop will be announced in Fall 2001, both in print and on the Website at http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl. The desire to offer this advanced course represents a commitment of the institute to provide tools for training the next generation of Nahuatl scholars.

"The development of an electronic database of Nahuatl and its placement online represents another goal of the Nahuatl institute: to develop and make universally available a set of research and pedagogical tools for research on and learning about Nahuatl. Mark Liberman and Steven Bird of the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania have provided invaluable assistance in developing a prototype search engine for a Web-based Nahuatl lexicon of Ameyaltepec (at http//www.ldc.upenn/hyperlex) that will eventually comprise over 10,000 entries (Nahuatl to Spanish and English). It will be linked to an electronic version of the reference/pedagogical grammar in an effort to solve a major problem for instructional material in less commonly taught languages, namely, how to provide the grammatical and pedagogical context for a dictionary while furnishing the appropriate lexical base for students to implement the language skills they learn through a grammar. Interactive exercises will accompany each lesson, offering the possibility of learning Nahuatl at a distance. A preliminary version of this effort can be viewed at http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl.

"The U.S. Department of Education, through its International Research and Studies Program, has granted two years of support to develop these materials for classroom and research use as part of a Nahuatl Learning Environment. The final product will include a lexicon, grammar, exercises, drawings and photographs, and sound files. Additional support for the Nahuatl Summer Language Institute and the Nahuatl Learning Environment has been provided by Yale University, the Latin American Studies Consortium of New England, and the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies through funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.

"For more information, including application materials to attend the 2001 intensive summer institute, please contact the coordinator of the institute by e-mail at jonathan.amith@yale.edu (or by phone at 503-831-3151), or visit the institute Website at http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl. Scholars who have worked on Nahuatl and wish to discuss their possible participation in future institutes or in jointly developing resource materials for research on and teaching of Nahuatl are cordially invited to contact the institute or the Council on Latin American Studies at Yale (latin.america@yale.edu / 203-432-3420)."

3. James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom announce that their edited volume Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: Anthropological Views of the Turn to Protestantism in Mesoamerica has been accepted for publication by Praeger Publishers Inc., a subsidiary of Greenwood Publishing Group. The volume will be included in the Religion in the Age of Transformation series (Anson Shupe, series editor). Following is the table of Index

"Preface" by Alan R. Sandstrom

1. "Protestantism in Mesoamerica: The Old Within the New" by James W. Dow
2. "Evangelicals in the Lower Mayo Valley" by Mary I. O'Connor
3. "Religious Affiliation in Indian Mexico" by Carlos Garma
4. "Demographic Factors Affecting Protestant Conversions in Three Mexican Villages" by James W. Dow
5. "Looking for a System of Order in Life: Jehova's Witnesses in Mexico" by Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola
6. "Godparenthood Ties Among Zapotec Women and the Effects of Protestant Conversion" by Nicole Sault
7. "The Maya Pentecost" by Garrett Cook
8. "Reconsidering Protestant Growth in Guatemala, 1900-1995" by Henri Gooren
9. "Making One Our Word: Protestant Q'eqchi' Mayans in Highland Guatemala" by Abigail E. Adams
10. "Pastors, Preachers, or Prophets? Cultural Conflict and Continuity in Maya Protestant Leadership" by David Scotchmer
11. "Conclusion: Anthropological Perspectives on Protestant Conversion in Mesoamerica" by Alan R. Sandstrom

4. Esther Pasztory writes to inform readers about a special conference entitled "West by Non West" that was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of pre-Columbian art history. The conference was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from November 10-12, 2000, and the brochure included the following information:

"The first Ph.D. in Pre-Columbian Art History was given half a century ago. Today, art historians in the field number between fifty and a hundred. We work alongside archaeologists and anthropologists, members of disciplines that are better represented in the field and in academic publications than we are. While various groups of art historians come together at College Art Association meetings, this will be the first conference where we in the discipline of Pre-Columbian Art History will be able to reassess a half century of scholarship while mapping out problems that may arise in the new century.

"The particular theme of the West by Non-West conference is the conundrum of being trained in Western methodology while studying non-Western cultures. Much scholarly work has represented non-Westerners as the "other" while at the same time appropriated and romanticized particular aspects of foreign cultures. Much of this discourse leaves one with the sense that such constructions are more reflections of Western desire than the culture studied. In studying pre-Columbian art are we in fact still studying Western art? If so, to what extent do Western styles, such as Classicism, Modernism, Conceptualism, or Earth Art affect collector's choices and the critical perspectives of the art historian?

"The aim of this exploration is not to vilify or separate the West from an 'authentic' Non West, but to inform our discourse by acknowledging and examining the cultural matrices through which we understand pre-Columbian civilizations. We may find that aspects of the 'other' are better revealed if Euro-American discourse is taken into account. As we reevaluate the scholarly work of the last half century, do we learn as much about ourselves as about pre-Columbian cultures?

"The West by Non-West Conference, particularly suited to the expertise and interests of art historians celebrating their half-century of pre-Columbian studies, will also be of interest to the archaeologists and anthropologists with whom we work, and to the many non professionals who are interested in pre-Columbian art."

Friday
Welcoming Lecture, Francesco Pellizzi, Editor of RES

Saturday
Opening Remarks, Welcome and Presentation of Honors to Doris Heyden by Esther Pasztory, Columbia University
"George Kubler's contribution to Pre-Columbia Art" by Mary Miller, Yale University
Theoretical Issues: "Views of Pre-Columbian Studies in Mexico" by Beatriz de la Fuente, Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, UNAM, Mexico
"Not Like Us and All The Same," by Cecelia Klein, UCLA
"Shield Jaguar and the French Academy" by Flora Clancy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
A presentation to be announced by Tom Cummins, University of Chicago
"Truth in Forgery: The Western Concept of Pre-Columbian Art" by Esther Pasztory, Columbia University
"History of Art and Anthropology of Art" by Claude Baudez
Panel Discussion: "Problems in Interpretation, Iconography, and Meaning" moderated by Mark Miller Graham, Auburn University, with panelists Dorie Reents-Budet, Smithsonian Institute, Dana Leibsohn, Smith College, Rebecca Stone-Miller, Emory University

Sunday
Problems of Historical Reconstruction: "Notions of Aztec History" by Emily Umberger, Arizona State University
"Chichen Itza and the Toltec: Changing Persiller, Yale University
Panel Discussion: "Exhibiting the Non-West" moderated by Diana Fane, Brooklyn Museum of Art, with panelists Richard Townsend, Art Institute of Chicago, Luis Cancel, Director of Exhibitions and IT, Museum of the Americas Foundation
Closing Remarks by Carlos Fuentes

5. The NN has received notice of the following publication that will be of interest to readers:
Xipe Totec, Notre Seignor L'Écorché: Étude Glyphique d'un Dieu Aztèque by Anne-Marie Vié Woher. México, D.F.: Centre Français d' Etudes Mexicaines et Centraméricaines (CEMCA), 2000. Vol. 1, 160 pp. with glossary; ISBN 968-6029-69-0. Vol. 2 contains 288 plates with 66 in color; ISBN 968-6029-69-9.

