¹ These samples (in their original orthographies) are (a) Nahuatl: 1738 land sale in McAfee Collection, UCLA Research Library; translation by Anderson, Arthur Berdan, Frances and Lockhart, James Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 101 Google Scholar; (b) Yucatec Maya: 1578 petition, Inquisición 69, 5: 199, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City; translation by Matthew Restall; (c) Cakchiquel Maya: 1760 will, Protocolos de escribanos 4551, 38560: 7, Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City; translation by Matthew- Restall; and (d) Mixtec: 1684 criminal record, Criminal 5: 581, Archivo Judicial de Teposcolula, Oaxaca; translation by Kevin Terraciano.

² Roys, Ralph L. The Ethno-Botany of the Maya (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1931)Google Scholar; idem, The Book of Chilam Balani of Chumayel (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1933); idem, The Titles of Ebtun (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1939); idem, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1943); de Sahagún, Fray Bernardino Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Anderson, Arthur J.O. and Dibble, Charles E. ed. and tr., 13 parts (Salt Lake City and Santa Fe: University of Utah Press and School of American Research, 1950–82).Google Scholar

³ Lockhart, James Nahuas and Spaniards. Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford and Los Angeles: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1991), pp. 183–200 Google Scholar; idem, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 7, 375.

⁴ Karttunen, Frances and Lockhart, James Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press Publications in Linguistics 85, 1976)Google Scholar; idem, The Art of Nahuatl Speech: The Bancroft Dialogues (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1987); Wood, Stephanie “Corporate Adjustments in Colonial Mexican Indian Towns: Toluca Region” (Ph D dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1984)Google Scholar; Cline, S.L. Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600: A Social History of an Aztec Town (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Burkhart, Louise The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Haskett, Robert S. Indigenous Rulers. An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial Cuernavaca (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Schroeder, Susan Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Lockhart, The Nahuas (to which Nahuas and Spaniards effectively functions as an appendix); Leibsohn, Dana “The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca: Recollecting Identity in a Nahua Manuscript” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1993)Google Scholar; Kellogg, Susan Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Horn, Rebecca Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, in press).Google Scholar

⁵ Thompson, Philip C. “Tekanto in the Eighteenth Century” (PhD dissertation, Tulane University, 1978)Google Scholar; Harada, Tsubasa Okoshi “Los Canules: analisis etnohistorico del Códice de Calkiní” (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993)Google Scholar; Restall’s and Sigal’s dissertations have been revised and published as Restall, The Maya World and Pete Sigal, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Desire (ms); Terraciano, Kevin “Ñudzahui History: Mixtee Writing and Culture in Colonial Oaxaca” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994).Google Scholar

⁶ Hill, Robert M. II The Pirir Papers and Other Colonial Period Cakchiquel-Maya Testamentos (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology 37,1989)Google Scholar; idem, “The Social Uses of Writing among the Colonial Cakchiquel Maya: Nativism, Resistance, and Innovation,” Columbian Consequences vol. 3, Thomas, David Hurst ed. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 283–299;Google Scholar idem, Colonial Cakchiquels: Highland Maya Adaptation to Spanish Rule, 1600–1700 (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1991).

⁷ Anderson, Berdan, and Lockhart, Beyond the Codices; Carrasco, Pedro and Monjarás-Ruiz, Jesús eds., Colección de documentos sobre Coyoacan. 2 vols. (México: INAH, 1976–78)Google Scholar; Cline, S.L. and León-Portilla, Miguel eds., The Testaments of Culhuacan (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, Nahuatl Studies Series 1, 1984)Google Scholar; Karttunen and Lockhart, The Bancroft Dialogues; Lockhart, James Berdan, Frances and Anderson, Arthur eds., The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545–1627) (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Lockhart, James ed., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993 Google Scholar [Repertorium Columbianum, 1]); Calvo, Thomas Celestino, Eustaquio Gómez, Magdalena Meyer, Jean and Xochitemol, Ricardo Xalisco: La Voz De Un Pueblo En El Siglo XVI (Mexico City: Casa Chata, 1993)Google Scholar; Cline, S.L. ed., The Book of Tributes: Early-Sixteenth Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1993)Google Scholar; Lutz, Christopher and Dakin, Karen eds., Nuestro pesar; Nuestra afflicción: Memorias en la lengua nahuatl enviadas a Felipe II por indígenas del Valle de Guatemala hacia 1572 (Mexico City and Antigua, Guat.: UNAM and CIRMA, 1996).Google Scholar

⁸ Restall, Life and Death in a Maya Community; idem, Maya Conquistador: Yucatec Perceptions of the Spanish Conquest (Boston: Beacon Press, forthcoming).

