First page

This manuscript was first published in Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 31, 196–199. However, the transcription, translation, and a new introduction presented here come from Lockhart's personal papers. The original manuscript is in the McAfee Collection, Special Collections, UCLA Research Library. [Introduction by James Lockhart:] Several other letters published in Beyond the Codices (Docs. 27–30) were all petitions by indigenous groups to Spanish authority. Far less common is correspondence from one indigenous corporation to another, but here we have an example. Such things may not have been as rare at the time as they seem now, for they normally had no occasion to be preserved in Spanish archives like the petitions. The entity generating the letter, San Francisco Tzaqualco, seems to be a good-sized altepetl, with two alcaldes, five regidores, and a notary, though no one has the title don, and a governor is lacking. The topic has to do with a couple who want to get married, the man being originally from San Francisco Tzaqualco, where the letter is written, and the woman from San Felipe [Xoquiyotl?]. San Felipe has already written a letter of inquiry. With both parties already apprised of the matter, the Tzaqualco cabildo’s reply naturally enough presumes things that today we can only guess at. It seems that a Juan Diego who was a Tzaqualco native moved to San Felipe, meeting an unnamed woman there whom he brought back to Tzaqualco two and a half years ago, intending to marry her, but she wanted to be married in her own native settlement (and presumably also live there permanently), so the two have returned to San Felipe. There questions have arisen about the validity of the marriage, for it has turned out that Juan Diego was previously married. The Tzaqualco officials now ask those of San Felipe to allow the marriage, reporting testimony that the man’s first wife died seven years ago. The first wife was not from Tzaqualco either, but from Çacatlan, a settlement far enough away that inquiry was made by correspondence. The existence of this single letter is enough to show that inter-altepetl correspondence about matters of mutual concern was an established practice, and that migration across altepetl boundaries was common, at least in this region at this time. It is noteworthy that the corporations become involved in the lives of individual citizens. In this case, essentially an ecclesiastical matter, although local Franciscan friars are providing guidance, the cabildo is bearing the brunt of the investigation. But what region are we in? Tzaqualco has not been positively identified (possibly it is Zacoalco [de Torres] a bit west of Lake Chapala). The language/orthography is quite unique. Since the document comes from the McAfee Collection, and the texts there that are not in a standard central Mexican Nahuatl tend to be from the western region, a western origin is our first hypothesis. But to anticipate, the strong orthographic idiosyncrasy of the Tzaqualco letter, which entirely dominates one’s first impressions of it, seems to share nothing with the known western texts in this collection, and whereas the latter tend to be simple and direct to the point of crudity, here we have very flowery language of central Mexican origin, however transformed. Nevertheless, if one picks one’s way through this labyrinth, some western traits emerge. The western texts here show a particular pattern in forming the preterits of verbs. Class 1 verbs may lack the singular suffix; Class 2 verbs remain unreduced and also often lack a suffix in the singular; but Class 3 verbs are reduced as in central Nahuatl; sometimes they have a -c singular suffix, but frequently are entirely orthodox by central standards. In the Tzaqualco letter we find the same picture. The preterit of Class 1 huica lacks a suffix: “oquihualhueca” (line 13) and “oquihuaLhueca” (line 42), “he brought her/it.” Class 2 verbs are unreduced and lack a singular suffix; there is only one test, “oconana,” “he took it” (line 41). But the text takes Class 2 preterits a step further than is seen in the other western texts, though in a way consonant with the tendencies in them. It leaves the preterit stem unreduced also in the plural, though it includes a suffix in order to indicate that the verb is not singular: thus “otipaqueque” (line 12), standard otipacque, “we were glad.” Also “oticmatiqui” (line 39), standard oticmatque, “we knew it, found it out”; “ticLacamatiqui” (line 42), standard (o)tictlacamatque, “we obeyed it, conformed to it, recognized it as true”; and “oquimatiqui” (line 44), standard oquimatque, “they knew it.” Class 3 verbs are (except for the e/i merging seen throughout the text) regular, as in some other western texts: “otictocaquiltiqui,” “we heard it” (line 12), and “omomiquiLi,” “she died” (line 39). Two additional traits present here are also found in other western texts, though they are not exclusive to them. The word iuhqui, “thus, like,” appears consistently as “yoqui” (lines 8, 21, 23), and ye, “already,” appears as ya (lines 13, 41). An extreme phenomenon in the text is a possessed noun retaining the absolutive ending, “tomachioL,” our rubrics” (line 31), in standard usage tomachio. Such forms are not specific to the west, but are associated with a Spanish/Nahua pidgin, as discussed in the introduction to Doc. 30. This shocking example is not typical of the handling of possessed nouns in this text, for all the others, singular and plural, reverential and not, are perfectly regular in their formation. But the mere occurrence of a form like this puts the text on the far margins of the Nahuatl corpus. The writer shows incomprehension of the way Nahuatl of all varieties compounds nouns. It is true that Nahuatl repeats the first and second person subject prefixes as many times as they apply to independent nouns or verbs; thus nipiltzintli