Codex Coyoacan, Scene of Chichimeca

1650-1700

Name(s) currently unknown

Providence, RI, USA, Brown University, John Carter Brown Library (current location)

The codex was created in the Mexican town of Mazatepec, likely in the late 17th century, and its maker was most probably an indigenous painter. It seems to document a parcel of land and may have been designed to defend indigenous land-rights in viceregal courts. The codex was deliberately antiquated, using images and materials known from pre-Columbian history. Such references to pre-conquest practices buttressed claims to indigenous authority.

In this page from a larger book, the painter has depicted a landscape scene with a line of trees or mountains and lake on the right-hand page and a group of men, dressed in animal skin cloaks and feather headdresses, carrying quivers of arrows on their backs at left. Such dress and weaponry was used before the conquest. The text, written in large letters after the images, is in Nahuatl, the indigenous language of central Mexico, yet the codex relies heavily on pictures to convey information, as would was typical of pre-Hispanic manuscripts.

Perhaps in an attempt to make the document looked aged, native amatl(fig bark) paper was used, even though European-style paper would have been more common for legal documents.

Recent archival research indicates that several codices of this genre were painted by a single hand. This one, however, seems to stand apart from that group and its painter’s name is not currently known, nor is the fate of the lands that it was created to protect.

The codex contains 14 folios and each measures ca. 25.5 x 23.5 cm (ca. 10 x 9.25 inches). The rough fibers of the amatl paper can be seen at the edges each page. Also evident are water stains and signs of insect damage which, wholly apart from the archaizing intentions of the painter, indicate this is an old document.

This conjuring of pre-Hispanic manuscripts in order to prove contemporary (17th-century) claims is not unusual. Codex Coyoacan, although a unique object, has ties with a whole series of codices created in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in central Mexico. All seem to have been commissioned by native communities, often seeking to defend rights to land in colonial courts. Not surprisingly, these codices share the same deliberate archaizing qualities. Known today as Techialoyan Codices, after a community named in one of the codices, these works share similarities in their historical narratives, style and iconography.

Reproduced courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
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Noguez , Xavier and Stephanie Wood, eds. 1998. De tlacuilos y escribanos: estudios sobre documentos indígenas coloniales del centro de México. Mexico: El Colegio de Michoacán

Zinacantepec and El Colegio Mexiquense.

Robertson, Donald. 1975. “Techialoyan Manuscripts and Paintings, with a Catalog.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Howard Cline, ed., vol. 14, 253-280. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Ruiz Medrano, Ethelia and Susan Kellogg, eds. 2010. Negotiation within Domination: New Spain's Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Wood, Stephanie. 1989. “Don Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma: a Techialoyan mastermind.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 19:245-268.

Wood, Stephanie. 2003. Transcending conquest: Nahua views of Spanish colonial Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.