⁹ Hill, Pirir Papers; Kellogg, Susan and Restall, Matthew eds., Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar. Quasi-notarial documents in Mesoamerican languages have also been published, as discussed below.

¹⁰ See Karttunen, Frances “Nahuatl Literacy,” in The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800, Collier, George et al. eds. (New York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 395–417 Google Scholar; Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards; idem, The Nahuas; Restall and Terraciano, “Indigenous Writing and Literacy in Colonial Mexico”; Restall, “Yucatec Maya Literacy”; Schwaller, John Frederick Guías de manuscritos en Nahuatl (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1987)Google Scholar; Terraciano, Kevin “Nahuatl and Mixtee Writing in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca,” in Quiñones Keber, Chipping Away on Earth, pp. 105–118 Google Scholar; Burkhart, Louise “Indigenous Literature in Preconquest and Colonial Mesoamerica,” in The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization, Carmack, Robert Gaseo, Janine and Gossen, Gary eds. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), pp. 429–34Google Scholar; and Gingerich, Willard “Critical Models for the Study of Indigenous Literature: The Case of Nahuatl,” in Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature, Swann, Brian ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Sousa, Lisa M. ed., Indigenous Writing in the Spanish Indies (Los Angeles: UCLA Historical Journal Special Issue, vol. 12, 1992)Google Scholar and Quiñones Keber, Chipping Away on Earth are compilation volumes celebrating and analyzing aspects of indigenous literacy under Spanish rule. The colonial period is also given some attention in Edmonson, Munro and Bricker, Victoria R. “Yucatecan Mayan Literature,” Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 3: Literatures, Edmonson, Munro and Bricker, Victoria R. eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 44–63.Google Scholar

¹¹ Haskett, , Indigenous Rulers, pp. 136–45Google Scholar shows that literacy levels among the office-holding élite of the Cuernavaca region were in the 5–25 percent range; figures were higher for altepetl governors, but still no more than 50 percent even among governors of larger communities.

¹² Restall, , The Maya World, Chapters 6,18 Google Scholar; Terraciano, “Ñudzahui History,” Chapter 2. There is evidence in the Cakchiquel material with which I am currently working of individuals, including women, able to pen a few lines in rudimentary script, typically at the foot of a more polished record written by the community notary.

¹³ With respect to the Mayas: Fash, William L. Scribes, Warriors and Kings. The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 136 Google Scholar; Schele, Linda and Freidel, David A Forest of Kings. The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: Morrow, 1990), p. 329 Google Scholar; Coe, Michael D. The Maya Scribe and His World (New York: Grolier Club, 1973)Google Scholar; writing in Spanish around 1580 Gaspar Antonio Chi remarked that preconquest Maya writing was understood only by the nobility (Chi’s various contributions to the Relaciones de Yucatán are compiled in Jakeman, M. W. The “Historical Recollections” of Gaspar Antonio Chi: An Early Source-Account of Ancient Yucatan [Provo: Brigham Young University Publications in Archaeology and Early History, 3, 1952]Google Scholar; and in Restall, Maya Conquistador, chapter 8).

¹⁴ Marcus, Joyce Mesoamerbcan Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Especially if one considers the total system of text, recitation, and performance; Houston, Stephen “Literacy among the Pre-Columbian Maya: A Comparative Perspective,” in Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Mignolo, Walter D. eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 27–49 Google Scholar (quote on p. 37); Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems.

¹⁶ Fash, , Scribes, Warriors and Kings, pp. 139–151 Google Scholar; Smith, Mary Elizabeth Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973)Google Scholar; King, Mark B. “Hearing the Echoes of Verbal Art in Mixtee Writing,” in Boone and Mignolo, Writing Without Words, pp. 102–36.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Tedlock, Dennis Popol Vuh. The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: Touchstone, 1985)Google Scholar; Roys Chilam Balam of Chumayel; Edmonson, Munro ed., The Ancient Future of the Itza. The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, Heaven Born Mérida and Its Destiny. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

¹⁸ Bricker, Victoria R. “The Last Gasp of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing in the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Chan Kan,” in Word and Image in Maya Culture: Explorations in Language, Writing, and Representation, Hanks, William F. and Rice, Don S. eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), p. 48.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Karttunen, and Lockhart, , Nahuatl in the Middle Years, pp. 8–14 Google Scholar, 130–31; Karttunen, Frances Nahuatl and Maya in Contact with Spanish (Austin: University of Texas Department of Linguistics, Texas Linguistic Forum 26, 1985), pp. 105–7Google Scholar; Restall, , The Maya World, pp. 230 Google Scholar, 297 (where the orthography of encometelo is further explained).

²⁰ At the same time, pictorial manuscripts were undergoing other changes, with ritual and divinitory codices being drawn only under Spanish sponsorship, which also led to the creation of new genres, while the conventions of European art were increasingly adopted by indigenous artists ( Burkhart, , “Indigenous Literature,” pp. 418–425 Google Scholar). Also see Lockhart, The Nahuas, Chapter 8; Gruzinski, Serge The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western World, 16th–18th Centuries (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993), Chapter 1.Google Scholar

²¹ The Spanish alphabet could not perfectly represent all features of Mesoamerican languages; vowel length and tone in particular were left un or underrepresented, while some pairs of letters came to be used interchangeably for sounds that each one inadequately represented (u and o in Nahuatl, for example, and l and r in Yucatec Maya) (Karttunen, Nahuatl and Maya; Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards, Chapter 8; idem, The Nahuas, Chapter 7). Yucatec, however, was the only language for which new characters were actually created (albeit simple adaptations of existing alphabetic letters; the same adaptations were then used for writing Choutal Maya); for a comparison of the alphabets used for Spanish, Nahuatl, and Yucatec Maya, see Restall, The Maya World, Chapter 22. It might be helpful to remind the reader that Yucatán was not conquered until twenty years after the “pacification” of the other regions where major Mesoamerican languages were alphabetized (Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and Highland Guatemala).

²² Lutz and Dakin, Nuestro pesar; Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 73–79 Google Scholar.

²³ Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 36–72.Google Scholar

²⁴ Both the Cakchiquels and Quichés continued to write their word vuh (or uuh) to mean “paper, document, book.” Although the Yucatec Mayas mostly used the Spanish term escribano to describe the notary, they also continued to use indigenous terms for “write” (oib), “copy” (hoch), and ahoib hun for “notary.”

²⁵ This analysis was first published in Karttunen and Lockhart, Nahuatl in the Middle Years and later articulated further in Karttunen, “Nahuatl Literacy,” and in Lockhart, , The Nahuas, 261–325.Google Scholar For a view of culture change and Nahuatl writing that is less philological and more oriented towards an analysis of “colonial discourse,” see de Alva, J. Jorge Klor “El discurso nahua y la apropriación de lo europeo,” in De Palabra y Obra en el Nuevo Mundo, León-Portilla, M. Estévez, M. Gutiérrez Gossen, G.H. and de Alva, J.J. Klor eds. (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España, 1992), pp. 339–68.Google Scholar

²⁶ Restall, , The Maya World, pp. 293–302 Google Scholar; Terraciano, “Ñudzahui History.” With respect to Yucatán also see Karttunen, Nahuatl and Maya; and Hanks, William F. “Authenticity and Ambivalence in the Text: A Colonial Maya Case,” American Ethnologist 13:4 (1986), 721–744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ Karttunen, , “Nahuatl Literacy,” p. 409 Google Scholar; Lockhart, , The Nahuas, p. 41.Google Scholar

