'What in the World Have You Done to Me, My Lover?' …eccwhp.org/research/154w1e.pdf · 350 SEX,...

"What in the World Have You Done to Me, My Lover?" Sex, Servitude, and Politics amongthe Pre-Conquest Nahuas as Seen in the Cantares MexicanosAuthor(s): Camillia TownsendSource: The Americas, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Jan., 2006), pp. 349-389Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491089Accessed: 12-04-2018 15:22 UTC

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The Americas

62:3 January 2006, 349-389 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

"WHAT IN THE WORLD HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, MY LOVER?"

SEX, SERVITUDE, AND POLITICS AMONG THE PRE-CONQUEST NAHUAS

AS SEEN IN THE CANTARES MEXICANOS*

The year 13-Reed [1479]. It was at this time that the people of Ame- cameca and the Chalcas Tlalmanalcas came to sing for the first time in Mexico. At that time they performed the song of the women of Chalco, the Chalca Cihuacuicatl. They came to sing for the lord Axayacatzin.

The song and the dance were begun in the patio of the palace while Axayacatl was still inside in the house of his women. But in the begin- ning the song was poorly performed. A noble of Tlalmanalco was play- ing the music very clumsily, and making the great drum sound in a lazy offbeat way until finally in desperation he leaned down over it, not knowing what else to do.

There, however, close to the place of the drums, was a man called Que- cholcohuatzin, a noble from Amecameca, a great singer and musician as well. When he saw that all was being lost and that the song and the dance were being ruined, he quickly placed himself next to the drum section. He picked up a drum and through his effort he gave new strength to the dance so that it would not be ruined. Thus Quecholcohuatzin made the people sing and dance .... Axayacatl who was still inside the palace, when he heard how marvelously Quecholcohuatzin played the music and made the people dance, was surprised, and his heart filled with excite- ment. He quickly arose and left the house of his women and joined in the dance. As Axayacatl approached the place of the dance his feet began to follow the music and he was overcome with joy as he heard the song and so he too began to dance and spin round and round.

When the dance was over, the lord Axayacatl spoke, saying, "Fools, you have brought this fumbler before me, who played and directed the song.

* This work could never have taken its present form without the help of Jonathan Amith, Michel Launey, James Lockhart, Jennifer Ottman and Susan Schroeder. I am forever in their debt.

349


350 SEX, SERVITUDE, AND POLITICS AMONG PRE-CONQUEST NAHUAS

Don't let him do it again." The people from Chalco answered him, saying, "It is as you wish, supreme lord." And because Axayacatl had given this command, all the nobles of Chalco became terrified. They stood there looking at each other, and it is said that truly they were very

frightened.

... But the lord Axayacatl was well pleased [with Quecholcohuatzin] and continued to take delight in the "Song of the Women of Chalco," the Chalca Cihuacuicatl. So it was that once again he had the Chalcas, all of the nobles, return, and he asked them to give him the song and he also asked all those from Amecameca, because the song was theirs, it belonged to the tlailotlaque, the men who had returned. The song was their property, the "Song of the Warrior Women of Chalco."

Chimalpahin, Seventh Relation Ms. Mexicain 74, Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris

Folios 174-1761

he indigenous historian Chimalpahin seemed quite certain that events on a certain day in 1479 had unfolded as he described them, though he wrote over a century later and saw it all through the

refracting lens of the intervening Spanish conquest. Posterity has been the more inclined to believe him since there exists a song amongst those collected in the sixteenth century under the auspices of the Franciscans entitled "The Song of the Women of Chalco" (Chalca cihuacuicatl) in which the singer addresses Axayacatl as the conqueror of Chalco and as her own lord and master. But what can we in the twenty-first century make of these two sources? We might pursue a number of interpretive avenues. In this article I will ask specifically what we actually know about the fifteenth-century performance event, and what, if anything, we can glean from the song concerning the lives of the Nahua women in that nearly untranslatable category whom we know in English as "concubines."

The Nahua tradition of the cuicatl or song is only partly understood.2 Songs were performed accompanied by music in elite households and at

1 This English translation of the Nahuatl text appears in Miguel Le6n-Portilla, "The Chalca Cihuacuicatl of Aquiauhtzin: Erotic Poetry of the Nahuas," New Scholar 5:2 (1978), pp. 235-262.

2 The best summary of what we know is James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stan-

ford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 392-400. For a literary analysis, see Miguel Leon-Portilla,

"Cuicatl y Tlahtolli: Las Formas de Expresi6n en Nihuatl," Estudios de cultura ndhuatl 16 (1983), pp. 13-108. John Bierhorst, ed., Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1985) is a complete edition of the Cantares, giving both the Nahuatl and an English translation. It

is in many ways a superb work, but it is marred by Bierhorst's insistence on adjusting his translations-


CAMILLA TOWNSEND 351

public celebrations. A song might be known to have been first composed or sung by one person, but might then be performed, slightly altered or not, by

others; or a song might come down through time entirely anonymously. There was an elaborate standard format involving pairs of verses that almost all songs followed, and a typical set of metaphors with which audiences were familiar. These works were never written down-unless perhaps as lists of glyphs representing certain titles-until the second half of the sixteenth century. Obviously, some of the written texts smack of post conquest adjustments (some even include mention of Dios) but the majority of them are clearly pre-conquest in theme and format.

Some version of "The Song of the Women of Chalco" was almost certainly performed by people from Chalco for the emperor Axayacatl in or about the year 1479.3 Moctezuma I had conquered Chalco in 1464 and had abolished their rulerships. After Axayacatl became king in 1468 or '69, he faced mounting pressures from the Chalca to ease up on them in terms of tribute demands, to reinstate their dynasties, and to accept the Chalca lords into the inner circle of empire. In the song, the concubine speaker vacillates between flattering and threatening the king, alternately arguing that he is doing her wrong and that she might need to seek revenge, and protesting that

she would be very good to him if only he would be good to her. For the Chalca to challenge the Mexica king in any form whatever was a risky ven- ture, but sending a "woman's song" had the potential to be very effective in that it might be disarming and make the conquerors laugh, feel a bit guilty, and think. It may even have worked to some extent: due to Chalca pressure, Tizoc reinstated some of the lines of rulership in the 1580s. Though Chi- malpahin may have imagined some of the details, it seems likely that he had the general story quite right, for the tenor of his comments-concerning the risk the Chalca were taking and the fear they experienced-fits perfectly with what we know of the political situation at the time.4

even to the point of inaccuracy-so that the songs seem to fit the "ghost song" tradition known to have existed among tribes of the American mid-west.

3 Leon-Portilla, in "Chalca Cihuacuicatl" (pp. 240-42), presents a lengthy commentary on the song's likely political origins, based on what he found in the annals of Chimalpahin. Bierhorst in Cantares (pp. 502-503) attempts to demolish Chimalpahin, claiming that everything he said about the song and its com-

position came out of the song itself, but he does not substantiate that argument at all effectively. Kay Read

(in this issue) offers a thoughtful analysis of the song, unquestionably demonstrating its political content.

4 See Susan Schroeder, Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991) on the political situation, especially pp. 74-76. It is worth noting, in addition, that Chimal-

pahin's original quotation contains over a page of additional information concerning Axayacatl's relationship with the brilliant performer Quecholcohuatzin: Chimalpahin is unlikely to have been completely wrong about a key event in the life of an individual who was obviously a famous singer and historical personage in his world.



What we cannot know, however, is whether this song was written for the occasion or whether the performers were making use of an old tradition. Did a political statement become a pop song, or was a pop song used to make a political statement? The latter seems most likely-that is, that the song we have is in fact just one example of a type of song well known to the Nahuas in their time. Chimalpahin goes on to say, "A noble named Aquiauhtzin Cuauhquiyahuacatzintli had composed it there [in Chalco], a man who was a great forger of songs. And for this song, another man also became famous, that lord called Ayocuatzin the elder, a noble Chichimeca, who had governed Itztlacozaucan Totolimpa [in Chalco]." What this probably indicates, however, is that a man named Aquiauhtzin had arranged a particular version for performance in Tenochtitlan, possibly under the patronage of the political lord Ayocuatzin.

There are numerous reasons to believe that a sort of sub-genre existed in this vein. First, Chimalpahin himself refers both to the "Song of the Women of Chalco" and to a "Song of the Warrior Women of Chalco"-and the version that we have has nothing to do with women warriors, except occasionally by implication, indicating there were probably other versions in exis- tence. Second, the songs collected by the Franciscans include another one that is very similar in style to certain verses of the Chalca cihuacuicatl: the narrator of "The Cradle Song" calls herself "a Mexica girl" (nimexicatl) and addresses king Ahuitzotl, using some of the same sexual imagery as the Chalca girl in some places-but offering none of the complaints found in other verses.5 Something called the Chalca Women's Song continued to be performed even after the conquest: not only Chimalpahin but also the annalist known as Juan Bautista reported performances in 1550 and 1564, for example.6 Such longevity and popularity of a vocal text in a non-literate society would seem to indicate that we are probably dealing not with a particular song set in stone, but rather with a popular tradition or sub-genre. Finally, the song that we have lacks many (though not all) of the elements common to the Nahua cuicatl, indicating that there may indeed have been multiple versions and losses in transmission: indeed, in many regions of the world it has not been at all uncommon for particularly popular cultural expressions to stray from the elaborate literary conventions followed by artists at court.7

5 Bierhorst, Cantares, pp. 263-267. 6 Cited in Bierhorst, Cantares, p. 504. 7 Literary critics remind us that irregular structure often indicates that less educated people were

involved in the production of a work. In Europe and Japan, for example, women were the first to write novels because they were less well versed in literary styles of poetic composition.



Whether the song was unique or part of a popular tradition, however, nothing indicates that the text we have was written, arranged, or performed by a woman. Women did sometimes compose and perform songs, but that seems extremely unlikely to have occurred in this particular context.8 At first

glance, then, one might be tempted to dismiss the song in terms of its value in reflecting women's experiences. But that would be too hasty. As we will see, the song does reflect, sometimes in painful detail, the experiences of concubines and even of less powerful wives. This is eminently logical: it was written, if not by women, then by men who undoubtedly had years of illuminating conversations and arguments with the women in their lives. It is probably the closest we can come to hearing such women speak. Natu- rally, talented artists living in fifteenth-century Mexico knew a great deal more about life in the calli (or Nahua household) than the average person does now, and were aware that the experience of a conquered woman might well be considered emblematic of the lot of a conquered state. They composed and sang about what they knew.

A lack of sensitivity to women's experiences on the part of many modern scholars has caused the song to be seriously misread in the past. Of course, offering a perfectly accurate translation of any of the classical Nahuatl songs is literally impossible. They do not obey the same conventions, even the same grammatical rules, as any of the other kinds of texts with which we are more familiar; they rely on stylized metaphors, many of which we have not yet been able to decipher. Thus any translator must guard against allowing green or rose-colored spectacles to alter the view. Yet several have failed to do this. Miguel Le6n-Portilla wanted to see the song purely as an erotic come-on, and he has published it in several places as if it were-though he himself at first could not fail to notice the woman's negativeness and admit- ted once in the 70s that "the conclusion is, up to a certain point, ambiva- lent."9 The renowned Angel Maria Garibay uses largely the same translation, but attempts to deal with the problem of the negative tone found in certain stanzas by arbitrarily inserting divisions between supposedly different speakers whom he calls "first woman," "second woman," and "old woman."1 Certain commentators, working largely with the same prevalent

8 On women performing, see Arthur J. O. Anderson, "Aztec Wives," in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

1997), pp. 81-82, and Miguel Le6n-Portilla, Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), pp. 175-77.

9 Leon-Portilla, "Chalca Cihuacuicatl," p. 244. For erotic translations, see not only that article but

also his Fifteen Poets, and more recently, In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Lit- erature, edited with Earl Shorris (New York: Norton, 2001).

10 Angel Maria Garibay, ed., Poesia Ndhuatl (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de M6xico, 2000), Vol. III, pp. 55-60.



translation, have at least made more of the element of mockery than Le6n- Portilla did, and have argued that the narrator is not merely flattering and sensual, but is at times making light of the king's prowess." John Bierhorst did his own translation, which is in many places more faithful to the text, but

as he held a common twentieth-century American male's attitude toward those we tend to term "sex slaves" he concluded that a person from Chalco could not possibly have written the song, as it would have been "self-abu- sive" to do so.12

Given the profound misunderstandings and inconsistencies in place, I have considered it important to translate the piece anew-"from scratch," as it were. I do not pretend that my translation attains the perfection that is so obviously out of reach as regards the cantares. I have marked a number of places where we must put up with some uncertainty. And indeed, it is unlikely that any single English translation would ever be able to convey the multiple meanings and nuances present in the song: we need at least two separate renderings to convey all that was embedded in any one sentence. Kay Read (in this issue), for example, has emphasized the political content of each utterance, while I have focused on elements reflective of concubines' experiences. Taking women's lived experiences with polygyny into account as the contextual backdrop, and sticking very closely to those elements we can translate with a degree of surety, I contend that an interpretation of the song emerges that is powerful and illuminating, as well as having common sense on its side. After making a detour through the social world of the Nahuas-the overlapping systems of slavery, concubinage and marriage-in order to create a context in readers' minds, I will return to the song's narrative voice.

ON NAHUA WOMEN

There has been a notable historiographical shift in the treatment of Nahua women over the past twenty years. Earlier efforts to reconstruct their lot were

made in the 1970s, and thus paint a picture of victimization even before the conquest, in the years when the Aztecs brought militarism to a high art and women became "the banked fire, the hearth stones."13 More recently, how-

" Susan Toby Evans, in "Sexual Politics in the Aztec Palace: Public, Private, Profane," Res 33 (1998), pp. 167-183, emphasizes women's use of flattery to gain their ends and empower themselves. Kay Read in "The Chalcan Woman's Song" in this issue and Manuel Lucena Salmoral in America 1492 (New York: Facts on File, 1990) make more of the element of teasing and mockery.

12 Bierhorst, Cantares, pp. 502 and 506. 13 June Nash, "The Aztecs and the Ideology of Male Dominance," Signs 4 (1978), pp. 349-62.

Though Nash's work has been superceded, it was pioneering at the time.



ever, scholars have seen evidence of gender complementarity in the Nahua world-sometimes cast as dialectical opposition and sometimes as a form of parallelism, but in either case a system in which both men and women were understood to be valuable."4 Despite the fact that increased militarism can in fact erode gender complementarity, Louise Burkhart, for example, argues that

"an ideology of male-female complementarity was maintained through an investment of the home with the symbolism of war, not only by means of metaphor, but also via direct ties to the battlefield front."15 Women's very brooms and spinning implements were spoken of as weapons in the ongoing social and political battle with chaos; women maintained the ceremonial ties to the gods in the home; without the women, the men could not eat or dress themselves; the bearing of a child was the equivalent of a warrior's taking a captive. "It is true that on the standard tests of sexual equity, the Mexica con-

spicuously fail," writes Inga Clendinnen. "But 'standard tests' are notoriously blunt instruments."l6 The role of the Aztec wife and mother of heirs was

unquestionably an honorable one, and probably no more constraining than that of the man who had per force to become a warrior. Writes Susan Schroeder: "Gender considerations were subordinate to pride of patria and women's (and men's) identity was an aspect of the socio-political whole."17

Such studies, however, as invaluable as they have been in setting to rest old notions, have not focused on the social experience of polygyny as a lived

14 See Betty Ann Brown, "Seen But Not Heard: Women in Aztec Ritual." In Text and Image in Pre- Columbian Art ed. Janet Berlot (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports Press, 1983); Louise Burkhart, "Mexica Women on the Home Front: Housework and Religion in Aztec Mexico," in Indian Women of Early Mexico; Karen Bruhns and Karen Stothert, Women in Ancient America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999); Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: an Interpretation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Rosemary Joyce, Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Susan Kellog, "The Woman's Room: Some Aspects of Gender Relations in Tenochti- tlan in the Late Pre-Hispanic Period," Ethnohistory 42 (1995), pp. 563-76; Sharisse McCafferty and Geof- frey McCafferty, "Powerful Women and the Myth of Male Dominance in Aztec Society," Archaeological Review from Cambridge 7 (1988), pp. 45-59; Thelma Sullivan, "Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and Weaver," in Elizabeth Hill Boone, ed., The Art and Iconography of late Post-classic Central Mexico (Washington, DC, 1983). There is still a competing school of thought, though its adherents are in the minority, which maintains that indigenous women were indeed oppressed-though no more so, such scholars would now add, than were European women. See Maria Rodriguez and Robert Shadow, "Las

mujeres aztecas y las espafiolas en los siglos XVI and XVII," Colonial Latin American Historical Review 5 (1996), pp. 21-46. Thus far, studies of Aztec women have been based on formal texts, but currently, some

younger scholars are using mundane literature, such as wills and litigation, to study women in real-life action, and they are proving that in the second half of the sixteenth century, at least, women were active

and vocal participants in their marriages and other social relations. See Lisa Sousa, "Women in Native Societies and Cultures of Colonial Mexico," PhD Dissertation, Department of History, UCLA, 1998.

15 Burkhart, "Mexica Women," p. 26.

16 Clendinnen, Aztecs, p. 157 17 Susan Schroeder, "Introduction," Indian Women of Early Mexico, p. 13.



reality among the most powerful families, or on the fact that many Nahua women other than the Mexica married or became concubines outside of their

natal communities, or were even taken in warfare. Clendinnen acknowl- edges that sometimes "social inequality derived from metaphysical complementarity." In a world in which "kinship largely defined a woman's identity"-and the most common female names were "Elder, Middle One, Younger Sibling, and Youngest-we should not forget that many women were entirely removed from their kin.18 Natalie Zemon Davis, speaking of the Northeastern Woodlands of colonial North America, has said: "Let us

consider the enemy wife," and has insisted that there must have been "important consequences for consciousness."19

Lest it appear that I am entering into a "western feminist" diatribe against polygyny, it is important to say at the outset that the system offered many dis-

tinct advantages to women. It meant, for example, that the incest practiced by

the royal family of Tenochtitlan never led to alarming consequences for the royal line, and that wealthy families of all stripes were immune from losing all their sons in warfare. In addition, as only elite families were polygynous, it meant that a larger proportion of women lived richly in a material sense than would otherwise have been the case. If indeed it meant that there ensued

in some times and places a slight shortage of women among the commoners (and this is in any case doubtful), then the women of that class had all the more power in their dealings with men. The work of food and textile production, childrearing and housework is much less onerous in a polygynous compound, and as women grow older they can look forward to a supervisory role. It eliminates the negative repercussions of men's choosing to have multiple relationships clandestinely. Pregnant and post-partum women can gain in certain respects: in Tenochtitlan, men were proscribed from demanding sex

or labor from women nearing or recovering from childbirth.20

Yet none of this does away with the pain and anger sometimes experienced by a woman living in a household in which she is far more replace- able than the male decision-maker. To acknowledge her full humanity we must explore all sides of her life, the ways in which she was empowered as

18 Rebecca Horn, "Gender and Social Identity: Nahua Naming Patterns in Postconquest Central Mexico," in Indian Women of Early Mexico, p. 107.

19 Natalie Zemon Davis, "Iroquois Women, European Women," in Peter Mancall and James Merrell, eds., American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 104.

20 Arthur J. O. Anderson, "Aztec Wives," in Indian Women of Early Mexico, pp. 68-69. He notes that

this stood in stark contrast to the Spanish practice of insisting that married women at all times had a duty to be accessible to their husbands.



well as those in which she was vulnerable. It is significant that the word quixtia[nite], which technically means "to throw someone out" was defined as "to throw a woman or servant out of the house" in the earliest complete dictionary.21 That definition is supremely logical in the context of the systems of servitude and marriage that were in place in the years before the con-

quest, systems which must certainly have affected women's consciousness, and which even had broader political implications for communities as a whole -and of which both the composers of the cihuacuicatl and their audiences were well aware.

ON SLAVERY

Motolinia, one of the twelve Franciscans who arrived in Mexico in 1524, later wrote that "the making of slaves [among the Nahuas] ... is contrary to [the system] of the nations of Europe, and is so difficult to attain a full understanding of... that in my view I have never seen anything as uneven and intricate as this."22 We would do well to take his warning to heart: in placing slaves in their proper context, it is important to understand that there

existed a range of unfree labor forms, only some of which we understand today. Most commoners' plots of land were theoretically distributed to them by their calpolli-though held for life and probably passed onto children- and were in close proximity to each other.23 Nobles, on the other hand, held widely scattered lands, as they received land from their calpolli as well, but in addition might buy land or be awarded land after a military victory over another altepetl, or ethnic state. In the latter cases, the previous owners sometimes became something akin to a class of tenant farmers, and sometimes were evicted and replaced by other tenant farmers who themselves had been displaced from their own calpolli lands by some sort of calamity. What exactly such dependent tenants were called and what their rights were understood to be seems to have varied a great deal across time and space, as did their numbers and significance in the overall economy.24 Only rarely did

21 Fray Alfonso de Molina, Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana y Castellana (Mexico City: Porrnia, [1571], 1992), p. 90v.

22 Fray Toribio de Benavente o Motolinia, Memoriales, o Libro de las Cosas de la Nueva Espafia (Mexico City, 1971), p. 366.

23 The concept of "calpolli" is difficult to translate easily. It bore something in common with our notion of parish and of ward; it was a subdivision of an altepetl, or ethnic state. For the best discussion

of its nature, see Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 15-20.

24 To follow this debate, see first Frederick Hicks, "Dependent Labor in Prehispanic Mexico," Estu-

dios de cultura ndhuatl 11 (1975), pp. 243-66; then Pedro Carrasco, "The Provenience of Zorita's Data on the Social Organization of Ancient Mexico," in Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and

Colonial Mexico in Honor ofArthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1994); and finally Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 96-102. An excellent study of these issues in a particular



people termed "slaves" (tlacotli, plural tlatlacotin) work the land. Central Mexico was never a slave-dependent economy, and when the first census was taken in Morelos in the 1540s slavery had virtually disappeared.25 There are, however, regular references to slaves acting as burden bearers in merchant trains. Much more often, they appear in the records spinning and weaving, working on household maintenance tasks, and serving as luxury goods for noblemen, sometimes gambled away as if they were pieces of jewelry.26 Slaves, in short, were mostly women.

How did these women come to be enslaved? The twentieth century his- toriography has favored a bifurcation between prisoners of war (who were to be sacrificed) and local people whose status changed to "slave" with their own or their family's or village's consent (and who were to work in households).27 It would be convenient if the sources spoke of prisoners of war only as malli (captives) and of house slaves as tlacotli, but the reality is not so neat. The word tlacotli appears in both contexts.28 And indeed, as we would expect, language and social custom were intertwined. As will become evident in the following pages, a woman taken in war might later find herself either facing sacrifice or working as a household servant or concubine, and a household dependent might suddenly find herself facing sacrifice. Nor did the blurring of identities stop there: whether a woman found herself enslaved through warfare or some form of community consent, in her daily tasks she was, in the words of James Lockhart, "barely distinguished from other menial servants and lower dependents" who were free, usually orphans living under the roofs of others to maintain themselves.29 In the post-conquest mundane documents, it is clear that to be forced to live in the houses of others, rather than with one's own immediate kin, was in itself a painful

locale is Rebecca Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519- 1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), chapter 5.

25 S. L. Cline, The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos (Los

Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1993), pp. 29-30. 26 Friedrich Katz, Situacidn social y econ6mica de los aztecas durante los siglos XV y XVI (Mexico

City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de M6xico, 1966), p. 146, and Hicks, "Dependent Labor," p. 246, both gathered examples. For language on rulers and lords going forth to gamble, see Arthur J.O. Ander-

son and Charles E. Dibble, eds., Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Reseach and University of Utah, 1950-82) (henceforth "FC"),

Vol. 8, p. 29. 27 An early example was Carlos Bosch Garcia, La Esclavitud Prehispdnica entre los Aztecas,

(Mexico City, 1944). It should be noted that a third type of slave has always been recognized-the sacrifice victim who was given as part of a tribute payment to the Mexica. However, the tribute payers almost always obtained such people through warfare against less powerful neighbors.

28 One example: "Quinmictiaya tlatlacotin." ("They used to kill slaves" [on that feast day].) FC Vol. 9, p. 45.

29 Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 99-100 (commenting on the post-conquest period).



and stigmatizing position, even if one did not arrive there through sale or the loss of a battle.

We have relatively clear information about the types of legalistic processes through which members of certain communities might find themselves enslaved with the consent of their families.30 In some places, such as Tetzcoco, there were formalities to be undergone, with witnesses required. One could sell oneself into servitude, or be sold by one's family, theoretically with the right to buy one's freedom again if that were ever possible. It was said that some people who chose to sell themselves were men addicted to gambling or women who were slothful and pleasure-loving: one can easily imagine a woman who had decided to accept the offer of a lord-or who had even been forced to do so-being accused by other villagers of having done so out of pure laziness. "Because of what she did [i.e. her sloth] ... she took to another, she lived by concubinage. And in the same way she achieved nothing and was not diligent at the place of her lord, where the slave-owner was."31 In reality, however, the vast majority who voluntarily relinquished their own freedom or that of one of their children did so out of desperate need, almost always induced by regional famine. During the drought of 1450-54, many a Mexica sold a child into servitude. A person could also be sold as a punishment for a crime-theft, treachery to one's lord, or attempting to sell someone else's child as a slave-or for repeated failure to pay one's taxes. In the case of the most serious crimes, not only the perpetrator but also his dependents could face enslavement.

