cuexyo (Mdz20v)
This is an iconographic example of a war shield that has the design called cuexyo. It has a nose ring at the top and three at the bottom of the circular part of the shield. The feathers of the shield and the feathers hanging below it are primarily red, but other colors are yellow, green, and turquoise blue.
Stephanie Wood
This is one of several versions of this shield design that we are tracking from the Codex Mendoza. It is the main cuexyo design identified by Berdan and Anawalt (The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, Appendix G). To this main version, they add four variants. This most numerous design is discussed in some detail in an article in Arqueología Mexicana. em>Cuexyo with the absolutive (cuexyotl) would be a noun, but here it seems to be modifying the noun for shield (chimalli), so it serves as an adjective. See also our dictionary entry for cuextecatl, which refers to a feather suit worn by a dancer.
Stephanie Wood
xx. rodelas
desta divisa
de plumas
veinte rodelas de esta divisa de plumas
Stephanie Wood
by 1553 at the latest
shields, escudos, rodelas, feathers, plumas
cuexyo, a feathered shield design, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuexyo
cuexteca(tl), a feathered suit for a dancer, or the person who wears this suit, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuextecatl
Codex Mendoza, folio 20 verso, https://codicemendoza.inah.gob.mx/inicio.php?lang=english.
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).
