huacaltonco (FCbk10f121v)

huacaltonco (FCbk10f121v)
Iconography

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This iconographic example, featuring a woman carrying a baby “in a little carrier” (huacaltonco), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text two pages beyond the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This is a Chichimec woman wearing a blouse called a quechquemitl. This baby carrier would be a little huacalli, a frame for carrying something on one’s back. There were a number of such devices, perhaps for different purposes. Note the “calli” (house) element in the term, which is reminiscent of the quiver for holding arrows (see Mical MH524r).

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

The child’s cradle in the Nahua heartland was called the cozolli, but this small huacalli is more of a carrying frame with a woven reed component (perhaps involving a petlatl) for containing the child. A carrying frame for putting heavy cargo on one’s back was called a cacaxtli. A similar frame was possibly a motli, but this single example (below) has yet to be verified.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

oaltonco

Gloss Normalization:

hualtonco

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Florentine/Florentinus, Codex (FC)

Date of Manuscript:

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Syntax:

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Children, Childhood, Adolescence

Family, Kinship, even Friendship

Gender (female)

Gender (male)

Race, Ethnicity, Identity, Othering

Technology (all types), plus Tools

Transportation, Travel, Roads

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

Shapes and Perspectives:

facing right

profile view

tied, bound, or bundled

woven

Keywords:

cargar, portar, madera, petate, bebé, bebés

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

huacal(li), a frame for carrying things on one’s back, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huacalli

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

en unas pequeñas angarillas para cargar un bebé

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 121v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/121v/images/0 Accessed 2 October 2025.

Image Source, Rights:

Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”

Orthography:

"o" for u, uh, or hu

Historical Contextualizing Image: