cacahuatl (Osu10v)

This simplex glyph for a cacahuatl (cacao bean) stands for a larger quantity, as shown in the contextualizing image, both from folio 10 verso of the Codex Mendoza (also Image 24). This glyph is expressed as part of a large debt that the Nahuas were expecting Viceroy don Luis de Velasco to pay them for 4,141 loads of grass that they collected and delivered to serve as food for the colonizers’ horses. The full debt is laid out in groups of twenty pesos (in the form of six flags, each one a tecpantli), four individual pesos, seven tomines (and each tomin was an eighth of a peso), and, finally, 415 cacao beans (the number being expressed with a centzontli, for 400, and three horizontal rows of five small circles, for the final 15 cacao beans). The beans are a tan color, and the circles representing the number 15 are painted a light red (almost a pink).