colonial indian maps of mexico
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colonial indian mapsTRANSCRIPT
The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Colonial Indian Maps in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: An Essay in Mixed CartographyAuthor(s): Serge GruzinskiSource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 13 (Spring, 1987), pp. 46-61Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum ofArchaeology and EthnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166763 .
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46 RES 13 SPRING 87
Figure 6. Coatlinchan, Texcoco (State of Mexico), no. 1678. 1578.
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Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico
An essay in mixed cartography
SERGE GRUZINSKI
The acculturation of Mexican Indians has generally been studied through the eyes of the Spanish chroniclers or mestizo and Indian historians. The
famous so-called "vision of the Vanquished" is
opposed to that of the conquerors. There is no doubt
that these written sources offer an exceptional living
testimony to the confrontation between such distinct
cultures and societies. But we must not forget that
many other expressions, such as images, paintings,
objects, art in general, that are not reducible to words
or glosses are also likely to highlight the vicissitudes of
the contact. Perhaps they can offer rather different
insights since Indian written documents, while of
primary importance, are in themselves manifestations
of the profound influence of Western literacy and
discursive logics (just think of the impact of
alphabetical writing according to J. Goody).1 But there
is another good reason for analyzing figurative testimonies.
As we know, the majority of Mesoamerican cultures
relied on an oral and pictographic transmission of
knowledge. In spite of some tendency toward
phonetization, the pictographic systems of Central
Mexico have proven to be based primarily on the
image. Far from being reducible to some sort of
rudimentary writing, their specificity seems to be
closely connected to their degree of iconicity. In other
words, any transcription into words of Indian pinturas could provide only a partial and approximate version of
their substance and content, for they would exclude
many features that are essential and meaningful: combinations of colours and forms, organization of
space, relations between figures and background, contrasts of light and tonality, selection or rejection of
geometrical laws and principles, use of symmetry or
asymmetry, and so on. In other words, many Mesoamerican cultures used the image as the specific mode of expression of their thought. That is why it is
important to know not only what the Indians said and
wrote about the Conquest, but also how they painted it.
In other respects, one of the most important (and most neglected) consequences of the Spanish conquest was the rapid adoption of alphabetical writing by the
Indian nobilities and the progressive shift?at least
among them ? from a pictographic to an alphabetic mode of expression. Many Colonial Indian codices or
pinturas ? a word commonly used by Spaniards and
Indians in the sixteenth century ? allow us to document
that history by showing the evolution of a pictorial
thinking that tried to explore, until the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the many possibilities offered by its
coexistence with a European and written expression of
thought. On the pages of the pinturas appear innovations that express the choices, borrowings,
misinterpretations, and sometimes the hesitations and
remorse of the Indian painters. Less directly, these
works also illustrate the aspirations and contradictions
of the social groups and classes to which these Indians
generally belonged, that is, the old Indian nobilities. At
the same time, and in a more general way, they
highlight the degree of irreducibility or permeability
existing between cultures that had evolved
independently for thousands of years. Nevertheless, Indian paintings are much more than the mere
reflection or projection of political, social, or economic
processes. They constitute a specific sphere that must
be considered and studied as an autonomous field, with
its own logic and deficiencies, as well as a material and
visual expression of cultural change in a Colonial
context. But it is rather difficult to describe with
accuracy changes in Indian paintings and plastic arts, for all too often we have insufficient information about
their origin, date, and context. This is not the case,
however, with the hundreds of Indian maps that are
kept in the Archivo General de la Naci?n in Mexico
City.2
I wish to thank Dr. Eileen Corrigan and Rose Hauer for their
corrections and invaluable linguistic assistance.
1. Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
2. See my doctoral thesis, Le Filet D?chir?, Soci?t?s indig?nes, occidentalisation et domination coloniale dans le Mexique central,
XVIe-XVIIIe si?cles, Paris, Universit? de Paris I, 1985, |Premi?re
Partie, La Peinture et l'Ecriturel. These maps are kept in the Ramo
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48 RES 13 SPRING 87
Insofar as we can speak of a pre-Hispanic Nahua
cartography, we must acknowledge that pre-Hispanic
"maps" were much more than mere geographical instruments, even more than a symbolic appropriation
of space. They maintained a mythical, social, political, and economic memory of the past. In many respects
they were sacred objects to be displayed in ritual contexts. It is not necessary to emphasize that our usual set of categories and divisions?social, economic,
religious?is quite inappropriate to describe the
polysemies of Amerindian objects and that we still need a new approach to these worlds, less dependent upon our old interpretations and d?coupages of the real.