"The work, published in French with abstracts in English and Spanish, is dedicated to the analysis of the representation of Xipe Totec, the deity well known for the flaying ritual celebrated on his festival day. The first volume offers the method used for the pictographic study and its application. The second one contains plates of pictographs gathered in 44 pre- or post-Columbian manuscripts to illustrate the deciphering method. Anne-Marie Vié Wohrer, French ethnohistorian, has been a student at ENAH in Mexico and EHESS in Paris from which she was awarded a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and Ethnology. Formerly a researcher at the French Archaeological Foundation in Mexico, she is now associated with a CD-ROM project for the Fonds Mexicain of the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Besides work in epigraphy, she does research in cognitive anthropology and linguistics."

In Mexico, the address to purchase the set is: Centre Français d' Etudes Mexicaines et Centraméricaines (CEMCA), Sierra Leona 330, 11000, México, D.F., México; tel.: 55 40 59 21 or 55 40 59 22 / fax: 55 40 59 23 / e-mail: cemca@data.net.mx. In France, the address to purchase the set is: Anne-Marie Vié-Wohrer, 13 Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris, France; tel.: 33 (0) 1 43 26 01 86 or 33 (0) 1 43 25 68 42 / e-mail: jawo@club-internet.fr.

6. The NN has also received notice of two new publications in French by L'Harmattan Press.
The first is Un plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan: Les représentations de la cité et l'imaginaire européen (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) by Dominique Gresle-Pouligny. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000. Pp. 366. ISBN 2-7384-8521-9.

From the brochure: "L'absence d'images préhispaniques de Mexico-Tenochtitlan impose de faire porter toute l'attention sur un plan attribué à Hernan Cortés et publié à Nuremberg et à Venise, en 1524. A partir d'un territoire restreint - l'ancienne capitale aztèque - porteur d'une forte charge symbolique, l'ouvrage associe l'analyse de la sémiologie graphique de plan, l'etude du contexte intellectuel de l'epoque et celle de la diffusion du modèle reproduit comme archétype de Mexico pendant près de trois siècles, en Europe. Solidement garanti par l'appui de l'archéologie et des textes, le décodage des éléments de réalité urbaine faorise une reconstruction de site indigène. Abordant l'histoire des idées et des représentations mentales, l'auteur inscrit sa réflexion dans le cadre des relations complexes établies entre la perception et la représentation de l'espace et du territoire."

The second book is entitled L'histoire ancienne du Mexique selon Mariano Veitia (XVIIIe siècle) by Éric Roulet. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000. Pp. 242. ISBN 2-7384-9268-1.

From the brochure: "La Nouvelle-Espagne connait au XVIIIe siècle un renouveau dans la recherche sur le passé indien. Mariano Veitia (1718-1780) s'enscrit pleinement dans ce mouvement grâce aux enseignements du collectioneur italien Lorenzo Botorini Benaduci. Veitia compose son oeuvre historique, L'Historia antigua de México, en privilégiant les sources, notament les chroniques des auteurs indigènes et en particulier celles de Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, d'ailleurs non sans en établir la critique, et les manuscrits pictographiques des anciens Mexicains. Il vise rapprocher des modèles classiques de l'antiquité méditerranéenne. Alors, cette oeuvre forte née du souci critique donne un nouveau souffle à l'histoire de l'Amérique en même temps qu'elle fournit un passé et donc une identité aux Espagnols de souche américaine, les créoles."

The address of L'Harmattan Press is: 7 rue de L'école-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris, France. The e-mail address is harmat@worldnet.fr.

7. Éric Roulet sent a copy of his new book entitled La conquête des Amériques au XVIe siècle. Presses Universitaires de France, 2000. Pp. 126. ISBN 2-13-050075-7.

From the back cover: "1492: découverte ou redécouvert d'un noveau monde? Des fouilles ont mis au jour de habitations vikings du Xe siècle á Terre-Neuve. Des Irlandais ont peut être essaimé plus tôt, dès le VIe siècle, vers le continent nord-américain. 1492 est donc autant la découverte que la redécouverte des Amériques par les Européens. Cet ouvrage analyse cette étape décisive dans sa globalité géographique, culturelle et politique."

8. Walden Browne writes: "My book, Sahagún and the Transition to Modernity (Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory, Vol. 20. Pp. 260. Norman: Oklahoma Press, 2000. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 0-806-13233-7.) is being published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Although many of my arguments will prove controversial in the eyes of many of your readers, I believe they will would find it of interest, and I expect the book will generate much discussion in the world of Sahagún and Nahua studies."

9. The NN has received a notice about Altmexikanische Skulpturen der Sammlung Lukas Vischer, Museum für Völkerkunde = Ancient Mexican Sculptures from the Lukas Vischer Collection, Ethnographic Museum Basel by Gerhard Baer, Ulf Bankmann, and Stefan Graeser. Basel, Switzerland: Wepf, 1990. Pp. 180, with 8 color plates and 66 pages of black and white illustrations. ISBN 3-85977-094-2. The book can now be purchased at a 30% discount from the publisher; the approximate cost is US $49.50.

From the brochure: "Since 1844, the Lukas Vischer collection, which comprises a large number of archaeological objects of stone, clay, and other materials, but also examples of more recent craftmanship, has been in the possession of Basel University, Switzerland.

"The Origin of the Collection: After the collapse of Spanish rule in Mexico (1821), the country became accessible to foreigners. People of different European nations began to arrive in Mexico where many of them had economic interests. Evidence of the pre Columbian past which Alexander von Humbolt had referred to in his publications shortly before aroused some attention and stimulated collecting antiquities. As early as 1824, William Bullock was able to hold an exhibition prepared for the London public of a series of Mexican codices as well as original Mexican stone sculptures and casts. Two of these men who came to Mexico in the same decade and started extensive collections were the German Carl Uhde (1795-1856) and Lukas Vischer (1780-1840) from Basel. After several years in North America, Vischer arrived in the Mexican port of Veracruz in 1828 from New Orleans. He was accompanied by the painter Ludwig Choris who, soon after his arrival, was killed during an ambush on the journey from Veracruz to the capital of Mexico.

"Some of Lukas Vischer's letters and diaries dating from the time of his travels in Mexico have been preserved, as well as a few drawings. His writings unfortunately include no information about the circumstances of collecting, nor do they tell us anything about the origin of individual pieces. It is most likely that Lukas Vischer was able to acquire numerous objects in the capital of Mexico. These include chiefly the best Aztec-style sculptures but also such an unusual work of art as the jadite mask from Tizatlan, Tlaxcala. On the other hand, it may be assumed that Vischer took every opportunity to extend his collection on his long journeys through the country. Certain clues to this are afforded by the published parts of his diary. Under the heading of November 14, 1834, we read, 'Tula appears to once have been the residence of an Indian chief. When I asked about antiquities, the people told me that there weren't any around the town but many in Salitre, the Tesoro, a nearby mountain about to be excavated.' This is also the earliest reference to Tula as an archaeological site."

Copies can be ordered from Wepf and Co. AG, Publisher, Eisengasse 5-CH-4001, Basel, Switzerland; tel.: 41 (0) 61/311 95 76 / fax: 311 95 85 / e-mail: wepf@dial.eunet.ch.

10. The University of Texas Press has sent announcements of two recently published books.

The first is From Moon Goddess to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire by Pete Sigal. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. Pp. 368. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-292 77753-1. $40.00 (cloth) ISBN 0-292-78737-5.

