Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts PDF Download

Photographic reproductions of three Mexican pictorial manuscripts--one from the late 16th century, the other two from the first half of the 18th century--concerning villages and lands in Tlaxcala and the valley of Mexico. The first ms., possibly dating from 1597, is a pictorial map with Nahuatl glosses, showing properties in the vicinity of Santa Barbara Tamascolco, including two churches, a river, four people, and various place glyphs. Glosses mention Santa Barbara, Santa Ana, don Antonio de Mendoza, and Diego Muñoz, the Indian governor. The other two documents are Techialoyan codices (nos. 717 and 716), fragments of village land books intended to legally establish the boundaries of a particular village, its barrios and outlying areas, and ownership claims to various land parcels. Illustrations, accompanied by explanatory texts in Nahuatl, the Indian language used in legal documents, depict the church, river, and farmlands of the village of San Pablo Huyxoapan, near Azcapotzalco, in what is now the Distrito Federal; individual fields are shown with their crops of maguey. In addition, the Santiago Chalco Codex contains illustrations of birds and animals, as well as a scene of the pueblo's patron saint being carried atop a trestle by the natives.