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POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY ANDCONCEPTS

'VIEWED THROUGH NAHUATL .
. 'WRITINGS

JAMES LoCKHART

The Nahuas of centrál MexiCQ «()ften misleadingly called Aztecs after

the quite ,ephemeral imperial confederatíon that existed among them
in late:prehispanictimes) were the mostpopulous of Mesoamerica's
cultural-lit:lguistic .groups .at the time of the .Spanish canquest, . and
they remainedat the center of developments for centuries thereafter,
since the hulk ofthe Hispanic population settled among them and
they bore the bn;mt of cultural contact. For these reas()t:ls, more was
written aboul them in the colonial perlod than about any other group,
and they have been equally favored bymodem scholars. Yet until
the last few, yearshardly anyone took advantage of the mass of docu­
ments the Nahuasproduced in their own language, Nahuatl, in the
timefrom about 1550:, to ahout.1800, using the European alphabet­
ical scrlpt w.hich took hold among them almost irnmediately. It was
as though Roman history -were being done without Latin.Let us look
at one of .the doct}ments the Nahuas have left us: 1
Ot:l an unspecified day in the year of 1584, more than two gene­
rations after theconquest, an indigenous clerk or legal representative
appeared before one of the two Indian municipal councils in the
importat:lt tQwnof Tulancingo, located on the northeastem edge of
central ;M~:xico,. and presented a written petition on behalf of one
Simón de Santiago, an Indian commoner. Beautifully penned and
perfectly spelled, the petition was set down by the clerk, _not by the
doubtless illiterate _Simón, a person so humble that he took his sumame
from bis district of Santiago and probably went through life with no
other appellation, on ordinary Qccasions, than Simón. But the writer
maintained the, convention of a first-person presentation. by . Simón,
- 1Preserved in 'the spe~ial eolleetÚms department ~f 'the library of the University
of Texas, San Antonio. The Nahuatl document, reversed, ,is used as a eover for
a pieee of Spanish litigation dated 1584 and mar in bet date from a few years
earlier. .. .
92 JAMES LOCKHART

and he seems to have folIowed Simón's. actual spoken words very

closely.
. After briefly calling out "my lords, my rulers" in the preconquest
style ofpublic oratory; Simón got· right clown to business. His complaint
concerned a certain -Cristóbal, . a .. commoner of the same district, as
humble as himself if not more so, who was presently lodged in the
municipal jail. In the night of Tuesday preceding, Cristóbal had
entered Simón's property by stealth, meaning to steal a turkey. But
when he got amongthem, the turkeysgave the alarm, causing Simón's
wife to awake and run to the turkey pen to investigate. By then Cris­
tóbal had wrung a turkey'sneck and was on bis way out with it, but
Simón's wife got agood look at him as he sped past the grainbin,
where upon she woke herhusband, shouting to him what had hap­
pened. Simón forthwith ran to Cristóbal's house, finding him and his
wife warming themselves by the fire, and demanded his turkey back.
Cristóbal denied all and threatened to kilI Simón; taking an iron­
tipped digging stick, he knocked him down with a blow to the head,
and Simón, while lying there in a pool of blood from the cut, heard
Cristóbal telI his wife to fetch him the knife lying on the chest in
order to spill Simón's guts. Simón managed to push Cristóbal's hand
aside, and in their struggle Cristobal's clothes, which were old and
worn out, began to rip off: first his c1oak, then his shirt, and finalIy
his loincloth, leaving him naked. Even so, Cristóbal, imagining himself
the victor,. ran off to Simón's house, told his wife to come recover
his body, and proceeded to beat her up. She was the one left in the
worst shape; by now Simón had spent 2 pesos on her treatment, had
borrowed more from merchants, and owed yet more to a Spaniard.
He therefore petitioned that Simón's wife be required to help take
care of his own wife during convalescence and that Simón ·cover all
costs.
Here is postconquest indigenous life seen through a new prism
and in new dimensions. More than twenty years ago Charles Gibson,
using Spanish documents, brought about a great advance· in our un­
derstanding of indigenous corporate development, showing that nume­
rous local indigenous states or kingdorns -sorne petty, sorne .not so
petty- survived the conquest intact, becoming the basis of encomien­
das, parishes, and Hispanic-style municipalities organized under Span­
ish auspices, and out of these most of the larger structures of the
Mexican rural scene gradualIy evolved. 2 What went on inside this

2 Gibson 1964. Nahuatl-based scholarship is adding to the insights of this

 POSTCONQUESTNAHUA SOCIETY 93

corporate framework continued to· bearelative mystery; One had to

reIy on generalizing, partisan statements of Spaniards who in any case
knew and caredvery liule about Indian-to-Indian relationsbips..Pro­
minent inthis corpus weretheRelaciones geográficas, surveys of
localities compiledby provincial' Spanish administrators, who when it
cameto Indiancustoms were likely to say simply that they were ."bad,'.'
in liné with the lndians' ,notorious idIeness and' inconstancy, and that
they dressed "poorly."·
It was' a reveIation, then~ to 'discover the existence of documents
in wbich .ordinary lndiaris' spoke to' eachother about. everyday thing
in their own language~ We are de1ivered from hearsay, we seeactual
individual cases and the originalcategories of thought. The immediate
message, as in the story of the stoIen turkey, is oftena double and
apparently contradictory one. On the one hand, the lndian world appears
to be maintaining its balance, concerned at least as much with intemal
affairs as with Spanish-Indian reIations, while many preconquest pat­
terns retain their vitality. On the other hand, evidence of contact
with 'Spaniards and Spanish culture is everywhere, even in surround­
ings as humble as those of Simón and Cristóbal.
Sim6n begins his address, as we have seen, with a string of vocativcs
taken directly from preconquest practice; bis complaint to the mu­
nicipal judges and the remedy he seeks from them put us in mind
oí descriptions of preconquest adjudication in the Florentine Codex of
Sahagún.s AH the personnel directIy involved -accused, accuser, and
judges- are indigenous. Simón's establishment, with its grainbin
and fowl, appears unchanged in the basics from a modest household of
prehispanic times. Cristóbal (presumably Simón as well) wears the
man's traditional cloak and loincIoth.
But Cristóbal also has a shirt, called a camixatli (from Spanish
camisa), the fitted and buttoned garment type brought by the Spani­
ards. Looking further, we see much more evidence of Spanish materia'
culture incorporated into the life of this indigenous cornmoner, so near
the bottom of the scale that he is reduced tostealing turkeys. He hits
Simón over the head with an indigenous digging stick, but this tra­
ditional· instrument is tipped with the new material iron and does
corresponding damage. He tries to stabSimQ.n with a knife, not of
the traditional obsidian-bladed type, but one of stee1, a cochillo (from
Spanish cuchillo). And thé knife happens to be lying on a chest,

monument and changing many perspectives on it, but its core analysis remains;
valido
sFor example; compare Sabagún 1950-82, 8; 42.
 JAMES LOCKltART '