These slaves had some "rights"-to use a partly anachronistic term. The children of slaves were apparently born free.32 Furthermore, theoretically, according to the testimony of indigenous men after the conquest, a slave could not be sold by the original owner without the slave's permission. The same men also said, however, that slave owners frequently gambled slave girls away. The informants acknowledged that slaves could be sold if they were derelict in any way; that decision was undoubtedly made by the mas-

30 Motolinia, Memoriales, pp. 366-72 is the best source, at least on practices in Tetzcoco, but Durain,

Torquemada, and the Florentine Codex also provide commentary on the subject. 31 "Auh in ie oquichiuh ... ic tehuic, ic temecapal mochiuhtinemi: auh qan no ihui aontleiecoa, aont-

laeltia, in itecuacan in ompa teltacauh." FC Vol. 4, p. 95. 32 In Tetzcoco, this was purportedly true unless an ancestor had entered into an agreement that one

member of his family would always be subject to the descendants of the person to whom he sold himself, leaving his descendants in a state of huehuetlacolli. Even in this situation, however, families theo-

retically chose who would serve for how long, and rotated the responsibility rather than permanently casting out one of their own. If such a slave were mistreated and died on the job, the family members were forever cleared of their labor debt.



ters. After three misdemeanors, some said, slaves could even be sold for sac-

rifice; in that market they brought a tidy sum. Clearly a slave's security within the system must have depended to a great extent on his or her social position before the sale and the tightness of his or her kin ties to the sur- rounding community. In fact, it seems clear that many of the tlatlacotin had none of the purported protections, as they had either had been sold by families who lived at a distance and were transported by traveling merchants,33 or were war captives.

The traditional twin notions that war captives were virtually always [male] enemy warriors and that they were automatically marked for sacrifice can no longer be considered accurate. Women were certainly not warriors in Mexica society, and yet, as David Carrasco has pointed out, women were killed in at least one third of Tenochtitlan's yearly festivals. Indeed, in the Ochpaniztli festival, considered by scholars to demonstrate the power of Mexica-Tenochca wives and midwives, a captured enemy woman had to give her body to the king before being surprised and sacrificed at a moment when she least expected it.34

That women prisoners of war were also sacrificed, however, does not by itself expose the more important notion that in the wake of war, whole peo- ples could be said to lose their freedom-at least until a peace agreement was made-not simply the armed combatants. In descriptions of battles, it is usually not one "side" or one "armed force" that loses, but an entire altepetl. "After the city was conquered, thereupon were counted as many captives as there were."35 The extraordinary number of prisoners we are sometimes told were taken with a straight face-in one case over 12,00036-demonstrates that no one then assumed that all prisoners were necessarily sacrificed. Indeed, there are many references to servitude in the wake of conquest. In

Durin's narrative, for example, the queen of Tlatelolco begs her husband to avoid war with Tenochtitlan for the sake of the children. "They will become perpetual slaves if we are conquered."37 Tezozomoc, a grandson of

33 Lockhart mentions merchants having exchanged children for cloth in The Nahuas, pp. 99-100 and 505. Most of the chronicles mentioning great famines refer to selling children to traveling merchants.

34 David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilizaion, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). p. 206. Compare Doris Heyden, "Las escobas y las batallas fingidas de la fiesta de Ochpaniztli," in Religidn en Mesoamerica, ed. Jaime Litvak King and Noemi Castillo Tejero (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropologifa, 1972). For a description of the ceremony, see FC, Vol. 2, pp. 118-20.

35 In icuac ompoliuh altepetl, niman ie ic nemalpohualo in quexquich malli. FC Vol. 8, p. 53. 36 Codex Yanhuitlan, cited in Bosch, La Esclavitud Prehispdnica, p. 102. 37 Fray Diego Durain, The History of the Indies of New Spain, ed. Doris Heyden (Norman: Univer-

sity of Oklahoma 1994), p. 254.



Moctezuma, stated explicitly what is implicitly obvious in all the sources- that prisoners who were not sacrificed became slaves.38 On some occasions, such speakers may have been referring to the people of the altepetl entering into a dependency or tenant-farmer status, not the tlatlacotin category, but on

some occasions they clearly meant the latter, especially when speaking of women and children.

What did it mean for a city to be sacked? How was it determined whether people would remain where they were as tenants or tribute payers, or be taken for sacrifice, or for concubinage or domestic servitude? We will never know, but some patterns do emerge in lengthy histories of warfare, such as Durtin's or Tezozomac's. We would be foolish to take these texts as "factual"

as regards such things as dates or outcomes of the various wars, but they are useful in revealing general patterns of expectation and widespread concerns. It seems clear that warrior prisoners taken in battle were most often held for sacrifice, and that victorious armies generally went looting in search of valu- ables and concubines. Special note is taken when anything less or more occurs. After the conquest of Xochimilco, for example, the Mexica govern- ing figures were interested for economic reasons in accepting the foreign chieftains as allies within their own council, and so they forbade the usual plundering. The soldiers were purportedly angry that they could not do here as they had done elsewhere. "They could have gorged themselves with the spoils, with great pleasure."39 Years later, on the other hand, the Mexica had reached a pitch of rage by the time they conquered the Huaxtec altepetl: "Even the youths took many captives, and all the prisoners were taken to Tenochtitlan [for sacrifice]. The seasoned soldiers from all the allied provinces also took many captives, both men and women, for they and the Aztecs entered the city, burned the temple, sacked and robbed the place. They killed old and young, boys and girls, annihilating without mercy everyone they could, with great cruelty and with the determination to

remove all traces of the Huaxtec people from the face of the earth. ... ."40

If politics determined the overall picture-that is, as to whether, on one extreme, the soldiers were forbidden even to seize any pretty women, or, on the other extreme, nearly all a village's people were left to be killed or taken for sacrifice-it was the Cihuacoatl, the emperor's second-in-command -or some equivalent in other states-who determined the specifics and allocated

38 Don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crdnica Mexicana (Mexico City: Porria, 1975), p. 360. Tezozomoc also makes numerous less explicit references.

39 Durain, History of the Indies, p. 109. 40 Ibid., p. 165.



war captives.41 We cannot describe a certain "distribution policy"; even if we had more reliable records, it would remain true that it undoubtedly varied

over time and place. According to the evidence that we have, in the most common scenario-and it is a picture that makes sense-warriors after a battle were given one or two captives whom they themselves had been responsible for taking; in the case of the Tenochca they ceremonially presented these prisoners to the king and the Cihuacoatl upon their return to the

city, who then distributed them to the temples of the appropriate calpolli to be maintained until they were sacrificed. When women and children were taken in large numbers from a sacked city, or a group of servant women was offered by a capitulating state as a symbol of submission, one can deduce that they, too, were sometimes distributed to the calpolli temples for use in upcoming ceremonies. But women's usual fate was probably quite different. The only references to them that we have mention their distribution to friends and supporters of the king-presumably as concubines. Tezozomoc mentions in passing at one point that the nobles he is listing were lesser men, not the kind who were of sufficient status to receive slaves in the division of

plunder after a war.42 Certainly when the leaders of capitulating states gave their own sisters and daughters as a peace offering, it was understood that they were to become concubines-sometimes even wives-and not sacrifice victims, as will be discussed in the next section.

Reality, of course, was not always so neat. At one point, the Florentine Codex mentions that if people were arguing over whose captive was whose, or there was a group of captives attributable to no particular warrior, then those prisoners went to the state, either to fight in gladiatorial sacrifice games played out on certain festivals, or to the great temple house (calpolco), apparently not meaning the calpolli in the usual sense, but rather, a larger state structure.43 1 would suggest that such "excess" captives probably fed the famous Azcapotzalco slave market. Merchants, who did not fight in wars, bought slaves for sacrifice there, as did other groups who did not happen to have war captives on hand. "If no one [in the calpolli] had succeeded in securing a victim to be bathed [and sacrificed] ... everyone gathered and presented the large cotton capes which were the price of a

41 Miguel Acosta Saignes mentioned this aspect of the Chihuacoatl's powers in "Los Pochteca: Ubi- caci6n de los Mercaderes en la Estructura Social Tenochca," Acta Antropoldgica 1 (1945). It is repeatedly mentioned in Durin, History of the Indies, pp. 112, 166, 201, 230-31.

42 Tezozomoc, Crdnica mexicana, p. 352. 43 FC Vol. 8, p. 53: "Calpolco quicaoauia, in ichan tlacatecolotl." "They used to leave him (such a

one) at the place of the great house, where the devil [local god] lived." Note that in context, it is clear that they were not simply saying that they went to the calpolli-rather, in fact, that they could not simply

be distributed to the calpolli as usual.



slave."44 Scholars have cast about trying to determine who these slaves originally were. Some were apparently tlatlacotin sold by their masters for bad behavior, but it seems unlikely that such a channel could guarantee a sufficient supply for all ceremonies where they were needed; the personal connections made in the household would have discouraged selling someone in Azcapotzalco in all but the most unusual of cases.45 It is clear that the Tenochtitlan ruling family attempted to impose a sort of monopoly, insisting that people buy slaves for sacrifice only from this one site- though whether people obeyed or not cannot be determined.46 Slave dealers were always called the wealthiest of merchants, and were known as the friends of the emperor.47 Thus it seems likely that a relationship existed that

was useful to both parties: the emperor probably made a goodly fortune selling excess captives to the Azcapotzalco merchants, and the merchants were then able to sell them to those who had to have them for religious reasons and were willing to pay up to forty pieces of cloth.48

Someone's fate after being sold in the market was generally predictable, but not universally so. The slaves on display were beautifully dressed and made to dance to music, but once sold, the clothes were removed, and the purchasers dressed them in other garments they had brought with them for the purpose. Back in the home of the master, a woman was offered a spindle and unspun cotton. In some cases, she might yet save herself if she could prove herself extraordinarily useful. "But for a man [a master] did nothing."49

It is more than possible, however, that some war captives passed through the hands of the slave dealer merchants for sale not at Azcapotzalco, but rather in some distant land. The long distance slave trade was alive and well:

4 FC Vol. 9, pp. 63, 87. See also Rudolph Van Zantwijk, The Aztec Arrangement: The Social His- tory of Pre-Spanish Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 164-65, and Anne Chap- man, "Port of Trade Enclaves in Aztec and Maya Civilizations," in Karl Polyani, Conrad Arensberg and Harry Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 123-25.

45 Motolinia, Memoriales, 370-71. FC Vol. 4, p. 95 mentions the threat of selling a woman servant who is useless. In an effort to make sense of the situation, Bosch in La Esclavitud Prehispdnica, p. 43, says those sacrificed must have been people who had become slaves to pay their own gambling debts.

46 Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute and Transportation: the Sixteenth Century Political Economy of the

Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), p. 111. 47 FC 10, pp. 59-60. 48 Frederick Hicks, "Cloth in the Political Economy of the Aztec State," in Mary G. Hodge and

Michael E. Smith, eds., Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm (Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamer- ican Studies, 1994), p. 99.

49 FC Vol. 9, pp. 45-46. Motolinia and other early chroniclers insisted that prisoners dedicated to sac-

rifice could never be saved from their fate, but they were clearly trying to portray the Aztecs as so steeped

in sin as to be in need of being saved from themselves.



it was primarily an export trade, and it was regularly supplied, whether or not there was a famine existing that induced self-sale, so some of those sold must have been war captives. Slave-dealers were wealthy and powerful. Of all the merchants it was they who were also described as the pochtectla- toque, or leaders of merchants, and as "bathers of slaves" (those wealthy enough to pay for major feasts in which slaves were purified by bathing before being sacrificed).50 Nahua merchants went east to the city of Tochte- pec, then some traveled to the Gulf Coast and others to the Pacific. As they penetrated new territories-"strategic provinces," in the words of Frances Berdan, as they were not tribute paying regions, but rather trading partners and buffer zones-they often carried goods on behalf of the emperor for rit- ualistic exchange with foreign chieftains, but they were also looking to obtain valuable exotic gems, feathers, shells, cotton, cacao and furs in exchange for goods of their own. What were these goods of their own? The records are repeatedly clear on that point: artisan products, useful crops that only came from the highlands, and most of all, slaves. These slaves "might be women [and girls], or might be little boys."'51

There has been little comment on what the demand mechanism was that

motivated this business, but the fact that the people sold were mostly women, when placed in the context of certain economic realities of the era, makes one scenario eminently plausible: the slaves were probably being sold wherever they were needed for time consuming aspects of household cotton production, including ginning, beating, spinning, and perhaps even weaving-though the latter was a higher status job that was integral to women's identity and may have been consistently claimed by mistresses of households. Archaeologist Elizabeth Blumfiel has demonstrated that spindle whorl frequencies are higher for sites of the early Aztec period than for the period of Aztec dominance, indicating that the task of producing yarn (processed cotton fiber) for the highly populated central valley was apparently being shifted onto more distant regions as the Mexica Tenochca

50 FC Vol. 10, p. 59 Elsewhere there is a slight distinction between, on the one side, merchant lead-

ers and wealthy slave bathers (pochtecatlatoque and tealtianime) and on the other side, "those who enter

enemy territory, those who sell people" (in nahualoztemeca, in teyahualoani yaotitlan calaquini, in tecoanime). See FC Vol. 9, pp. 7 and 47, for instance. The two groups are always paired, but separated by ihuan. One scenario that would explain all these examples would be that wealthy and powerful merchant leaders rose from the ranks of those who dared to penetrate foreign territory with their wares,

including slaves.