From the brochure: "For the preconquest Maya, sexuality was a part of ritual discourse and performance, and all sex acts were understood in terms of their power to create, maintain, and destroy society. As postconquest Maya adapted to life under colonial rule, they neither fully abandoned these views nor completely adopted the formulation of sexuality prescribed by Spanish Catholicism. Instead, they evolved hybridized notions of sexual desire, represented in the figure of the Virgin Mary as a sexual goddess, whose sex acts embodied both creative and destructive components.

"This highly innovative book decodes the process through which this colonization of Yucatec Maya sexual desire occurred. Pete Sigal frames the discussion around a series of texts, including the Books of the Chilam Balam and the Ritual of the Bacabs, that were written by seventeenth and eighteenth-century Maya nobles to elucidate the history, religion, and philosophy of the Yucatecan Maya communities. Drawing on insights of philology, discourse analysis, and deconstruction, he analyzes the sexual fantasies, fears, and desires that are presented, often unintentionally, in the 'margins' of these texts and shows how they illuminate issues of colonialism, power, ritual, and gender."

The second book is Michoacán and Eden: Vasco de Quiroga and the Evangelization of Western Mexico by Bernardino Verástique. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. Pp. 222. ISBN 0 292-78738-3. $19.95 (paper). $45.00 (cloth) ISBN 0-292-77844-2.

From the brochure: "Don Vasco de Quiroga (1477/8-1565) was the first bishop of Michoacán in Western Mexico. Driven by his profound respect for Spanish jurisprudence and the desire to convert the native Purhépecha-Chichimec to a purified form of Christianity, he sought to establish New World Edens in Michoacán by congregating the people into pueblo-hospital communities, where clerics could more easily teach them the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and the values of Spanish culture.

"In this broadly synthetic study, Bernardino Verástique explores Vasco de Quiroga's evangelizing project in its full cultural and historical context. He begins by recreating the complex and not wholly incompatible worldviews of the Purhépecha and the Spaniards at the time of their first encounter in 1521. With Quiroga as a focal point, Verástique then traces the uneasy process of assimilation and resistance that occurred on both sides as the Spaniards established political and religious dominance in Michoacán. He describes the syncretisms, or fusions, between Christianity and indigenous beliefs and practices that arose among the Purhépecha and relates these to similar developments in other regions of Mexico.

"Written especially for students and general readers, this book demonstrates how cultural and geographical environments influence religious experience, while it adds to our understanding of the process of indigenous appropriation of Christian theological concepts in the New World."

To order these books, contact the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819, or visit the Web site at: http://ww.utexas.edu/utpress/books/vermic.html.

Book Reviews

Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Culhuacan, and other Nahua Altepetl in Central Mexico. 2 vols. Collected and Recorded by Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuantzin. Edited and translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Vol. 1. Pp. viii+248. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8061-2921-2. Vol. 2. Pp. vi+248/ $48.50 (cloth). ISBN 0-8061 2950-6.

The first installment of a six-volume series, these two publications present manuscripts by Chimalpahin that have been recently unearthed. The work of the late Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder, they include meticulous transcriptions of the original texts in Nahuatl and Spanish, facing translations into English, and a useful apparatus of notes and indices.

The manuscripts in question were discovered in 1983 in the Bible Society Collection at Cambridge University, having arrived there via the London-based British and Foreign Bible Society. Gathered and bound in three vellum volumes, possibly by Sigüenza y Góngora, the manuscripts required thorough editing, and include a few items that are definitely not by Chimalpahin. They are a wonderful find, whose significance is still being fully assessed, and the range of their subject matter is indicated in the long title common to both the present volumes. The question of their relationship and overlap with Chimalpahin's previously known and published works, and with each other, is complex enough to have deserved separate treatment in the subsequent volumes of the series, along with the fraught matter of "original" authorship. Of themselves, these manuscripts help to clarify long standing debates on the links between Chimalpahin's works and those of such other predecessors and contemporaries as Bernardino de Sahagún, Ixtlilxochitl, and Alvarado Tezozomoc.

As Schroeder notes in her sober and informed introduction to each volume, Chimalpahin writing at the turn of the seventeenth century continued to view the world very much in his own native terms, despite the Christian and Old World allegiances that his work demanded of him, as a cleric in the town of Chalco. As in the pictorial annals of the pre-Cortesian period, the main concerns remain lineage and historical precedent, and there are some fascinating insights into palace life at Texcoco, and into the behavior and attitudes of the Mexica emperors themselves. It is remarkable how firmly Chimalpahin conceives the continuity of political power in Mexico, despite the damage wreaked by the Spanish invaders as much as a century previously. It is also remarkable that still in his day he was able to consult native pictorial records directly. Several passages in these accounts of Mexica migration make it clear that he was transcribing from such a source.

As the first in the series concerned with Chimalpahin's Bible Society Manuscripts, these two volumes set high standards while providing materials of major scholarly consequence.

Gordon Brotherston
Indiana University\

Francis, Norbert. 1997. Malintzin: Bilingüismo y alfabetización en la Sierra de Tlaxcala (México). Tomo I. Pp. 257. Tomo II. Pp. 251. ISBN (set) 9-978043-33-0. Collección Biblioteca Abya-Yala, Nos. 54 and 55. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala.

Malintzin is not primarily a study of the Nahuatl language as such, but is a contribution to applied linguistics and especially to literacy in bilingual education, centering on a case study of an experiment in bilingual education undertaken in the Malinche Volcano town of San Isidro Buensuceso. When I did fieldwork on the Malinche (including in San Isidro) between 1974 and 1982, there was absolutely no institutional recognition given to the Nahuatl language (then universally called "Mexicano" by its speakers). The schools were unequivocally seen as instruments for the castellanización - synonymous with civilización - of Mexicano-speaking students. Monolingual Spanish-speaking teachers coped heroically with huge classes in kinder and primer where the majority of the children were either monolingual in Mexicano or knew only a bare minimum of Spanish "to defend themselves." Even Nahuatl-speaking school personnel (and they did exist, right up to the level of system directors) never spoke the language at the school and constantly urged families to speak Spanish to their pre-school children - with considerable success, as Francis finds. Only at the end of the 1980s - ironically, as language shift had begun in earnest even in San Isidro, the most conservative Malinche town - did bilingual education programs begin to appear, in the form of the Escuela Xicotencatl in San Isidro, where most children still do speak Nahuatl, and the Escuela Xochitecalli in San Bernardino Contla, where the indigenous language is only rarely spoken by people below middle age.

Francis reports that there was considerable resistance to the founding of the bilingual program in San Isidro, with parents picketing the school and especially objecting to the presence of bilingual educators from San Isidro itself. The resistance continued; even at the end of Francis's fieldwork in 1993, efforts to end the program were continuing. In Contla, parents objected to a bilingual program in Nahuatl: if there was to be bilingual education, why not have the second language be English? However, my latest intelligence is that both programs continue in the year 2000, albeit in a context of constant struggle for acceptance and serious underfunding. It is not clear from Francis's book exactly what the content is of the Nahuatl-language component of "bilingual education." My understanding is that a scarcity of materials means that relatively little time is given to it. The major shift seems to be a change on the part of school staff away from actively suppressing Nahuatl and even punishing children for speaking it (even away from school), towards tolerating it and even encouraging it on some occasions, such as the singing of the national anthem in Nahuatl and presentations in Nahuatl during formal occasions such as graduations and celebrations of patriotic holidays.

