mesoamerican philology as an interdisciplinary study: the ... · tec, mazatec, and popoloca, spoken...

Ethnohistory 58:4 (Fall 2011)�DOI 10.1215/00141801-1333688Copyright 2011 by American Society for Ethnohistory

Mesoamerican Philology as an Interdisciplinary Study: The Chochon (Xru Ngiwa) “Barrios” of Tamazulapan (Oaxaca, Mexico)

Bas van Doesburg, Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa, Universidad Autónoma “Benito Juárez” de Oaxaca Michael W. Swanton, Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa, Universidad Autónoma “Benito Juárez” de Oaxaca

Abstract. This article is a diachronic investigation of a form of social organization of the Chochon (Xru Ngiwa, Chocholtec), a Mesoamerican people. Speci�cally, it is a philological examination of one form of a customary community subdivi-sion, usually called sindi in Chochon and barrio in colonial Spanish. Thanks to the discovery of a remarkable set of colonial writings in the Chochon language from Tamazulapan (Oaxaca, Mexico)—complemented by secondary documentation, interviews with elders, and toponymy—it has been possible to trace the sindi from precolonial times to the twentieth century. The �ndings reveal multiple adaptive strategies used by the sindi across the centuries even within a relatively compact area. This article also illustrates a methodological approach in which a broad philo-logical perspective opens the door to additional, interdisciplinary types of contextu-alizing data that can enrich our readings of the textual documentation.

Cabe una advertencia especial a los �lólogos: la de no olvidar que la lengua es una manifestación social. Uno de los vicios de los �lólogos es estudiar sólo en los libros, sin observar directamente las manifestaciones que se producen a su derredor diariamente.—Mauricio Swadesh, La Nueva Filología

Introduction

The mountainous region in southwestern Mexico known as the Mixteca is home to several indigenous peoples, among them the Chochon people, also known as Chochos, Chocholtecs, and, in their own language, Xru Ngiwa.1Their principal settlements are located in the arid, high Valley of Coixtla-huaca and extend into the northern part of the Valley of Tamazulapan (�g. 1). Today, the communities of the region su�er from both an economic margin-

614 Bas van Doesburg and Michael W. Swanton

alization and environmental degradation, which have resulted in massive migration toward other areas, especially Mexico City and the United States. This situation is in striking contrast to that encountered by the Europeans during the sixteenth-century invasion. At that time, the densely populated region was known for its wealth and artistic expression, as is attested today in the remarkable early-colonial architecture as well as in a broad range of surviving historical documents that include a remarkable corpus of picto-graphic manuscripts.2

The Chochon language, also called Ngiwa, forms—along with Ixca-tec, Mazatec, and Popoloca, spoken in adjacent regions to the north and east—the Popolocan language family, one of the eight branches of the Oto-manguean family.3 Today Chochon is moribund. With perhaps fewer than one thousand elderly speakers, the language appears to be headed toward

Figure 1. Map of Chochon region. Mixtec is widely spoken in Huautla and Apoala, and, to a much lesser extent, in Tonaltepec and Soyaltepec. Ixcatec is spoken by a handful of elders in Ixcatlán. Tamazulapan and Tejupan were principally Mixtec- speaking communities, though there were also Chochon speakers. See Swanton (2008) for a description of the multilingualism of this region during Spanish colo-nial rule. Figure by Bas van Doesburg

Mesoamerican Philology as an Interdisciplinary Study 615

extinction. Concerned by this development, a number of Xru Ngiwa educa-tors over the past two decades have sought to extend language use and have begun to write their language. However, Ngiwa language literacy is not a new phenomenon. As recent research has shown, during the Spanish colo-nization, the Chochon, like their Mixtec neighbors to the south and west, developed a noteworthy literary tradition based on the Latin alphabet. The surviving texts of this tradition were written principally for purposes of colonial administration and religious instruction. They date from 1577 to 1827, but the majority were written at the end of the sixteenth century and in the �rst half of the seventeenth. The more or less coincidental localization of these hitherto unknown documents has resulted in a project of transla-tion and analysis, some of the �rst results of which we shall present here.