Pre-Hispanic Nahua cartography followed very
specific principles. It seems to have been based mainly on a representation of space that ordered place-signs in
a regular, geometrical way that recalls, as D. Robertson
has proposed, some of our own railway and subway maps. These "maps" looked like diagrams that
conformed to the size and shape?often rectangular? of the sheet on which they were painted instead of
reflecting the peculiarity of local topography and nature. In other words, these maps displayed the
sequence of toponyms without referring to the physical distance that separated them.3
Besides this "railroad" type?well exemplified by the Map MPEAI from Cuauhtinchan in the Puebla
Valley (fig. 1)4 ? another style, somehow distinct, may
have appeared in the Texcoco region, northeast of
M?xico-Tenochtitl?n.5 It seems that this second type took into consideration many topographical
peculiarities as well as their respective positions. In
other words (and not to enter into a debate that still
remains open), one could say that pre-Hispanic Nahua were familiar with at least three types of "maps":6
1. an extremely stylized and conventional
representation of space ("railroad style" maps) 2. the rendering
? although quite approximate
? of orientation and distances between places (Texcocan
style) 3. an intermediate style combining the other two,
according to which the central part would have
reflected topographical distribution while information on the margins remained much more schematized
(Cuauhtinchan style)7
It must be stressed that such a typology is still quite
hypothetical, for while the "railway station" style is
unquestionably pre-Hispanic, the Texcocan prototype
might have been of more recent origin, that is, from
early Colonial times. The same must be adduced
regarding pre-Cortesian city maps, whose existence can
only be inferred from Colonial paintings. It is therefore
not easy to properly evaluate the changes introduced
under Spanish rule: if we admit the diffusion of a
Texcocan prototype already characterized by a more
"realistic" approach to geography, then these changes are less pronounced than if we equate pre-Hispanic
cartography with "railway station" style. In any case, decisive changes did occur, although the fate of Indian
Tierras of the Archivo General de la Naci?n (AGN) in Mexico City;
they are presented in the Cat?logos de ilustraciones, vols. 2, 3, 4, and 5, published by the AGN Mexico City, 1979. The map numeration refers to these catalogues. Note that in spite of their great
usefulness, these guides sometimes provide some topographic indications and dates that need to be criticized and corrected. Our
analysis concerns the 1530-1619 period, that is, 858 maps, 39 of
which were painted before 1570. The production climbs from 147
maps (1570-1579) to 296 (1580-1589), then it falls from 254 items
(1590-1599) to 97 (1600-1609), climbs again to 125 for the 1610
1619 period, before collapsing after 1620: 23 (1620-1629), 3 (1630
1639), and so on. Maps of Indian origin represent more than one
third of the whole production (306/858). This relation did not change until the end of the seventeenth century (17/59), but it falls in the
eighteenth century (14 Indian maps versus 969 Spanish maps). It must
be recorded that these data are subject to discussion, for it is
sometimes difficult to identify categorically the cultural origin of the
painter?Indian painters have been able to draw Spanish-style maps since the sixteenth century. In spite of that, I hope this survey can
provide information about profound and long-term tendencies.
3. Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period, The Metropolitan Schools, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1959, pp. 179-180.
4. The MPEAI ("Mapa pintado en papel europeo y aforrado en el
indiano, seg?n Boturini, 1746," also called Mapa de los linderos de
Cuauhtinchan y Totomihuacan) is part of the Historia tolteca
chichimeca (John B. Glass and D. Robertson, "A Census of Native
Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts," Handbook of Middle
American Indians, vol. 14, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1975,
pp. 220-222). This map was painted by 1532, before the writing of
the Historia (1547-1560) (see Luis Reyes, Cuauhtinchan del siglo XII
al XVI. Formaci?n y desarrollo hist?rico de un se?or?o prehisp?nico, Tesis presentada en la Escuela Nacional de Antropolog?a e Historia,
Mexico, 1974, pp. 28-32).
5. Keiko Yoneda, Los mapas de Cuauhtinchan y la historia
cartogr?fica prehisp?nica, Mexico, AGN, 1981, p. 91.
6. It is also necessary to mention the "circular maps," among which is that of Teozacoalco drawn in the Colonial period
(Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 1959, p. 180).
7. Yoneda, Los mapas, 1981, p. 97. For an example of "urban"
cartography, see the Plano en papel maguey (Robertson, Mexican
Manuscript Painting, 1959, pp. 77-83, 182).
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 49
#
?4 vrtf m
Ptt
Figure 1. Map of the boundaries of Cuauhtinchan and Totomihuacan (MPFA). Biblioth?que Nationale, Paris. Following the diagrammatic style as defined by Robertson. Cf. AGN 1, VI, 1.
Except for figure 1, all the maps in this article are from the Archivo General de la Naci?n (AGN), Mexico
City, Ramo Tierras. They are given the catalogue numbers that appear in the Cat?logos de ilustraciones del
AGN, 2, 3, 4, Mexico City, AGN, 1979.
maps was somehow different from that of other
pictographic documents.8
Apart from a clandestine production that was
severely repressed by the church, mainly related to
calendrical and ritual matters, Colonial Indian pinturas were openly produced and reproduced in order to keep some memory of the past?sometimes at the request of
the Spanish authorities?or as a familiar, traditional, and customary way to provide information about
lawsuits and tribute. Clandestine or licit painted
production?the cleavage was never clear between
what was "idolatrous" and what was not?remained
limited to Indian spheres. On the other hand, the
drawing and use of Indian maps frequently overlapped their boundaries to become an instrument of
domination in the hands of the Spanish bureaucracy. These maps played an important, even decisive, role
when they were used to support the Spanish
appropriation of Indian land in the second part of the
sixteenth century.9 It is revealing to note that in this
area, perhaps because Spanish cartographers were very
few, the Colonial administration relied mainly on the
collaboration of Indian painters to produce the maps
they needed. Far from being indifferent to their skill and
8. Robertson (Mexican Manuscript Painting, 1959, pp. 181-182)
stresses the precision of the cartographic representation of the lakes of
the valley of Mexico on the Codex Xolotl (before 1542), noting the
early influence of European-style landscape. For the Codex Xolotl, see
Glass, "A Census," Handbook, vol. 14, 1975, p. 241. On the Mapa de Santa Cruz (painted between 1555 and 1562), the valley of
Mexico became a mere landscape full of sc?nes de genre and drawn
by "a landscapist of genius" (Robertson, p. 183). See also Glass, pp. 194-195.