Francis's project included several dimensions. These included observation (only in the first-year classroom at the Escuela Xicotencatl), and testing and interviewing of a sample of 45 children (15 in each grade, about evenly divided between boys and girls) from the second-, fourth-, and sixth-year classrooms. The total school population was about 400 students. The subjects were selected by teachers and were intended to include the full range of student abilities; four of the subjects are strongly Spanish-dominant, but the majority are bilingual and include a number of Nahuatl-dominant children. Francis set up a small "library corner" at the school, and every two weeks brought students from the sample there to undertake a variety of exercises intended to assess their ability in reading and writing Spanish and Nahuatl, and to examine the impact of the bilingual program on these skills (the sixth-graders had begun the bilingual program only in their second year of primary school). The study focused especially on reading, and Francis used three instruments to assess this: Miscue Analysis (where children's reading miscues are analyzed for semantic and syntactic conformity or non-conformity to the author's text), Oral Re-narration (where children read a story and are asked to re-tell it), and a Cloze test (where children are asked to fill in words deleted from a text). For writing, the children were given a picture book illustrating traditional stories and were asked to write a story to go with the pictures. Francis undertakes a number of quantitative analyses of the results of these tasks. The results are presented in graphic form, with students from the different class years compared with Nahuatl and Spanish side by side on the same graph.

In addition to these instruments, children were also assessed for their level of bilingualism by standard tests and interviews, and were interviewed individually, in informal style, to assess their language attitudes. Only this last interview was conducted entirely in Spanish; in other interviews both Spanish and Nahuatl were included (not always successfully - see below). Francis also interviewed teachers and parents in the community. Francis's findings are, on the whole, quite positive. He finds that, even though materials on Nahuatl available to students and teachers are scanty and relatively little time is given to Nahuatl compared to other subjects, the students did make steady progress, acquiring Nahuatl-language skills at the same rate (although slightly behind) as they improved their skills in Spanish. Especially notable was the improvement of skills in written Nahuatl, which actually was ahead of their spoken-language skills (at least as revealed in the oral evaluation tests such as re-narration). Francis speculates that this may occur because the writing exercises gave students time to think and plan more sophisticated texts.

He concludes that many inexpensive strategies are available to teachers that would permit them to introduce the indigenous language into the classroom, and his final chapter reviews these strategies. While Francis argues that there is no disadvantage in bilingual education, one very interesting finding was that students who came to school with a good background in Spanish did better throughout their school careers, with a dramatic advantage over Nahuatl-dominant children hardly diminishing from the second graders to the sixth graders in his sample. Furthermore, children who were better in Spanish did better in Nahuatl as well. This observation, of course, reinforces the near-universal belief in the communities that it is very important to speak Spanish to preschoolers to prepare them for school. It is difficult, however, to tell exactly why this effect occurs. Francis speculates (and I suspect that he is right) that parents who encourage their preschoolers to speak Spanish are probably simply globally more involved in their children's education and have a more positive kind of involvement with the school.

Acknowledging the realities of the Malinche communities, Francis takes a very sensible approach to the construction of a bilingual education program. For instance, he recognizes that Nahuatl immersion would be unrealistic. Nearly all the children are bilingual, and accepting the sociolinguistic realities of the communities, where there is a near-diglossia between Nahuatl and Spanish, is sensible. This reality manifests itself in the school in a universal pattern of teacher-student interaction in Spanish. Student-student interaction, especially in "off-task" contexts, is predominantly in Nahuatl. This pattern, in fact, made it rather difficult for Francis to collect interview materials in Nahuatl, but he might have tried using a peer or near-peer interviewer, along the lines of William Labov's (1972) use of African American college students to interview African American children and teenagers in his studies in the U.S. in the 1960s. However, by focusing on literacy in Nahuatl, the school can expand the domains where the language appears in a positive direction. Furthermore, the use of the two languages in school should generally heighten the children's metalinguistic sophistication, and broadly enhance their ability to think about textual materials at a more abstract and decontextualized level.

Of most interest for readers of the Nahua Newsletter will probably be the many passages of written Nahuatl extracted from student essays, and analyses of language-contact phenomena such as u/o alternations in their written and spoken Spanish - a major shibboleth in the communities that Francis correctly points out has very little to do with the effectiveness of the children's skills in Spanish-language discourse more broadly. Readers should be warned that many of the Nahuatl passages are not translated, which can make interpretation rather difficult, especially when the written Nahuatl is the product of a second- or fourth-grade hand! Fortunately, since many of these passages involve students telling the same traditional stories (stimulated by the pictures that are given in the appendix), it is usually possible for the practicing nahuatlahto to figure out what is intended. However, this will impair the usefulness of the work for those readers who don't know Nahuatl and may find it difficult to understand the point of many examples.

Also useful for readers whose main interest is Nahuatl is a valuable update on the condition of the language in the Malinche communities, where Francis compares today's situation to that reported, for instance, in my own reports of fieldwork in the late 1970s (cf. Hill and Hill 1986). One of the most noticeable changes is that many speakers now use the word "Nahuatl" instead of "Mexicano" for the language. In the 1970s, the word was known to only one or two people. Francis finds, however, a number of points of continuity. For instance, women are still more likely to have negative attitudes about Nahuatl, a fact that is significant since they are especially active in the local parents' association. This last is a change. During my own field work the Asociación de Padres de Familia was emphatically dominated by men, with mothers hardly visible at any institutional level and not much in evidence even in informal ways (they tended to stand in the back row of graduation spectators, heads bowed and rebozos clutched in their teeth so as to hide much of their faces). A good deal of this rather long pair of volumes is devoted to a literature review on issues in applied linguistics, orality, and literacy. This feature will probably make the volume very welcome in Latin America where the sources, both English and Spanish, are hard to come by. It does mean, however, that the reader seeking information on the situation of Malinche Nahuatl will have to read almost 150 pages of the first volume before encountering this kind of material. One minor problem that should be pointed out is that in the map of the Malinche towns on p. 13 in the first volume, the towns of San Pablo and La Resurrección have been reversed.

Malintzin is an exceptionally thorough study of the classroom production of child bilinguals, with careful analysis of a large body of data, richly exemplified. It also is a very responsible and thorough critical overview of the theoretical literature in the relevant fields. Volumes from Abya-Yala (which can be purchased at what are generally bargain prices by North American and European standards) should make Malintzin attractive to readers who wish to build personal and institutional libraries on the sociolinguistic situation of the Nahuatl language.

References Cited

Hill, Jane H., and Kenneth C. Hill. 1986. Speaking Mexicano. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. [Also available in Spanish as Hablando Mexicano. José Antonio Flores Farfán and José Gerardo López Cruz, transl. México, D.F.: CIESAS, 1999.]

Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Jane H. Hill
University of Arizona

Commentary

Mary Ritchie Key sends the Nahua Newsletter the following comment on her work among the Nahuas:

My Zacapoaxtla dictionary is referred to from time to time, and I presume, with some puzzlement because of the recording of vowel length. The following is intended to clarify the circumstances regarding the publication of my dictionary, which documents a northern Sierra dialect in Puebla. Harold and I did our Aztec work in 1948-1955 when it was not considered demure for a wife to accomplish anything on her own, so my work was published under both names, with the husband's name preceding. The 1953 article on phonemes was also my work. This statement is prompted by the attention given to Frances Karttunen's An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl in a recent issue of the Nahua Newsletter.

A decade ago, on February 25, 1990, I wrote to her:

Dear Dr. Karttunen,
I am not sure of your address, but trust that this will be forwarded to you.

Some material has come from Denmark on the Copenhagen Dictionary Project, and this worthy project prompts me to deal with Aztec phonology again! Specifically, I will comment on Key and Key, 1953 Vocabulario Mejicano de la Sierra de Zacapoaxtla, Puebla.

For the record: I will comment on length and glottal stop. The background is that I did most of the work on the dictionary. I set up my word file and methodically went through the list with visitors who dropped by so that I had a good sense of the vocabulary being accepted in various dialect areas. I also went into town and checked the Spanish with local, educated people there. So I think the actual meanings are fairly reliable. My husband was working with our regular informant. I did not feel that I had good control over "length," so this aspect of the dictionary was turned over to my husband and our very capable informant.

About the time it was to be published, we went into Mexico City to live for a while. We had a good deal of illness in the family, as I remember... typhoid, paratyphoid... memory dims for so long ago, but I do remember that I was not able to proofread the final version. We were experimenting with a new printing process, in order to cut down on expenses and make the dictionary affordable to the people in the villages and markets. But some of my typing had to be redone. There are still pages where the actual letters are difficulty to read. I had thought, through the years, that possibly some of the mistakes in recording length were due to the retyping that was done after I had turned it over to the publishing department.

A couple of years (or so) ago, I thought I would try to straighten it out, so I spent some time comparing both sides of the dictionary and analyzing mistakes. Also, many years ago I did a little comparison on most of the Aztec dialects on the recording of length in the word for 'star.' To make a long and complicated story short: I found no good answer to the problem of length which is exemplified in my dictionary.

I am now advising my students - and anyone else - to approach length from the point of view of sociolinguistic/paralinguistic/extralinguistic articulation. The actual number of minimal pairs is very small, so this distinctive feature of length is not a great problem in "meaning" and quite possibly is used more in a paralinguistic sense than in a suprasegmental sense.

Our informant was very capable and recorded length in his writing... but when he and my husband went over the vocabulary file to write in length for publishing the dictionary he probably just wrote it where it felt comfortable. For example, the minimal pairs were probably pretty well documented (though this might have been changed with the retyping.) Unfortunately, my husband has had a stroke, so it is not possible to get any information from him.

[...]

Now for glottal stop: The Zacapoaxtla dialect does not have a phonemic glottal stop, and this is clearly stated in the dictionary on page v. The "h" is an aspiration - never a glottal stop. It occurs in /ehekat/ 'wind' etc. and it also occurs as a morpheme (pages vii-viii-ix). Also, see IJAL 19.1: 53-56, where /h/ is described as a continuant. The [¿] is mentioned on pages 55-56, where its status is clearly defined.

In Harold Key, 1953, "Algunas observaciones preliminares de la distribucion dialectal del Nahuatl...." Mexico, D.F.: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, editors Ignacio Bernal and Eusebio Davalos Hurtado, Huastecos, totonacos y sus vecinos, pp. 131-143, two dialects are listed where /¿/ occurs.

There is a lot more we can understand about Classical Aztec by looking closely at contemporary dialects (see Stanley Newman's article, e.g.). Also we can understand laryngeals better by comparative studies of /h/ and /¿/ in Aztec dialects. It is in the interest of understanding these things that I am writing to you - for the record.

Sincerely yours,

Mary Ritchie Key
[End of 1990 letter to Karttunen]

In my dictionary of Zacapoaxtla Nahuat, which I take full responsibility for, the recording of length is botched so badly! In fact, it is so magnificently inconsistent that this fact may be the key to the use of length in the Zacapoaxtla dialect.

Several years ago, in an informal survey regarding length, (using the word 'star' /sitalin/), I canvassed the Aztecan dialects and languages and found a surprising amount of ambiguity and confusion. This fits in with other remarks I have noted through the years on how researchers confronted the problem of recording length. Phonemic length, albeit the contrastive nature of it, is not always easily identifiable. I remember asking Norman McQuown why he didn't mention it in his article on one of the dialects of Nahuatl, and he said forthrightly, that he didn't hear it! Other researchers in Nahuatl dialects have noted that vowel length is "quite erratic" and difficult to hear." In Pipil, "Vowel length is an important contrast, but it is difficult to determine in many cases" (Campbell 1985:25, The Pipil Language of El Salvador).

It is interesting that Campbell and Langacker used my entries with some measure of success. When the entries were clearly correct in giving length, they used them in their reconstructions. When my entries appeared to have problems, they put them aside. It is to their credit that they used the data from the Zacapoaxtla dialect judiciously, and it turned out to be useful in many cases, in spite of recognized flaws.

Some distinguishing features of the Zacapoaxtla dialect: lack of phonemic glottal stop; the /-t/ formative, which corresponds to the /-tl/ and /-l/ of other Nahuatl dialects; the /g/ in /tagol, tagat/; the unique example of initial /l-/ as in /lamat/ 'vieja.' These anomalies suggest some deep-seated origins that have not been identified, or a situation where "languages in contact" brought together two separate linguistic systems, as I felt when I wrote a little piece for Stanley Newman (Key 1989). A thorough investigation could possibly throw light on the origins of the Aztec people.

Minimal Pairs

In some of the lexicon, length is clearly contrastive, as shown by minimal pairs. The following vocabulary illustrate vowel length in Zacapoaxtla Aztec:

yolik 'he/she was born tepan 'stone wall'
yolik 'slowly' tepan 'on or over all the people'

sikpata 'change it!' kitoka 'he/she chases it'
sikpata 'melt it!' kitoka 'he/she plants it'

It appears to be the case that two languages came together and the resulting language contains something from each - some words from a length language, and some words from a non-length language. Both systems could overlap for a period of time. The idea of a Creolized result should be considered here. Thus the new language managed two ways of using length: one part of the language used length as a contrastive feature, and it was considered at the phonemic level. The other part of the language used length as one of the suprasegmentals that all languages of the world use, in a paralinguistic and sociolinguistic sense of conveying emotional and attitudinal meaning to interactions among speakers.

The length language would have had to give up some of the dominance of contrastive length thereby down-playing and moving this linguistic distinctive feature into the realm of paralinguistics and sociolinguistics.

Suprasegmentals and paralinguistic movement of pitches are the music of language, supremely important and enigmatical, slippery, intriguing and challenging. I do not know of any language in the world where the suprasegmentals are described to the satisfaction of linguistic scholars. I once suggested that supersegmentals are like quarks - you know they are there, for the effect you observe, but you can't find them!

Semivowels

Previously I have dealt with semivowels and our limited Western perspective in "hearing" these protean sounds (Key 1993). While editing some 150 Word Lists for the Intercontinental Dictionary Series, I found that every single Word List/language analysis had inconsistencies in the recording of semivowels! With regard to the Zacapoaxtla dialect of Aztec, various articulations of /w/ and /y/ result from: place in the syllable, contiguous sounds, stress, and paralinguistic features. In my field notes, I have recorded [pwa] for [poa] or [powa]. A word such as /iwan/ has the possibility of occurring in over 20 combinations of spelling, because it contains both the high vowels (semi-consonants) /i [y]/ and /u [w]/.