²⁸ Haskett, Indigenous Rulers; Lockhart, , The Nahuas, p. 450 Google Scholar; Karttunen, , “Nahuatl Literacy,” pp. 414–15.Google Scholar

²⁹ Restall, , The Maya World, pp. 244–50.Google Scholar

³⁰ Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 100–102.Google Scholar

³¹ This list is based largely on archival observations by myself, Lisa Sousa, and Kevin Terraciano; see also Karen Dakin’s essay, “El Náhuatl de las Memorias: Los rasgos de una lingua franca indígena,” in Lutz, and Dakin, , Nuestro Pesar, pp. 167–94Google Scholar. On the Salvadoran Nahuatl dialect of Pipil, see Dakin’s references; examples are Campbell, Lyle The Pipil Language of El Salvador (Berlin: Mouton, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Pedro Rivas, Geoffroy El nawat de Cuscatlán. Apuntes para una gramática tentativa (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1969)Google Scholar, which includes a seventeenth-century Pipil document.

³² Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 73–74 Google Scholar; idem, “Nahuatl and Mixtee Writing.”

³³ See the articles by Stephen Houston, Elizabeth Hill Boone, John Monaghan, and Mark B. King in Boone and Mignolo, Writing Without Words; Marcus, , Mesoamerican Writing Systems; the articles in Ancient Mesoamerica 1 (1990)Google Scholar, especially those by King and by Monaghan; and Calnek, Edward E. “The Analysis of Prehispanic Central Mexican Historical Texts,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 13 (1978); 239–66.Google Scholar

³⁴ For example, a 1583 record of a grant of a house site by the Nahua town officials of San Miguel Tocuillan to a woman simply named Ana is structured as a series of conversations; the document begins, “Ana spoke and said to her older brother Juan Miguel, ‘My dear older brother …’” (Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards, Chapter 4; idem, The Nahuas, pp. 455–59). Lockhart provides further examples in an analytical context in Nahuas and Spaniards, Chapter 1 and in The Nahuas, Chapter 8.

³⁵ Borah, Woodrow “Yet Another Look at the Techialoyan Codices,” in Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico: A Two Thousand Year Perspective, Harvey, H.R. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 209–222 Google Scholar; Wood, , “Corporate Adjustments,” 301–22Google Scholar; idem, “Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma: A Techialoyan Mastermind?” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 19 (1989), 245–268 Google Scholar; Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 414–15.Google Scholar

³⁶ Haskett, Robert “Visions of Municipal Glory Undimmed: The Nahuatl Town Histories of Colonial Cuernavaca,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1: 1 (Fall 1992), 1–36.Google Scholar

³⁷ Both annalists and their genre are succinctly analyzed in Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 376–92Google Scholar. For extensive analysis of don Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin and his work, see Schroeder, Chimalpahin; Schroeder is also the chief editor of the Nahuatl/English edition of Chimalpahin’s annals (Codex Chimalpahin, 6 vols.[Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997 and forthcoming]), of which the first two volumes have just been published as Anderson, Arthur J. O. and Schroeder, Susan eds. and trs., Society and Politics in Mexico-Tenochtitlán, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahua Altepetl in Central Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Tezozomoc’s annals are available as don Tezozomoc, Hernando de Alvarado Crònica mexicayotl, León, Adrián ed. and tr. (Mexico City: Publicaciones del Instituto de Historia, 1: 10, 1949)Google Scholar. Of indirect relevance here are Spanish-language chronicles by Tezozomoc and by Ixtlilxochitl (see Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 390 Google Scholar, 587 n.6), as well as the histories of Cristobal del Castillo, which were written in Nahuatl but bear a heavy Spanish cultural influence (see Castillo, , Historia de la venida de los mexicanos y otros pueblos e Historia de la conquista, Linares, Federico Navarrete ed. [Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1991]Google Scholar; Christensen, Alexander F. “Cristobal del Castillo and the Mexica Exodus,” The Americas 52: 4 (1996): 441–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ See the more detailed discussion of primordial titles, with accompanying citations, below.

