Historia Tolteca Chichimeca, Chicomoztoc

1545-1565

Name(s) currently unknown

Paris, FRA, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (current location)

This manuscript painting from central Mexico, is part of a set of annals written in Nahuatl called the Historia Tolteca- Chichimeca.This scene shows one moment in a long indigenous history—set four centuries before the annals were created in the mid 16th century. The painting depicts two Toltec leaders at the bottom, who call out to warriors residing in the flower-shaped cave dominating the page. As a portrayal of a time long ago and a place far away, this painting shows one way the Nahua world of the ancestors could take form in the mid-16th century.

The image of a cave with seven lobes dominates the page. It was called Chicomoztoc and was a place of primordial origin among indigenous people living in central Mexico. Its womb-like shape was a visual reference to it as a place of origin. At its top, the curling form is a glyph for the Nahuatl place-name Colhuacatepec, or Hill of the Ancestors. The cave of Chicomoztoc was believed to have been in a faraway desert, as the thorny cacti seen upon its exterior suggest.

This manuscript was probably created in the mid-16th century at the behest of an indigenous noble, don Alonso de Casteñeda, who lived in the town of Cuauhtinchan in central Mexico. In New Spain, pre-Hispanic history had political uses. Because don Alonso could trace his ancestry to this primordial cave, he could justify his status as one of the ruling elite of his community. Archival records show that he joined with other leaders in his community on numerous occasions to address local and regional political conflicts.

Indigenous painters created this work on sheets of European paper; each page measures about 11.8 by 8.6 inches (30 x 22 cm). The Historiaincludes alphabetic writing, glyphs and painted images—a combination often used in the 16th century to remember and record pre-Hispanic history. The painters would have thus drawn their inspiration, both in terms of painting style and iconography, from local, indigenous manuscripts and histories as well as imported prints and images from Europe.

This manuscript was one of many collected by Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (1702-55), an Italian who came to Mexico between 1736-43, whose principal interest was to investigate the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Boturini collected this manuscript in the indigenous community of Cuauhtinchan, Mexico, where it was originally painted in the mid-16th century. This suggests the annals were considered important by people in Cuauhtinchan across many generations. The vast Boturini collection is today scattered across countries, and today, this Nahua manuscript resides in Paris, with others he collected.

While friars in New Spain tried to destroy the visible manifestations of pre-Hispanic religion, religious ideas were intimately bound up with history. Many of the peoples living in central Mexico considered the cave of Chicomoztoc a place of origin—an idea that ran counter the biblical idea of origin in the Garden of Eden. This image represents one elaborate attempt to both record pre-Hispanic beliefs and preserve them. By the end of the 16th century, many indigenous communities had forged distinct amalgams of local and Catholic beliefs to understand and explain the origins of the world. As testimony to this, certain images in this manuscript have close parallels with mural paintings in the coeval Franciscan church in Cuauhtinchan, San Juan Bautista. In New Spain, pre-Hispanic history also had social uses. Because this history painting carefully distinguished among the different ethnic groups inhabiting the cave, it provided a historical rationale for ethnic divisions between Cuauhtinchan and neighboring communities, and within Cuauhtinchan itself.

© Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Kirchhoff, Paul, with Lina Odena Güemes and Luis Reyes García, trans. and eds. 1976. Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. Mexico: CIS-Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Leibsohn, Dana. 2009. Script & Glyph: Pre-Hispanic History, Colonial Bookmaking and the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

Glass, John B. 1975. “The Boturini Collection.” Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 15. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pp. 473-486.