not a traditionalcontainer inade ofmatS or reeds,but a 'Spanish-style

caxa (caja) of wood, lóckablé, With' ¡ron' hirigesand latch. To tbis
ex.tent has the life 'oí even the poorest members oí indigenous sociefy
been 'affécted by thé ,late sixteenth' century. Simón is paying' nloney
to have his wife treated ;hementions not on:Iy fue Spanish denomination
peso buí thegeneric term tomines (originaIly rderring toa' spedíic
'cain, but extended by the Nahuas to signify cashor Inoney). lndige­
nous merchants (pochteca) are still active in Tulancingo, hui among
other things they are lending out Spanish money. A Spaniard (español
in titeNahuatl text) is also somehow involved in the treatmerit cíf
Simon's·Wife; probably he is an apothecary whohas provided Spa.nish
medicines, ón credit. The "Spimish things" are treated no diffe:tently
{roro the indigenous things; all seem to he unselfconsciouslyáccepted
foi what they are andincorporated ínto life as lived. Oncechests, knives,
'shlrtS, and moneyhad been built irito indigenous culture, there was
nó lónger any awareness of them 'as something foreign.' lndeed, éie­
ménts of Spamsh origin were soon capable of becorning á badge óf
local pride andself-identity. The ostensibly Spanish-style council (ca­
bildo) of each lndian municipality was its primary vehicle of corporate
'representation, and the ostensibly Spanish patron saint its pnmary
symbol of corporate identity.
Both council and saínt, however, were identified in the indigenous
miri:d with precoriquest antecedents. Not many years {rom the time
of ,the Tulancingo turkey theft, in the small settlement of San Miguel
Tocuillan in thé Valley of Mexico, a woman narned Aria petitioned
the local council, of wbich her brother was' a member, for a piece of
land where she and her husband could build a house. The 'notary
chose ,to tell the whole story in dialogue form rather' than restríet
himself to Spanish' legalities, thus shówing us for onCe what really
went on on such occasions." No sooner had Ana told her biother
Juan Miguel (whose second name was taken from the town saint)
of her intention than he went out to callect the other membersof the
council while Ana prepared tortillas andpulque (the alcoholic drink
from, maguey juice). On their retum, eating, dririking, and polite
conversation were the first order of business, follawed by Ana's request,
couched in words of elaborate humility, and a quick acceptance of
thé petition by the guests. Thereupon she tbok them to the site she
had chasen; they measured itout, declared- it hers; and 'politely dec1inéd
her pro forma invitation to come back and have a bit more pulque.

" Transcription and Spanish translation of this document are published in

Lockhart 1980, together with substantial commentary.
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 95

Ana promi.sed "1 will bum candles and always provide incense for
my predous father the saint San Miguel, because it is on bis land
that 1 am building my house." The town fathers expressed their
approval, each giving a little speech, after which all embraced and
the function was adjoumed. Thus the annually elected town officials
with Spanish tides were really in operation, and the' Spanish patron
saínt received real allegiance, but they had become so closely identified
with the indigenous tradition that as in preconquest times a feast for
the officials and parties involved was an indispensable part of the
legitimation of land transfers, and the entity's land was thought of as
ultimately belonging to a supernatural being symbolizing the corpo-­
ration, now a patron .saínt rather than an ethnic deity as before the
eonquest.
Mast Nahuatl writing had the purpose of communication among
indigenous people, and that is its strength. But at times texts produced
for Spaniards can be instructive too. Around 1570 or 1580 in one
of the old imperial capitals, Tetzcoeo, a Nahua who must have been
serving as an aíde to the Francisean friars there composed for them
a sel. of language lessons in the form of speeches and dialogues on aH
sorts of everyday occasions: greetings, smaH talk, addresses apropos
of marriage, birth, and death. Though the transactions are ordinary,
the discourse is in the grand manner~ for the speakers come from the
circle of the town council, and sorne are descendants of precon­
questk.ings. Within the framework of Spanish-style municipal go­
ernment and enthusiastic Christianity, an exquisite protocol for daily
interaetion continued, c1asely defining the nature of a given occasion
and the relative position of each actor in it. In a dialogue, the arriving
party always spoke first, remaining standing, and outdoing himself
in apologies for intrusion of his worthless self into such an august
presence, whereas the stationary party, adopting the attitude of a
superior, remained seated, responding with the formula "you have
wearied yourself," i.e., "welcome." Inferiors never ealled superiors or
elders by name and· rarely even referred openly to any relationship
that might exist between them, whereas superiors could do both' (though
sparlngly). A system of inversion of kinship terms had rulers calling
their aides "uncles," while to subjects the ruler could be "our grand­
child." Children were not exempted froID the formalities. Consider
how two boys of the nobility greet their mother in the morning: 11

5 Karttunen and Lockhart forthcoming, p. 14143. The publication indudes

a complete transcription and two English translations oí the entire set oí speeches,
together with a comprehensive preliminary study.
1
96 JAMES LOCKHART

The elder: Oh our mistress, oh lady, 1 kiss your hands and feet. 1
bow down to your dignity. How did our Lord eause you to feel on
rising? Do you enjoya bit of His health?
The younger: Oh my noble person, oh personage, oh lady, we do
not wish to distraet you; we bow down to you, we salute your ladyship
and rulership. How did you enjoy your sleep, and now how are you
enjoying the day? Are you enjoying a bit of the good health of the
All-pervasive, the Giver of Life?

Not only certain fundamental patterns of the indigenous world, then,

persisted into Spanish times. A rich and flowery language of polite
social intercourse also long survived, bearing within it a multitude of
subtle concepts which were thus given time to enter in one way or
another into the evolving ideational systems of the postconquest period.
A great many of the most spectacularly informative NahuatI do­
cuments stem, like the three just drawn upon, from the second half
of the sixteenth century, when the new techniques of writing had been
mastered but were so fresh thatone seems to detect a positive joy in
using the medium, and furthermore many preconquest survivals were
then still starkly evident. Documents from later times also sometimes open
up to the reader, however, particularly those of the genre often called
"titles", though they could be more· accurately described as attempts
to make up for the lack of proper titIe. In the first half of the colonial
period, because of a massive and long continuing decrease in indige­
nous population, combined with slow growth in the numbers of Span­
iards from a small base, there was relatively lit~le pressure on the land
and correspondingly litde coneern with authenticating title toit. By
the second half of the seventeenth century things had changed. The
Hispanic sector had expanded, land had nsen in value and was becom­
ing scarce, and lndian towns were being pressed to document their
land rights in the Spanish fashion. Often they could not; instead a
town would resort to writing down its oral tradition of how it carne by
its rights, going far beyond a recital of boundaries and Spanish official
acts to tell as much of the entity's history as legend had preserved.
The self-view that emerges from these documents emphasizes the auto­
nomy of the local entity in both pre- and postconquest periods and its
solidarity against all outsiders, be they indigenous or Spanish. More
distant outsiders, however, such as the Spanish king, viceroy, and
archbishop, are seen as potentially benevolent allies against external
threats coming from the immediately surrounding lndian towns and
Spanish estates.
As in the first postconquest century, Hispanic cultural elements
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 97