³⁹ Tedlock, , Popol Vuh, pp. 33, 71.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Sahagún, Florentine Codex; Coe, Michael D. and Whittaker, Gordon trans, and eds., Aztec Sorcerers in Seventeenth Century Mexico: The Treatise on Superstitions by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón (Albany: SUNY Institute for Mesoamerican Studies 7, 1982)Google Scholar; Karttunen and Lockhart, The Bancroft Dialogues; Lockhart The Nahuas; Maxwell, Judith M. and Hanson, Craig A. Of the Manners of Speaking That the Old Ones Had: The Metaphors of Andrés de Olmos in the TULAL Manuscript (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Burkhart, “Indigenous Literature” is a good, brief introduction to some of these manuscripts.

⁴¹ de Landa, Fray Diego Relación de las cosas de Yucatán [1566] (México: Editorial Porrua, 1982), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁴² Two bodies of colonial Mesoamerican testaments have been published, both with English translations and transcriptions of the respective Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya: Cline and León-Portilla, The Testaments of Culhuacan; Restall, Life and Death in a Maya Community. Sample wills in Nahuatl, Mixtee, Yucatec and Cakchiquel Maya, with accompanying analysis, are published in Kellogg and Restall, Dead Giveaways.

⁴³ Lockhart, , The Nahuas, p. 368 Google Scholar; Restall, , The Maya World, p. 242 Google Scholar offers a comparison of Nahuatl and Yucatec admonitions.

⁴⁴ With respect to Yucatec Maya, see Edmonson, and Bricker, , “Yucatecan Mayan Literature,” pp. 59–60 Google Scholar; Restall, , The Maya World, pp. 241–42.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Burns, Allan F. “The Language of Zuyua: Yucatec Maya Riddles and their Interpretation,” Past, Present, and Future. Selected Papers on Latin American Indian Literatures, Preuss, Mary H. ed. (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1991), p. 36 Google Scholar; Restall, , The Maya World, pp. 242–43.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Restall, The Maya World, Chapters 18–22.

⁴⁷ Lockhart, , The Nahuas, pp. 468–72.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Restall, The Maya World, Chapter 18. Terraciano’s interpretation of similar formula variants in Ñudzahui (Mixtee) wills emphasizes individual piety rather than community notarial traditions; “Colonial Ñudzahui-Language Testaments from Oaxaca, Mexico,” in Kellogg and Restall, Dead Giveaways.

⁴⁹ Restall, The Maya World, Chapters 15–16; Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan; Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 296–309, 417–22.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Published in Cline and León-Portilla, The Testaments of Culhuacan and Restall, Life and Death in a Maya Community, respectively, and subjected to further analysis in Cline, Colonial Culhuacan and Restall, The Maya World.

⁵¹ Harvey, H.R. and Prem, Hanns J. eds., Explorations in Ethnohistory: Indians of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Wood, “Corporate Adjustments”; Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan; Harvey, Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico; Lockhart, The Nahuas, Chapter 5; Restall, The Maya World, Chapters 13–17.

⁵² Haskett, Indigenous Rulers, Chapters 2, 5; Restall, The Maya World, Chapters 5, 6, 20.

⁵³ See Anderson, , et al., Beyond the Codices, pp. 166–73Google Scholar; Haskett, Robert “‘Not a Pastor, but a Wolf’: Indigenous-Clergy Relations in Early Cuernavaca and Taxco,” The Americas 50: 3 (January 1994): 293–336 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, William B. Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, Chapter 10; Restall, The Maya World, Chapters 11, 12, 19; Sigal, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins, Chapter 4.

⁵⁴ Restall, The Maya World, Chapter 19 is a study of Yucatec petitions; Haskett, Indigenous Rulers, Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan, and Lockhart, The Nahuas use Nahuatl petitions (the latter reproduces one on pp. 460–62); the memorias in Lutz and Dakin, Nuestro pesar are 21 Nahuatl petitions of 1570-72 from Cakchiquel cabildos.

