Author: Susan Schroeder
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398–1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was “the beginning and origin” of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become “the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time.” But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica nobleman, Susan Schroeder searches out the truth about his life and legacy. A century after Tlacaelel’s death, in the wake of the conquistadors, Spaniards and natives recorded the customs, histories, and language of the Nahua, or Aztec, people. Three of these chroniclers—fray Diego Durán, don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and especially don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin—wrote of Tlacaelel. But the inaccessibility of Chimalpahin’s annals has meant that for centuries of Aztec history, Tlacaelel has appeared, if at all, as a myth. Working from Chimalpahin’s newly available writings and exploring connections and variances in other source materials, Schroeder draws the clearest possible portrait of Tlacaelel, revealing him as the architect of the Aztec empire’s political power and its military might—a politician on par with Machiavelli. As the advisor to five Mexica rulers, Tlacaelel shaped the organization of the Mexica state and broadened the reach of its empire—feats typically accomplished with the spread of warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In the annals, he is considered the “second king” to the rulers who built the empire, and is given the title “Cihuacoatl,” used for the office of president and judge. As Schroeder traces Tlacaelel through the annals, she also examines how his story was transmitted and transformed in later histories. The resulting work is the most complete and comprehensive account ever given of this significant figure in Mesoamerican history.
Tlacaelel Remembered
Author: Susan Schroeder
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398–1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was “the beginning and origin” of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become “the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time.” But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica nobleman, Susan Schroeder searches out the truth about his life and legacy. A century after Tlacaelel’s death, in the wake of the conquistadors, Spaniards and natives recorded the customs, histories, and language of the Nahua, or Aztec, people. Three of these chroniclers—fray Diego Durán, don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and especially don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin—wrote of Tlacaelel. But the inaccessibility of Chimalpahin’s annals has meant that for centuries of Aztec history, Tlacaelel has appeared, if at all, as a myth. Working from Chimalpahin’s newly available writings and exploring connections and variances in other source materials, Schroeder draws the clearest possible portrait of Tlacaelel, revealing him as the architect of the Aztec empire’s political power and its military might—a politician on par with Machiavelli. As the advisor to five Mexica rulers, Tlacaelel shaped the organization of the Mexica state and broadened the reach of its empire—feats typically accomplished with the spread of warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In the annals, he is considered the “second king” to the rulers who built the empire, and is given the title “Cihuacoatl,” used for the office of president and judge. As Schroeder traces Tlacaelel through the annals, she also examines how his story was transmitted and transformed in later histories. The resulting work is the most complete and comprehensive account ever given of this significant figure in Mesoamerican history.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398–1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was “the beginning and origin” of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become “the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time.” But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica nobleman, Susan Schroeder searches out the truth about his life and legacy. A century after Tlacaelel’s death, in the wake of the conquistadors, Spaniards and natives recorded the customs, histories, and language of the Nahua, or Aztec, people. Three of these chroniclers—fray Diego Durán, don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and especially don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin—wrote of Tlacaelel. But the inaccessibility of Chimalpahin’s annals has meant that for centuries of Aztec history, Tlacaelel has appeared, if at all, as a myth. Working from Chimalpahin’s newly available writings and exploring connections and variances in other source materials, Schroeder draws the clearest possible portrait of Tlacaelel, revealing him as the architect of the Aztec empire’s political power and its military might—a politician on par with Machiavelli. As the advisor to five Mexica rulers, Tlacaelel shaped the organization of the Mexica state and broadened the reach of its empire—feats typically accomplished with the spread of warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In the annals, he is considered the “second king” to the rulers who built the empire, and is given the title “Cihuacoatl,” used for the office of president and judge. As Schroeder traces Tlacaelel through the annals, she also examines how his story was transmitted and transformed in later histories. The resulting work is the most complete and comprehensive account ever given of this significant figure in Mesoamerican history.