9. Guadalupe Rivera Mar?n de Iturbe, La propiedad territorial en
M?xico 1301-1810, Mexico, Siglo XXI Editores, S.A., 1983.
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50 RES 13 SPRING 87
knowledge of the country, it seems that the viceroys and their officers recognized the efficiency and
accuracy of the sophisticated system of conventions
provided by the Indian glyphs. For these reasons,
during the decades corresponding to the elaboration of
the Relaciones geogr?ficas?an encyclopaedic
investigation and description of the Spanish new world ?to the forced concentrations of Indian populations
and to the massive grants of land to the Spaniards, that
is, mainly from 1570 to 1600, Indian painters were
requested to draw hundreds of maps by the new
authorities.10 Most of these painters were the heirs of
the pre-Hispanic nobility and clergy; the oldest among them had been trained before the Spanish Conquest.
In addition to serving as historical and economic
pinturas, Colonial Indian maps proved quite capable of
describing the society and reality that was emerging. While they still retained many of the old symbols?
such as those related to rivers, springs,11 mountains,12
paths, habitat?they were inundated by new signs made necessary by the Colonial presence and
exploitation. More specifically, Indian painters created new glyphs to design new things: churches with their
parvis (square) and bells,13 plans en damier of Indian
pueblos, new Spanish estates such as estanciasu and
haciendas, corrals, water mills,15 covered carts drawn
by teams of oxen (fig. 2),16 and so on. Although their content was completely original?for they
corresponded to animals, buildings, and types of
Hw?k ? MM'? ta ;
Figure 2. Amat/an et Zacatepec (Morelos), no. 2018. 1600. Chariots on the Camino Real, royal road; two
rivers, and trees in European style. Cf. 1, VI, 2, 3.
10. See the order of the viceroy constantly repeated: "Har?is
pintar el asiento del pueblo en cuyos t?rminos cayere (la merced) y las dem?s estancias y tierras que en ellos estubieren prove?das. ..."
11. N?1822, Tenango (State of Mexico) 11587].
12. N?1088, Coatepec and Ayahualulco Ixtapaluca (Chalco, State
of Mexico) II574].
13. NT1679, Coatlinchan (Texcoco, State of Mexico) [1579].
14. N?1678, ibid.
15. N?2133, Tecualoya and Santa Ana (Malinalco, State of
Mexico) 11594].
16. N?2018, Amatl?n and Zacatepec (State of Morelos) [16001;
N?2362, Zempoala, San Miguel y Suchiguacan (State of Hidalgo)
[1589].
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 51
farming and transportation introduced by the
Conquerors?these signs retained the customary canons of Indian iconography. The estancia, for
instance, was an extension of the glyph "house," created by adding a steep roof to the usual sign; the
church was drawn in a stylized and two-dimensional
way, sometimes adorned with autochthonous
decorative features.17 It is hardly necessary to stress, once again, the extraordinary plasticity of pictographic
expression that definitely does not mesh with its being a
limited, fixed, and petrified form of writing. Nevertheless, this temporary enrichment of glyph
repertories cannot be disassociated from the slow
degradation of forms that also occurred. Rapid changes and skillful adaptation went hand in hand with an
indisputable exhaustion of this mode of expression.
Although at the end of the sixteenth century we still
find "classical" glyphs painted with accuracy, more
often the drawing had lost its strength, elegance, and
consistency; the line was no longer precise, continuous, and thick as it had been before the Spanish conquest. In the last two decades of the century the
glyph for river was pictured simply by two wavy lines
(fig. 3) or reduced to a roughly sketched spiral (fig. 4), or even to a mere line.18 At the same time the sign mountain was deprived of its stylized basis and became
just an irregular protuberance (Cerro de Tecuyucan)
(fig. 4).19 Hastily drawn, the footprints?used to signify tracks and traveling?became spots hardly
recognizable (fig. 4). The glyph house became
transformed into a sort of graffiti that is sometimes
difficult to identify (fig. 4).20 In other words, even the most common signs ended in losing their specificity and identity.
Colours vanished at the same time as glyph drawing
Figure 3. Ahuehuezinco and Chietla (Puebla), no. 1626. 1579. The map is sketched; the spring (fountain head), the
pointed roofs, the faces, break out of the ancient conventions.
lost its neatness and regularity (fig. 5). Whenever it can
still be observed, it appears that the chromatic range was made up of more than ten different tonalities. In some maps of the 1570s (fig. 6), blue-green and blue
grey indicated rivers and springs; yellow ochre was
used to paint hills and fallow lands; mauve, brown, and pink coloured houses and churches while Spanish estancias were green and paths were brown.21 As we
know, Indian chromatism had been a basic component of pictographic expression, although in general its
meaning and functions remain obscure.22 It may be
17. N?867, Mistepec, Chicaguastla, and Coquila (State of Oaxaca)
[1595]. See also Coatlinchan (n. 13, 14).