The colonial Ngiwa texts are an invaluable source of linguistic data about earlier stages of the Chochon language, but as James Lockhart (1992) has convincingly argued, such indigenous-language documentation also constitutes a unique and rich source that should be primary for writing a people’s history. This is because the value of this documentation resides not only in the perspective taken in the texts but in the manner in which this perspective is expressed. Thus, in addition to being important linguis-tic and historical sources, these indigenous-language texts are exceptional objects of study for a philology of indigenous Mesoamerica. While it is gen-erally understood that philology establishes and interprets texts, we should recall that its foremost goal is to understand culture by means of text. This is achieved by restoring as much of the original life and meaning(s) to texts as possible.4 The methodological approach employed in philology’s restora-tive task is essentially the linkage of forms in texts to the cultural contexts in which they occur, similar to what today is often called “pragmatics” in reference to spoken language. The forms are compared within and across sources in order to determine their meanings or values and how these change across time. This approach is crucially important for the present study, in which it is understood that the continuity of expressions for units of social organization through time indicates the cultural continuity of these units. Philological investigation therefore seeks to rigorously reference the tex-tual sources. Yet, despite being overtly textbound—or perhaps because of it—the philological approach can and often does draw from a wealth of diverse data sources and disciplines. The insightful interpretation of texts, especially ones of other times and peoples, requires a broad knowledge of cultural history. Philology traditionally has been an interdisciplinary study par excellence.5

Our study of the Chochon colonial writings has required multiple sojourns in the Xru Ngiwa region and consultation with elders. This has


been dictated in part by the present location of these colonial documents. Two of the three major texts we shall examine here are housed in a munici-pal archive. Furthermore, because there is no known extant grammar or lexicon of colonial Ngiwa and because there are almost no bilingual texts, the reading of these documents can be achieved only through compari-son with the Chochon and related Popolocan languages of today. As mod-ern linguistic references for these languages are lacking, we have had to undertake descriptive and comparative linguistic studies in consultation with speakers of Chochon and the related Popolocan languages, Otlal-tepec Popoloca and Ixcatec. We were especially aided in this undertaking by the late Don Antonio Santiago Rivera, one of the last ³uent speakers of Teotongo Chochon. But our stays in Xru Ngiwa communities have also helped place these indigenous-language texts within “their true context,” thus permitting a richer reading of the texts themselves. The writings under examination here can be understood to be remains of previous forms of social organization. They are not, however, the only ones. Chochon social organization, through time, has left its imprint on present-day language, landscape, and social practices as well as in the archaeological record. The philological interpretation of the texts therefore bene�ts from an inte-grated study of these diverse cultural manifestations. In this article, we shall explore one form of social organization present in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ngiwa texts from the Tamazulapan region: a custom-ary community subdivision called sindi in Chochon and barrio in Spanish.6Our understanding of this form of social organization has been enriched by an interdisciplinary investigation of both the cultural geography and socio-religious organization in Xru Ngiwa communities today.

Previous Study of Customary Subdivision in Mesoamerica

Since the emergence of anthropology as a discipline in the second half of the nineteenth century, the social organization of ancient Mesoamerica has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. At the center of debate has been the nature of Mesoamerican social groupings that medi-ate between the kinship-based household and the territorial-based commu-nity. Attention was �rst drawn to these “customary subdivisions” in early anthropologically informed studies of the available historical sources.7These sources were the works of friars, chroniclers, and Spanish o¶cials, written in Spanish and concerned with the core area of the Culhua-Mexica empire. The geographic and ideological bias of these sources underlay the assumption of early anthropologists that indigenous Mesoamerican society


was organized according to constituent parts called calpolli (often written, following the sources, as calpulli) in the Nahuatl language. Over a period of decades, explanations of these subdivisions, often presented in the form of ahistoric models ranked along a scale of cultural evolution, tended to focus on whether the calpolli was better characterized as a clan-like organization or an urban territorial grouping. While the primary sources of these early studies were written during the period of Spanish colonial rule, the studies themselves did not explore this colonial dimension.8

After the World War I, when anthropology had established a �rm foothold as a professional �eld of study within the university, investiga-tors provided the �rst ethnographic descriptions of contemporary cus-tomary subdivisions—usually called barrios—in indigenous communities across Mesoamerica. These contemporary barrios were compared with the descriptions of the precolonial calpolli. The relation between the two was explained in terms of acculturation, with emphasis given to conser-vative, indigenous survivals.9 The results of these investigations succeeded in showing the diversity of modern customary subdivisions; however, the diversity of pre-Hispanic antecedents was not adequately appreciated.