are intenningled in ihe "titles" with those of indigenous ongm, but

now the process has gone even fllrther. Christianity is· sometimes pro­
jected upon figures from the remoíe preconquest past, stone images
of that time may be referred to as saints, and the postconquest orga­
nization of Hispanic-style municipalities may be taken for the original
foundation of the entity centuries earlier. Such identifications are no
doubt related to the indigenous cyclical view of events in general,
hut simple merging and 1088 of historical awareness are also involved.
Nahuatl writers of the first colonial century, though they saw post­
conquest entities as retaining an identity and history carried over from
before the arrival of the Spaniards, nevertheless were able to distinguish
clearly between the two periods, and many of them still possessed a
large amount of objectively correet historical infonnation about their
own groups before the eonquest. The writers of the later titles, despite
preserving mueh lore of preeonquest origin, were often unaware which
elements belonged to which tradition (presenting Spanish officials, for
example, with a tale of an ethnic leader being eonverted into a feat­
hered serpent by way of supporting their claims). Indeed, sorne writers
seem not to have been able to imagine two sharply differentiated
sueeeeding periods at all;. sorne oí" those who were able to do so arid
attempted partial portrayals of the preconquest world proved to have
woefully Hule infonnation, resorting instead at times to Spanish-influ­
eneed reinvention, with results bearing Httle resemblanee to the original
phenomena.6
Mueh the same trends are seen in another form of Nahuatl ethnic­
historieal writing, the annals genre, in which diserete bits of infonnation
are organized by the year of their oceurrenee, marehing ehronologieally
forward so mechanicallythat if no noteworthy event is known for a
given year, the year designation is often included anyway, with next
to it a blank spaee or an apologetic note. In preeonquest times sueh
annals eonsisted of a glyphic-pietorial doeument plus a memorized oral
recital; posteonquest annals quickly went over to an alphabetical text
as the primary vehicle, though the pictorial element long remained
strong and never disappeared entirely. The prehispanie annals eovered
events sueh as the foundation of the local state, the sueeessÍon of its
kings, its wars, its internal strife, and also natural phenomena, inc1ud­
ing earthquakes, plagues, and the appearance of comets. Sixteentb­
century annals often devoted a large amount .c:>f space to preeonquest

6 1 have discussed· the genre at sorne length, using e:xamples from the Chaleo
region, in Lockhart 1982. See also Wood 1984, Ch. 8, Cor reJated material con­
ceming the Toluca Valley.
98 JAMES LOCK.HART

material, adapted to the new medium but. otherwise unchanged, before

continuing in the same vein for the postconquest years, though now
reporting changes in the governorship and town council of the local
entity rather than successors to the dynastic ruler.;hip.7 Annals con­
tinued to be written in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cent­
uries, still primarily concerned with the affairs of a single town, still
retaining the same type of organization and subject matter. But in
the late annals the preconquest era hardly figures) and even events of
the sixteenth century are reported skeletally, often unreliably. The fuIl
specification of years by the indigenous calendrical scheme is some­
times simplified. The appointmentsof new viceroys and archbishops,
often. reported from the beginning, are now such standard annals fare
that they rival the changes in local indigenous government.8
To convey in a small space a notion of how communicative Nahuatl
documents can be, as weIl as something of their thrust, 1 have been
conc'entrating on sorne of the more colorful, juicy types and examples.
The bulk of Nahuatl docurnentation preserved today was produced
by municipal notarles as a function of routine activities of indigenous
local government. It includes sales and grants of land, litigation, town
council .minutes, and above all thousands of testaments.9 Most of the
material sticks rimch closer to Spanish legal formulas and procedures
than the W'ritings we have been sampling. Testaments, the staple item,
'normally follow the Spanish model closely, proceeding from an ab­
breviated credo to dispositions concerning the burial andmasses, then
apportioning houses and land to relatives and liquidating debts. But
even here there are reminiscences of the Nahua declamatory style,
with a· great many admonitions and spontaneous outbunits one would
notexpect in a Spanish wiIl. Aside from massive evidence on the nature
oí Spanish influence and the elucidation Qf a multitude of general
indigenous concepts, the special contribution of Nahuatl testaments
is to teach us about the Nahua household. When first seen in sixteenth­
century documents, the household unit is of variable size, moving
toward a complex containing two or mote related nuclear families, then
periodically splitting into constituent parts and repeating the process.
The household's lands were scattered and divided into relatively smaIl

7 The best example of annals of the earlier type is Chimalpahin 1963-65.

Aspects of the work are studied in Schroeder 1984.
8 Fmnces M. Krug is presently nearing completion of a doctoral dissertation
on the late colonial annals of the region of Tlaxcala and Puebla.
9. Mayor published collections incluye Anclerson,. Berdan, and Lockhart 1976
(with sOrne. translations now outdated in cert:\in respects); Karttunen and Lockhart
1976; Cline and Le6n-Portilla 1984; and Lockhart, Berdan, and Anderson 1986.
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 99

plots even when the aggregate amount was large, and the different
adult household members were responsible for their respective portions.
Inside the home complex were separate buildings arranged around
a patio, each holding and in asense belonging to an adult family
member or nuclear family. And íor all the changes and additions that
over the centuries the introduction of Spanish techniques, varieties,
and artiíacts brought about, the essential structure oí a complex oí
clustered separa te dwellings and scattered landholdings remained the
same in the indigenous sector across the whole colonial period, and
labor-intensive cultivation oí indigenous crops remained the core oí
indigenous agriculture. In the earliest sources there is great variation
in the amount oí land held by different individuals and family groups.
not only, as expected, between the nobles and the commoners, but
among the commoners themselves, indicating a great deal oí flexibility
and low-level autonomy in the land regime, and this attribute too is
maintained over the centuries, even while the indigenous sedor as a
whole lost land to the expanding Hispanic sector.10
Sorne important insights coming out oí Nahuatl documentation
are not to be gleaned from any one genre .but pervade the whole
corpus. We become privy to uníamiliar concepts and procedures and
aware oí the absence oí familiar ones. Among the most striking
absences is that oí the category "Indian". Nahuatl contained no word
covering tbis semantic range, and later, when it began to borrow
Spanish words, including much ethnic terminology, Spanish indio did
not become a standard part of the language. Indeed, no large-group
category íor indigenous people had much currency. The term "Nahua"
in the sense 1 am using it here was understood but rareo
Self~definition and differentiation between indigenous groups was
primarily in terms of the altepetl, the type of local kigdom mentioned
aboye as having survived the conquest all over central Mexico; this
the Spaniards usually called a pueblo. The entity was partíaIly defíned
by its tradítion oí ethnic distinctness, partíally by its possession of a
certain territory, and partialIy by its dynastic ruler, the tlatoani, whom
the Spaniards immediately and correctly recognized as sueh, terming
him the cacique. As to the intemal structure of the altepetljpueblo,
the Spaniards, in line with their own traditions, perceived it to consist
of a cabecera or capital ruling a set of sujetos or subject hamlets. And
in fact, one could often íind the semblance of a central settlement in
10 Here as in much of what follows 1 am anticipating the conclusions oC a
large and heavily documented book 1 am now writing on the social and cultural histo.
ry of central Mexican Indians across the colonial period en the basis oC Nahuatl
sources. See ruso Cline 1986.
lQO ] AMES LOCKHART ,

