cihuatzitzintin (LTlaxUT2)
This iconographic example is included here for possible comparisons with Nahuatl hieroglyphs. It features a group of five Nahua women from the Tlaxcallan region. They are all dressed in exquisite textiles and they carry extra pieces of cloth as though they are about to gift them to someone, perhaps the Spaniards. They are shown in a ¾ view, but their heads are in a profile view, facing left. The first one in the line and the third one are wearing blouses much like the one that Marina wears in many of the scenes of this manuscript fragment. All five women are barefooted. Their hair is long with bangs; it is not worn twisted upward in the neaxtlahualli style of adult women. Glosses give the names of the first three women.
Stephanie Wood
The first woman in line is the daughter of Xicotencatl, who plays a major role in the Tlaxcallan alliance with the invading party. Her name is supposedly Luisa Tecuilhuatzin, although Camilla Townsend (Malintzin’s Choices, 2006) challenges the orthography, suggesting Tlecuilhuatzin or Tecuhcihuatzin instead. Anyway, she was later married off to Spaniard Pedro de Alvarado. Her sister, Tolquequetzaltzin, was later baptized Lucía and given to Pedro’s brother Jorge de Alvarado in marriage. [See: Adrian Recinos, Doña Leonor de Alvarado y otros estudios, 1958, 13.] The third woman is Coaxochitzin. A great many Tlaxcalteca women were “given” by the elite men of this region to the Spaniards, even to the point that Cortés put a stop to it.
Stephanie Wood
cihuatzitzītin
chihuatzitzintin
Stephanie Wood
1540s
Jeff Haskett-Wood
jóvenes, muchachas, hija, hijas, esposa, esposas, mujer, mujeres, mantas, telas, ropa, tributo, tributos, regalos
cihua(tl), woman (plural and reverential: cihuatzitzintin), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cihuatl
las mujeres, hijas de los hombres del élite
Stephanie Wood
Benson Latin American Collection, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, The University of Texas at Austin https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:3c754fd0-b27f-4af7-9cf...
The Benson Library has kindly provided the digital images and permission to put them into our Mapas Project in 2015. Use and reproduction from this project: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/, but please also cite the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood, (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, ©2020-present). Version 1.0.
