Huitznahuatl (MH515r)

It remains to be determined if anything in the iconography could lead to a reading of nahuatl (language, speech). In tlilli in tlapalli, "the black, the red (or colors)" was a diphrasis and metaphor for writing and painting, which by extension involves language, so perhaps the coloring of the thorns here is meant to convey that. Huitznahuatl, "Thorn Speech," is a title that was held by a dignitary, as shown on folio 66 recto of the Codex Mendoza. Thorns were used for blood-letting in self-sacrificial religious rituals. Some have the red color (symbolizing blood, most likely) at the tip. Some thorns that were used in rituals were decorated with a jade bead.

John Bierhorst (A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos, 1985, 143) says that Huitznahuatl was a "name or epithet of a god to whom slaves were sacrificed in Mexico." Other sources report that one of the ethnic groups that migrated from the Seven Caves came from a place called Huitznahuac, and there was a temple with this association in Mexico Tenochtitlan. Finally, Huitznahuatl was a high title, and it had an association with the South. The name was not inaccessible for tribute-paying men of humble means, such as found in the census of modern-day Morelos and in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco (modern-day Puebla). See the Online Nahuatl Dictionary for more information about Huitznahuac and Huitznahuatl.