an altepetl. The residence of the tlatoani, the site of the kingdom's main
temple, arid its central marketpIace oftencoindded, leading to a settle~
mení cluster' in that' vicinity. The cluster, however,' had no separáté
name arid no juridical, identity or organizationaI unity. Different seg­
mentS oí it belonged to differeni: constituent parts oí the entity. These
named parts, called calpolli Or tl~il(lcalli,comp'rised a theoretical1y
symmetrical whole (often but not always in groups 'of 2, 4, and 8);
each part was separate, equal in :principle,' ~nd self-contained, with
.its own territory,subethnic identity, arid submlei:ship~ The parts were
arrnnged in a fIXed order of rotation áccoiding to whjch all mechanisms
of ,thé altepetl operated~, This order of thé parts, indeed, defined thé
whole at a level everi more basic than the rul,ership.' Where the Spa­
nish view included three types of entities -pueb1(), cabecera, and su­
jeto--, Nahuatl documents recognize on1y two: the altepetl, being
thewhole, and the calpolli or parts. The' Spanish view emphasizes
urbari nucleation and a stepped hiernrchy; tlíeNahtÍ~ view emphasizes
a symmetrical arrangement and rotationalorder. Through indigenouS:­
language saurces it becomes dear that the', Sparuards opérated under
a partialdelusion, and modem scholarshave followed, theim in it. Over'
the course of the colonial period', theáltepetl, underwent many modifi­
catioQs, but, half undetected by Spanish authorities, it retained' its
basic principIes of organization.
, The office of tlatoani was gradually tránsfonn~d into the Spanish­
influenced governorship, in principIe a tem()vable, e1ective position,
as was already well understood 'from, Spanish doc,u,ments alone. Sub­
seqúently much of the machinery of Spanishmunicipal government
was introduced into the altepetl. A Spanish ciiy counCíI had two alcal­
des 01' first-instance judges and a larger number ol. regidores 01' coun­
dImen. Nahuatl documents show us how these alfices were fitted to
the indigenous moldo In the Spanish tradition, ea~h official in a se~
represented his extended famny and clientele, a kin-básed faction, but
functioned at large. Among the Nahuas, office continued to be tied
c1ose1y to the constituent parts ofthe (now municipal) entity. Thus
an alcalde above all represented his calpolli; saon either the alcaldes
were being rotated systematically among the calpolli following the fixed
order or -in the long run the dominant trend- the number of alcal­
des increased until there was one for each major constituent parto
Regidores followed the same pattem, to the point that there was no
general distinction between the two offices than that of rank, alcalde
being higher, whereas in the Spanish system, tIle 'ofter longer-Iasting
office of regidor had greater prestige. Indeed, whereas a Spanish town
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 101

council (cabildo) was a well.defined corporate entity, clearly set off

from the commonwealth in general, an indigenous town council, though
equalIy meaningful, was in a sense an ad hoc group of representatives
of the constituent parts, and as such it merged imperceptibly into the
generality of prominent citizens and former office holders.
The altepetl schéme is but the best and most central example of
a type ofcelIular ormodular organization that appears in several forros
in indigenous life. The Nahuatl songs preserved from the second half
of the sixteenth century consist of selfcontained verses, ofteneight of
them, arranged in pairs. The pairs relate similarIy to a central theme
but m:ver refer directly to each other, and therefore in variant versions
the pairs are often found differently arranged, although the overall
numerica1 scheme remains the same, and the integrity of each pair is
maintained. A similar organization of decorative motifs has been noted
in preconquest indigenous art and again in survivals associated with
postconquest religious architecture.u Although not involving such mar­
ked symmetry, the annals genre,reporting events in discrete segments
under individual years, operates on the same principIe. So do the home
complex, divided into separate subhouseholds in separate buildings,
and the land regime, dividing holdings into many independent su­
bunits.12
After absorbing the fresh humanity and color of Nahuatl docu:"
ments in a direct, philological fashion, exploring the topical content
of various documentary genres, and, tracing certain central concepts
through the entire corpus, the natural next step in building a history
based on indigenous-language sources is a linguistic approach, trying
to win meaningful patterns about society and culture from the language
of the texts itself. Like other languages of the world, Nahuatl has been
neither static over time nor uniform over space. The Nahuatl-speaking
.worId functioned as a cultural unit in many ways, with similar trends
in al1 its parts, and new elements often affected the whole within a
very short period of time. Yet each altepetl had its own specific way
of speaking and writing. Paying closc attention to such differentiation,
we can tell something of which areas retained the most e1aborate
development of preconquest culture and which were losing the refine­
ments; which were at the forefront of new trends and which lagged
behind. For example, it becomes apparent that many of the larger
11 Karttunen and Lockhart 1980 contains a thorough study of the structure
of Nahuatl song; the modular principIe in art is mentioned in McAndrew 1964,
p. 199.
12 The topics of the preceding three paragraphs are discussed aIso in Lockhart
1985 and Lockhart forthcoming. See also Lockhart, Berdan, and Anderson 1986.
102 JAMES LOCKHART

altepetl, which felt the full force al Spanish intrusion into the· country­
side and consequentIy underwent the greatests change, nevertheless at
the same time had and retained the greatests corporate strenght and
far into the colonial period kept more of the social and other distinctions
embodied in preconquest Nahuatl polite discourse than did smaller
and less centrally located entities. Amecameca in the southeastem part
of the Valley of Mexico is a good example of such a centa.18
It i51 hard, however, to achieve more than impressionistic results
through cultural-linguistic research unless the potentially vast and amor­
phous field of investigation is somehow restricted. A naturally restricted
field is available inthe form of the Spanish loan words that leap to
the eye in Nahuatl texts, and the choice of tbis topie is further justified
by the fact that it is at the very core of the question of cultural change
and continuity. Frances Karttunen and I thus set out sorne time ago
to discover the patterns in Spanish-Nahuatl language-contact pheno­
mena (on the N ahuatl side, that is), primarily bycollecting all the
loan words in all Nahuatl texts then known to us, with attention' to
the date of each example, and subjecting the resulting lists to several
kinds of simple linguistic analysis. A dynamic picture emerged, cha­
racterized by tbree successive well-defmed Stages.:140 Since the process
went on over generations and centuries, doubtless beneath the level of
awareness, we have no contemporary comments on what motivated
it, but considering the general movement of early Mexican history
and what is known about two-Ianguage situations in other parts oí
the world in modem times, it is cIear enough that the stages correspond
to increasing amounts of everyday contact between Nahuatl-speaking
and Spanish-speaking populations.
Stage 1, extending from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519 until
about 1540-50, involved mínimal contact between Spaniards and In­
dians; hence hard1y any change in the Nahuatl language took place
at all. Since during most of this time the Nahuas were not yet produc­
íng alphabetical texts in anY number, Stage 1 remains shadowy and
Httle documented, but it is embodíed in a few texts written probably
in the time period 1535-45, and we can reconstruct aspects of it from
relies left in dictionaries and texts of the succeeding periodo Rather
than borrow Spanish words for the new things which they were after
aH seeing more than hearing about, the Nahuas described them with

See Karttunen and Lockhart 1978, and alsoLockhart forthcoming.