51 "aqo cihuatl, aqo oquichpiltontli, in ompa quimonnamacaia," FC Vol. 9, pp. 17-18. Scholars who have looked at this phenomenon include Hassig, Trade, 116, Chapman, "Port of Trade Enclaves," pp. 125-26 and 139, Frances Berdan, "Economic Alternatives Under Imperial Rule: The Eastern Aztec Empire" in Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm, pp. 297-98, Pedro Carraso, "Markets and Mer- chants in the Aztec Economy," Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 2 (1980), pp. 261-62.



became more powerful. Many of the outlying edges of empire paid their tribute in cotton (some of which they traded for, but much of which they pro-

duced themselves) and we know that the coastal Maya culture then consisted primarily of urban centers populated by elites and their slaves who lived off of textile production and trade. As essentially the same type of spinning and weaving equipment was used throughout Mesoamerica, and virtually all girls were introduced to it at a young age, an inter-regional slave trade based on cotton processing was viable.52

There were, in short, many paths to tlacotli status, especially for women, and most left people in far more vulnerable social positions than we have been accustomed to considering, at least explicitly.

ON MARRIAGE SYSTEMS

The varying terms the Nahuas used to talk about marriage can be over- whelming to outsiders. "But," warned Motolinia, "the common people who understand these things really pay attention to these differences."53 In the 1540s census of Morelos, the word cihuatia meant for a man to acquire a woman, and the word oquichtia meant for a woman to acquire a man. Some- times they used manque, meaning, "They took each other," or in our words, "They were married." In the annals, however, there was almost always a male subject and female object in discussions of marriage brokering. "He asked for her." "He took her." "He gave her. . . ."54 Some of the women whom a man took to live with him became official wives in the sense that

lengthy ceremonies were conducted; others simply lived with him. Motolinia, who did not speak Nahuatl, said that the latter kind of woman was called a tlacihuaantli (taken woman), but that if a woman wanted to clarify that she had been freely given by her family rather than forcefully taken, she could insist on the title cihuanemactli (given woman).55 Given his limited language skills, Motolinia may well have had the words wrong, but

52 On the equipment as well as the textiles see Patricia Anawalt, Indian Clothing Before Cortds: Mesoamerican Costumes from the Codices (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981). On the time put into each stage of cotton production, see Hicks, "Cloth in the Political Economy," in Economies and

Polities in the Aztec Realm. For the shift in women's work, see Elizabeth Brumfiel, "Weaving and Cook- ing: Women's Production in Aztec Mexico," in J. M.Gero and M. W. Conkey, eds., Engendering Archae-

ology: Women and Prehistory (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), esp. pp. 232-33. Joyce summarizes Maya literature on the subject in Gender and Power, pp. 15, 186.

53 Motolinia, Memoriales, p. 322. 54 Cline, Tributes, p. 53, Lockhart, The Nahuas, p. 81. Susan Schroeder, "The First American Valen-

tine: Nahua Courtship and Other Aspects of Family Structuring in Mesoamerica," Journal of Family His- tory 23 (1998), p. 342.

55 Motolinia, Memoriales, pp. 313 and 322-23.



it does seem that someone had been trying to convey distinctions to him among women he would simply have called mancebas (concubines).

For our understanding of the system, we must attempt to bypass the layer of Spanish that intervenes in the written record. The word chahuayotl for concubinage existed before the conquest, since it surfaces in the song tradition, but it received no entry in Molina's dictionary later in the century. Still, even there it surfaced in other forms: chauacocoya meant for a woman to be afflicted because her husband had taken a concubine, and chauaconetl a step-child, chahuanantli a step-mother. It is more than possible that by this point the Spanish were trying to keep this word in use only to express the concept of "step relation" through a second legitimate marriage, as they were clearly pushing the word mecatl (tied one) to mean "concubine" in their mental universe, and the word namictli to mean spouse in a Christian sense. Both of these had undoubtedly been used in some contexts before the arrival of the Spanish, but now they emerged constantly with particular significance as the friars tried to clarify what marriage ought to mean. In the Morelos census, a man might label several women, or one, or none, as ici- huauh (his wife), and the same for imecauh (his concubine), but in the case of a Christian marriage, only one was called inamic.56

The status of the children of the various kinds of wives and concubines

was probably not sharply differentiated. One of the cihuapilli (noblewomen) was the mother of the most probable heirs, but even this position could and often did move about as the political terrain shifted. Children of the wives of rank, who had been through a marriage ceremony, were called tlazopilli (precious children) and children of the other women were calpanpilli (household children) but even these could inherit in certain situations, as we will see. The children of the mecatl (tied one) probably were not considered "illegitimate" until the Spanish rendered them so. In Molina's sample will prepared for use in towns throughout Mexico, the phrase "children of his concubines" was translated by the phrase "those who were only [or merely] the children of his mecatl" (yn Can ymecapilhua): someone had thought it necessary to insert the "only" [or "merely"] for clarity's sake.57 The word ichtacapilli (literally, "secret children") does exist in some of the post-con-

56 Cline, Tributes, pp. 53-54. See also Anderson, "Aztec Wives," p. 66, on Spanish priests emphasizing the distinction between nemecatiliztli and nenamictiliztli.

57 The will is reproduced and translated by S.L. Cline in "Fray Alonso de Molina's Model Testament and Antecedents to Indigenous Wills in Spanish America," in Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, eds., Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (Salt Lake City: Uni- versity of Utah Press, 1998), pp. 22-24.



quest annals as if it were a preconquest word, but it does not convey the type of illegitimacy that the Spaniards wanted it to: rather, it seems to have conveyed the accusation that the child's mother had been impregnated by someone other than her husband, and probably a man of low rank at that, or possibly simply that the mother was of particularly lowly origin.58

Even official, primary wives lived in a complex universe, and might need to defend their status, for rights of their children to inherit and the politics of

the altepetl were intimately intertwined, and could shift about dramatically. It is a fact well-known to historians of Nahua lineages-including that of the Tenochtitlan ruling family-that the documents are replete with inconsistencies. Susan Gillespie has pointed out that these discrepancies are almost certainly not due to an inability on the Nahuas' part to devise a better record keeping system! Rather, they are due to "the lack of any desire to fix or stan- dardize their traditions, which would make the past less amenable to necessary . . . modification."59 In fact, she argues, "the contradictions take on greater significance than the consistencies." In Tenochca history, the varia- tions never occur in the list of the nine kings, but rather, in the women who were their wives and mothers. It was through their wives and mothers that Aztec kings-who were originally outsiders-claimed their legitimacy in various regions.60 Who a particular historian wanted his king to have married or be descended from all depended on where he was from, of course.

And, I would add, the political dickering did not exist only in the histories narrated later: it existed in the real-world intrigues unfolding behind noblemen's walls where the polygynous arrangements made possible a range of possible outcomes for the next generation. The Mexica lineage provides examples. Sources closest to the preconquest tradition all agree that the first three kings of Tenochtitlan, who ruled while Azcapotzalco was still supreme, passed the emblems of power from father to son, which was the most typical practice of the region. Then when the Triple Alliance formed in a time of upheaval, Itzcoatl, another son of the original founder of the line, probably a particularly charismatic one, had his chance to seize power. His mother was either a slave or a poor greens-seller (perhaps she was both), but in a time of such chaos, it no longer mattered that his mother was not a legit-

58 Susan Schroeder, "The Noblewomen of Chalco," Estudios de cultura ndhuatl 22 (1992), pp. 78- 79. See Molina's dictionary for a typical Spanish definition.

59 Susan Gillespie, The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History (Tucson: Uni-

versity of Arizona Press, 1989), p. xxvi 60 Ibid, chapter 2. See also Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the

Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), pp. 162-64.



imately married princess of a leading line.61 Whether real or apocryphal, the council of judges meeting after any king's death to determine a successor clearly could be persuaded by practical considerations to make a different choice. Interestingly, when he neared his own death, Itzcoatl wisely did not try to insist that his own son inherit, but rather, at that point the extended royal family moved from filial to fraternal succession, which stressed the corporate nature of their power and rendered them all interested in main- taining it. Thenceforward, a candidate for the rulership would try to marry a

daughter of the current king, to promote his own legitimacy. Mothers undoubtedly did all they could to promote the interests of their own sons; men from their own states would have helped them. Tlacaelel, who would one day be Cihuacoatl, and Moctezuma I were purportedly born to the current king by different noblewomen on the same day. The annalist Chimal- pahin offered an astrological explanation for the rise and supremacy of the one over the other; but one can easily imagine that household Realpolitik may actually have been decisive.62

Generally, a ceremonial marriage between nobles was effectively a marker of the political relationship existing between altepetls: a foreign wife or concubine's status in the household depended on the prestige of her natal ethnic state in relation to her new home. Again the story of the Mexica lineage provides an excellent example. Though the Mexica Tenochca kings took their primary wives from among their own immediate family, the practice of polygyny allowed them to use intermarriage with other dynasties to cement their regional power. Pedro Carrasco has outlined the three basic patterns and provided historical examples of each, in the relationships between Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco and Teotihuacan: 1) The high ruler would give his daughter in formal marriage along with tracts of land to a subordinate king of another altepetl, who thus became his personal ally (this is called "interdynastic hypogamy," as the woman is marrying "down"); 2) The high ruler would take a young noblewoman from another state as a wife, but with no understanding that her children would succeed ("interdynastic hypergamy"); or 3) The high ruler would marry the daughter of a subordinate king, with the understanding that their child would become the next king of her natal

61 Pedro Carrasco, "Royal Marriages in Ancient Mexico," in H. R. Harvey and H. Premm, eds., Explorations in Ethnohistory: the Indians of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), pp. 59-60. For discussion of the variable modes of succession for a teuctli, or dynastic overlord, see Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 103-109.

62 Chimalpahin cited in Gillespie, Aztec Kings, p. 133. Carrasco, "Royal Marriages," pp. 60-61. See also Edward Calmek, "Patterns of Empire Formation in the Valley of Mexico, Late Postclassic Period," and J. Rounds, "Dynastic Succession and the Centralization of Power in Tenochtitlan," both in The Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800: Anthropology and History (New York: Academic Press, 1982).



state ("intradynastic hypergamy"). Only much less powerful states would accept the third arrangement, as it meant that a male child raised elsewhere by his powerful father would one day come to rule. Tetzcoco kings, for example, participated in the first and second types of arrangements, but never the third.63

A crucial point is that this never became an "immutable policy"; it was always dependent on the political context. The moment that Tenochtitlan lost status-that is, at the Spanish conquest-the Tetzcoco kings cut their marriage ties with that city and reverted to marrying their own noblewomen,

as they had done in days long past. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the situation could even change dramatically between the period in which a woman moved to her new home and the period in which her children came of age: her altepetl could fall-or rise-in power or prestige. In my reading of the mutually contradictory royal histories of Tetzcoco, for example, one thing seems clear, and that is that it was never permanently certain which woman's children would be powerful enough to succeed. Those who had once deemed themselves the legitimate heirs could apparently find themselves replaced by others.64

63 Carrasco, "Royal Marriages," pp. 42-46 and 66. See also Carrasco, "Indian-Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony," in Indian Women of Early Mexico, pp. 90-92.