The /w/ phoneme in Aztec is surely one of the most interesting sounds among any phonetic system. The /w/ has a large repertoire of articulations, depending on where the sound occurs in the stream of speech and who is speaking. We have recorded the following phonetic actualizations of the /w/ phoneme: [W] [u] [ß] [F] [b] [p] [ph] [f] [h]. The semivowel /y/ may also appear to disappear in fast speech: /piya/ > /pia/. A morpheme with initial /y/ + vowel may appear with only the vowel maintained - until the linguist can get the speaker to "Slow down!" "Say it slowly!"

Glottal stop

In Zacapoaxtla Nahuat, a final vowel is closed off with a clearly articulated glottal stop [-¿]. The glottal stop never occurs in contrast; and it is not considered a phoneme. The morpheme /-h/ also occurs finally, but when I recorded the lexicon, listeners and speakers reacted to the phonetic (non-meaningful) features more often than they did to the meaningful phonemic feature.

When living in Xalacapan I did little experiments with Indian visitors; I had a list of diagnostic types of words that would display the problems of /h/ (aspiration) and glottal stop. When the words exemplified the final, phonetic [-¿], the Indians struggled with the symbol problem and how to write the glottal stop. They experimented with various letters: <g, gh, x, k> etc. More revealing was their body language: perplexed and puzzled looks; questioning shoulder movement; raised eyebrows; and hesitance in their appearance, with pencil in hand. They did not exhibit the same puzzlement when they wrote words ending in /-h/, which could be either a morpheme meaning 'past tense' or 'plural.' Even when they did not represent the morpheme /-h/ with a letter, they wrote the vowel preceding the final /-h/ in a relaxed manner.

Among the many linguistic experiences I have had in the past 54 years, this is the only experience I have witnessed where the speakers had more concern over a phonetic feature than for a phonemic feature.

These incidents have jumped into the present - out of my memories of the last half century, as I have been thinking on the concepts of laryngeals and the part that they play in comparative linguistics. In many languages these "throat" sounds are crucial in historical/comparative studies. The involvement of aspiration at the glottis is of great interest. Witness the attention paid in Indo-European studies to "laryngeal theory."

Along with length, the Zacapoaxtla dialect may very well play an important part in unfolding the history of the origins of the Aztec people in Mexico, if one can look at aspiration and glottal involvement as laryngeals.

The Syllable

A weakness of language descriptions today is that the syllable may not be recognized as a basis for description of the sounds that move about in the syllables. A "single" sound takes a different form: when it occurs in a different location in the syllable; when it is contiguous to various other sounds; when the syllables are articulated in fast and in slow speech; when it occurs in precise speech vs. everyday talk-to-your-family speech. Normal speech also permits fluctuations in pronunciation which are handled with aplomb in actual language situations and speakers may not even be aware of varying articulations.

In Zacapoaxtla Aztec, stress is a word marker. It occurs on the penultimate syllable of the word (exclusive of enclitics), and mora count is relevant. The "exceptions" show a subtle blend of syllable structures, stress, and mora count. It is a delicate balance. When the stressed syllable has a short vowel and the final syllable has a long vowel, phonetically the length appears more prominent than the stress. Note the following, from Key and Key (1953a:55):

ihko.n 'thus' aksa. 'somebody'
ta.gaci.n 'man' noho. n 'that'

But a.ci.n 'water' is heard with the regular penultimate pattern.

In some ways Aztec is reminiscent of Old English, where quantity and quality coalesce. The Old English scribes of that era devised a spelling system that even today justifiably reflects a vowel system that is not common in languages of the world. This feature, based on the count of mora, is one of the reasons our English spelling system is superior and should not be replaced. English spelling of certain groups of words reflects the quantity system of Old English, where the number of symbols reflects mora count - length. The syllable nucleus in <beat> (CVVC) is longer than in <bit> (CVC).

Publication

A little history: The publication of the Zacapoaxtla dictionary was a pioneering venture. I think that the Key and Key dictionary (1953) was one of the first attempts to write length in the dictionary of a modern dialect. The publishing department was experimenting with new processes that they were attempting by using already typed copy. The ribbon on my typewriter was not right for the duplicating process they were beginning to use; so various pages were re typed in the publishing department. I was not notified (probably because of the illnesses in the family) and thus was not able to proof-read the re-typed pages. They were working valiantly to produce this early dictionary.

Dictionaries of ancient varieties of American Indian languages were compiled from the 1500s onward. Vocabulario Mejicano was among the first early dictionaries of present-day speakers of American Indian languages. In fact, along with a small group, I pioneered this type of linguistic publication in Mexico, following Herman Aschmann, who preceded me with his Totonaco dictionary in 1949. While he was revising it, we talked about dictionary-making. He was helpful and generous; and with his advice, we avoided some difficulties. Years later I initiated the dictionary series in Bolivia. The Summer Institute of Linguistics, in cooperation with the Dirección General de Asuntos Indígenas, began a dictionary series in 1959, with Tarahumara, Número 1 (K[enneth] Simon Hilton); and Cora, Número 2 (Ambrosio McMahon and Maria Aiton de McMahon).

Pioneering efforts have the bravado of early works that serve as models for later works which improve with experience; and they contain the defects of producing "firsts." Yes, it is hazardous to pioneer!

In those days - the middle of the century - the technology for inexpensive publishing was limited, and we were experimenting with a way of reproducing material at a price that the native speakers could afford to buy at the local markets. And indeed, many of our dictionaries were carried on the backs of our neighbors to distribute in the outlying markets and villages. I wonder how many of those 1953 dictionaries might still exist in native homes?

Regarding the title of my Zacapoaxtla dictionary, on the recommendation of Mexican authorities in education and academia we used the term "Mejicano," where other publications have used "Aztec, Nahuat, Mexicano." Karttunen incorrectly cites the title of the Zacapoaxtla dictionary twice (pages xvi, xviii).

Recently I have retraced my way through the voluminous pages of Aztec dictionaries, grammars, reviews, replies, and replies to replies. In reviewing the materials, I wonder why there is so little mention of Stanley Newman's tight and scholarly masterpiece? It is a model of forthright clarity, as is all his linguistic work in other American Indian languages. He studied a dialect of Nahuatl when he was in Mexico in the 1940s. He used my comparative material in a workshop at the University of Chicago in 1954, during the Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America. And, along with the ancient documents and other Aztecan studies, he used our material for his article on Classical Nahuatl.

I have checked with various dictionaries and linguistic studies, and still I find the glosses of the Zacapoaxtla dictionary to be in pretty good condition. It should be reprinted - if not revised and reprinted - for historical purposes and intrinsic interest, for the study of Aztec in a dialect which is similar to the ancient language in many ways.

Sociolinguistic Possibility

The dynamic vs. static nature of language is remarkably demonstrated in the bizarre recording of length in the Zacapoaxtla dialect of Nahuat. Maybe the "mistakes" in my Zacapoaxtla dictionary are leading us to a more important discovery: the matter of changing systems of suprasegmentals in the various languages, as in "languages in contact." Think of length, then, as something yet to be discovered.