18. N?1678 (n. 14): the glyph is figured a kind of spiral surrounded by wavelets and painted in turquoise. N?1626,
Ahuehuezinco and Chietla, (State of Puebla) [1579]; N?2126,
Cihutepeque, Cepayahutla, and Maxtleca (Malinalco, State of
Mexico) [1581]. N?2131, San Crist?val Ecatepeque, Santa ?gueda, and Santo Tom?s (Cuautitl?n, State of Mexico), [1590]. N?2133
(n. 15).
19. N?2152, Cempoala and Santa Clara (State of Hidalgo) [1590]; N?2177 (Tlalmanalco, State of Mexico) [1599]; N?1611,
Cinacantepeque (Ixtlahuaca, State of Mexico) (1619]. N?2206, San
Lucas Iztapalapa and Cuitlahuac (Distrito Federal) [1589]; N?2131 (n.
18); N?1269, San Nicol?s Oztotipac (Otumba, State of Mexico)
[1616]. 20. N?2015, Temascaltepeque and Iztapa (State of Mexico)
[1631].
21. N?1240, Tezontepec (Pachuca, State of Hidalgo) 11571];
N?1678and 1679 (n. 13, 14).
22. Bernardino de Sahag?n, Historia general de las cosas de la
Nueva Espa?a, Tome III, Mexico City, Editorial Porr?a, 1977, pp. 341-344 (Livre XI, Chapitre XI).
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52 RES 13 SPRING 87
Figure 4. San Cristobal Ecatepec, Cuautitlan (State of Mexico), no. 2131. 1590. The sketch follows the ancient conventions (houses, river or lake, roads), reducing them
to their bare essentials. Cf. 1, VI, 2, 3.
assumed that far from simply representing the quality and use of the lands that were painted, chromatism was
used to define each space according to a sensitive and
sacred scale by marking oppositions, continuities, and
boundaries, noting realities that remained irrelevant and
invisible to a Spanish eye. We must not forget, for
instance, that the colour and design used by Indian
painters to indicate water had been one of the attributes
of Chalchiuhtlicue, water goddess and lady of the
running waters. In spite of that, in the second half of
the sixteenth century Indian chromatism kept on being eroded. There remain few entirely painted maps in the
archives. When it has not wholly vanished (fig. 5), colour is limited to a few glyphs, or merely serves to
suggest landscape in a Western way, as if Indian
painters had exchanged their traditional perception of
the environment for a more acculturated approach. For
instance, a river that was painted as a blue ribbon in
1599 ? a representation that is already quite familiar to
us?some thirty years later ran between two roughly sketched and muddy-brown-coloured banks. How to
explain such loss? No doubt there are simultaneous and
complementary explanations. We can adduce that the
sudden or gradual loss of knowledge of colours was
due to complete (or partial) cultural amnesia, and/or the
impossibility or simply the difficulty of getting colours
and dyes in societies and economies disorganized by the colonization. Finally and above all, to my mind, we
must not exclude the likelihood that Indian painters
quickly responded and adapted themselves to a
European demand that found coloured signals and
codes irrelevant, as can be inferred from Spanish maps drawn in the same context. It is obvious that depending on the time and place these factors might well play a
different role.
Regarding their global structure, Colonial Indian maps had not had to fit the format and pagination of a
European book, unlike the historical, economic, and even ritual (idolatrous) pinturas that were recomposed
?
that is, deeply and insidiously altered ? in accordance
with these exotic norms. But it is fundamental to stress
that most of these maps were adapted to a Western
vision of space. If we except some documents that recall
pre-Hispanic diagram maps (fig. 7),23 the usual painting and drawing of topographical elements was meant
to reflect?if only approximately?their physical
23. N?1818, Cuezcomatepec, Tlacoyocan, Temacac, and
Xocoyoltepec (Otumba, State of Mexico) [1593]; N?1813,
Xocoyoltepec, Tezayuca de Otumba (State of Mexico) (15931;
N?2163, Cerros Chimalpan, Tlacoyo and Teyoca (Otumba, State of
Mexico) [1599]. On the San Diego llamatl?n map (N?591 [1599]),
south of Huejutla (State of Veracruz), the signs indicating the sujetos
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 53
distribution. As stated earlier, this evolution may be
viewed as the Colonial culmination of a pre-Hispanic
prototype or as the successful introduction of some
degree of Westernization, influenced by Spanish models.24 But it might also have been a response to the
urgent need to provide the Spanish with instruments
that could be easily read and used. In any case, it
can be assumed that pre-Cortesian precedents, as
well as Western imported modelsand Colonial imperatives, combined to modify the traditional stylized and
geometrical ways of painting. This new conception and organization of space
integrated a number of innovations and changes that
increased the Westernization of Indian maps, as, for
instance, the orientation of space indicated by churches. Christian churches that are painted on Indian
maps to represent the pueblo, open toward the west, in
conformity with Christian tradition that generally sets
the choir eastward (fig. 8).25 Since they are always
represented facing the reader, churches tend to impose on the map their own orientation. Less commonly, a
sun drawn on the top of the page indicated the east in a wholly Spanish manner (fig. 8).26 In other respects, distances clearly indicated on the maps (in feet or
leagues) (fig. 3) prefigured our modern scale.27 This means that space not only was oriented, it was also
measured. While it is true that alphabetical and
numerical indications of distance and orientation were
generally drawn by a Spanish hand, one must assume
that this intervention was always programmed and
made possible by the Indian painter, who prepared an
empty space with the purpose of receiving and putting this new information together.
