xihuitl (HJ276:79,pt3:178r)

This glyph appears as one of a series of six year signs (see contextualizing image) on a pictorial manuscript submitted as evidence during a land dispute between the Cuernavacan community of Tezoyuca and the Marquesado del Valle. On October 19, 1549, the indigenous lords of this pueblo, Gaspar Tlapaltecatl and Baltazar Atenpaneca, submitted what may have been an oral petition—translated and transcribed in Spanish--along with a pintura in the name of the “other Indians and natives (naturales)” of the community. The petitioners claimed that six years previously the Marqués del Valle had usurped a parcel of community land, planting it with morales (mulberry trees, undoubtedly related with efforts to found a silk industry in the region), with the six glyphs being linked by a line to a representation of such a tree (see contextualing image). The pictorial forms part of the so-called Códice del Marquesado del Valle, with this same year glyph system appearing in several other of its pictorial manuscripts. Von Mentz, Cuauhnáhuac 1450-1695, 237, has also identified this as a year glyph. See also Códices indígenas de algunos pueblos del Marquesado, 1933 and 1883, “Códice núm. 19;" and Santiago Sánchez, Códices del Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca, 165-169.