tecpan (HJ276:79pt2:78r)

This glyph appears on a pictorial manuscript submitted as evidence during a land dispute between the Cuernavacan community of Tecpan and the Marquesado del Valle. On October 11, 1549, the indigenous lords of this barrio (one of Cuernavaca’s principal subdivisions), don Diego, Francisco, and Agustín, submitted what may have been an oral petition—translated and transcribed in Spanish--along with a pintura in the name of the “other lords and Indians” of the community. The petitioners claimed that five years previously the Marqués del Valle had usurped a parcel of community land called Tetlaltitlan. The pictorial forms part of the so-called Códice del Marquesado del Valle. The depiction of a tecpan, or “palace,” here also serves as a glyph for the place name, Tecpan, referring to the barrio to which the land is said to belong. As shown in the contextualizing image, it is linked by a line to five concentric circles with mesh inside signifying that number of years (the determination that these are year signs comes from the litigation records). Since there is no Nahuatl text associated with these records the word that would have been used by the Nahua inhabitants to describe their community is not certain. For several works with information about and some analysis of the Códice del Marquesado del Valle, see Códices indígenas de algunos pueblos del Marquesado, 1933 and 1883, “Códice num. 8; Santiago Sánchez, Códices del Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca, 114-118; and Von Mentz, Cuauhnáhuac 1450-1695, 118, 473.