Huitznahuac (T2781:11:511r)

The place glyph for Huitznahuac appears among a cluster of other images of tepetl on the lower left side of the manuscript (see the historical contextualizing image). The pictorial was created sometime around 1590 and is included among the folios of an investigation into a request by Luis de Sandoval for a grant of a sitio de estancia de ganado menor (ranch for small livestock) and six caballerías of land located near the cerro (hill) of Hutiznahuac, which is within the limits of the municipality of Cempohuallan (today, Zempoala, Hidalgo). A Spanish-language gloss to the left of the place glyph states, “huitznahuac donde se pide el sitio de ti[erra]” (Huitznahuac, where the landsite is being requested). The requested sites are also in the vicinity of the pueblos of Tlaquilpan and San Antonio de Octoyuca. This pictorial manuscript is discussed in Pulido Rull, Ana, Mapping Indigenous Land: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020). An image of the manuscript is found as Plate 4 in the book.

John Bierhorst (A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos, 1985, 143) says that Huitznahuatl was a "name or epithet of a god to whom slaves were sacrificed in Mexico." Other sources report that one of the ethnic groups that migrated from the Seven Caves came from a place called Huitznahuac, and there was a temple with this association in Mexico Tenochtitlan. Finally, Huitznahuatl was a high title, and it had an association with the South. The name was not inaccessible for tribute-paying men of humble means, such as found in the census of modern-day Morelos and in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco (modern-day Puebla). See the Online Nahuatl Dictionary for more information about Huitznahuac and Huitznahuatl.