Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World

From the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

Justyna Olko

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781607322412
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This significant work reconstructs the repertory of insignia of rank and the contexts and symbolic meanings of their use, along with their original terminology, among the Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mesoamerica from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Attributes of rank carried profound symbolic meaning, encoding subtle messages about political and social status, ethnic and gender identity, regional origin, individual and community history, and claims to privilege.Olko engages with and builds upon extensive worldwide scholarship and skillfully illuminates this complex topic, creating a vital contribution to the fields of pre-Columbian and colonial Mexican studies. It is the first book to integrate pre- and post-contact perspectives, uniting concepts and epochs usually studied separately. A wealth of illustrations accompanies the contextual analysis and provides essential depth to this critical work. Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World substantially expands and elaborates on the themes of Olko's Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office, originally published in Poland and never released in North America.

1
Introduction

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“Let your Majesty not imagine that what I say is fabulous, for it is true that Moteucçoma had had copied very faithfully all the things created in both land and sea of which he had knowledge, in gold and silver as well as in precious stones and feathers, in such perfection that they almost appear to be the things themselves . . . Besides this, Moteucçoma gave me much clothing that belonged to him, which considering that it was entirely of cotton with no silk, in the whole world the equal could not be made or woven, nor in so many and diverse colors and workmanship, which included very marvelous garments for men and women.”¹

As implied by this enthusiastic account by Hernando Cortés, among the first European visitors to imperial Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards were not only attracted by the material value of what they witnessed upon their encounter with one of the most advanced societies in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. Such sensitive observers as Cortés were also impressed by the astounding level of native craftsmanship. He was able to appreciate the high quality, pageantry, and sumptuousness of the accouterments and jewelry of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan and other Nahuatl-speaking groups who occupied the Valley of Mexico and adjacent regions. Indeed, this was one of the most compelling aspects of native culture, deservedly catching the attention of sixteenth-century Spanish authors. And, surprisingly enough, it is a subject that has not received enough scrutiny by modern scholars.

My own fascination with native adornments and status items, their meaning and roles, started many years ago when I was almost entirely focused on the pre-Hispanic world, though already beginning to perceive the research possibilities offered by postconquest sources. I became interested in how the Nahuas themselves referred to their costume and insignia much more than in the descriptions of European observers such as Cortés. I wanted to find out how much can be learned from native records in different genres, especially when these are combined with other categories of extant sources studied in a cross-disciplinary perspective. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the available corpus of data on costume and insignia is in its potential for creating both a very broad systematic study and more focused, interpretative searches. With time, the study of postconquest resources has brought me to the realization that I should not only make full use of them to illuminate earlier times, but that I should include the later time as an equal component within the larger topic and not accept a rigid and unrealistic barrier between the two. As a result of an inclusive approach to the topic in several dimensions, this book has characteristics of a reference work and a research monograph at the same time, providing both a systematic listing and analysis of extensive data and an interpretative study based on contextual reading of a wide range of sources. I now turn to more detailed discussion of the points I have just made.

The Focus and Organization of This Book

It is a general tendency among Mesoamerican scholars that preconquest and postconquest themes and perspectives are treated separately and are rarely combined in the same study.² This dominant attitude ignores the important fact that the bulk of currently available evidence dates from the postcontact era and can be explored to address issues referring to both epochs at the same time, instead of focusing exclusively on one or the other. Such a procedure also means shutting our eyes to the native perspective, which saw many preconquest phenomena as continuing after the arrival of the Europeans on the scene and either avoided seeing an abrupt break with the Spanish conquest or tried to minimize it. The nature of the available data makes it virtually impossible to understand many aspects of native culture and its transformations under European impact without studying both epochs within a unified approach combining precontact and postcontact data, though keeping in mind their distinct contextual frameworks and inherent differences.

This book is an attempt to reconstruct the repertory of insignia of rank in the Nahua world and the ways they were used, based on the currently available body of native and Spanish written sources in different genres, as well as indigenous painted manuscripts. By insignia of rank I understand all components of elite dress and certain portable items, accessories, or accouterments, such as seats, mats, staffs, and weapons. The chronological framework encompasses the last several decades before the Spanish arrival, the period of expansion of the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as well as the early postconquest era up to the seventeenth century. At the heart of my research is the Valley of Mexico, the center of the Nahua world, but the study extends to other areas inhabited by Nahuatl-speaking communities and to regions dominated by other ethnic groups but controlled by the Triple Alliance. Thus, to the extent made possible by existing sources, the study embraces territories surrounding the Valley of Mexico, including portions of the present states of Hidalgo, Estado de México, Morelos, Guerrero, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, but giving special emphasis to states in this geographically vast area that were fully or partially Nahua. I have excluded the core Mixtec and Zapotec regions in Oaxaca, characterized by the strength of local traditions that should be studied in their own right. The only exception is parts of the Mixteca Baja region that have been included in the general discussion because of the region’s strong ties with the Nahua zone, at least as seen through the postconquest evidence.