1.3
140
The following description of the stages summarizes, interprets, and sometimes
expands on material in Karttunen and Lockhart 1976. A full-scale yet succinct
treatment oí the process is Karttunen 1982.
 POSTCON~UEST NAHUA SOCIETY 103

the tooIs of their own language, using various kinds of extensions,

circumlocutions, and neologisms. The new material wool, for example~
as a ullually whitish fiber for textile use, was caHed ichcatl, "cotton,"
and the word was then extended further to the animal that bore it,
coming to mean "sheep." Tepoztli, "copper," as a designation for a
workable metal, soon took on the additional meaning "iron". The
Christian sacraments were called teoyotl, "holy things," and quaatequia,
"to pour water on the head," became the tenn for speaking of baptismo
The only loans taking place in Stage 1 appear to have involved
names. Many of the Nahuas began to receive Spanish baptismal names,
and Hernando Cortés' title-name of Marqués (often M alquex in Na­
huatl texts) became widely familiar, as did the name of bis indigenous
interpreter, doña Marina (Malintzin ). Full of implications was the
place name Castilla, "Castile," taken into Nahuatl in the naturalized
fonn Caxtillan. Using it as a modifier, the Nahuas could now expresa.
simultaneously their perception that introduced items shared defining
characteristics with items already known and their awareness of the
Spanish items' newness; thus wheat was Caxtillan centli, "Castile
maize." Caxtillan also gave rise in sorne fashion to caxtil, one of the
words the Nahuas were to use for the European chicken. It is tempt­
ing, if perhaps too whimsical, to think that since the Nahuas took the
final -lan to be their own suffix "place characterized by", and since
they saw the Castilians always accompanied by chickens, they deduced
that "Castilla" meant "place with chickens," then proceeded to retrleve
and use the. presumed root in that meaning.
In Stage 2, beginning 1540-50 and extending over about a hundred
year to approximately 1640-50, the Nahuas borrowed Spanish words,
readily and copiously. In this time perlod Spanish cities grew in size~
economic and institutional networks brought Spaniards into steady
contact with Indians, and a long slow process of formation of Hispanic
residential nuclei in the countryside got underway. The words now pour­
ing into Nahuatl belonged to several semantic domains, representing dif­
Ierent aspects of a massive cultural impacto AH the loans were alike
in naming an element introduced by the Spaniards that in one way
or another had become a part of indigenous life. Words for new plant
and animal varleties head the list. Spanish trigo now replaced Caxtillan
centli for "wheat" and caballo the earlier extension TTUIfall ("deer")
for "horse"; vaca, "cow", pushed quaquahue ("one with horos") into<
the specialized meaning "ox." Sorne of the Stage 1 forms lived on.
lchcatl, mentioned aboye, remains the usual Nahuatl word for "sheep"
to this day. N ew tooIs (often metal), materlals, and artifact types
104 JAMES LOCKHART

form a second important category. Our turkey theft story, written in

the first haH of Stage 2, offers good examples in Cristóbal's knife
( coc hillo ), chest (caxa), and shirt (camixatli). A third category con­
sists of new role definitions: the names of the ubiquitous local officers,
gobernador, alcalde, regidor, and others; of Spanish officers, from
virrey, "viceroy," and obispo, "bishop," on down; group designations,
such as cristiano, "Christian," and español, "Spaniard" (which also
appears in the turkey story). More abstract loans were by no means
lacking. They included specific Spanish-style concepts and procedures,
whether economic (such as prenda, "pledge, pawn, security"), legal
(such as pleito, "lawsuit litigation"), or religious (misa, "mass"). Es­
pecially pervasive in the indigenous world and important in enabling
Nahuas to act in a Spanish context were the loans involving words
for the measurement of time, extension, weight, and value. The turkey
story again offers examples: martes, "Tuesday," and the denomination
peso.
The Spanish words that during Stage 2 became an integral part
of Nahuatl vocabulary by the hundreds (probably thousands, if the
record were more complete) represent a vast cultural input and a
considerable addition to the Jexicon. Lest anyone should imagine that
the loans are an artificial, minority phenomenon restricted to the
written expression of a few well-educated notaries, consider whether
we have any earthly reason to doubt that humble Cristóbal really
did have a knife, chest, and shirt, and that he called them by the
Spanish loans used in Simón's account. What else, indeed, could he
have called them? Consider too that although colonial Nahuatl writing
was highly developed in its way, it did not constitute an independent
canon. What we call "words" lacked any universal spelling; rather
the the individual letters followed the writer's actual pronunciation,
whatever form that happened to take. The purpose of writing was
simply to reproduce speech. Consider further that every altepetl of
the hundreds across central Mexico, including very small and humble
entities where it would be an exaggeration to separate an educated
upper group from the rest (as in Tocuillan in the story of Ana and
her house site ), had its notary or notaries; yet the same kinds of loans
are found in the texts of all of them, in all the types of documents
they produced. And this despite the fact that writing was handed
down directly from generation to generation within each altepetl,
leading to pronounced local idiosyncrasies.
Yet the impact of Spanish on Nahuatl was in another sense severely
limited during Stage 2. The grammar of the language hardly changed.
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 105

