zacate (Osu15v)
This painted simplex Nahuatl hieroglyph represents a bundle of grasses (zacatl) that the Nahua tribute payers had to pick, tie up, and present to the Spanish overlord, who would feed it to his horses. The blades are long and dark green. The details of the tie (a cord or rope) suggest twisted fiber.
Stephanie Wood
This manuscript represents a protest against the demands for horse fodder without offering compensation. Eventually, the viceroy would order that they receive some money in response to their petition. While the (Spanish-language gloss) here refers to “zacate” the Hispanized version of zacatl, on some other pages this same bundle is called mazatlacualli, “deer food,” given that the Nahuas did not have a name for horse, and they called horses deer when they first came off the ships. That term stuck when referring to this type of fodder, which had to be provided from the earliest days of the colonial enterprise.
Stephanie Wood
zacate
Stephanie Wood
1551–1565
Jeff Haskett-Wood
forraje, pasto, comida para caballos, tributo, protesta, resistencia, colonialismo
zaca(tl), grass, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/zacatl
el zacate
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
"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." But please cite the Biblioteca Nacional de España and this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs if you use any of these images here or refer to the content on this page, providing the URL.