⁵⁵ Some of these are studied in Sell, Barry D. “Friars, Nahuas, and Books: Language and Expression in Colonial Nahuatl Publications” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994)Google Scholar. Also see various articles on Nahua christianization by de Alva, J. Jorge Klor among them “Religious Rationalization and the Conversions of the Nahuas: Social Organization and Colonial Epistemology,” in To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, Carrasco, David ed. (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1991)Google Scholar, and “Sin and Confession Among the Colonial Nahuas: The Confesional as a Tool for Domination,” in La Ciudad y El Campo en La Historia de Mexico (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1992), vol. 1, p. 91–101. See too the work of Louise Burkhart: Slippery Earth; “Flowery heaven: The aesthetic of paradise in Nahuatl devotional literature,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 21 (1992): 89–109; “The Voyage of Saint Amaro: A Spanish Legend in Nahuatl Literature,” Colonial Latin American Review 4: 1 (1995): 29–57; Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). A number of church-sponsored texts are available in facsimile editions, such as fray de Sahagún’s, Bernardino Adiciones, Apéndice a la Postilla y Ejercicio Cotidiano, Anderson, Arthur J. O. ed. and tr., prologue by León-Portilla, Miguel (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993)Google Scholar; also see Schwaller, Guías de manuscritos en Nahuatl.

⁵⁶ Sahagún, Florentine Codex; and The Conquest of New Spain: The 1585 Revision, Cline, Howard trans, and Cline, S.L. ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Sell, “Friars, Nahuas, and Books”; Terraciano, “Ñudzahui History.”

⁵⁸ Lockhart, , Nahuas and Spaniards, 6 Google Scholar; the manuscript is published as Karttunen and Lockhart, The Bancroft Dialogues.

⁵⁹ Published Chilam Balam editions include Roys, Chumayel; idem, “The Book of Chilam Balam of Ixil,” in Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology 75 (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1946): 90–103; Vásquez, Alfredo Barrera and Rendón, Silvia eds., El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1948)Google Scholar; Craine, Eugene R. and Reindorp, Reginald C. eds., The Codex Pérez and the Book of Chilam Balam of Maní (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Edmonson, The Tizimin; idem, The Chumayel; Book of Chilam Balam of Nah (Mexico City: Grupo Dzibil, 1981); Gubler, Ruth and Bolles, David The Book of Chilam Balam of Na (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1997)Google Scholar; Book of Chilam Balam of Chan Cah (Mexico City: Grupo Dzibil, 1982). Copies of the Ixil, Kaua, and Tusik versions are in Tulane University’s Latin American Library.

⁶⁰ Examples are Anderson, , Berdan, , and Lockhart, , Beyond the Codices, pp. 198–209 Google Scholar (Nahuatl) and Terraciano, , “Ñudzahui History,” pp. 107 Google Scholar, 626–27 (Mixtee).

⁶¹ See Restall, The Maya World, chapters 1, 21; idem, Maya Conquistador, which contains English translations of the Calkiní, Chicxulub, and Yaxkukul texts and other related Yucatec sources. The Yaxkukul title is analyzed by Hanks, William “Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice,” American Ethnologist 14:4 (1987): 668–692 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Calkiní title is preserved facsimile as Gates, William ed., The Maya Calkiní Chronicle, or Documents concerning the Descent of the Ah-Canul, or Men of the Serpent, their Arrival and Territory (Baltimore: The Maya Society, 1935)Google Scholar, in facsimile and Spanish translation as Vásquez, Alfredo Barrera Códice de Calkiní (Campeche: Biblioteca Campechana, 1957)Google Scholar, and in Spanish translation in Okoshi Harada, “Los Canules”; part of the Chicxulub is published in Brinton, Daniel G. ed., The Maya Chronicles (Philadelphia: Library of Aboriginal American Literature 1, 1882)Google Scholar and preserved in photostat at Harvard and Tulane Universities; copies of the Yaxkukul manuscript are in Tulane University’s Latin American Library, and two versions of the final portion of the document are published as Vásquez, Alfredo Barrera Documento No.l del Deslinde de Tierras en Yaxkukul, Yucatán (Mexico City: INAH Colección científica, Linguistica 125, 1984).Google Scholar