It would be a mistake to reduce the Westernization
of space to the mere imposition of some arithmetical
and materialistic concept of space. The introduction of
landscape?often pictured by mountainous lines
covered with trees that call to mind, oddly, some D?rer
gouaches (fig. 6)?or just the hint of remote, blue, and
shaded skylines reveal the influence of Spanish (and
European) painting and engraving as well as the many frescoes adorning recently built churches and convents
Figure 5. San Lucas Iztapalapa and Cuitlahuac (Federal District), no. 2206. 1589. Fields, with an indication of the
villages to which they belong, mountains, and a quarry. Cf. 1,
VI, 2, 3.
are connected by a line that figures a rectangle, the centre of which is
occupied by the cabecera of the district. We can observe the same
formalization imposed by the size and space of the sheet on the San
Bartolo Malila map (Molango, State of Hidalgo) (N?593 [1599]): the
estancias (hamlets) figure three vertical columns, and their succession
along the roads is obviously more important than their respective
position in the region. The diagrammatic scheme survived until the
end of the Spanish rule according to the Coyotepec map (N?969),
close to Tepej? de La Seda (State of Puebla), produced in 1794 by the
local caciques: toponymie glyphs are still figured on the four sides of
a quadrilateral. Although it is probably the copy of an ancient model, this conservatism carried over profound continuities regarding
perception and reproduction of space. 24. The Atlatlaucan map (State of Morelos), drawn for the
Receptor de la Real Audiencia, Antonio de Turcios, in 1539 (N?546),
figures the bend of paths and rivers, situates the irregularity of the
ground, and indicates hamlets and villages by painting a chapel.
Although the hand is an Indian one?as suggested by the style of
churches?this map is already (some twenty years after the conquest)
strongly Westernized, showing the precocity of Indian adaptation to
European request and criteria.
25. N?1685, Santiago and Coatepec (Guatepeque, State of
Veracruz) [1583]; N?1088 (n. 12).
26. N?566, Coatinchan (Texcoco, State of Mexico) [1584].
27. See, for the number of feet, maps N?1088, 1540, 1822, 1829;
for indication of leagues, maps N?1705, 1867/1868, 1882, 2064,
2091, 2216.
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54 RES 13 SPRING 87
Figure 7. Coyotepec and Zoyamazalco, Tepeji de la Seda (Puebla), no. 969. From a 1794 copy. A map in diagrammatic style, with glyphs glossed in
Spanish and Chocho: 'Thee chago quo yoii, ?sta es el ydolo de caras
dos . . ." and so on.
(fig. 8). This is an innovation that can be observed in
other pictographic documents painted toward the
1570s. While it could be combined with the old
chromatism and conventions, it often seems that
European-style landscape was frequently used in a quite traditional way, rather than simply to give a more
"realistic" view of the surroundings. Thus a new sign or
a neoglyph would mark the boundaries and reaffirm a
symbolic and lasting relation to mountains and woods
that the Nahua considered as "sacred" places through which contact with other and divine worlds was made
possible. The frequent integration of mountain glyphs in
a landscape (fig. 8) corroborates that hypothesis. Once
more, insofar as it is difficult to go beyond form and
appearance, historians must not mistake a formal
substitution for a decisive change. Another tendency appeared, however, one that
seems to have been much more destructive. As we
have seen, Indian maps gradually lost colour and
stylization. Their polished curves and carefully drawn
contours disappeared, to be replaced by a rough and
quick sketching, not to speak of a clumsy drawing.28 These maps were not drafts for more sophisticated
paintings. They were Indian versions (fig. 9) of Spanish
maps drawn in the same period that looked like
sketches hastily done: some sort of hazy frothing was
supposed to indicate a relief, the hasty zigzag of a pen intended to mark a stream, some quick hatching was
the signal for a pueblo (fig. 10),29 and so on. Obviously
irregular lines, rudimentary schematism, and ?
28. N?1692-1, Gueguetoca (Huehuetoca) (Cuautitl?n, State of
Mexico) [1590]; N?2126 (n. 18); N?2015 (n. 20).