Essential1y .al1 the loans were grammatically nouns, leaving everything

else QnaJfected. The loan nouns were treated no differently than Na­
huatl f,louns, not only acting as subjects and objects but being compo­
unded with native elements including nouns, verbs, subject prefixes,
and relational suffixes. It is true that after a brief period in which
sorne loan words received the absolutive suffix (-tli and variants)
found on most native nouns, as in camixa-tli, "shirt," new loans were
left without the absolutive, but this was not an innovation in principIe,
since Nahuatl did already have· a class of absolutiveless nouns.
Nor was pronundation affected at this time. Nahuatl had no voiced
obstruents (that is, it had p, t, and hard c but not the corresponding
b, d, and g); among the liquids it had 1 but lacked r; among the vowels
it had. only o where Spanish had both o and u; it did not tolerate
initial or final consonant clusters. None of these things changed during
the brilk of Stage 2. No new sounds were added to the repertoire.
Rather each loan was pronounced in a way conforming to the existing
Nahuatl phonetic system, with substitution of the closest Nahuatl sound
for mÍS8ing Spanish sounds and insertion of an extra vowel or omission
of a consonant to break up impossible consonant clusters. We know
this beca use of the N ahuas' propensity to write as they pronounced,
often making exactly the adjustments we would expect. Thus for
Spanish trigo ("wheat") we can find tilico, for sábado ("Saturday")
xapato, for vacas ("cows") huacax, for cruz ("cross") coloz, for cris·
tiano ("christian") quixtíano, and so on. And since the Nahuas heard
no difference between p and b or 1 and r, they were prone to hyper­
correction, writing such things as breito for Spanish preito ("lawsuit")
and even sometimes using b, d, g, and r in native vocabulary.
Spanish words in Nahuatl did not always mean exactly the same
thing as in the original language. We have already seen how the Na­
huas, having borrowed the word lamín, "an eighth of a peso," extended
it to serve as their primary term for money or cash, a meaning which
Spaniards probably would not have understood immediately, especially
as they increasingly abandoned lomin in favor of real. Cristiano or
quixtia:no often meant not "believer in Christianity") but "person of
European extraction," and señora or xinola ("lady") usually referred
specifically to a Spanish ")'oman. The names of the municipal officers,
though they had the same referents in Nahuatl as in Spanish, connoted
different functions and characteristics. Spanish words in Nahuatl, na­
turalized as they were in both external form and inner meaning,
were as much a part of the general linguistic and conceptual equip­
ment as vocabulary that had been in the language for centuries.
106 JAMES LOCKHART

Stage 3 can be considered to have begun around 1640-50, conti,;..

nuing for the rest of the colonial period and indeed until today,
wherever Nahuatl is still spoken. Now Nahuatl opened up to take
(though still sdectively) whatever Spanish had lo offer. The language
remained very much itself, but it was now permeated with elements
of Spanish origin which affected grammar and pronunciation as weU
as lexicon. This type of penetration can only mean that a large number
of Nahuas were by now bilingual; not nearly a majority, no doubt,
but a critical m~. Speaking Spanish in the marketplace or where
they worked, they needed easy ways to repart the events of the day
to the monolingual Nahuatl speakers at home. Thus Nahuatl began to
go beyond borrowing primarily to name new things for whichno other
word was readily available to reproducing common Spanish expressions
even when nearly equivalent indigenous expressions existcd, sometimes
with the result of displacing the latter. By Stage 3, Spaniards were
firmly ensconced in every part of the central Mexican countryside. They
lived cheek by jowl with Nahuas in what once were purely Indian
settlements, owning large amounts of rural land. Here they had created
a network of haciendas, ranchos, an other enterprises connected with
the urban market, which permanently employed an ever increasing
number of Nahuas, in addition to continuing seasonal employment of
yet larger numbers. For their part the Nahuas were now more inclined
than ever to move back and forth between the countryside and the
large Spanish cities, México City and Puebla.
The discovery of Stage3 and its timing represents an especially
large contribution to the periodization of Mexican history. Scholars
had already known of the just mentioned characteristics of the seven­
teenth century, but the trends began in the sixteenth and continued
full force in the eighteenth and latero Whereas a series of large re­
organizations were taking place around the time of the transition from
Stage 1 to Stage 2, so that we are not surprised to find that they coincide
with a major social and cultural shift, nothing so dramatic occurs in
the seventeenth century; there was little reason to think of any one
stretch of time as more crucial than another. Nor are bilingual Indians
distinguished in contemporary censuses and papulation estimates from
any other Indians. Once discovered, however, the .onset of Stage 3
proves to coincide approximately with a whole set of changes in the
indigenous world, as we will see in more detail below.
As to the linguistic content of Stage 3, Nahuatl now developed
a convention for borrowing Spanish verbs, adopted sorne Spanish par­
tides (prepositions and conjunctions) , found equivalents for many
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 107

1 Spanish idioms, and added new sounds to its phonetic repertoire in

loan vocabulary. Although these things happened more or less simul­
taneously over a few decades, the change did not come overnight;
sorne signs. appeared in the early seventeenth century, then the move­
ment gathered strength as mid-century approached, and by 1650 late
colonial Nahuatl was essentially in place as far as its mechanisms are
con cerned (though individual accretions along the same lines continued
and still continue). To borrow verbs, Nahuatl developed the strategy
of adding the native verbalizing element -oa to the Spanish infinitive;
the construction then conjugated like any other Nahuatl verbo Loan
verbs were not very numerous -a drop in the bucket compared to
nouns-- but they became a standard feature, found sprinkled here
and there in texts of all kinds. They tended to be technical legal,
religious, or economic terms, such as confirmaroa, "to confirm (an
appointment or administrative action)," or prendaroa, "to hock," but
perhaps the most widespread of them, pasearoa, "to take a stroll, parade
about," referred to a general social practice, and simple everyday vo­
cabulary could also be affected, as in cruzaroa, "to cross (a street, etc.)."
The first presently attested true loan verb is from the 1630's and we
may yet find isolated examples from earlier yet, but it is not until
around 1650 that they become an expectable feature of Nahuatl texts.
Loan particles are as striking a symptom of Stage 3 as are verbs.
Nahuatl made little distinction in native vocabulary between conjunc­
tions and adverbs, and it had no construction remotely llke a prepo­
sition, expressing similar notions instead through suffix-like relational
words. Yet it now began to accept from Spanish both conjunctions
and prepositions, at first primaríly the latter. They were few, even
fewer than the verbs, but they were pervasive, especially para, "( destined)
for, in order to," and aboye all hasta "until, as far as, even," which
became an indispensable part of the language. Introductions of this
type went beyond expanding the lexicon to bring about substantial
changes in Nahuatl syntax.
Another important characteristic of Stage 3 is the frequent use of
calques, that is, expressions in which native vocabulary is employed
to express foreign idiom. This tendency had been developing for a
long time, but it reaches full flower only in Stage 3. Though Nahuatl
was rich in ways to signify possession, inclusion, and connection, it
originally facked a close equivalent of the ubiquitous Spanish verb
tener, "to have." As earIy as the second half of the sixteenth century
the Nahuatl verb pía, "to guard, take care of, have charge of, hold,"
seems to have been veering in. the direction of "to have (possess)."
108 JAMES LOCKHART