⁶² Scholes, France V. and Roys, Ralph L. The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel[1948] (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Restall, Maya Conquistador, chapter 3; Recinos, Adrian Memorial de Sololá, Anales de los Cakchiquels; Título de los Señores de Totonicapán (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950)Google Scholar; Berlin, Heinrich “La Historia de los Xpantzay,” Antropología e Historia de Guatemala 2:2 (1950)Google Scholar; Crespo, Mario “Títulos Indígenas de Tierras,” Antropología e Historia de Guatemala 8:2 (1956)Google Scholar; Carmack, Robert Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Sources (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 11–79 Google Scholar; idem, Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiché-Mayas of Momostenango (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), pp. xxviii, 415–17; Carmack, Robert and Mondloch, James El Título de Totonicapán: Su texto, traducción y comentario (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Estudios Mayas, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, Título de Yax, y otros documentos quichées de Totonicapán, Guatemala (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Estudios Mayas, 1989); Edmonson, Munro “Quiché Literature,” in Edmonson, and Bricker, , Supplement, pp. 107–32Google Scholar; Hill, “The Social Uses of Writing.”

⁶³ Terraciano and Sousa, “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca.”

⁶⁴ Nahua examples are defined by Lockhart, , Nahuas and Spaniards, p. 42 Google Scholar as “the rarified language of the high-cultural codices” (classical) and “the quotidien language of mundane post-conquest documentation” (colonial). On Nahua primordial titles see Borah, “Yet Another Look at the Techialoyan Codices”; Florescano, Enrique Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 115–20Google Scholar; Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico, Chapter 3; Haskett, “Visions of Municipal Glory”; idem, “Paper Shields: The Ideology of Coats of Arms in Colonial Mexican Primordial Titles,” Ethnohistory 43: 1 (Winter 1996): 99–126; Lockhart, , Nahuas and Spaniards, pp. 39–64 Google Scholar; idem, The Nahuas, pp. 376–392, 410–418; Terraciano and Sousa, “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca; and Stephanie Wood, “Corporate Adjustments”; idem, “A Techialoyan Mastermind?”; idem, “The Cosmic Conquest: Late Colonial Views of the Sword and the Cross in Central Mexican Títulos,” Ethnohistory 38: 2 (1991): 176–195. See Restall, The Maya World, Chapter 21 for some Nahua-Maya primordial title comparisons.

⁶⁵ Terraciano sees among Mixtee speakers the same overwhelming sense of local, rather than ethnic, identity that has been emphasized in studies of the Nahuas (Lockhart, The Nahuas) and Yucatec Mayas (Restall, The Maya World), with the exception of the Mixteca Alta, where ñuu-centrism was complemented by a self-perception of regional, linguistic, and ethnic distinctness by the Ñudzahui, an aspect of identity that seems to have had preconquest roots (Terraciano, “Ñudzahui History,” Chapter 6; Terraciano and Sousa, “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca”).

⁶⁶ As Gruzinski has suggested: The Conquest of Mexico, p. 69.

⁶⁷ See Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico; Klor de Alva, “El discurso Nahua”; and Lockhart, The Nahuas, Chapter 8 for varying discussions of the impact of colonial rule upon Nahua forms of expression. Gruzinski’s assertion that “writing was the instrument of assimilation, or more precisely of a less subtle and more generalized subjection to the demands of colonial society” (p. 55) may be pertinent to the specific context of the decline of central Mexican pictorial manuscript production, but should not be applied broadly to colonial Mesoamerica. Nor, I suggest, should similar arguments made with respect to the Andes (see, for example, Stern, Steve J. Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of the Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Rappaport, Joanne The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; idem, “Object and Alphabet: Andean Indians and Documents in the Colonial Period,” in Boone, and Mignolo, , Writing Without Words, pp. 271–92)Google Scholar. With respect to Mexico City, see Kellogg, Transformation of Aztec Culture, which is an elaboration of Woodrow Borah’s perspective on the impact upon indigenous culture of the experience of engaging the colonial courts (“The Spanish and Indian Law: New Spain,” in Collier, et al., The Inca and Aztec States, pp. 265–288)Google Scholar; Kellogg argues that the colonial legal system was “a powerful tool of acculturation” (p. xxix) that altered not only indigenous legal culture, but also conceptions of family and gender.