Annals of Native America
Author: Camilla Townsend
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190628995
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Old stories in new letters (1520s-1550s) -- Becoming conquered (the 1560s) -- Forging friendship with Franciscans (1560s-1580s) -- The riches of twilight (circa 1600) -- Renaissance in the East (the seventeenth century) -- Epilogue: Postscript from a golden age -- Appendices -- The texts in Nahuatl -- Historia Tolteca Chichimeca -- Annals of Tlatelolco -- Annals of Juan Bautista -- Annals of Tecamachalco -- Annals of Cuauhtitlan -- Chimalpahin, seventh relation -- Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190628995
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Old stories in new letters (1520s-1550s) -- Becoming conquered (the 1560s) -- Forging friendship with Franciscans (1560s-1580s) -- The riches of twilight (circa 1600) -- Renaissance in the East (the seventeenth century) -- Epilogue: Postscript from a golden age -- Appendices -- The texts in Nahuatl -- Historia Tolteca Chichimeca -- Annals of Tlatelolco -- Annals of Juan Bautista -- Annals of Tecamachalco -- Annals of Cuauhtitlan -- Chimalpahin, seventh relation -- Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza
Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico
Author: Robert C. Schwaller
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
On December 19, 1554, the members of Tenochtitlan’s indigenous cabildo, or city council, petitioned Emperor Charles V of Spain for administrative changes “to save us from any Spaniard, mestizo, black, or mulato afflicting us in the marketplace, on the roads, in the canal, or in our homes.” Within thirty years of the conquest, the presence of these groups in New Spain was large enough to threaten the social, economic, and cultural order of the indigenous elite. In Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico, an ambitious rereading of colonial history, Robert C. Schwaller proposes using the Spanish term géneros de gente (types or categories of people) as part of a more nuanced perspective on what these categories of difference meant and how they evolved. His work revises our understanding of racial hierarchy in Mexico, the repercussions of which reach into the present. Schwaller traces the connections between medieval Iberian ideas of difference and the unique societies forged in the Americas. He analyzes the ideological and legal development of géneros de gente into a system that began to resemble modern notions of race. He then examines the lives of early colonial mestizos and mulatos to show how individuals of mixed ancestry experienced the colonial order. By pairing an analysis of legal codes with a social history of mixed-race individuals, his work reveals the disjunction between the establishment of a common colonial language of what would become race and the ability of the colonial Spanish state to enforce such distinctions. Even as the colonial order established a system of governance that entrenched racial differences, colonial subjects continued to mediate their racial identities through social networks, cultural affinities, occupation, and residence. Presenting a more complex picture of the ways difference came to be defined in colonial Mexico, this book exposes important tensions within Spanish colonialism and the developing social order. It affords a significant new view of the development and social experience of race—in early colonial Mexico and afterward.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
On December 19, 1554, the members of Tenochtitlan’s indigenous cabildo, or city council, petitioned Emperor Charles V of Spain for administrative changes “to save us from any Spaniard, mestizo, black, or mulato afflicting us in the marketplace, on the roads, in the canal, or in our homes.” Within thirty years of the conquest, the presence of these groups in New Spain was large enough to threaten the social, economic, and cultural order of the indigenous elite. In Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico, an ambitious rereading of colonial history, Robert C. Schwaller proposes using the Spanish term géneros de gente (types or categories of people) as part of a more nuanced perspective on what these categories of difference meant and how they evolved. His work revises our understanding of racial hierarchy in Mexico, the repercussions of which reach into the present. Schwaller traces the connections between medieval Iberian ideas of difference and the unique societies forged in the Americas. He analyzes the ideological and legal development of géneros de gente into a system that began to resemble modern notions of race. He then examines the lives of early colonial mestizos and mulatos to show how individuals of mixed ancestry experienced the colonial order. By pairing an analysis of legal codes with a social history of mixed-race individuals, his work reveals the disjunction between the establishment of a common colonial language of what would become race and the ability of the colonial Spanish state to enforce such distinctions. Even as the colonial order established a system of governance that entrenched racial differences, colonial subjects continued to mediate their racial identities through social networks, cultural affinities, occupation, and residence. Presenting a more complex picture of the ways difference came to be defined in colonial Mexico, this book exposes important tensions within Spanish colonialism and the developing social order. It affords a significant new view of the development and social experience of race—in early colonial Mexico and afterward.
Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World
Author: Miguel Leon-Portilla
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806132914
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
In this first English-language translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, Miguel León-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806132914
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
In this first English-language translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, Miguel León-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.
Everyday Life in the Aztec World
Author: Frances F. Berdan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108894410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
In Everyday Life in the Aztec World, Frances Berdan and Michael E. Smith offer a view into the lives of real people, doing very human things, in the unique cultural world of Aztec central Mexico. The first section focuses on people from an array of social classes - the emperor, a priest, a feather worker, a merchant, a farmer, and a slave - who interacted in the economic, social and religious realms of the Aztec world. In the second section, the authors examine four important life events where the lives of these and others intersected: the birth and naming of a child, market day, a day at court, and a battle. Through the microscopic views of individual types of lives, and interweaving of those lives into the broader Aztec world, Berdan and Smith recreate everyday life in the final years of the Aztec Empire.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108894410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
In Everyday Life in the Aztec World, Frances Berdan and Michael E. Smith offer a view into the lives of real people, doing very human things, in the unique cultural world of Aztec central Mexico. The first section focuses on people from an array of social classes - the emperor, a priest, a feather worker, a merchant, a farmer, and a slave - who interacted in the economic, social and religious realms of the Aztec world. In the second section, the authors examine four important life events where the lives of these and others intersected: the birth and naming of a child, market day, a day at court, and a battle. Through the microscopic views of individual types of lives, and interweaving of those lives into the broader Aztec world, Berdan and Smith recreate everyday life in the final years of the Aztec Empire.
Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico
Author:
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806119748
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
This volume presents ancient Mexican myths and sacred hymns, lyric poetry, rituals, drama, and various forms of prose, accompanied by informed criticism and comment. The selections come from the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Tarascans of Michoacan, the Otomís of central Mexico, and others. They have come down to us from inscriptions on stone, the codices, and accounts written, after the coming of Europeans, of oral traditions. It is Miguel León-Portilla’s intention "to bring to contemporary readers an understanding of the marvelous world of symbolism which is the very substance of these early literatures." That he has succeeded is obvious to every reader.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806119748
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
This volume presents ancient Mexican myths and sacred hymns, lyric poetry, rituals, drama, and various forms of prose, accompanied by informed criticism and comment. The selections come from the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Tarascans of Michoacan, the Otomís of central Mexico, and others. They have come down to us from inscriptions on stone, the codices, and accounts written, after the coming of Europeans, of oral traditions. It is Miguel León-Portilla’s intention "to bring to contemporary readers an understanding of the marvelous world of symbolism which is the very substance of these early literatures." That he has succeeded is obvious to every reader.
The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec
Author: Arni Brownstone
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806151528
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
In four chapters, a foreword, preface, and two appendices accompanied by detailed, full-color illustrations, scholars Arni Brownstone, Nicholas Johnson, Bas van Doesburg, Eckehard Dolinski, Michael Swanton, and Elizabeth Hill Boone describe what a lienzo is and how it was made. They also explain the particular origin, format, and content of the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec—as well as its place within the larger world of Mexican painted history. The contributors furthermore explore the artistry and visual experience of the work. A final essay documents past illustrations of the lienzo including the one rendered for this book, which employed innovative processes to recover long faded colors.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806151528
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
In four chapters, a foreword, preface, and two appendices accompanied by detailed, full-color illustrations, scholars Arni Brownstone, Nicholas Johnson, Bas van Doesburg, Eckehard Dolinski, Michael Swanton, and Elizabeth Hill Boone describe what a lienzo is and how it was made. They also explain the particular origin, format, and content of the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec—as well as its place within the larger world of Mexican painted history. The contributors furthermore explore the artistry and visual experience of the work. A final essay documents past illustrations of the lienzo including the one rendered for this book, which employed innovative processes to recover long faded colors.