By the early seventeenth century we can find Pía used in expressions

which would have made no sense in preconquest Nahuatl, deriving
their meaning instead from a Spanish idiom involving tener. Thus
quipia chicuey xihuitl, which once would have been a meaningless
"he guards eight years," meant "he is eight years old," following the
Spanish tiene ocho años, literalIy "he has eight years." By Stage 3, a
full-scale equivalency relationship had come into existence, that is,
pía could automatical1y be used to replicate in Nahuatl any Spanish
idiom involving tener. The same was true of sorne other common
verbs, including pano, originally "to traverse (a body of water, field,
or the like) ," which became the equivalent of the much-used Spanish
verb pasar, "to pass."
One of the most subtle, hard to detect, and hard to date aspects
of Sstage 3 was a change in the pronunciation of loan vocabulary as
the Nahuas learned how to reproduce the sounds of Spanish. This
development took place over a good stretch of time, often by interme­
diary steps; thus Nahuatl speakers first acquired a single new pro­
nunciation for Spanish d and r, then later learned to distinguish
one from the other. Exact pronunciations cannot always be deduced
throught the inconsistent spellings and ambiguous orthography. Yet
it is clear that a large change occurred across the middle of the
seventeenth century, and before 1700 Nahuatl speakers in general were
able to pronounce new loans as in Spanish (older loans, however,
retained their original form).
The stages of the linguistic adaptation of Nahuatl to Spanish have
close parallels in altmost every facet of indigenous life. 1<5 Since the whole
field of Nahuatl-based historical studies is so new, much remains to
be learned, but something can already be said. Perhaps the most
stríking exarr(ple of parallelism concerns the mechanisms of procurement
of short-term Indian laborers by Spaniards. Given the laVÍsh use of
temporary labor characteristic of the colonial period as. of the pre­
conquest era before it, bulk labor mechanisms were both a major
department of indigenous organization and one of the most important
tíes between the Indian and Spanish populations.
During Stage 1, Spaniards acquired temporary Indian labor through
the encomienda, a device which, essentialIy, gave a single Spaniard for
his lifetime the tributes, in kind and in labor, which one altepetl would
otherwise have rendered to the Spanish government. This system in­
volved as Httle contact as it dig change. An unaltered local indigenous
state, throught the prerogatives of its ruler and the operation· of its
15 1 now retum to summarizing aspects of the project mentioned in note 10.
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 109

internal rotational order, delivered work parties to a single Spaniard

(and, to be sure, often to his employees); the parties usually remained
intact, under corporate indigenous supervision, and did things in or
close to the indigenous tradition.
At the end of the time period 1 have assigned to Stage 1, the
central Mexican encomienda lost its labor power. During Stage 2,
temporary labor was procured through a system that the Spaniards
called repartimiento. The constituent parts of the altepetl continued
to provide contingents through rotation as before, but the operative
indigenous authority was now usually the governor and town council
rather than the dynastic ruler per se, and aboye all the assembled
contingents were now divided ad hoc into more numerous smaller
parties which worked for a short periods for whatever Spanish estate
owners and entrepreneurs happened to need them. The new frame­
work involved more Spanish-Indian contactj smaller groups worked
at tasks more Hispanic in nature under closer Spanish supervision.
By Stage 3, the repartimiento had given way to informal arrang­
ements in which individual Indians made agreements to hire on for
seasonal labor with individual Spaniards at a negotiated wage (usually
simply the going rate for less skilled work). Ordinary Indians now
had absorbed enough Hispanic lore to be able to deal with Spaniards
one to one, without need of a corporate prop; on the other side of the
coín but for the same reasons, the indigenous corporations were less
and less able to deliver laborers when so required. The legal abolition
of the central Mexican agricultural repartimiento carne in the 1630's
a few years before the time 1 have set for the beginning of Stage 3,
but the coincidence is still quite dose, and as 1 indicated aboye,
advance signs of the developing linguistic shift did show themselves
earlier in the seventeenth century.:tll
Indigenous govemment is another area in which the stages can be
detected. During Stage 1 the organization of the altepetl remained
basically untouched, with the tlatoani retaining his fuIl traditional
powers. At the onset of Stage 2 the govemorship and town council
took shape. Although no later transfonnation is of quite the same
magnitude, as well defined in content, or as sharply etched as to
dating, several traits prominent after about 1650 make it appropriate
to speak of a Stage 3 fonn of town govemment. In most places the
regidores (councilmen) dther faded from the scene altogether or were
relegated to sharply subordinate rank. The govemor and alcaldes

16 The legal and institutional side of these developments receives extensive

converage in Gibson 1964, Ch. 9.
110 JAMES LOCKHART

were joined on many occasions by the fiscal (church steward), and

they, together with previous holders of those offices, who ostentatiously
bore the title pasado, "past (officer) ," and often returned to active
status after an interval, constituted a consortium which made the most
important internal decisions or appeals to the autside and was indis­
pensable in all sorts of ceremonial legitimation. Stage 3 also saw a
widespread fragmentation of large altepetl into their constituent parts
(or confederations thereof), the new smaller independent units oper­
ating on the same principIes and with the same type of officials,
though often lacking a governor. These independence movements took
place through energetic campaigns carried on by the seceding parts;
although especially characteristic of the late colonial period, they at
the same time represent a realization of one of the tendencies inherent
in ceHular alteptl structure from preconquest times. l1
doely intertwied amog te Naua. Te tlatoai or kig wa at tenihnsshhnnsh
Altepetl office and the system of social distinctions had always been
dosely intertwined among the Nahuas. The tlatoani or king was at
the apex of the social pyramid; teteuctin, "lords," held the same
position in each constituent part, and it was from among the pipiltin,
"nobles," that aH office holders were recruited. Unchanged in Stage
1, the terminology of noble rank not only largely continued in use
in Stage 2, it became associated with the introduced Hispanic-style
offices. Thus the governor was often called "tlatoani" even if he was
not the dynastic ruler, and the council in general would be referred
to as teteuctin and pipiltin. By Stage 3, the indigenous terminology of
social rank effectively disappeared; only rare, frozen remnants can be
found. In its place, a subtle system of differential naming patterns
had grown up, making many of the same distinctions in a more
flexible fashion.
At the level of the household, the nature and pace of change is
hard to detecto Simple continuity seems the dominant note, but kinship
terms do provide sorne interesting evidence of patterned change. As
late as Stage 2 the system was altered only by the concept of mono­
gamous Christian marriage and sorne loan words associated with it,
such as viuda and viudo, "widow" and "widower," and soltera and
soltero, "spinter" and "bachelor". (The Nahuatl word -namic, "spouse",
may or may not have been a new formation during Stage l.) In any
case, all these terms had close equivalents in preconquest times. In
Stage 3, the Nahuas moved nearer to the Spanish system, largely

