acalli (Mdz17v)
This element, acalli (canoe, boat), comes from the compound place name, Acalhuacan. It features a canoe that is the orange-tan color used for wood in this manuscript. The ends curve upward and may have a flat bow and stern (as opposed to the way many canoes have pointed ends today). On the side of the canoe in the original, compound glyph (below, right), there are two thick black, vertical, parallel lines that represent the "hua" (possession) element in the place name. The simple "canoa" that we provide as iconographical support for this, stripped-down canoe, does not have those lines.
Stephanie Wood
For another sixteenth-century example of an acalli, see the Florentine Codex, Book II, folio 45 verso.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
boats, launches, canoes, barcos, lanchas, canoas
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/acalli17v%28nohua%29FromAcalhuacan.png?itok=qwH2P0fB)
acal(li), canoe or boat, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acalli
la canoa
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 17 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 45 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).