64 Nezahualcoyotl, the renowned king who was born c. 1400 and ruled until 1472, had many wives and concubines, and purportedly 144 children. The sources, as we have learned to expect, contradict themselves on the name of his primary wife. It seems to me quite likely that there was in fact more than

one-that is, that Nezahualcoyotl was pressured into changing his mind regarding the succession as Tenochtitlan became more powerful. Nezahualpilli, who became his heir, was only six years old when his father died, and obviously the son of a much younger wife. Whatever her name was, all sources agree that she was the daughter of a Tenochca nobleman, probably a direct descendant of Moctezuma I, and probably had been betrothed to another man before a sudden change was made (for which the predatory

Nezahualcoyotl was blamed). We are asked to believe that she was also the mother of a much older previous heir named Tetzauhpiltzintli, who was executed years before his father's death for an unspecified grave crime against the king. But it is more than likely that one of the several names later applied to Nezahualpilli's mother actually belonged to a separate woman, who believed she would mother Neza- hualcoyotl's heir when she married him, but later died or was set aside around the time her son Tetza-

upiltzintli was killed. We know that judges from Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan joined the Tetzcocan king in pronouncing judgment on his wayward son, thus leaving the succession open again. Certainly history- memorizers living under Tenochtitlan's power would have been motivated to forget that the executed prince had had a different mother from another altepetl, and to imply that his death was entirely due to

his own crimes. One chronicler later blamed his death on a conniving concubine of the king, who had wanted one of her own children to replace him. Certain it is that much later the three adult sons of a

favored concubine did become the six-year-old Nezahualpilli's greatest rivals when their father died, launching a veritable civil war that was only settled when Axayacatl interfered on his young kinsman's behalf. The three rebels were eventually bought or beaten into submission to the point that it was rumored

one was later forced to give a daughter as a concubine (not a wife) to Nezahualpilli. Similar or worse problems emerged in the next generation. King Axayacatl had made sure of Nezahualpilli's throne, and not surprisingly, the first wife who was presumed to be the one who would mother the heirs was Axay-

acatl's daughter. Either she felt more powerful than her husband and really dared to commit adultery, or



Susan Schroeder has demonstrated that similar practices existed in the region of Chalco as well, down to the most local of levels, though she is quick to add that because her source, the annalist Chimalpahin, did not explicitly comment on power differences between kingdoms or consorts, we cannot always be absolutely sure of what we are seeing.65 It is certain that power nor-

mally passed man-to-man and through the male line-women ruled only when no men were available-but who one's mother was remained very important in establishing one's authority. In times of upheaval, a princess could marry a militarily successful commoner, thereby granting him a social status to match his practical accomplishments and render him--or at least his son-a legitimate king.66 In Chimalpahin's vision of the Mexica Tenochca conquest of Chalco, the key element of the defeat had been the more powerful state's interfering with Chalco's ancient noble lines. For instance, in a classic example of intradynastic hypergamy, in 1492 Moctezuma came to Chalco to officiate at the inauguration of a nine-year-old son of the Mexica Cihuacoatl as king of his mother's home town.67

her husband wanted to strike at his overbearing father-in-law and patron and so accused her of the unspeakable crime. She was executed with great fanfare. Nezahualpilli later took as the mother of his heirs a niece (or some say two nieces) of the next Tenochca king, Tizoc (she was-or they were-also descended of Moctezuma I), and eleven children were born. The eldest was Huexotzincatzin, and the most famous Ixtlilxochitl. By the time Huexotzincatzin became a young man, Tizoc was no longer king; he had been replaced by Moctezuma II, who made efforts to establish dominance over Tetzcoco in a variety of ways. Perhaps it should not surprise us that Huexotzincatzin was accused of committing adultery with one of his father's concubines, the beautiful and talented poet-daughter of a merchant from Tula. The story of his mother's useless pleading became well-known. But there is more to the story in reading the fine print: sources elsewhere mention that at least three others of Huexotzincatzin's brothers were executed as well--one for building his own palace without his father's permission, and two others for claiming war captives that were not in fact their own. This left a sister of the current king Moctezuma as

the apparent first wife, and her son Cacama as the heir. When Nezahualpilli died, however, the surviving full brothers of Huexotzincatzin would have none of it, and launched a civil war leading to the permanent division of the kingdom. Jerome Offner, Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1983), pp. 228-41, records every single mention of Tetzcoco's royal history, allowing me to formulate my hypothesis much more easily than I otherwise could have. Juan de Pomar ("Relaci6n

de Tetzcoco," in Crdnicas de America 65, ed. Germin V\izquez, Madrid, 1992) and don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (Edmundo O'Gorman, ed., Obras Hist6ricas [Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, 1975-77], Vols. I and II) were both descended from Nezahualpilli, the former through one of his slaves and the latter through a royal wife, and both wrote their own versions of the

history. Motolinia (op. cit.) and Juan de Torquemada (Monarquia Indiana [Mexico City: Porrda, 1975], vols. I and II) both lived for a time in Tetzcoco. Chimalpahin (Susan Schroeder, ed., Codex Chimalpahin [Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997-present], 6 vols.), himself from Chalco, seems to have taken particular interest in the problems of this wealthy and powerful city-state.

65 Schroeder, "Noblewomen of Chalco," p. 66. 66 Ibid., p. 65. 67 Ibid., pp. 78-79, 85. Chimalpahin also claimed that one king of a small Amecameca lordly house

was so taken with one of his wives that he petitioned the Tenochca king to make her children his heirs-

he does not explain what the tie was that would have made the emperor happy to comply-and to the days of Chimalpahin himself, the descendants of the other wives were still angry about it, still insisting



The same dynamic was replicated within the confines of Chalco. In the years before the Spanish conquest, the four altepetl of the region were ranked in order of importance (and, theoretically at least, of antiquity): Tlalmanalco, Amecameca, Tenanco, Chimalhuacan. Tlalmanalco was the most powerful; indeed, the king was married to a daughter of Moctezuma II and thus had the backing of the empire as her son was to inherit. Not surprisingly, we learn that in the generation before conquest Tlalmanalco princesses married the lords of each of the other three altepetl, and their sons

later ruled in each place. Immediately after the conquest, the recorded marriages indicate no such practice, but instead a tendency for noblewomen to marry within their own polity.68

The assumption thus far has been that these politically significant marriages or relationships were entered into voluntarily, at least by the young women's families if not by the women themselves, but such was not always the case. There could be a fine line-or perhaps more of a gray area- between a woman's marrying a more powerful town's lord (without any hope of her children inheriting) by choice and in order to cement an alliance, and a woman's doing so because her altepetl had been conquered, or would be conquered if she did not. A completely vanquished town could signal its willingness to pay tribute by offering slave girls to the victors as concubines or sacrifice victims; or a town could be more proactive before suffering final defeat and offer a sister or daughter of the king as a wife for the more powerful lord in an attempt to establish a voluntary and mutual political relationship. Occasionally a middle course was sought: many commoners and a noble girl or two were offered.69 And sometimes communication broke down and efforts to establish a permanent alliance failed after a young woman had already married an enemy lord and moved to his town. Then she would live in a state at war with her own people.

The many possibilities and tensions inherent in such unfolding situations are revealed in the partly apocryphal story of the early fifteenth-century Cuernavaca princess Miyahuaxihuitl. The second king of the Tenochca,

that the son who inherited was not even really the son of the king. See also Schroeder, "Looking Back at the Conquest: Nahua Perceptions of Early Encounters from the Annals of Chimalpahin," in Chipping Away on Earth, pp. 85-86.

68 Schroeder, "Noblewomen of Chalco," data chart on p. 61, commentary on pp. 67, 75-76. A foun-

dation story of another town can be similarly analyzed, pp. 80-81. The latter even shows shifting power relations, as a story of intradynastic hypergamy in the first generation is followed in the next generation

by one of interdynastic hypogamy.

69 Schroeder, "Looking Back at the Conquest," p. 85. Chimalpahin says that before offering their

services as allied fighters, two Amecameca kings gave Cort6s forty young girls: they were mostly unspecified commoners, but they also asked noblemen to offer up their daughters.



Huitzilihuitl, had of course taken as his primary bride the daughter of the king

of Azcapotzalco, then the most powerful altepetl. The Tenochca were interested in establishing a trade relationship with (or dominance over) the Cuer- navacans, who had large quantities of cotton at their disposal. Huitzilihuitl made an offer of marriage to the princess-obviously without any intention of making her children his heirs-and the offer was rejected. So Huitzilihuitl shot a jeweled shaft over the wall. The princess gathered it up and became pregnant and married Huitzilihuitl. War ensued anyway. Her people lost, and were forced to pay tribute henceforward to their conquerors. Yet the child she

had conceived grew up to become the great king Moctezuma, despite the original intent of the Tenochca. "The erotic arrow with its exquisite jewel- seed was both divinely inspired and politically charged," writes Susan Schroeder. And more: "The conquest was mutual, for when Miyahuaxihuitl internalized the fertile stone, she was power incarnate."70

There is no question, however, that any power enemy wives exerted over their lives they wrested out of adverse circumstances; they inhabited a mental world ranged against them. The idea that victory is to defeat as male is to female has existed in many times and places; it was certainly present among the Nahuas to some degree.71 Because women were so important in the cosmos, enemy women had to be controlled. Wherever enemy women joined their men in fighting the Mexica, the conquerors both impugned their characters and emphasized their inglorious defeat in the way they later told the story. Even the earth goddess Cihuacoatl, who was both creator and destroyer, kind and untrustworthy, was in her visual image a fallen enemy, a brutally conquered female being.72 These ideas were ancient among central Mexicans. At Cacaxtla, near Tlaxcala, there is a well-known late Classic archaeological site featuring two murals in which a finely dressed queen is the most prominent image, seen first as an arrow pierces her cheek and she makes the sign of defeat, and next when she is captive with her hands bound, waiting, presumably for sacrifice or a forced sexual relationship.73

70 Schroeder, "First American Valentine," pp. 342-344. 71 Cecilia Klein, "Rethinking Cihuacoatl: Aztec Political Imagery of the Conquered Woman," in J.

K. Josserand and Karen Dakin, eds., Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma Sul-

livan (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1988), vol. I, p. 240. 72 Ibid., pp. 224-227, 237-246. For a fascinating glimpse of this creator-destroyer, see the Cihua-

coatl-like image of the Virgin Mary in the Huexotzinco Codex housed in the Library of Congress. Xavier

Noguez provides commentary in "The 1531 Codex of Huexotzinco," in Chipping Away on Earth. 73 Bruhns and Stothert, Women in Ancient America, pp. 253-54. Sharisse McCafferty and Geoffrey

McCafferty, "The Conquered Women of Cacaxtla: Gender Identity or Gender Ideology?" Ancient Mesoamerica 5 (1994), pp. 159-72. Current scholarly debate centers around the question as to whether the images actually represent men dressed as women to signify their defeat, or rather demonstrate that



We see, finally, that Nahua wives occupied a range of social and political positions. A woman who had been transferred to her husband in time of war, or who had come as an offering from a particularly weak altepetl in order to prevent bloodshed, might find herself treated no better-and perhaps far worse-than a clearly defined tlacotli who came from a well-known local family that had stumbled into hard times and been forced to sell one of their own, or a girl who had caught the eye of the dynastic overlord in the market and been pressured into entering his household. Or, to look at the situation another way, whether a noble Chalca concubine taken in battle should be looked upon as a kind of slave-prisoner or as a sort of minor wife is difficult to say. Her status, as she well knew, depended on a variety of factors, and might even shift.

HOUSEHOLD TENSIONS, LARGE AND SMALL

We should not underestimate the importance of what went on behind calli (household) walls. "One could see the Mexica house as a model of the cosmos, writ small," writes Louise Burkhart, "but perhaps it would be better to see the Mexica cosmos as a house writ large."74 Housewives and priests, after all, shared similar dangers and joys in their constant efforts to maintain

order and keep chaos at bay. And the household was also a microcosm of the political world, or rather the political world a multiplication of households. Writes James Lockhart: "The Nahua household, with its independent calli arranged around a center, separately occupied by individual members who at the same time belonged to the whole, is another example of the principle of cellular organization and as such is comparable to the altepetl."75 Even kin ties were understood in connection with the notion of a household. There

was no real word for "family": various words and phrases essentially meaning "people living together in a house" were used to convey what "family" usually means to us.76

The vast majority of Nahua marriages were monogamous. If most com- pounds contained multiple structures, it was generally in order to house grown children and their spouses, not multiple wives. On the other hand,

women could in reality be important military leaders. It seems to me that neither is necessarily true. What

seems clear is that it was important to the victors to represent the painful and humiliating defeat of their enemies' most highborn woman or women.

74 Burkhart, "Mexica Women," pp. 1, 30-31.

75 Lockhart, The Nahuas, p. 61. The Mesoamerican pattern of households opening onto small, unroofed spaces or patios is found from the smallest settlements to large complexes such as at Teotihua- can.

76 Lockhart, The Nahuas, p. 59.



almost all elite households were polygynous, including a large proportion of families in Tenochtitlan, the wealthy capital of empire.77 Thus in the case of the most powerful households, we generally see separate buildings ranged around a common courtyard or patio, each building housing the hearth and property of one wife or concubine. This is typical by any standards: except in cases of actual harems or sororal polygyny, polygynous households around the world have virtually always provided separate living quarters for each wife.78 Each woman's house, then, contained a grinding stone, griddle, cooking pots, straw mats, wicker hampers, small seats, a loom and weaving supplies; a broom leaned outside.79 But this should not suggest to us that the women lived autonomous and completely independent lives, as if they were the anonymous residents of an apartment building. First, it is not entirely clear what they were expected to do in the cihuacalli or "Women's Room" that large households tended to have one of; secondly, in the absence of arti- ficial lighting, they did almost all their work outside in the common patio.80 They knew each other well.

On the one hand, a certain solidarity must have existed among them. They were, after all, whether first wife or slave, dependent on the same man both for material goods and social prestige in relation to other households. If he were killed in battle, they would all suffer. If he committed a grave crime or even simply a serious political error, they might all be killed or sold as slaves. Most likely, they resented that potentiality: a sixteenth century narrator later expressed some discomfort with the system, in that he claimed the

king had sometimes regretted his actions: "He regretted having killed the wives and children of those men, since they were not at fault and had offended no one."8' More than this, the women de facto helped raise each other's children, and we know that despite earnest strictures, they joked about men and about sex. ("What are those things which, when they dance, are given stomachs, are made pregnant? They are spindles!")82

77 Cline, Tributes, p. 55, Bruhns and Stothert, Women in Ancient America, p. 133, Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation ofAztec Culture, 1500-1700 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press,

1995), pp. 170-71. 78 Sabrina Chase, "Polygyny, Architecture and Meaning," in Dale Walde and Noreen Willows, eds.,

The Archaeology of Gender: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Archaeological Associ- ation of the University of Calgary, (Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary, 1991).

