Tohueyo (MH502v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Tohueyo ("Outsider" or "Foreigner," sometimes spelled Tohuenyo) is attested here as a man's name. This glyph is built onto the tribute payer himself in the form of an addition of an inverted teardrop shape below what would be his ear. It has a black center and a white border. Pewrhaps this made him look exotic. Also, protruding from the tribute payer’s chin is something that looks like a flower, with four small circles, each one with a dot in the center. The implication may be that he was a sweet talker, a seducer of women.
Stephanie Wood
The teardrop shape may be akin to the ones described in the book Birds and Beasts (2023: 317), edited by Susan Milbrath and Elizabeth Baquedano. Plenty of evidence of "othering" will be found in this collection of hieroglyphs. See below for more examples of how face paint or other facial ornamentation is used to show differences between ethnicities.
The original Tohueyo was somewhat mythical or legendary as a Chichimec or Huasteco (two "others" in the perspective of the Nahuas of the central valley). Exotic and savage, he supposedly seduced the daughter of the Toltec ruler named Huemac, injecting Toltec society with chaos. But while Huemac sent Tohueyo off to war, hoping he would be killed, he apparently proved to be a valiant and successful warrior. Still, some people believed that the divine force Tezcatlipoca used the guise of Tohueyo to sow discord and distrust in Tollan (Tula). See: Alfonso Arellano, "Tula: Myth and History," Voices of Mexico (2008, 73–79).
Stephanie Wood
nicolas tohueyo
Nicolás Tohueyo
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
foreigners, extranjeros, ethnicities, etnicidades, othering, otherness, otredad, alteridad, nombres de hombres, men's names
tohueyo, outsider or foreigner, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tohueyo
El Otro, o El Extranjero
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 502v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=83&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).