1.1 Compare Haskett forthcoming and Wood 1984, and for Stage 2 Lockhart,
Berdan, and Anderson 1986.
 POSTCONQUEST NAHUA SOCIETY 111

abandoniIig the indigenous categorization of siblings, cousins, and in­

lavis, which had been the most obvious points of difference in the
two: systems, and adopting the Spanish categories instead.
In the field' of historical writing, we have already seen the distinc­
tion' betweeIiStage 2 annals, reporting many authentic preconquest
events j and those of Stage 3, devoted entirely to the postconquest
periodo Stage 2 was the time when a mixed Hispanic-indigenoUs style
of expression flourished, executed by' individuals still cognizant of
preconquest skills and lore, buttressed by a still strong solidarity of the
altepetL Stage 2 has left us the annals of Chimalpahin, the Florentine
Codex, the co11ections of Nahuatl song/8 and other such monuments,
and in 'the realm of art the great monastery complexes, complete with
stone carvings and frescoes still close to indigenous traditions. 19 Nothing
comparable exists from later times. The syncretizing, synchronizing
"titles," on the other hand, are entirely a phenomenon of Stage 3.
Only Stage 3 writings make prominent mention' of the Virgin of
Guadalupe, and this is no chance occurrence. In Stage 2 many local
cults arase around the patron saints of individual altepetl (with a pre­
conquest substratum), and Guadalupe was one of these; only in Stage
3 did the devotion to Guadalupe spread beyond the vicinity oí Mexico
City to become a symbol of the naseent sense of identification of indig­
enous (and Spanish) people with a general Spanish-Indian Mexican
framework over and aboye the home altepetl and the immediate
locality.
The marvelous and many-dimensioned new world of Nahuatl
sourCes, then, is showing us that indigenous structures andpatterns
survived the conquest on a much more massive seale and for a longer
period of time than had seemed the casee when we had to judge by
the reports ofSpaniards alone. The indigenous world retained much
social and cultural as we11 as jurisdictional autonomy, maintaining its
center of balance, concerned aboye a11 with its own affairs. Yet viewed
in their totality, Nahuatl writings show us movement and intermingling,
not stasia and isolation. Change went on constantly, and it occurred
preciSely because of contact with Spaniards. Increasing degrees of
contact with the numerica11y growing and territoria11y expanding His­
panie population caused successive general waves of indigenous struct­
ural adjustment. The Spaniards represeIited, however, more the fuel
than the motor of the development. They did not by themselves, either
18 A superb transcription, an in a way good but unreliable translation, and
an unacceptable interpretation oí the largest such collection are published in
Biernorst 1985. •
1,9 'See . Kubler 1948, McAndrew 1964, and Peterson 1985.

a
112 JAMES LOCKHART

individually or en masse, determine the nature of change; change was

a transaction between two groups and two cultures. lodian numbers
were as important as Spanish numbers. The long demographic slide
of the indigenous population, lasting well into the seventeenth century,
meant that the Spanish impact was divided among fewer. and fewer
recipients, so that a given number of man-hours oí contact represented
an ever larger "proportion of the Nahua world's. total experience.
Above aH, though, it was the nature of Nahua culture inrelation
to Spanish culture that detenmned the shape (as opposed to the tempo)
of change. Mere Spanish decisions to implant certain elements, either
through forcible imposition or through benevolent teaching, did" not
suffice to bring about the desired results. Nahua culture had to have
structureS and values close enough to the new Spanish elements to malee
them .viable in the indigenous contexto When tbis was the case, there
was often no need for imposition or teaching. Everyday contact between
Spaniards and lndians in the course of routine, often economié activi­
ties emerges as the prlmary vehicle of cultural transfer, with governm­
ental and ecclesiastical influence merely one congruent subset within
that framework. Major policy decisions of Spanish authorities, including
the establishment of encomiendas and anciHary parishes, were made in
awareness of the nature of indigenous structures; there was no other
choice. When Spanish officials tried to replicate such institutions in
areas lacking a close equivalent of". the altepetl, they failed. And even
as time went on into the later periods, Spanish administrative decisions,
including the basic ones concerning labor mechanisms, were made in
response to the social and cultural constitution of the indigenous
population at that point in its evolution, doing little more tban ratifying
what the two populations had gradually, spontaneously brought about.
To give another example, official urging from about 1770 forward
that the Nahuas do more of their record keeping in Spanishand allow
Spaniards more direct intervention in community affairs had a good
deal of effect because as a result of long-standing trends these things
were already happening and the Nahuas wereready; similar Spanish
concern in the sxiteenth century had had no impacto In areas where less
contact occurred and the indigenous sector remained in the earlier
stages, the institutional forros corresponding to Stage 1 and 2 persisted
longer, sometimes by centuries, than in the Nahua sphere, despite
occasional metropolitan urging of reform.20 Whereas in the earlier stages

'lIO Frances Karttunen (1985) has done research shawing that phenomena
corresponding to Nahuatl's Stage 3appeared in the Mayan Ianguage of Yucatan
only in the course of the eighteenth century, weIl behind" the central Mexican
 POSTCONQ.UEST, NAHUA SOOIETY 113

it was large1y Nahua-Spanish similarities that allowed adoptions to

succeed, later, as rapprochement proceeded, it might be those things
that were different which were adopted, as was seen in the case of
the kinship system.
Nahuatl writings illusttate for us the common perception that
continuity and change are often to a large extent the same thing. As
we have observed, the Spanish elements which the Nahuas were able
to take over because of a perceived affinity with things already current
in indigenous cultureimmediate1y veered from the Spanish model, or
rather never fully embodied tbat mcide1 from the beginning. A partially
unwitting truce existed in which each side of the cultural exchange
seemed satisfied thát 'its own interpretation óf a given cult~lfal phe­
nomenon was thé prévailing, if not exclusive one. Elsewheré 1 have
called tbis the process' oí Double Mistaken Identity.ri The Nahuas
accepted the new in order to remain the same; the Spaniards for their
part were generalIy willing lo accept' a new title as evidenceof a new
role definition. Under the cover of this truce or mutual incomprehens­
ion, Nahua patterns could survive at the same time that adaptations
worked themselves out over generations. Nothing could illustrate the
evolution better than Na~uad. alphabetical writing itself. Readily adopt­
ed because the Nahuas already had paper, documentary records, and
professional record keepers, alphabetical writing in Nahua hands never­
theless at first retained a large pictorial element and a dec1arriatory
text corresponding to the preconquest style of recital. TÍle illustrations
gradually faded away, and the texts assimilated more tó Spanish
models, but they never lost their idiosyncrasy entirely, andnew speci­
fically indigenous genres, such as the tides, continued to evolve. A large
task still facing historical scholarship is to determine how and to what
extent patterns like these, oí ultimately indigenous origin, entered the
general Mexican cultural stream in the nineteenth century, when upper
groups in small Mexican towns had gone over to speaking Spanish,
and Nahuatl writing, having flourished in central Mexico for two
and a half centuries, had become a thing of the pasto

schedule. Hunt 1976 and Faniss 1984 demonstrate a more general relative re­
tardation of developments in Yucatan, in both Spanish and indigenous spheres.
21 Lockhart 1985, p. 477. One could find many formulations. The essence
of the matter is that each side naively underest:imates, the complexity and idio­
syncrasy of phenomena as seen from the other side and imperviously marches
ahead in its own tradition.
114 JAMES LOCKI-lART,:, ' I ,

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