Tequixquipan (T2681:6:2r)

This compound glyph appears on a mapa submitted by Indigenous petitioners from the pueblo of Cuitlahuacan, Chalco, sometime before March 24, 1579, when a canoe-born investigation was carried out of a region of chinampas (artificially constructed raised fields represented by narrow rectangular dark brown bars in the shallow waters of a laguna) near the sujeto (dependency) of Santa María Magdalena Michcalco (also called an estançia). Tequixquipan was another sujeto in the area and appears on the same map (see the historical contextualizing image). According to the petitioners, a man named Bartolomé Arias was attempting to gain a property grant from the viceregal authorities that would compromise indigenous land tenure (an effort that ultimately failed). Contextually, the glyph for Tequixquipan is sited on a black-outlined oval figure—with a band of green shading inside running around the boundary—that might indicate an island (a similar element on the map lacks any other features, but is glossed as tierras as opposed to the chinampa elements, which are glossed in Spanish as camellones, or "ridges"). In fact, one of the Spanish records associated with the map contains the statement that a neighboring community called Michcalco is on something “like a kind of island” (folio 4r), a featured rendered in the same way as that of Tequixquipan. Whether this is a natural feature, a more substantial kind of chinamitl, or a combination of these things is not entirely clear This piece of land may be a second semantic indicator for an inhabited place (see the historical contextualizing image). An alphabetic gloss of the place name is written next to the left wall of the house. This was partly damaged when the thick, black outline for the island was added on top of it; a certain amount of reconstruction was necessary to make the gloss readable (see below).