29. N?1682, Apaseo and Villa de Celaya, Guanajuato [1579];
N?1758, Rio Atoyac and Arroyo de Apapastle, Huejotzingo, Puebla
[1589]; N?1564, Tepeaca, Puebla [1583]; N?1275, Santa Maria
Sultepec, Tejupilco, and Tepuztepec (Sultepec, State of Mexico)
11568]; N?1276, San Lorenzo Zayula (Tulancingo, State of Hidalgo)
[1617]; N?1286, Atotonilco and Valle de Santa Catalina
Chichimequillas (San Luis, State of Quer?taro) [16091;-N?2116, San
Matheo Hueychiapan (Xilotepeque, State of Hidalgo) (1583]. We
must confess that a better knowledge of Spanish cartography would
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 55
Figure 8. Coatlinchan, Texcoco (State of Mexico), no. 566. 1584. The church faces the west, the fish in the lake are probably inspired by European engravings; at the top right, two glyphs are
inscribed in a mountain.
whenever colour was used ? smearing had little in
common with the sophisticated calligraphy of pre
Hispanic paintings. But they made the Indian painters familiar with Spanish sketching.
No doubt, Spanish sketchings were also more
personal and subjective (fig. 10). They carried
information that was more condensed, restricted, and
univocal. They constituted a form of abstraction of the
real that relied on a range of conventions less
systematically standardized and much less easily identifiable than those used on Indian maps. The
selection of significant features could vary, ranging from
global configurations to tiny segments. Spanish
sketching mixed elements that were immediately
comprehensible with others that depended more on the
context or on the specific manner of the sketcher. In
other words, it corresponded to a somewhat less
imperative code that emphasized personal intervention to the point that on occasion Spanish drawing could be
hard to understand without the accompaniment of a
written commentary. It is obviously impossible in these few pages to deal
with another element that played a considerable part in
the Westernization of Indian paintings: the introduction
of alphabetical writing among Indian nobilities.
Nevertheless, one must remember that Spanish
sketching and alphabetical writing can hardly be
dissociated: they were nothing but two different
modulations of the same stroke of the pen. Moreover, in some cases legend and drawing mingled, to the
point of producing "written maps" in which legends drawn in cartouches filled the places they were
supposed to describe (fig. 11). These legends invaded
the whole space of these Spanish maps and determined
their stylistic composition to such an extent that
be absolutely indispensable to complete this analysis. See, for
instance, Bruno-Henry Vaissi?re, "Des cartes en Espagne," in Cartes
et figures de la terre, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980,
pp. 167-177.
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56 RES 13 SPRING 87
sometimes alphabetical writing was wholly substituted
for drawing.30 Spanish "written maps" (fig. 12)?as an
extreme variant of sketching?constituted the European
counterpart of the most traditional Indian maps (fig. 13). Instead of arranging glyphs according to the format of
the sheet, "written maps" set out alphabetical
inscriptions in accordance with geometrical axes or
quadrilaterals.31 Other things being equal, both Spanish and Indian maps manifested a high degree of
abstraction. It is worth emphasizing that in these cases, as well as in many others, it would be misleading for us
to systematically associate Westernization and a more
"realistic" vision of the environment and of space. On
the contrary, convention and formal ization were
operating on both sides; that did not, however, make
the shift from one system to another an easy task. For
one thing, it must be noted that sketching involves both
a perfect mastery of alphabetical writing and the
assimilation of drawing conventions and patterns, both
empirical and implicit, that combine constantly with
improvisation and subjectivity. Sketching proceeded from a sixteenth-century European literate society that
tolerated, to a certain degree, the individual alteration
of social and cultural codes, while Indian societies seem to have imposed canons and conventions with a
more rigid uniformity. In line with this hypothesis, the
learning and practice of sketching by Indian painters is
likely to reflect a corresponding change in the direction
of individualization. It would be instructive to relate
this hypothesized evolution to the contemporaneous
changes we have observed in the Indian representation of the human body, which shifted gradually from a
composite representation to the (for us) more familiar
drawing of a unified silhouette. On a more general note, access to alphabetical writing and sketching and
to private property and money, as well as the adoption
Figure 9. Temascaltepec and Iztapa (State of Mexico), no. 2015. 1631.
30. N?2159-1, Ocuituco (State of Morelos) [1575]; N?2110,
Ac?mbaro, (State of Guanajuato) [1594]. N?2194, Nacatepeque
(Huejotzingo, State of Puebla) [1591]; a long commentary figures a
rectangular space: "Eso es el sitio del ganado menor. . ."; on the top of the sheet a sun indicates west; on the right and left margins, written texts are placed parallel to each other: "Tierras de Francisco
de Montealegre [ . . . ] Tierras de Juan Ser?n Carbajal." 31. Compare N?2163 (n. 23) and N?2194 (n. 30).
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 57
Figure 10. San Matheo Hueychiapan, Xilotepeque (Hidalgo), no. 2116. 1583. In the middle: 'lands that are being requested"; from bottom to top: "road that goes from Hueychiapan to Chapantongo."
of confession, Christian matrimony, and belief in
personal salvation, might well have been some of the
many manifestations of the long and complex process of acculturation of the individual to be found in the
Indian nobilities.