Thus, the innovation of this study is that it deals with the Nahua world both before and after the conquest on the same basis, trying to view similar phenomena across the time span embracing both the dominance of the Triple Alliance and the reorganization of native sociopolitical organization and culture under Spanish rule. The justification for this approach lies not only in the strong lines of continuity between the two eras, but also in the simple fact that much can be learned about pre-Hispanic status items by how they were described and used in colonial times. This method also makes it possible to trace changes occurring over time and, by grasping the nature of these transformations, to understand more fully not only the degree of overlapping but also the distinctiveness of preconquest and postconquest functions and meanings. By the same token, this study integrates written and pictorial sources often dealt with separately, treating both the visual vocabulary and the Nahuatl terminology as equal dimensions of the research. Nahuatl resources are not handled as simple listings of terms referring to the attributes of rank, but are studied in their own context, in actual statements in real texts belonging to many distinct genres, including accounts provided by elite collaborators but compiled by their European patrons: historical annals, early dictionaries, “mundane” documents such as wills, and so forth. The same principle applies to the spatial approach, incorporating the whole Nahua sphere in its broadest sense. This makes it possible to transcend the narrow perspective limited to Tenochtitlan and its closest vicinity, a strong, if not dominant, focus of contemporary research.

The core of the book is the extensive chapter 2, containing a systematic and analytical reconstruction of the Nahua repertory of elite dress and status items as used before the Spanish conquest. Although the emphasis is inevitably on the insignia employed by the Mexica, for the great majority of the extant sources refer specifically to Tenochtitlan, the customs of other groups are also discussed whenever possible. The study embraces elite costume in the wide sense, that is, what was worn by rulers, lords, nobles, and high-ranking warriors, with some references also to the prestigious insignia granted to long-distance merchants. Strictly religious insignia, especially those worn by impersonators of gods, remain beyond the scope of this book. However, it is not possible to draw a clear borderline between secular and ritual costume in the Nahua world, because the most important elite garments were used in ritualized contexts or in rituals proper. Therefore, whenever religious paraphernalia form part of the accouterments worn by rulers and nobles, in addition to being worn by deities’ representatives or priests, they are embraced by the analysis. While focusing on descriptions and references to native attire and symbols of rank, I pay special attention to their contextual use and symbolic meaning, when hints can be retrieved from extant sources. This is, for example, the case with the turquoise diadem (the royal headdress in Tenochtitlan and beyond), the royal cape, exuberant battle insignia, and even flowers carried as essential attributes of nobility.

The wide scope of this reconstruction was made possible by the creation of a complex database recording all attestations of a given item in textual and pictorial sources, together with the available contextual information. This approach helps to define basic contexts, where identified attributes and garments appear, shedding important light on ways they were used, groups of their wearers, and symbolic meanings. But even more important for this reconstruction was the identification of the original Nahuatl terminology describing the repertory of status items, with possible variants and synonyms, as well as attempts at translation. The latter are often strengthened by additional clues provided by native texts and by identifying pictorial images of objects known by their Nahuatl terms. This way of data gathering has made it possible to reconstruct the spatial distribution of certain items and their terminological variants and functional range. A natural extension of this chapter is the appendix at the end of the book. Presenting in compact form and expanding on the data discussed in the main text, it is conceived as a contextual dictionary of identified terms designating elite garments and attributes, with short descriptions, groups of users, and references to their attestations in written sources and in pictorial material. References are limited to secure identifications based on terminological correspondences or iconographic verisimilitude, omitting problematic cases such as ambiguous mentions in Spanish texts that ignore the original terms.

Chapter 3 takes a different standpoint, centering on pictorial records, embracing both preconquest sculptures and postconquest native manuscripts to address the iconography of rank in a regional perspective, from the times of the Triple Alliance through the sixteenth and, to a lesser degree, the seventeenth centuries. Crucial for this part of the research has been broadening the analysis by incorporating local evidence from regions surrounding the Valley of Mexico and inhabited by distinct ethnic groups interacting with the speakers of Nahuatl at different levels. By discussing many different kinds of royal images, I define pictorial conventions specific to different altepetl (native states, see below) and re...