Chimalman (MH714r)

The jury is still out, but if the name ends in -man, this would render a translation of "She is Like a Shield." If the second part of her name is -ma, then some see a reference to the hand (maitl), and thus some translate her name as "Shield Bearer." But Chimalmama ("She Carries a Shield") also comes close to that translation, and the stem for mama (to carry) could be man-. Sometimes names are apocopated, dropping letters at the end.

Chimalman was the name of a famous deity-bearer--carrying Huitzilopochtli and/or his accoutrements) in the famous migration from Aztlan captured in the Tira de la Peregrinación. (See: Angela Herren Rajagopalan, Portraying the Aztec Past, 2018, 29.) For Alfredo López Austin (The Myth of Quetzalcoatl, 2015, 150), Chimalman was a progenitor/mother worthy of note, related to the concept of mother earth. In this case, from the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, the name is being used by what may be a macehualli woman. She does not have a title by her name, such as the imported term, doña.

This may be a war shield of the ihuiteteyo design, discussed by Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt (The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, Appendix G). It can come in different colors. Sometimes the symbols on this design are taken for shells. An article by Ian Mursell in Mexicolore and citing the same authors, reminds us that they are down balls, which have associations with death. He also paraphrases John Pohl, saying that the war shield was very personal, it "represented the warrior’s soul, and would generally be burned at the funeral of a dead man." We also learn from The Codex Mendoza: New Insights (2022, 24), that "the tlacuiloque drew and painted a total of eleven ihuiteteyo, one for each one of the rulers of the city."