Return to Aztlan
Author: Danna A. Levin Rojo
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806145609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475
Book Description
Long before the Spanish colonizers established it in 1598, the “Kingdom of Nuevo México” had existed as an imaginary world—and not the one based on European medieval legend so often said to have driven the Spaniards’ ambitions in the New World. What the conquistadors sought in the 1500s, it seems, was what the native Mesoamerican Indians who took part in north-going conquest expeditions also sought: a return to the Aztecs’ mythic land of origin, Aztlan. Employing long-overlooked historical and anthropological evidence, Danna A. Levin Rojo reveals how ideas these natives held about their own past helped determine where Spanish explorers would go and what they would conquer in the northwest frontier of New Spain—present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Return to Aztlan thus remaps an extraordinary century during which, for the first time, Western minds were seduced by Native American historical memories. Levin Rojo recounts a transformation—of an abstract geographic space, the imaginary world of Aztlan, into a concrete sociopolitical place. Drawing on a wide variety of early maps, colonial chronicles, soldier reports, letters, and native codices, she charts the gradual redefinition of native and Spanish cultural identity—and shows that the Spanish saw in Nahua, or Aztec, civilization an equivalence to their own. A deviation in European colonial naming practices provides the first clue that a transformation of Aztlan from imaginary to concrete world was taking place: Nuevo México is the only place-name from the early colonial period in which Europeans combined the adjective “new” with an American Indian name. With this toponym, Spaniards referenced both Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the indigenous metropolis whose destruction made possible the birth of New Spain itself, and Aztlan, the ancient Mexicans’ place of origin. Levin Rojo collects additional clues as she systematically documents why and how Spaniards would take up native origin stories and make a return to Aztlan their own goal—and in doing so, overturns the traditional understanding of Nuevo México as a concept and as a territory. A book in the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806145609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475
Book Description
Long before the Spanish colonizers established it in 1598, the “Kingdom of Nuevo México” had existed as an imaginary world—and not the one based on European medieval legend so often said to have driven the Spaniards’ ambitions in the New World. What the conquistadors sought in the 1500s, it seems, was what the native Mesoamerican Indians who took part in north-going conquest expeditions also sought: a return to the Aztecs’ mythic land of origin, Aztlan. Employing long-overlooked historical and anthropological evidence, Danna A. Levin Rojo reveals how ideas these natives held about their own past helped determine where Spanish explorers would go and what they would conquer in the northwest frontier of New Spain—present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Return to Aztlan thus remaps an extraordinary century during which, for the first time, Western minds were seduced by Native American historical memories. Levin Rojo recounts a transformation—of an abstract geographic space, the imaginary world of Aztlan, into a concrete sociopolitical place. Drawing on a wide variety of early maps, colonial chronicles, soldier reports, letters, and native codices, she charts the gradual redefinition of native and Spanish cultural identity—and shows that the Spanish saw in Nahua, or Aztec, civilization an equivalence to their own. A deviation in European colonial naming practices provides the first clue that a transformation of Aztlan from imaginary to concrete world was taking place: Nuevo México is the only place-name from the early colonial period in which Europeans combined the adjective “new” with an American Indian name. With this toponym, Spaniards referenced both Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the indigenous metropolis whose destruction made possible the birth of New Spain itself, and Aztlan, the ancient Mexicans’ place of origin. Levin Rojo collects additional clues as she systematically documents why and how Spaniards would take up native origin stories and make a return to Aztlan their own goal—and in doing so, overturns the traditional understanding of Nuevo México as a concept and as a territory. A book in the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Mapping Indigenous Land
Author: Ana Pulido Rull
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806166797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485
Book Description
