Chichimecatlalli (FCbk11f231r)
This iconographic example, featuring the land of the Chichimeca peoples north of central Mexico (Chichimecatlalli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a man in a loincloth in profile, facing right. He is using a bow and arrow to hunt a deer located–in this landscape setting–on the right. It is running away from the hunter, but its head is turned back, looking at him.
Stephanie Wood
A search for hieroglyph names beginning Chichimec- turns up a number of bows and arrows, along with the heads of men whose cheeks have face paint of perpendicular lines that create something of a mesh pattern. These men are often called Chichimec Yaotequihua, warriors of the Chichimeca peoples. It may be a title among the Mexica or (more broadly) the Nahuas, derived from an admiration for Chichmecs as fierce warriors. Perhaps this is true, too, of the Chichimeca Tecuhtli (see below). Finally, there is a woman who is a Chichimecatl (individual Chichimec), wearing a short quechquemitl that leaves her midriff bear. She is carrying a child in a woven carrier on her back, and in her right hand she carries what may be a dead rabbit. It is unclear if she hunted that rabbit or it was caught for her. She has another object in her left hand; it is difficult to identify.
Stephanie Wood
Chichimeca tlalli
Chichimecatlalli
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
cazar, cazadores, arco, arcos, flecha, flechas, maxtlatl
Chichimecatlalli, the land of the Chichimeca, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Chichimecatlalli
la tierra de los chichimecas
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 231r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/231r/images/0 Accessed 16 November 2025.
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