onicatca, “I was a small child,” with ni-, “I”, in both the noun and the verb, and if there were more first-person nouns in the clause, ni- would be repeated each time. But when nouns are compounded, the whole construction receives the subject prefix only once. “You precious rulers” would be antlaçotlatoque. The writer, however, puts the prefix in both the modifier and the main noun: “aLaço anladoque” (line 3), the equivalent of antlaço antlatoque (another example of the same compound treated the same way is in line 23). In the same fashion, “our humble statement, our poor rude statement as commoners,” is tomacehualtlatoltzin in standard Nahuatl; in the text (line 49), we find “tomacehuaL toladoltzin,” the equivalent of tomacehual totlatoltzin. Also very much out of the mainstream is the plural here of teopixqui, “friar, priest.” As a preterit agentive noun, this very common word has a -que plural, teopixque. Yet line 22 has “teopixquime,” in which teopixqui is treated as an frozen noun stem and the normal noun suffix -me is added to it. Despite all this, much of the Nahuatl is basically sound and standard, and even sometimes more like central Nahuatl than many western texts. Thus all first person plural reflexive verbs use the central prefix to (lines 6, 12, 26) and not the western mo. Now let us at last confront the feature of the text that overwhelmingly dominates the reader’s impressions of it, its highly unusual orthography. That is, unusual in two respects, for in the rest nothing would particularly attract our attention. First, throughout the text e and i are merged and switched, in stressed and unstressed syllables, in vocabulary of native origin and of Spanish origin, with total promiscuity. Probably e repaces i more frequently than vice versa, but that too is common. Line 5 has “amehueltiticati,” standard anmehuiltiticate, “you are presiding”; line 14 “quinique,” standard quinequi, “she wants it.” There are scores of examples. Second, the text lacks tl, the very hallmark of Nahuatl texts. Instead there is only l, or so it seems. The writing contains two characters that occur in the places where one expects both l and tl. One of them is a normal elongated loop that one cannot fail to recognize as l. The other looks like a capital L, but seen in a certain way it might be taken for a kind of t. Here the first character is reproduced here as l and the second as L. In the first part of the text, L frequently seems to correspond to standard tl, l to ordinary l. Yet as things proceed a shift takes place, until by the end of the document the opposite is more nearly true. It seems impossible to judge just what kind of merging the unusual orthography represents. A secondary feature is that in this text d appears as a hypercorrect substitute for t not only, as often, in loan vocabulary, but also in native vocabulary, as in “damolaçodahuan” (line 24), standard tamotlaçotahuan, “your precious fathers.” At any rate, the situation with e/i and l/L renders the text very hard to read, even for experts in older Nahuatl. “Laçole” (line 21) is the equivalent of standard tlaçotli, “something precious”; “molatzinco” (line 49) is motlantzinco, “with you”; “toladoltzin” (line 49) is totlatoltzin, “our statement.” To facilitate reading the Nahuatl and also to show how often it is perfectly normal underneath the orthography, a second version is provided after the translation, in which the original and a second transcription in standard orthography are confronted in facing columns. In the second transcription, preterits, plurals, compounds, and the like have been given their usual forms in central Mexican Nahuatl. In this way the reader can trace the innumerable switches and changes without their having to be fully explained each time. The first paragraph of the letter is packed with polite expressions and metaphors that were common in the elevated speech of central Mexico, though here one feels little sense of mastery and cohesion, rather that the words and phrases are a bit out of the writer’s control, that he is imitating something. Even so, virtually everything has a close parallel in central Mexican rhetoric. The verb tlanehuia (line 5), to borrow, was indeed used to express the transitoriness of human life on earth. On balance, this complex text shows some elements of western Nahuatl, considerable influence of central Nahuatl elevated speech, a unique orthography, and some constructions that fall outside normal Nahuatl grammar of any kind. It is hard to believe that the writer was a native speaker. In line 2, no interpretation has suggested itself for “te” before “nohuestra senora.” Perhaps it is a simple mistake. In lines 6–7, “yn iLhuecacayoL justiciatzin yn dios” clearly means “the celestial justice of God,” but the possession remains unexpressed grammatically. Possibly the writer intended “iLhuecacayoL” as compounded with “justiciatzin” despite having an absolutive ending, and the i- of the first word was meant as the possessive prefix. In line 15, “chan” lacks the possessive prefix that it virtually always bears. The intention may be “ompa ichan,” “at her home,” or “ompa mochan,” “at your home.” In line 17, “hueyan” seems to mean hueca, “far.” In lines 19, 20, and 21, the word teoyotl, here “sacrament, especially of marriage,” has become “tehueyotl,” a very considerable transformation and not corresponding to any shifts seen elsewhere in the text, but all three examples are consistent. In line 24, “damolaçodahuan,” standard form tamotlaçotahuan, literally means “we your precious fathers.” Through polite inversion, “your fathers” could mean “your subordinates, your servants,” and that seems to be the intention here. It was not, however, the practice to add tlaço-, “precious,” to such inverted expressions. In line 31, “tofrma” for tofirma, “our signatures, is more than a mistake, for the i is lacking also in the form “titofrmatia,” “we sign” (line 46).