79 Burkhart, "Mexica Women," p. 30. Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 66-70. 80 Kellogg, "The Woman's Room"; Bruhns and Stothert, Women in Ancient America, p.131.

81 Durin, History of the Indies, 494. See also 462-63 (this is a running theme). See also FC Vol. 8, p. 44; and Burkhart, Slippery Earth, p. 61.

82 FC Vol. 6, p. 240. Joyce in Gender and Power (p. 163) is the most recent one to insist that male informants' concern about feminine decorum indicates that it was often lacking in their view.



On the other hand, their world was laced with bitter conflict. More than one

source tells the probably apocryphal story of Illancueitl, the sterile wife of the

founder of the line, Acamapichtli, who lay in state with each infant delivered in the palace as if she were the mother.83 It is difficult to say if this story speaks

louder of the pain of the spumed older woman, the fear of the younger woman

who cannot even hold her own infant, or the coming struggles over the succession: it depends on your point of view. To survive together in the household

compound, women needed to keep rivalries and anger hidden beneath the sur- face as much as possible. We must remember that "for the Nahuas the basic cosmic conflict was between order and chaos,"84 and in their everyday lives their need to triumph in this regard was more than theoretical. But sublimated

rage, as we know, does not just disappear. When they were prodded to do so in the Florentine Codex, men described "the bad noblewoman," and a definite

theme emerged: she was violent, furious, savage, a respecter of no one, pre- sumptuous, spiteful, hateful, reserved, unjust, disturbed, troubled, overde- manding, wished to cause trouble, aroused fear, implanted fear, caused havoc, and impelled flight. (It was not clear whose flight she impelled-most probably the slave girl's.) Only very briefly did the men mention "dissolute" and "given to vice" as they did in describing others: these were apparently not qualities they very often had to face in their women.85 Early colonial documents do not offer us much information on polygyny and its discontents, but

there are some surviving references that offer concrete examples of the pain and anger women sometimes experienced.86

There were three major sources of contention-the purely personal pain experienced by the women as they aged and were replaced, the potential for political betrayal that existed as long as women from enemy kingdoms were present, and the rivalries that occurred concerning whose son would primarily inherit. Because most of the wives and female slaves bore children and eventually grew old, there emerged a secondary connotation for the word "mother" (usually a term of great respect) that conveyed the notion of someone like an abandoned old courtesan, a woman who had been sexually

83 Schroeder cites Chimalpahin in "First American Valentine," p. 347. A version is also found in Durin, History of the Indies, pp. 49-54.

84 Louise Burkhart, Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), pp. 34-35.

85 FC Vol. 10, pp. 45-46. 86 Lisa Sousa, for example, has studied a 1541 Inquisition case in which a noblewoman named dofia

Ana berates her husband for sleeping with various female relatives and causing untold pain. Although dofia Ana is obviously using the Spanish authorities to rid herself of a husband whom she does not like,

possibly for other unstated reasons, it is more than possible that some sort of tensions in relation to his

having other women were at the root of their problems. Sousa, "Women in Native Societies," pp. 256-61.



accessible for years, and was now dependent on the household. In the Flo- rentine Codex, the young wives of the wealthy were said to be looked after by hunchbacks, dwarves, and "the old mothers, who had reared them." Next to the illustration of the harlot, we find the Aztec glyph for "mother." "I am

your mother," sang the Chalca concubine whose words we will hear. Years later, in the 1540s, Tlaxcalteca noblemen would claim that upstart cochineal traders were becoming rich by making "mothers" out of local women-sup- porting them by buying their cochineal, and using them for sex as well. In the worst case scenario, a woman in the end would not be beloved enough to be remembered. "The bad old woman is forgotten.""87

If becoming such a "mother" was a woman's private fear, the fear of the traitor wife was much more public. Whether women ever really gave "state secrets" to their natal villages we will never know: I would presume they sometimes did, but it is the sort of thing people could not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt even at the time, and certainly we cannot now. What is clear is that the possibility of their doing so affected a community's consciousness. The idea was rooted in stories. A sister of Axayacatl was married to the king of the Tlatelolca, and she notified her brother when her husband's

people planned to attack him, said Durnin's source. Chimalpahin went fur- ther and said that the king of the Tlatelolca provoked the war with the Mexica by publicly spurning Axayacatl's sister in favor of prettier women. He lived to regret his actions. "The Tlatelolca were no more because of concubines," Chimalpahin remarked.88

By far the most serious tension, however, was induced by the question of whose children would inherit. Generally, as we have seen, the matter was

87 FC Vol. 8, p. 49 and FC Vol. 10, p. 11 and Fig.108; James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson, eds., The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala, 1545-1627 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), p. 82. The mention of the word "harlot" or

"courtesan" brings up a host of questions: it is more than possible that such a notion only came into exis-

tence after the conquest. The ahuiani, or pleasure woman, may have existed only to perform sexual roles

in certain religious ceremonies, rather than as a paid worker. See Margaret Campbell Arvey, "Women of Ill-Repute in the Florentine Codex," in Virginia Miller, ed., The Role of Gender in Precolumbian Art and

Architecture (Boston: University Press of America, 1988), and Rebecca Overmyer-Velizquez, "Christian Morality Revealed in New Spain: The Inimical Nahua Woman in Book Ten of the Florentine Codex," Journal of Women's History 10 (1998), pp. 9-37. An interesting angle is given in FC Vol. 2, pp. 102-103:

if a nobleman in the ceremony described wanted to sleep with one of the pleasure women in his own house, he could ask her to come the night of the festival. However, he could not try to keep her there as a concubine. If he did, there would be trouble for both. But even after that he might settle things by mar-

rying her ("niman ic quimocioaoatia, quiiauceuilia"). 88 Chimalpahin cited in Schroeder, "First American Valentine," p. 347; and Durin, History of the

Indies, p. 255. Katz, in Situacidn social (p. 148), citing Torquemada, says that Nezahualpilli, early in the 1500s, had had to free all the slaves in the city, because there were too many and their discontent was rising.



predetermined by the power relations between the states involved. But if a woman's hometown lost power, or if her husband and his kin wanted to assert themselves in relation to her hometown, she could find the ground- rules shifting; in ordinary wealthy households where interdynastic politics were not at stake, a man might even more easily change his mind. We know that in the early colonial testaments, men divided their property among various heirs. Tensions did exist even then, however; they tended to leave small shares to illegitimate girls, for instance. And every dynastic overlord had to choose one son to inherit his seat of authority. Not infrequently a city-state was thrown into turmoil and the young men fought after their father's death.

"Surviving unsuccessful candidates [for the throne] often lived in exile in neighboring altepetl, hatching plots against the incumbent."89 Certainly it was in each woman's best interest to do everything that she could to strengthen her own sons' position, both in their father's eyes, and in the eyes

of potential supporters in any upcoming battles.90 For how a woman would be remembered depended on what became of her children.

THE CHALCA WOMAN'S SONG

We return now to the voice of the concubine in the Chalca woman's song. Many of the Nahuatl songs we have on record are narrated as if in the voice of a particular person-usually a king or famous warrior. Whether composers were more often projecting a persona who was then actually living, or who had just died, or who was an historical figure or a composite one, we cannot be sure. There seem to be examples of all these, but we are often left guess- ing. In most cases, though, it seems that, in the words of James Lockhart, "a protagonist serves as the central figure around whom a world of memories comes flooding back."91 In this case, the singer throws himself into the mental world of a noblewoman from his homeland who has been taken to live

with King Axayacatl as a concubine. It was unusual for the protagonist to be female, but not unheard of, as we have a few other examples extant.

What was at least equally unusual if not more so was the song's format, as it violated the usual pattern of paired verses in which two in a row end with the same phase. In this song, the forty verses are unevenly divided into

89 Lockhart, The Nahuas, p. 32. See also Susan Kellogg, "Aztec Inheritance in Sixteenth-Century Mexico City: Colonial Patterns, Prehispanic Influences," Ethnohistory 33 (1986), p. 322.

90 Frederick Hicks in "Tetzcoco 1515-1519: The Ixtlilxochitl Affair," in Chipping Away on Earth argues for the importance of reputation, charisma and patronage in determining the outcome of struggles between siblings.

91 James Lockhart, "Care, Ingenuity and Irresponsibility: The Bierhorst Edition of the Cantares Mex- icanos," Reviews in Anthropology 16 (1991), p. 130.



six distinct sections, marked out from each other by sixteenth-century style representation of a period of drum beats ("toco tico tocoti" etc).92 Only a few verses are paired in the normal sense-that is, ending with the same phrase: interestingly, the composer--or at least the person who wrote down this version-does seem to use the technique when he wants to call particular attention to a certain phrase, such as "I'm a Chalca woman," or "No longer!" There is no sense of disorder, however. A different theme emerges in each section, but taken together all make a common point, as is typical of Nahu- atl songs. Indeed, as is also typical, the sectional building blocks might be ordered differently without doing harm to the song. For in each section, the woman reveals one facet of her identity as a concubine. She may choose to be alluring, or to joke, or to give vent to her pain; these are all elements of her reality. The poem is included in its entirety as an appendix; here I offer a close reading of each section.

In the opening stanza, the young woman tries to make her peace with her life, as any woman in captivity must be of half a mind to do, rather than live

with rape. She calls out to other young women (her figurative "little sisters") asking them to go with her voluntarily to cut meaning-laden flowers- shield-flowers, symbols of war. The song is typical of many others in that it is evocative of the impermanence of life, the fragility of all good things. Her own people had once chosen to fight the Mexica. "It is enticing, it is enjoyable, in the flower garden of war." She does not want to weep now for the results. After all, there are other kinds of flowers-those laden with the meaning of goodness and beauty, like sacred writings. "Let them be my wreath. In these my various flowers, let me wrap myself." And even more: "My heart imbibes the sweet smell of the earth." She wants to love being a woman, to go to the man who is to be her sexual partner with joy. "I long for the flowers, I long for the songs. In our womanly sphere, I am intoning the songs of the king, little Axayacatl." He is "little Axayacatl"-out of affection, perhaps, or an attempt to belittle him, render him less powerful in relation to her.93 She is, of course, confused. "What in the world am I to think

of what you say, my lover?" She speaks in the verb tense used to try to con-

vince oneself to take a certain action: "What if I were to pleasure him ... .?"

92 I have used the transcription provided by Bierhorst. James Lockhart has compared it with a pho-

tocopy of the original in his possession, and informed me in a personal communication that Bierhorst is entirely diplomatic.

93 This may not have been a matter either of disparagement or of affection alone. Inversion in polite forms of address was not uncommon. There is evidence to suggest that in some circumstances less pow-

erful people might address their political superior as "my child" or "my grandchild," just as a king might

call his aides "my fathers." See Lockhart, The Nahuas, pp. 89-90.



In the next part the woman seems to want to live joyfully: she makes a direct

come-on and verbally recreates sexual intercourse. But then by the end she regrets it all, insists she will never do it again, and even wishes that she might

die. In a pattern that is virtually universal among young girls who are pressured

into sexual relations with more powerful men, she becomes for a time sexually

aggressive enough to place herself in control-at least temporarily. Surely there

were many concubines who went this route. Part of the song's joking and sexual innuendo is lost on us today, but it would have been both funny and sug-

gestive to audiences then; even now, we get the point. She is going to take him

places he will find out he wants to go. As the audience, we are unprepared for her suddenly interjected negative feelings, "Let it not be .. ." Later, in the midst

of a sexual encounter, she raises a lament that sounds like many women's laments from around the world. "It lies there inside.... No longer." Suddenly, she speaks as if to her mother -but it might be to any older woman in her quar-

ters- bitterly recalling the years as a child when she was taught first to spin and then to weave, all in the happy expectation that she would soon become known and respected for her marriage and children (literally, "time or condition of having a man"), like all young noblewomen.94 She is enraged. "It is heart-rending, here on earth." And she wishes she might die. Surely there were many concubines who had known these feelings, too.

The third section is an enumeration of the young woman's complaints. First she speaks again to her mother or an older woman, evoking an almost paralyzing sadness: "I am dying of sadness here in my life with a man. I can't make the spindle dance. I can't throw my weaver's stick." Then she turns to her sexual partner and lets him have it. Again she calls him a child, and more than that, a servant boy, emphasizing her scorn. "You cheat me, my child," she complains. For she does not have the full life of a wife, of a mother of heirs. "You ignore me," she says in another verse. She even seems to threaten him when she reminds him that although she does know her way around a battlefield, she has close personal connections with his enemies. She wishes he were a woman so he would know what it is to be used sexually. Sensing her hostility, he has rejected her in some way. "You're angry, little boy." Her frustration seems to stem from the inequality deeply embedded in polygyny-not to the difference between public and private roles, which can in fact be complementary, but rather to the fact that the man has no motivation to

hear her concerns, as he can always turn to another if she is not happy with him. In frustrated rage, the woman says, apparently quite uselessly (unless

94 Nearly all the literature on complementary gender roles cited in note 13 discusses the importance of marriage and motherhood both in a woman's life and in that of the calli writ large. For specific treatment of the subject, see Lisa Sousa, "Women in Native Societies."



she is referring to the threat of running away mentioned in the Florentine), "My child, I'm about to go home, too." She accuses him of being a drunkard, and of failing to obey the rules of social decency, even implying that he forces

sex or raises his voice or in some way behaves badly. In a remark that is particularly interesting to us, she tells him that he has no right to do this, as she

was not sold into slavery, asking a rhetorical question which, in typical Nahua style, was to be answered with a resounding "No!" "Did you buy me? Did my uncles and aunts come to trade? Yet you do it [yell? become angry? have sex?-we cannot know] without restraint, and you get angry."