Bibliography

Aschmann, Herman P. 1949, 1950, 1956. Totonaco Dictionary. Mexico City: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Campbell, Lyle, and Ronald W. Langacker.1978. "Proto-Aztecan Vowels" [3 parts]. International Journal of American Linguistics 44(2):85-102; 44(4):262-79.

Karttunen, Frances. 1983. An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Key, Harold. 1953. "Algunas observaciones preliminares de la distribución dialectal del nahuatl en el area Hidalgo-Veracruz-Puebla." In Huastecos, totonacos y sus vecinos. Ignacio Bernal and Eusebio Davalos Hurtado, eds., pp. 131-43. México, D.F.: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología.

__________. 1960. "Stem Construction and Affixation of Sierra Nahuat Verbs." International Journal of American Linguistics 26(2):130-45.

__________, and Mary [Ritchie de Key]. 1953a. "The Phonemes of Sierra Nahuat." International Journal of American Linguistics 19(1):53-56.

__________, and Mary Ritchie de Key. 1953b. Vocabulario mejicano de la Sierra de Zacapoaxtla, Puebla. México, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano and Dirección General de Asuntos Indígenas, Secretaría de Educación Pública.

Key, Mary Ritchie. 1989. "Interpreting the Past from the Present: A Nahuat Example." In General and Amerindian Ethnolinguistics: In Remembrance of Stanley Newman. Mary Ritchie Key and Henry M. Hoenigswald, eds., pp. 381-85. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

__________. 1993. "Interpretation of Semivowels." In American Indian Linguistics and Ethnography: In Honor of Laurence C. Thompson. Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 10. Anthony Mattina and Timothy Montler, eds., pp. 429-34. Missoula: University of Montana.

__________, and Henry M. Hoenigswald, eds. 1989. General and Amerindian Ethnolinguistics: In Remembrance of Stanley Newman. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Newman, Stanley. 1967. "Classical Nahuatl." In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5. Linguistics. Norman A. McQuown, ed., pp. 179-99. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Robinson, Dow Frederick. 1970[1966]. Aztec Studies II: Sierra Nahuat Word Structure. Norman, Oklahoma: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Oklahoma.

Mary Ritchie Key
University of California, Irvine

The following commentary has been sent to the Nahua Newsletter by Terry Stocker:

Reconsidering Comments on Sahagún's 260 Day Signs

Stocker and Dodge (1993) co-authored comments on the 260-day count of the Aztecs as it was presented in Book 4 of Sahagún. The four illustrations published with that article are reproduced here in part. One of the main finds of our analysis was that the 12th sign on line 10 was a mistake. Instead of 12 Rain, it should have been 12 Water (Figs. 1 and 3). Why the mistake?

Our original thinking was that at least two scribes penned the 260 signs since the second 130 day signs are done in a different, presumably older, style than the first (Fig. 2). I am no longer convinced that this is the case. The reason for the shift in style might be because of the need for variation. No sign in any category is duplicated. This is easily seen with the sign House (Fig. 3). It would have been hard for the scribe to impart singularity if one style were adhered to all of the time. Thus there might have just been one scribe. Variation is also seen easily with the sign Knife (Fig. 4). In the first group the bands run from left to right. In the second group, the bands run from right to left. Each has minute variations.

The basic problem comes with the signs on each side of the mistake. Eleven Rabbit has teeth, something none of the other rabbits in Fig. 1 have (see also Fig. 3). And 13 Dog is quite different from the other six portrayals with its round eye. One could argue that these are only additional variations, which they definitely are, except for the fact that they frame the mistake. This is a mistake a scribe should never have made since he already had rain on that line. It remains a mystery. Could it have been done on purpose, along with the signs on both sides? Other mistakes are mentioned in Stocker (1999).

My book A Walk Through an Aztec Dream will be published soon and a companion volume, A Walk Through an Aztec Dream: The Aztec Horoscope, should be out early in 2001.

References Cited

Stocker, T. and G. Dodge. 1993. "Comments on the 260-Day Calendar in Sahagún's Book of Soothsayers." Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications [Papers?] 22[21?]:295-302.

Stocker, T. 1999. "The Aztec 260 Day Count: An Augury Table Not a Calendar." Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers 23[27?]:175-86.

Terry Stocker
Woosong University, Hannam, Republic of Korea

Terry Stocker also sends the following commentary on obsidian:

Ethnohistorical Input for the Mesoamerican Obsidian Industry

In "The Highland Sword and the Gulf-Coast Shell," Stocker and Jackson (1983) attempt to define which area of Mesoamerica had the greater trading power. Our conclusion, based on a checklist of items mentioned in ethnohistorical sources, was the lowland-coastal areas: feathers, seashells, jaguar skins, crocodile skins, etc. The highlands were mostly represented by obsidian. The reason we chose the seashell to represent the lowland inventory is that it required the least energy to procure and was often traded and used in its natural state (see Stocker 1986, 1987).

Maybe this is why early civilizations, e.g., the Olmec, were located in the lowlands. What would account for the rise of monumental centers in the highlands during the classic period of Mesoamerica, e.g., Teotihuacan?

There can be little doubt of the value of the obsidian resources for Teotihuacan; it had a "free" supply of obsidian with the nearby Otumba quarry. And with the invention of eccentrics, apparently at Teotihuacan, the Teotihuacanos had a "free" source of status items (Stocker 1981, Stocker and Spence 1973, 1974).

While the highlands had only one major trade item, it may have been control of this resource that allowed certain centers to establish empires and maintain control by force. The invention of the macuahuitl, the obsidian lined sword, would have given a group a tremendous advantage over groups not possessing it (See Fig. 1). I do not want to simplify military analysis by centering on one weapon. Military analysis is complex (See Stocker 1982). But probably the most critical factor in the defeat of the Native Americans by the Spaniards was a difference in their swords (see Oakeshott 1994). Granted, the Spaniards had much more in their technological inventory such as cannons, etc. But all encounters ended up at close range. The European sword with its sharp point was lethal in close range combat. While an Aztec was raising his macuahuitl to slash a Spaniard, he would have been dead. And with a European sword and a shield, a soldier could literally pile dead Indians at his feet.

Healan (1993) interchanges macana and macuahuitl. This is not accurate. Macana is a Spanish word referring to any club. Macuahuitl is a Nahuatl word referring to an obsidian lined shaft. One would assume that the Spanish adapted macana from macuahuitl.

In illustrations, the number of blades ranges from three to five. Some of the illustrations tend to be a bit surreal. For example, in some illustrations the obsidian blades are wider than the wooden shaft (Sahagún 1981, Fig. 54). The matter of mistakes in Sahagún's illustrations has been addressed (Stocker, this issue). Indeed, the illustration Healan chose for the macuahuitl in World Archaeology has one warrior carrying a shield decorated with a smiley face (maybe the first smiley face recorded?). These three warriors are the bottom three of nine individuals depicted in Sahagún (see Fig. 2). Notice the man on the top is carrying the devil on his back. This is again obviously poking fun at the Aztecs. Figuring ten blades per sword, 1,000 swords (and that is a small army) requires 10,000 blades. The Aztecs also had an obsidian-blade lined spear, the tlatzintepuzotilli (see Fig. 1).