Between 1536 and 1601, at the request of the colonial administration of New Spain, indigenous artists crafted more than two hundred maps to be used as evidence in litigation over the allocation of land. These land grant maps, or mapas de mercedes de tierras, recorded the boundaries of cities, provinces, towns, and places; they made note of markers and ownership, and, at times, the extent and measurement of each field in a territory, along with the names of those who worked it. With their corresponding case files, these maps tell the stories of hundreds of natives and Spaniards who engaged in legal proceedings either to request land, to oppose a petition, or to negotiate its terms. Mapping Indigenous Land explores how, as persuasive and rhetorical images, these maps did more than simply record the disputed territories for lawsuits. They also enabled indigenous communities—and sometimes Spanish petitioners—to translate their ideas about contested spaces into visual form; offered arguments for the defense of these spaces; and in some cases even helped protect indigenous land against harmful requests. Drawing on her own paleography and transcription of case files, author Ana Pulido Rull shows how much these maps can tell us about the artists who participated in the lawsuits and about indigenous views of the contested lands. Considering the mapas de mercedes de tierras as sites of cross-cultural communication between natives and Spaniards, Pulido Rull also offers an analysis of medieval and modern Castilian law, its application in colonial New Spain, and the possibilities for empowerment it opened for the native population. An important contribution to the literature on Mexico's indigenous cartography and colonial art, Pulido Rull’s work suggests new ways of understanding how colonial space itself was contested, negotiated, and defined.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806166797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485
Book Description
Between 1536 and 1601, at the request of the colonial administration of New Spain, indigenous artists crafted more than two hundred maps to be used as evidence in litigation over the allocation of land. These land grant maps, or mapas de mercedes de tierras, recorded the boundaries of cities, provinces, towns, and places; they made note of markers and ownership, and, at times, the extent and measurement of each field in a territory, along with the names of those who worked it. With their corresponding case files, these maps tell the stories of hundreds of natives and Spaniards who engaged in legal proceedings either to request land, to oppose a petition, or to negotiate its terms. Mapping Indigenous Land explores how, as persuasive and rhetorical images, these maps did more than simply record the disputed territories for lawsuits. They also enabled indigenous communities—and sometimes Spanish petitioners—to translate their ideas about contested spaces into visual form; offered arguments for the defense of these spaces; and in some cases even helped protect indigenous land against harmful requests. Drawing on her own paleography and transcription of case files, author Ana Pulido Rull shows how much these maps can tell us about the artists who participated in the lawsuits and about indigenous views of the contested lands. Considering the mapas de mercedes de tierras as sites of cross-cultural communication between natives and Spaniards, Pulido Rull also offers an analysis of medieval and modern Castilian law, its application in colonial New Spain, and the possibilities for empowerment it opened for the native population. An important contribution to the literature on Mexico's indigenous cartography and colonial art, Pulido Rull’s work suggests new ways of understanding how colonial space itself was contested, negotiated, and defined.
Introduction to Classical Nahuatl
Author: James Richard Andrews
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806134529
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 704
Book Description
Nahuatl is the language used by the ancient Aztecs and the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico. This text introduces the language using an anthropological approach, teaching learners to understand Nahuatl according to its own distinctive grammar and to reject translationalist descriptions based on English or Spanish notions of grammar. In particular, the author emphasizes the nonexistence of words in Nahuatl (except for the few so-called particles) and stresses the nuclear clause as the basis for Nahuatl linguistic organization.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806134529
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 704
Book Description
Nahuatl is the language used by the ancient Aztecs and the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico. This text introduces the language using an anthropological approach, teaching learners to understand Nahuatl according to its own distinctive grammar and to reject translationalist descriptions based on English or Spanish notions of grammar. In particular, the author emphasizes the nonexistence of words in Nahuatl (except for the few so-called particles) and stresses the nuclear clause as the basis for Nahuatl linguistic organization.