In the fourth part, the narrator experiences a variety of self-doubts and is

even defensive, before becoming what can only be described as politicized, as she comes to see herself as having something in common with other people subjugated by the king. She tells a woman priest that her people in Chalco offered up many songs and prayers to the gods at the scene of the battle, but then in the next verse she admits to some anger against the men who failed her by losing: she says she doesn't know what she is to do, but perhaps she will become a man, since they acted like women at the time. She talks to Axayacatl again, teasing him for his boasting, and making sugges- tive comments. But then in the next verse she laments that she has not yet attained true womanhood (that is, she is not a respected wife and mother of heirs) because he came to make war. She tells us where she is from, perhaps even giving us the name she is known by in the capital. "I'm a Chalca woman and I'm Ayocuan." Ayocua[n]tzin, we remember, was the Chalca lord whom Chimalpahin associated with the song. It may have been the name of the place or lineage he ruled as well as the person. Or the woman may simply have been named Ayocuan, which was a lovely type of bird: "Its flight feathers, its tail, are as if shot with mirror-stones, mingled with white."95 With the reference to her natal ethnic state, the woman's tone takes

a turn. "I crave my fellow women!" She lists others who have also been made concubines and adds, "They are ashamed to be made concubines." And she asks the king if he is going to do to her what he did to the recently conquered Tlatelolcas.96 She turns as if to her mother-again, it could be to any older woman in the compound-and demands that she paint her up. She refers to the Mexican battles with Huexotzinco, whose warriors were known

for their ferocity, and boldly speaks of her desire for those men.

95 FC Vol. 11, p. 21. 96 The singer is probably referring to a famous incident of the early 1470s: when the Tlatelolca

rebelled, women apparently armed themselves and fought as well. In accounts that are hostile to them, they are described as dancing naked and flinging excrement. See Cecilia Klein, "Fighting with Feminin-

ity: Gender and War in Aztec Mexico," Estudios de cultura ndhuatl 24 (1994), pp. 219-53.



In the fifth section the woman spells out her revenge, as it were: and it is, ultimately, that the Mexica king must live with the knowledge that he is an evil man in her eyes. The first part is not entirely clear, but it seems to say that because of concubinage he will have far more children to maintain and satisfy. "What comes of it that it seems he makes me live as a concubine in

the home of others? Because of me, you will have twice the kingdom to keep, my child." The next part of the translation is more certain. Does he truly want to let concubinage take root in his home? Is that what he really desires for his life? He should not adorn himself so beautifully, for truly, he is a bad man. A woman's spinning and weaving has overtones of religiosity and power, and in her last verse she tells him, "In my spinning place, I speak of you. In my weaving place, I remember you." Just above, she had asked plaintively, "What in the world have you done to me, my lover?" "What have you confused, or disordered?" And the answer is-her heart, which in the Nahua view of things is her soul, her very life.

In the sixth and last section, the woman reaches out and asks for sympa- thy, for a willingness to meet her half way, as we would say. She suddenly takes on the voice of a concubine who has grown old, and reminds everyone "I am your mother," using the plural pronoun that indicates she is speaking to more than one, probably to the audience, not just to Axayacatl. She becomes a pathetic old lady, still offering sex, all she has. But, she says at last, it does not have to come to this between us. The man might yet treat her

with respect, and avoid great consternation in the household writ large. "Don't let your heart take a needless tumble somewhere, little Axayacatl. Here is your hand. Go along holding me by the hand." And then, gently, "Go to sleep." For the first time, she does not say, "little Axayacatl," but rather allows him his power, "you who are king Axayacatl." This was, of course, a message in metaphor from Chalco to the overlords

in Tenochtitlan, not a letter from a real woman to a real man. Probably it was a rare woman who actually voiced such feelings to her lord. But the composer of this song and his audience both knew that a woman might well long to do so: they had no difficulty in drawing a political parallel between her life and the life of a conquered altepetl.

Colgate University Hamilton, New York

CAMILLA TOWNSEND



APPENDIX:

CHALCACIHUACUICTAL

"THE CHALCA WOMAN'S SONG" I

Intlatlalil chalca ic quimopapaquiltilico in tlatohuani in Axayacatzin ca noqo yehu- atzin oquimopehuili in ma qan cihuatzitzintin.

This is a composition of the Chalca, with which they came to entertain king Axay- acatl because he had conquered them as if they were just women.2

[A] Toco tico tocoti, toco tico tocoti, toco tico tocota

X[an]moquetzacan [oo] Stand up [or, Stop!], you who are my annicutzitzinhuan [aye] tonhuian little sisters! Let's go, let's go, we will tonhuian tixochitemozque [he] tonhuian look for flowers. Let's go, let's go, we tonhuian tixochitehtequizque nican will pick some flowers. They were mania nican mania tlachinolxochitli here, they were here, scorched flowers, [oo] chimalli xochitli teihicolti huel shield-flowers.3 It is enticing, it is tetlamachti yaoxochitla [oohuiya] enjoyable, in the flower garden of war.

Yectli [aya] in xochitl [ayehuaya] ma Good are the flowers. Let them be my nocpacxochiuh ma ic ninapana nepapan wreath. In these my various flowers let i(n) noxochiuh [aya] nichalcatl nicihuatl me wrap myself. I am a Chalca [ahuayao ohuaya] woman.

Nicnehnequi xochitl nicnehneco cuicatl I long for the flowers, I long for the [aytzin] in totzahuaya(n) in toyeyeya(n) songs. In our spinning-place, our [o ohuaye] noconeheuhtica ycuic in customary place [our womanly sphere], tlatohuani Axayacaton nicxochimalina I am entoning the songs of the king, nicxochilacatzohua [o oahuayao ohuiya] little Axayacatl. I twirl them together

[into a strand] like flowers; I twist them forth as a flower.

I Those friends and colleagues who gave me useful critiques on the article as a whole also gave crit- ical help with translation. I especially wish to thank James Lockhart in this regard. For the Nahuatl speaker: I have placed what I believe to be vocables in brackets. I have added letters which it was customary to exclude (such as word-final "n") in parentheses. For the non-Nahuatl speaker: It must be emphasized that the prevalence of vocables in the Nahua songs renders any translation somewhat dubi- ous. Often it is unclear, for example, if certain vowels are included as vocables only (or "nonsense" syl- lables with which the Nahua song tradition is peppered), or if the intent was to render the preceding verb

in the imperfect tense, or to turn the preceding noun into "a place where" such things may be found. Still,

in the case of this song, the general sense remains relatively clear.

2 Michel Launey and Jonathan Amith believe an equally plausible translation would be: "He had placed them in subjection even though they were women." In that case, the song would speak even more directly to the experience of the concubines themselves, rather than to their political symbolism.



[A(y)] iuhquin tlacuilolli yectli [ya(y)] Their songs are like paintings, they are incuic iuquin huelic xochitl ahuiaca good, like fragrant [pleasant] flowers. noyol quimati in tlpc [ahuayyao ohuiya] My heart imbibes the sweet smell of

the earth.

Tle(n)mach ypan nicmati motlatoltzin What in the world am I to think of noyecoltzin taxayacato(n) tla what you say, my lover [sexual noconahuilti [aylili aylililili hii olotzin partner],4 you, little Axayacatl? What if ololo oyyaye ayyo Et] I were to pleasure him...I

Can nitocuilehuilia qa(n) niquiquixhuia I just sing Tocuilan style, I whistle to [hooo yeee] tla noconahuilti Et. him.6 What if I were to pleasure him ...

[B] Cotiti tototototo cotiti tototototo

Xolo xolotzin titlahtohuani taxayacaton Boy, little servant boy, you who are [ohuiya] (cuix?) nel toquichtli i[z](n?) king, little Axayacatl, are you truly a maqonel titlayhtolli; cuix nel ahoc man? Though it may be you are tiquahquahuitiuh [ayye] xoconquetzan someone spoken of (well-known, nonexco(n) ce(n)ca niman xocontoquio. chosen), is it true you no longer go to

cut firewood?7 Ay, go stoke the pot and light a big fire!8

Xiqualcui o xiqualcui yn ompa ca o Come and bring it, come bring what is xinechualmaca o in conetzintli te' there! Come give it to me! O child! xontlatehteca tohuan You! Lay out the things [the mats]. You tonhuehuetztozque [tzono] tompaquiz and I will lie together.9 You will be

3 Probably a sunflower, Helianthus annuus, and certainly a symbol of war. See FC Vol. 9, pp. 34 and 45.

4 This word does not appear in dictionaries in this form. Yecoa (nitla) is to finish a job, or to sample something. Yecoa (nite) is to copulate with someone. Teyecolli should thus be "sexual partner." The word appears here only as noyecol; it is an unusual form without the te-, but given the meaning of the word, the generic possessor's omission when a personal possessor appears seems perfectly within keeping. Note also that the word's formation indicates the female vocative. This is the first time that the form

appears in the song; it appears frequently henceforth. 5 It is difficult to determine how best to render this verb tense. I take my cue from Carochi. "Se usa

tambien del tla, que aun es mas comedido, que el ma, y con el se ruega o anima mas que con el ma. ...En otras lenguas no suele ayer primera persona de Imperativo, en esta la ay, con la qual muestra uno ani- marse, o resolverse ' hazer la cosa." Horacio Carochi, Grammar of the Mexican Language, ed. James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 104-106.

6 This phrase has puzzled all translators, but it is definitely about making noise. James Lockhart rec-

ognized the pairing from Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex, when the Indian allies enter Tenochtit- lan with the Spaniards making quite a racket. FC Vol. 12, p. 41.

7 Only children (and servants) went to gather firewood. This was apparently a Chalcan expression. In the original there is a marginal gloss: "chalco tlatolli

q.n. xitlatlati." The phrase is still common in modern Guerrero (personal communication from Jonathan Amith).

9 A mark of a king's status was the richness of his mats. They were made of the furs of ocelots, moun-

tain lions, and bears, as well as cured leather and elaborately painted woven reeds. See FC Vol. 8, p. 31.



tompaquiz paquiz [tzono] happy, you will be happy, will be nictlatlamachihuaz [oo] happy.10 And I will do it peacefully,

gently.

Macamo maca o macamo tla ximayahui Let it not be, please don't stick your xolotzin titlatohuani axayacato(n) [yya] hand in my skirts," little boy, you who ago ninicuilo y(n) cuecuetzoca ye are king, little Axayacatl. Maybe I am nomaton [o ayee] ye nocuel ye nocuel painted, my little hand is itching. Again tictzitzquiznequi in nochichihualtzin and again you want to seize my breast, ach in noyollotzin [huiya] even12 my heart.

In ye ahcaqo monehuian ticmitlacalhuiz'3 Now perhaps you yourself will ruin my nonehcuilol [huiya tzono] tiquitztoz body-painting.'4 You will lie watching xiuhquecholxochitico [ohuaye] nihtic what comes to be a green quechol bird nimitzonaquiz onca motenchalohtzin flower. I will put you inside me. Your nimitzmacochihuiz. tenchalohtli lies there.'5 I will rock you

in my arms.16

In quetzalizquixochitl in ye It is a quetzal popcorn flower, a tlauhquecholcacaloxochitl in qa(n) flamingo raven flower.17 You lie on moxochitquachpetlapan ti[ya] onoc ye your flower-mantled mat. It lies there oncan ytic [y yyoyyo] aocmo [huiyao inside.... No longer. aylili]

Teocuitlapetlatl ipan ti[ya] onoc You lie on your golden reed mat. It lies quetzaloztocalco tlacuilocalitic [yyoyyo] in the [precious] feathered cavern aocmo [huiyao aylili]. house, inside the painted house.... No

longer.

10 It may say, "You will be happy, he will be happy," indicating a change in whom the speaker is addressing, first the man himself, then the audience.

" This meaning is common in modern Guerrero (personal communication from Jonathan Amith). If

we do not accept this construction, and seek another meaning, there is a problem here: either the verb is reflexive, in which case the syllable -mo- is missing, or it is transitive, and the speaker is asking him not

to throw something else down, in which case the object -c- is missing. Another possibility is that it means, "Please don't toss yourself in the blanket." Frances Karttunen notes that in present day Morelos,

ayahuia has just this meaning, apparently from ayatl + -huia. See her Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 16. 12 The implication of ach in this position is unclear.

