Chiconquiyauhco (MH595v)

This place name involves a day sign that comes from the tonalpohualli, the 260-day divinatory calendar. Calendrics figure importantly in Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos. the dropping of any visual for the number seven (chicome) may seem surprising, but it is possible that this was a way to dodge the wrath of the colonial clergy, who were trying to discourage the use of the tonalpohualli. Serious events in 1539 may have made Nahua tlacuilos more cautious when writing and painting about aspects of their faith even twenth-one years later. See Patricia Lopes Don for information about the Inquisition case against don Carlos Ometochtli, a Chichimecatecuhtli (or Chichimecateuctli) executed in late 1539, in Bonfires of Culture, 2010. Bradley Benton (The Lords of Tetzcoco, 2017, 46) also writes that the case “demonstrates that blatant disregard for Christianity had serious consequences.”

As our Online Nahuatl Dictionary entry for quiyahuitl shows, there was a strong relationship between tears and raindrops. When children cried, people believed that to be a sign that it would rain. Rainfall had a strong association with the deity or priest called Tlaloc, who could bring on the rain and facilitate fertility in agriculture (Florentine Codex, Book 1). Tlaloc wore a necklace of green stones, which also symbolized water or precious raindrops.

For a visual of rain in the Florentine Codex, with its companion number "one" (another calendrical date), see this page in the Digital Florentine Codex, published by the Getty Research Institute.