Cheek (1977) proposed that much of Teotihuacan's influence throughout Mesoamerica is the result of direct military conquest, but military technology is not a consideration in his evaluation. Also, Santley's (1980:5) analysis of "Obsidian Trade and Teotihuacan Influence in Mesoamerica" completely dismisses any consumption of obsidian artifacts, e.g., projectile points, by the military complex of Teotihuacan. He proposes that all the obsidian products at Teotihuacan either serviced the craft industries or were traded. We are never provided a checklist of craftsmen utilizing obsidian; similarly with Healan (1993) for Tula. Obviously these works are too reliant on just archaeological remains and not ethnohistorical documents.

When was the macuahuitl invented? (Note that the macuahuitl was probably only an adaptation, not an invention, by replacing biface-lined swords with blade-lined swords.) Stocker and Jackson (1983) proposed sometime during the classic period at Teotihuacan based solely on the shear density and tremendous increase in obsidian workshops. If the obsidian wasn't used for the production of the macuahuitl, then we must list all the craftsmen that might have used that tremendous amount of obsidian, not just have statements about generic craftsmen. Stocker and Jackson provided figures that indicate craftsmen were not the major consumers of obsidian at Teotihuacan or Tula.

The argument against the existence of the macuahuitl at Teotihuacan is based on the fact that it is not shown in Teotihuacan art. This argument is fallacious. If we did not have codices, we would not know that the Aztecs had the macuahuitl.

Moving to Tula, we have more information based on the ethnohistorical record. In the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, one passage concerns the "Toltecas and Nonoualcas unidos en Tula." There is the statement: "Now the Nonoualcas were very mad and they went. Later, still furious, the Nonoualcas placed and fastened knives (navajas) of obsidian on poles.... Then the Nonoualcas grabbed their shields, swords of obsidian and arrows..." (Berlin 1947:69). These same Nonoualcas supposedly migrated from Teotihuacan to Tula (Stocker and Spence 1973).

Stocker and Jackson (1983) noted that most of the obsidian remains excavated by the University of Missouri project were blade segments and not complete blades. Some of these blade segments might have been used for military inventory, but we attempted to delineate what crafts the blade segments might have been used for. Healan (1993) provides quantitative data on the blade segments.

Sahagún (1961) notes that the Toltecs were responsible for the invention of weaving in Mesoamerica. There is an undeniable fact with which archaeologists must soon come to grips: there are no spindle whorls in Mesoamerica before the Postclassic and Tula. The complexities of this issue are many (see Stocker 1993). But to address one, I'm often asked, "What did people wear before the Postclassic?" I think the nakedness of figurines before the Postclassic bespeaks a reality. Also, animal hides were probably used. This might account for the high density of stamps during the classic period. They would have been used to decorate hides. Once weaving became popular, designs were incorporated into the weaving. Thus the rapid decline of stamps in the Postclassic coincides with the rise of weaving.

It is also significant that the Aztecs credited the Tolteca with the domestication of cotton. Cotton may have diffused to Mesoamerica from South America, and came in with spindle whorls. Spinning could be a reason Tula was the center it became. Did they control a cotton industry? Textiles certainly made Uruk Mesopotamia important. Aztec merchants who dealt in slaves set the price in capes (Sahagún 1959:46). Cotton is one of the tribute items paid by places around Tula in the 16th century (Feldman 1974:Table 12). Based on the ethnohistorical records we have to assume that one of the commodities going from the highlands to the lowlands was cotton clothing.

Also in Sahagún's description of the Toltecs are the following details about feather working: "The Tolteca were skilled; it is said that they were feather workers who glued feathers. In ancient times they took charge of gluing feathers, and it was really their discovery, for in ancient times they used the shields, the devices, those called apanecaiotl, which were their exclusive property. When the wonderful devices were entrusted to them, they prepared, they glued the feathers; they indeed formed works of art; they performed works of skill. In truth, they invented all the wonderful, precious, marvelous things which they made" (Sahagún 1961:167).

In Sahagún's (1959) The Merchants, more space is devoted to feather working than any other craft. And yet we have no archaeological inkling of where a feather workshop might be. One thing is certain, cutting a feather would have been much easier with an obsidian blade than not. The ethnohistorical sources should be integrated more thoroughly into reconstructions of the Pre-Columbian craft industries and the obsidian industry.

References Cited

Berlin, H. 1947. Historia Toltec-Chichimeca. México, D.F.:Porrua.

Cheek, C. 1977. "Excavations at the Palangana and the Acropolis, Kaminaljuya: A Study in Prehistoric Culture Contact." In Teotihuacan and Kaminaljuyu. W. Sanders and J. Michaels, eds., pp. 1-204. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Feldman, L. 1974. "Tollan in Central Mexico." In Studies of Ancient Tollan, Richard A. Diehl, ed., pp. 150-89. University of Missouri Monographs in Anthropology, No. 1. Columbia: Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia.

Healan, D. 1993. "Local Versus Non-local Obsidian Exchanged at Tula." World Archaeology 24:450-66.

Oakeshott, E. 1994. The Archaeology of Weapons. New York: Barnes and Noble.

Sahagún, Bernardino de. 1981. Ceremonies. Book 2, The Florentine Codex. A. Anderson and C. Dibble, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research.

__________. 1961. The People. Book 10, The Florentine Codex. A. Anderson and C. Dibble, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research.

__________. 1959. The Merchants. Book 9, The Florentine Codex. A. Anderson and C. Dibble, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research.

__________. 1954. Kings and Lords. Book 8, The Florentine Codex. A. Anderson and C. Dibble, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research.

Santley, R. 1980. "Obsidian Trade and Teotihuacan Influence in Mesoamerica." Paper presented at the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium on "Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mesoamerican Highland-Lowland Interaction."

Stocker, T. 2000. "Reconsidering Comments on Sahagún's 260 Day Signs." Nahua Newsletter (this issue).

__________. 1993. "Who Were the Toltecs and What Did They Do?" Paper presented at the 13th meeting of the IAES, Mexico City.

__________. 1987. "Where is Coatepec?" Explorers Journal 65:126-29.

__________. 1986. "Where is Tollan?" Explorers Journal 64:76-81.

__________. 1982. "Chichimec Military Potential: The Teotihuacan Case." Paper presented at the meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, England.

__________. 1981. "Obsidian Technology in Mexico." Explorers Journal 59:176-81.

__________, and B. Jackson. 1983. "The Highland Sword and the Gulf Coast Shell." Paper presented at the SAA, Pittsburgh, Penn.

__________, and M. Spence. 1974. "Obsidian Eccentrics in Central Mexico." In Studies of Ancient Tollan, Richard A. Diehl. University of Missouri Monographs in Anthropology, No. 1. Columbia: Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia.

__________. 1973. "Trilobal Eccentrics at Teotihuacan and Tula." American Antiquity 38:159 99.

Terry Stocker
Woosong University, Hannam, Republic of Korea

Illustrations this Issue

The illustrations in this issue were taken from Los oficios de las diosas: Dialéctica de la religiosidad popular en los grupos indios de México by Félix Báez-Jorge. 2nd edition. Xalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana. ISBN 968-834-534-2.

Directory Updates

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Last updated: 11/29/07