13 The original has an editorial insertion: [ticmitlacalhui]li[z]."

14 On the body painting of noblewomen, see FC Vol. 8, p. 47. 15 I do not yet have a translation for tenchalohtli, but it seems to be part of the man's body and the

implication is clear. 16 The verb in Molina is "cochhuia" without the "i" and has a specifically sexual connotation. "Haz-

erlo a la muger que esta durmiendo." Karttunen points out that in modern Morelos, even without the embedded ma, the verb just means to rock in one's arms (Analytical Dictionary, p. 36).

17 Probably Cordia elaeagnoides and Plumeria rubra.



Anquiqo ye ichan ye nontlayocoya ... this is his home.'8 I am distraught. tinonantzin ahqo huel nitzahua ahqo O mother, maybe I can spin. Maybe I huel nihquitia qa ne(n)ca ni conetl [tzo] even used to be able to weave19-but it nicihuapilli ynic nihtolo y(n) was all for naught. As a noble girl- noquichhuacan [yao] child, I was spoken of in connection

with my [future] marriage.20

Tetlatlahuelcauh teyollocococan in tlpc It is infuriating. It is heart-rending, in que(n)mano(n) no(n)tlahtlayocoya here on earth. Sometimes I worry and ninotlahuelnequi onnexiuhtlatilco fret. I consume myself in rage. In my nichualihtoa cue conetl, manoce desperation, I suddenly say, hey, child, nimiqui [yiao]. I would as soon die.

[C] Toco tico tocoti, toco tico tocoti, toco tico tocota

Ya cue nonantzin nontlaocolmiqui o ye Hey mother, I am dying of sadness nican ye noquichuacan ahuel niquitotia here in my life with a man. I can't in malacatl ahuel nocontlaga in make the spindle dance. I can't throw notzotzopaz noca timoqueloa noconetzin my weaver's stick. You cheat me, my [yao ohuiya]. child.

Auh que(n) nel noconchihuaz cuix yhui What in the world can I do? Am I to go chimalli yca nemanalo ixtlahuatl itic along sacrificing myself, just as people ninoma'mantaz [a ayia ooo] noca are offered on their shields in the fields timoqueloa noconetzin [ohuiya]. [of war]?21 You cheat me, my child.

Xolotzin noconetzin titlahtohuani Little boy, my child, you who are king, Taxayacaton qan timonencahua nohuic little Axayacatl, you just ignore me timomahmanaya to(n)moquichittohua (are negligent toward me). You used to [o ohuaye] cuix no(n)mati yaopan sacrifice yourself. You say you are niquimiximati ye moyaohua(n) manly [you consider yourself a man]. noconetzin qa(n) timonencahua Do I [a woman] know my way in war? nohuic [ohuiya] I know your enemies, my child. And

you just ignore me.

18 Anquigo might be translated very literally as "You make him bleed" (that is, honor him as a god in religious ceremony) but it might also be a cluster of particles whose meaning we do not know.

19 Girls learned to spin before they learned to weave. Often only the mistresses of the household did

the weaving, while children and servants did the earlier processing of the fibers, as weaving was in some ways a sacred act. If this is not after all in the imperfect, then it means, "Maybe I even [now] know how

to weave, but all for naught."

20 This might mean time or condition of having a man. It might mean, more literally, the place or household wherein a woman would have a man. In modern-day Guerrero, for example, it is used to refer to the traditional home of one's husband, of the bridegroom's parents (personal communication from Jonathan Amith). The overall effect in terms of this song remains the same.

21 This is another particularly doubtful translation. It might equally plausibly mean: "Am I to spread

myself out the way men spread out in the fields of war?" Still, that kind of sexual metaphor does not fit

with the style of the sexual repartee of the earlier section, while talk of sacrifice is very much in keeping

with the rest of the song.



Ma teh ticihuatini ahqo nel ahticyecoz in I wish you yourself had been a woman. iuhqui chahuayotl yn ixochitzin yn Perhaps then you would not sample icuicatzin noconetzin [yiao] (use sexually) she who is like the

blossom and song of concubinage, my child.

A oquichpilli, not' titla'tohuani Ah manly nobleman, my lord, you who Taxayacaton onoqo tonpeuh ye no are king, little Axayacatl. Instead tiqualani xolotzin ye no niauh in nochan you've taken off. You're angry, little noconetzin boy. My child, I'm about to go home,

too.

Anca qo ca nican tinechnahualan yectli Perhaps thus you took me with sorcery. ticchiuh ye motlatoltzin iz in axcan You spoke the right words. Behold tlahuanquetl, maqo teh titlahuanquetl now the drunkard, maybe you yourself ahqo no netlacamacho [i]n tochan are drunk. Are there social rules in our [yyao ohuiya] home?22

Cuix noqo tinechcouh tinechmocohui Did you buy me anywhere? Did you noconetzin cuix tlapa'patlaco nahuihuan buy me for yourself, my child? Did my ye notlahua(n) qaqo tictlacanequi ye no aunts and uncles come to trade? Yet tiqualani xolotzin ye noniauh in nochan you do it heedlessly (impetuously, noconetzin [yao ohuiya] without restraint) and you get angry,

little boy. I'm going home, my child.

D] Tocotico tititi tocotico tititi tocotico tititi

Tiniuctzin ticihuatlamacazqui ma You who are my little sister, woman xontlachia yn omach moman cuicatl priest, please look! Many songs were in Cohuatepec in quauh tenampan y(n) offered in Cohuatepec, at the wooden Topan moteca Panohuaya(n) (or eagle) circling wall, where they [ohuaya yiaho] came down upon us at Panohuayan.

1(o nocihuayo ninaytia noyollotzin I make (live) my womanhood. My mococohua ach que(n) nel heart suffers. I don't know what in the noco(n)chihuaz yhuan noquichtiz o world I am to do. I will become a man magoc cenca ye incue ye [ye] inhuipil like (together with) him-howsoever it in toquichhuan in toyecolhuan was that the skirts and blouses of our [yyaho ohuiya]. men, our lovers, were many and full

(literally "more," "plentiful").

Xiqualquixti nonextamal in Hand me my softened maize, you who titlatohuani Axayacato(n) tla ce are king, little Axayacatl. Let me just

22 Literally, "Is there obedience?" This is the reciprocal impersonal passive construction of tlacamati

("to obey").



nimitzmanili neoc in noconeuh neoc pat one [tortilla] out for you. Neoc,23 noconeuh xoconahuilti xictocuilehuili my child, neoc, my child. Pleasure [olotzin ololo ayye ayyo]. him. Sing to him Tocuilan style.

Ago tiquauhtli tocelotl in timittohua Do you call yourself an eagle, an noconetzin [ohuiya] ago moyaohua(n) ocelot, my child? Do you boast before inhuic ticuecuenoti neoc in noconeuh your enemies? Neoc, my child. xoco(n)ahuilti Et. Pleasure him....

Ayatle nocue, ayatle nohuipil I a woman don't yet have a skirt, a nicihuatzintli yehua ya nica(n) blouse (I have not yet attained true quimanaco yectli ye incuic nican womanhood).24 He's the one who came quimanaco chimalli xochitl quenmach here to offer their beautiful songs; he tontlaca ye nichalcacihuatl nayoquan came here to offer shield-flowers [ohuiya]. (war). What is to become of us?25 I'm

a Chalca woman and I'm Ayocuan.

Niquimelehuia nocihuapohua(n) in I crave my fellow women, the acolhuaque niquimelehuia y(n) Acolhuaque. I crave my fellow women, nocihuapohuan tepaneca quenmach the Tepaneca. What is to become of tontlaca ye nichalcacihuatl nayoqua(n) us? I'm a Chalca woman and I'm Et. Ayocuan.

Ca pinauhticate in chahuahuilo no They are ashamed to be made conetzin [yhuia] cuix no iuh concubines, my child. Are you going to tinech(ch)ihuaz i(n) no iuh toconchiuh do to me what you did to the poor little

in quahtlatohuaton macaqo yhuian [a] Cuauhtlatoa? Peacefully take off your ximocuetomaca(n) ximomaxahuican skirts, spread your legs, you the Antlatilolca in amiyaque [ayayya] Tlatelolca, you who stink. Come take a xihuallachiacan nican chalco look here in Chalco!

[ahauyya ohuiya].

Ma ninopotoni tinonantzin ma Let me have my plumes, mother! Paint xine[ch]xahua [oo] que(n) nechittaz in me up! What will my lover think of noyecol ymixpan(in)on tonquigatiuh me? You pass before them [her lover ahcaqo mihicoltiz ye huexotzinco and his men] as you leave. Won't he be xayacamahchan [ohiuya] greedy, rapacious in Huexotzinco, in

Xayacamachan?

23 I do not yet have a translation for neoc, but it seems clearly to be an interjection.

24 "A skirt, a blouse" is frequently used as a metaphor for "woman." The implied opposition is not

only to maleness but to youth: young girls wore single shift dresses; only when they came of age did they exchange them for a separate skirt and blouse. This is still true in parts of modern Mexico. Personal communication from Jonathan Amith.

25 Carochi, Grammar of the Mexican Language, pp. 419-21. Quen titlaca' is translated as "What will become of us?" My thanks to James Lockhart who pointed this out to me.



Quen ami in cuicatl ehualo in cuicoya o How is the song sung, how did people in quauhquecholli ancaqo mihicoltiz ye used to sing? He is an eagle huexotzinco xayacamahchan [ohuiya] quecholli.26 Won't he be greedy,

rapacious in Huexotzinco, in Xayacamachan?

In tetzmolocan nicihuatl ninomaoxihuia In Tetzmolocan I a woman anoint my ninocxioxihuia noconcuico ye nochcue hands and feet with oil. I came to get ye nochhuipil niccece(n)tlamitaz [aytzin my maguey skirt and blouse, and I'm ay aytzin]. going to go use them up.

Niquimelehui xaltepetlapan ye I desire the Xaltepetlapan Huexotzinca, Huexotzinca tzo incuetlaxtlamalin tzo their leather ropes, their leather thongs. incuetlaxtetecuecuex niccecentlamittaz I'm going to go use them up. [aytzin ay aytzin yyao Et].

[E] Tocotico, tocotico, tocotico, tocotico, tocotico

Y(n) quen oc Can in tlamati nechmitlania He jests (or deceives, or knows) a bit in conetl in tlatohuani in Axayacaton cue more. He demands me, the child, the e tleon in ma ic i(n) tepal king, little Axayacatl. Hey! What nech[ch]ahuatlalia [oohuaye] noca comes of it that it seems he makes me titlaomepiaz noconetzin a'qo iuh live as a concubine in the home of quinequi moyollo maqohui huian (dependent upon) others? Because of mociahuan [yyao ohuia]. me, you will have twice the kingdom

(or family) to keep, my child. Maybe that's the way your heart wants it.

Though it should be so ....27

Cuix a'moyollocopa noconetzin in Is it not wholeheartedly, my child, that toconcalaquia in chahuayotl inic mochan you bring in concubinage, since it is [ahayayoho] ahqo iuh quinequi moyollo your home? Maybe that's the way your Et. heart wants it.

Que(n)mach in tine(ch)chiuh no What in the world have you done to yecoltzin [ayye] maca oc ic me, my lover? Don't adorn yourself ximochichihuan huel ahtitlacatl tlein thus any longer-you are really a bad ticnenelo ye noyollotzin ticxochimalina man. What have you confused ye motlatol [yyao ohuia]. (disordered)? It is my heart. You

flower-twist your words.

26 This is yet another sentence of whose meaning we cannot be certain. 27 This is a particularly difficult segment. The first sentence is ambiguous. The middle part contains

clauses that I may not be relating to each other correctly. And I have no translation at all for the final clause.



Notzahuayan nimitzittoa in nihquitian In my spinning place, I speak of you. nimitzilnamiqui xolotzin tlein In my weaving place, I remember you. ticnenelo ye no yollotzin. Little boy, what have you confused? It

is my heart.

[F] Tocotico tocota

Nahuilylama namonan nicahualilama I am an old courtesan. I am your (pl) nichpochylama ypan nochihua mother. I become a rejected old nichalcotlacatl [aha aili] nimitzahuiltico, woman, an old maiden lady. I am a noxochinenetzin, no Chalcan person. I have come to xochicamopalnenetzin [yyaho ohuia]. pleasure you, my flower doll, my

purple flower doll.

Ye no quelehuia in tlatoani in Little king Axayacatl also wants it. Axayacaton xiqualitta Come see my flowery painted hands, noxochitlacuilolmaton xiqualitta come see my flowery painted breasts. noxochitlacuilolchichihualtzin [oohuia]

Maca go can onne(n)huetztiuh ye Don't go let your heart take a needless moyollotzin taxayacaton iz ca ye tumble somewhere, little Axayacatl. momatzin ma nomatitech Here is your hand. Go along holding xinechonantiuh [aayyahayiaho] me by my hand. Be content. xonahuiaca(n) Et.

Moxochipetlapan moyeyeyan xolotzin On your flowery reed mat, in your yhuian xoncocochi xonyayamani sitting place, little boy, peacefully go to noconetzin, titlatohuani taxayaca sleep. Relax, my child, you who are [yao ohuaya]. king Axayacatl.


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