Chimalpopoca (MH550r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Chimalpopoca (“The Shield Smokes,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a round war shield with concentric circles around the perimeter, four half circles evenly spaced and attached to the interior of the large circles, and one small circle at the center. Three swirling puffs of smoke rise vertically from the shield. They are painted gray.
Stephanie Wood
"Smoking Shield," as most translate the name, was a prominent leader in the autonomous era, with one especially prominent man with this name living in the early fifteenth century. It is interesting that boys in the mid-sixteenth century might still have been named for him, although perhaps the concept of a smoking shield was what was appealing.
This may be a simplified war shield of the ihuiteteyo design, discussed by Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt (The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, Appendix G). It can come in different colors. Sometimes the symbols on this design are taken for shells. An article by Ian Mursell in Mexicolore and citing the same authors, reminds us that they are down balls, which have associations with death. He also paraphrases John Pohl, saying that the war shield was very personal, it "represented the warrior’s soul, and would generally be burned at the funeral of a dead man." We also learn from The Codex Mendoza: New Insights (2022, 24), that "the tlacuiloque drew and painted a total of eleven ihuiteteyo, one for each one of the rulers of the city."
Stephanie Wood
Juā chimalpopocā
Juan Chimalpopoca
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
shields, escudos, smoking, humeante, humo

chimal(li), war shield, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chimalli
popoca, to smoke, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/popoca
Chimalpopoca, ruler's name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chimalpopoca
La Rodela (o El Escudo) Humeante
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 550r, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=179&st=image
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