Nevertheless, acculturated Indian painters encountered still another obstacle. For the Spanish,
writing and sketching were intended to pinpoint the
essential, to the detriment of any complementary, more
subordinate issue?whether it be religious, social,
ecological, or even aesthetic. Spanish sketching was
extremely restrained, spare, and unadorned. It served a
limited, well-defined purpose: to localize an estate, a
grant of lands on a territory. On the other hand, Indian
maps in rather a contradictory and complementary way, seemed more concerned with the soil itself
(terroir) or the area as a whole. Indian maps carried
much more information and generally reflected a
profound knowledge of all the places painted. Moreover, pictographic expression was systematically
polys?mie: for instance the glyph that was used to
signify (and to show) Coatepec (i.e., a snake on the top of a mountain) or Citlaltepec (a star on the same
mountain) not only identified places but also referred to
what was known of the so-called mythical origins of the
pueblo, or even to a complex cosmology.32 In contrast, the Spanish sun (a circle surrounded with rays) that
indicated the map orientation was simply a convention
limited strictly to cartographic use and, somewhat more
purposefully, to some ornamental end. Reality was
different for Spaniards and Indians. They did not relate to the world in the same way, even though they could
understand and communicate with one another to some
degree. In other respects, such as the mode of expression,
Indian glyphs may be seen as autonomous entities. That
is, they had meaning in themselves, while Spanish
drawing often needed written comments to keep it from
being ambiguous or hard to interpret. To indicate a
mountain, the drawing of a slightly curved line was not
enough ? it had to be complemented by the label
serran?as?while the single Indian mountain glyph was
more immediately understandable, even for a Spaniard.
32. N?1088 (n. 12); N?1822 (n. 11); see the Christianisation of
both sign and soil figured by the drawing of a cross on the top of the
snake mountain: N?1269 (n. 19). On the contrary, some maps maintain the memory of old shrines until the end of the century. Cf.
N?2154, San Juan del Rio (State of Quer?taro) 11590]; a Spanish hand
indicates: "estos son cues." N?2091, Citlaltepeque (Zumpango, State
of Mexico) 11606].
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58 RES 13 SPRING 87
Figure 11. Ocuytuco (Morelos), no. 2159-1. 1575. At the top: "The pueblo of Ocuytuco"; in the middle "merced de tierras son dos cavallerias" ("allotment of land is two caballer?as").
In short, the gap that separated these two
cartographic approaches not only was the product of
completely distinct personalities, categories, and
objectives, but it also involves distinct ways of
combining modes of expression. I would adduce that
Indian painters who learned and assimilated Spanish
sketching must have adopted a new approach to
themselves and their environment, as well as a
complete mastery of alphabetical writing. Clearly, it was not at all easy to add up and articulate together all these features without at the same time being deeply acculturated. When assimilation remained partial,
Spanish sketching seems to have transformed the Indian manner and practice in a more superficial and
pernicious way, by merely introducing an alteration of
Figure 12. Nacatepeque, Huejotzingo (Puebla), no. 2194. 1591. Cf. 1, VI, 2, 3.
line and stroke, by imposing a quicker and more
chaotic style. In addition, it rejected all the elements of
the glyphs that appeared to be superfluous?such as
colour?or excessively complex.33 I believe that more
than the introduction of landscape, the adoption?or better, the evolution toward Spanish sketching? contributed greatly to the disintegration of the Indian
tradition by depriving it of so much of its specificity. In any case, one must not imagine a gradual,
straightforward evolution of the expressive modes that
would make it possible for us to date with precision the
rejection of an Indian process or the diffusion of a new
33. Some maps (NT1762, 1765) suggest the modalities of this
influence when we observe a Spanish hand writing and sketching on
a background drawn by an Indian painter.
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 59
European technique. From a rich, albeit limited and
incomplete, documentation, it is quite clear that
modifications and alterations in composition of space,
range of conventions, and other relevant features
evolved quite differently in accordance with the
different places, times, and painters. Until the
beginning of the seventeenth century, we discover some continuity in the traditional manner of map
drawing. In an Indian map drawn in 1601 in Tepeji del
Rio (in the modern state of Hidalgo, north of the valley of Mexico), the accuracy of line, lack of landscape, and use of colours and "classical" conventions remained
essential elements in its composition.34 Three years
later, in the region of Puebla, another map looks like a
rudimentary pochade, lacking old signs and permeated
by a landscape adorned with hills and woods.35
Nevertheless, some twenty years earlier, close to
Malinalco (south of the valley of Mexico), the map was
already sketched and the hills covered with trees.36
Instead of suggesting a strict and precise chronology, such variants draw our attention to the coexistence of
distinct modes of cartographic representation, some of
which could have been more traditional and others
more Westernized. It is important to note that these
modes may be found coexisting at the same time in the same region and sometimes in neighboring pueblos.37
Moreover, they can even be found on the same map, when glyphs mix with watersheds or when churches are represented both two- and three-dimensionally,
using a form of perspective (fig. 14).38 The interplay of these two modes was not a balanced
one, however; Westernization of space tended to be a
definitive borrowing, while the traditional manner
became more and more distorted and mutilated, to the
point that pictographies disappeared on most of the
maps drawn after 1620, at least?it must be specified ? on those made at the request of Spanish authorities.
As a manifestation of the decline of both a technique
?* J(?** F*Q HUMP*n lO . JMBB^Mrfft(E*^?F: \_
Figure 13. Cerros Chimalpan, Tlacoyo and Tecoyo, Otumba (State of
Mexico), no. 2163. 1599. Cf. 1, VI, 2, 3.
