Huitzoco (Mdz37r)

If this is not a digging stick for agricultural uses, it may be a pointed war club. Notice how the white rectangle in the middle of the stick has a resemblance to some of the examples of quemitl from various other glyphs; this was apparently a bib that could be warn over a person's face or chest. The association may give the huitzoctli a possible ritual dimension. Huitzoctli digging sticks are mentioned in a seventeenth-century testament as being brought out to break soil in a field when this action had a religious significance. [See: James Lockhart, The Nahuas (1992), p. 201.] The huitz- part of the term may have a connection to huitztli, thorn or spine. The huictli was a similar instrument, and both a pre-contact huitzoctli and a huictli are on display in the museum of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. Wikipedia offers additional examples, many from manuscripts. The one from the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca has a handle resembling a serpent head. After contact, a synonym for huictli was coa, not actually related to coatl (serpent, snake), because it was a term imported to Mexico from the Caribbean, according to James Lockhart, The Nahuas (1992), 531, note 281. Mexicolore also has a short study of the huictli. Many huictli tools were shaped like a very large thorn (huitztli), with a flat blade in the lower part.