34. N?2016.
35. N?2019, San Juan Ixtaquimaxtitl?n (Tlatlauquitepec, State of
Puebla) [1604). 36. N?2126(n. 18).
37. Compare two maps from the region of Texcatepec (State of
Hidalgo), painted in 1599. On the Tornacuxtla map (N?590) style is
indigenous, with the usual range of autochthonous conventions:
toponymie glyphs, footmarks, streams. Colonial glyphs are painted in
the old-fashioned style, and the map is still based on a system of
signs placed on a rigid rectangular frame. Contrarily, on the
Tlicuauhtla map (N?589), Colonial conventions and images are
multiplied: the plan en damier of the pueblo, cattle grazing on a
meadow, a roughly sketched habitat, a wooden and uneven
landscape on the first and back stage. Cf. the two Tlalmanalco maps
(N?1829)and N?2177 [1599].
38. N?2049, Nopaluca and Santa Maria (Tecamachalco, State of
Puebla) [1595]. See also N?2126 (n. 18).
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60 RES 13 SPRING 87
Figure 14. Nopaluca and Santa Maria, Tecamachalco (Puebla), no. 2049. 1595. The juxtaposition of two
styles: the two-dimensional church of Nopaluca with its indigenous lookouts facing the church of Santa Maria.
and a form of knowledge, this process of dissolution
must be studied and emphasized. It must not, however, be overestimated, for an Indian cartography did survive, or better, evolve, until the end of Colonial times by
combining compromises, borrowings, and adaptations devised and experimented with in the last decades of
the sixteenth century. These maps used a reduced
pictographic repertory, often displaying glyphs scattered
and lost in the landscape: they resorted to a
rudimentary perspective while still keeping some
tendencies toward geometric formalization. Some of
them?those drawn within and rather exclusively for
Indian communities?may show the return or the
persistence of an autochthonous structuring of space.
Indeed, it must be stressed that their apparent fixity and
conservatism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are due more to the fact that repeated copies
were made by successive painters than to any lack of
creativity or some long and irreversible lethargy. But
this is another story.39
These sixteenth-century maps deserve a much
longer, more detailed study. As the product of a
colonial and cross-cultural situation, they demonstrate
materially and visually a form of temporary collaboration between the leading Indian groups and
the Spanish bureaucracy. Like Japanese mamban, African fetiches, and Mexican ?dolos and santos, these
pinturas are new objects, born from the interaction of
the Western world with other cultures and societies.
This is why they are such excellent documents for
studying the process of Colonial domination and
Westernization in sixteenth-century Mexico. However, these objects (which are at the same time images) are
also complex, ambiguous, and changing. While on the
one hand sixteenth-century Indian maps became
pragmatic instruments for foreign colonization, on the
other they sometimes continued to convey through
glyph and colour symbolism traces of the old relation to
39. N?1155 Santa Catalina, San Pedro Cuitlahuac, San Francisco Tetlalpa (Chalco, Distrito Federal) [1656]. N?629, San Juan Cuiluco et
Huaquechula (State of Puebla) [1694].
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Gruzinski: Colonial Indian maps in sixteenth-century Mexico 61
space and environment. It is interesting to note that in
spite of being converted into mere material auxiliaries
of the Spanish colonization, many of these maps could
still retain and manifest a cultural identity that could
not have been expressed at that time either in words or
in writing. They reveal on a plastic and iconic level a
persistence of beliefs, canons, and mental structures
that was strong enough to permit in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the resurgence of a more
traditional expression of space (and use of maps) such as we find, for instance, in the false Indian land titles called t?tulos primordiales.
But, indeed, is it appropriate to speak of "tradition"
and "resurgence"? Or of "alteration" and "decay"? We
are constantly tempted to equate pre-Hispanic cultures
with tradition, fixity, "classicism," and authenticity, while equating Colonial rule with syncretism,
decadence, and chaos. Unquestionably, historians
should view critically their concepts of tradition and
syncretism and revise them, instead of remaining
prisoners of these old conceptual dyads, which are
themselves often based on implicit moral or aesthetic
postulates. In actuality, the capacity for assimilation
and creation that Indian painters displayed underwent
recurrent processes of innovation and rejection that
evolved constantly and followed simultaneous,
divergent paths. This dynamic reality should not be
reduced to a struggle between two protagonists. Pre
Hispanic "tradition" was in fact simply the Colonial
remembrance and reinterpretation of more or less
idealized norms, while European influence was a
composite whole filtered through Indian minds that were already partly Christianized and acculturated. This
complexity, revealed in maps and other documents,
explains why instead of disappearing or arriving at a
complete phonetization, pictographic expression could
have inspired the new and multiple expressive forms that flourished in the second half of the seventeenth
century. Nor need we minimize the well-known
demographic, social, economic, and religious crisis that
struck Indian populations during the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth century. What we wish to emphasize here is the extreme complexity of Indian cultural trends:
they cannot be reduced either to some cataclysmic annihilation or to some underground pre-Hispanic
perpetuation. Sixteenth-century Mexican Indian maps, I
believe, afford many opportunities that can help us to
revise this romanticist and stereotyped vision of the
Indian past and to greatly enrich the testimony that our
written sources provide.40
40. Remo Guidieri, L'abondance des pauvres, Paris, Seuil, 1984.
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