By the 1960s, anthropologically informed historians recognized another set of sources could be brought to bear on the issue of Mesoamerican social structure: early colonial administrative documentation. Such material, generally kept inconspicuously in Mexican archives, was able to provide a wealth of detailed information on indigenous community organization. The sources were surprisingly diverse and ranged from censuses and parish registers to juridical documents and testaments to account books and inven-tories. Many of these documents were written in indigenous languages. The use of these administrative records refocused discussion of early Meso-american social organization from larger aggregates, such as the Culhua-Mexica empire, to the study of speci�c communities in diverse regions. Like the earlier ethnographic descriptions, these historical investigations with their community focus led to recognition of the considerable diversity in customary subdivisions. In light of this new evidence, the initial character-izations of the calpolli, such as its kinship-based nature, were thrown into doubt, and the traditional sources were increasingly problematized. The colonial documentation in Nahuatl also called attention to other forms of customary subdivision, such as the tlaxilacalli and the teccalli, which were apparently more common than the calpolli. It was not until the 1990s that attention was directed to such administrative sources in languages other than Spanish and Nahuatl.10 Adding administrative documentation from the later period of the colony facilitated the diachronic study of customary subdivisions as subjects of social change. In cases in which the local docu-


mentation spans the entire colonial period and even beyond, important case studies have been achieved.11 These studies have shown that not only can the subdivisions vary considerably from one region to the next but they can also take surprisingly di�erent historical trajectories. Though important, such case studies are still rare, in part due to the limited work carried out in local archives.

A relatively recent innovative methodological approach in the study of Mesoamerican customary subdivisions has been to contextualize the documentary sources on early colonial social organization by situating them in the geographical reality of today. The results of these case studies have enriched our understanding of the longstanding issue of the territorial basis of the early subdivisions. This approach opens new possibilities, still little explored, for the involvement of archaeological data in addressing the dynamic nature of the Mesoamerican customary subdivision (for example, Williams 1991; Williams and Harvey 1997).12

The Texts

Our analysis of the sixteenth-century sindi is based on three principal Ngiwa-language sources from the saçê (called “pueblos” in Spanish) of Teo-tongo and Tulancingo, both belonging to the greater polity of Tamazulapan. The three sources date to the end of the sixteenth century and to the early seventeenth century. They were quite possibly associated with the ambi-tious congregaciones, or resettlement program that took place at this time under the direction of the Spanish judge Francisco de las Casas. As a result of this program, the Xru Ngiwa population of Tamazulapan was concen-trated in the two mentioned nucleated pueblos. The relative abundance of Ngiwa texts from the region makes it likely that the Dominican convent of Santa María Tamazulapan played an important role in the emergence of Chochon-language literacy.13 Although this tradition is clearly based on European models, the speci�c content of the texts is highly informative regarding early colonial indigenous culture.

The �rst text is an account book of �fty-three folios from the Teotongo sindi of Ca/andaxu, which, following the titles appearing on the interior of the cover and on the �rst page, we call the Libro de Cuenta de Ca/andaxu(LC-Ca). The text provides a year-by-year account of the income (cargo) and expenses (descargo) of this small sindi from 1592 to 1621. It is entirely in Chochon, except for the entries for the year 1599, which were penned by Andrés de Zárate in Mixtec. The book is incomplete, as the year 1621 con-tains only the income and a heading for the descargo, which presumably would have appeared on the following page. That the text is incomplete is


also suggested by the thickness of the book’s cover and by the sewing of the binding. A short text dating to 13 September 1714 appears on the second folio, raising the possibility that the use of the account book was continued well after 1621. Despite being incomplete, the existing portion of the book documents the monetization of elements of the sindi- level economy. The book is kept in the Municipal Archive of San Miguel Tulancingo, under the custodianship of the secretario municipal (town clerk).14

The second document bears, on the inside of the front cover of the manuscript, the title “Libros Testamentos”; consequently, we refer to this document as the Libro de Testamentos de Teotongo (LT- Teo). It is a manu-script text of 243 folios and contains approximately 527 testaments from Teotongo dating from the end of 1606 to 1654.15 All of the testaments are in Chochon with the exception of that of the above- mentioned Zárate (LT-Teo 6), which is in Mixtec. In addition, short notes in Mixtec appear with two other testaments (LT- Teo 7 and 164). The ink of several testa-ments, especially those toward the end of the document, has faded due to humidity, making the reading and identi�cation of these testaments dif-�cult. The document is presently curated in the Archivo Histórico of the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, under the signature 777.

These two contemporaneous documents from Teotongo, being of dif-

Figure 2. Example of Ngiwa writing from the �rst page of the Libro de Cuenta de Ca/andaxu (LC- Ca). Municipal Archive of San Miguel Tulancingo


ferent genres, complement each other remarkably well. Where the LC-Ca furnishes detailed information about the community activities on the level of the sindi, the LT-Teo provides data on the material culture, land tenure, and kinship relations. This strong correlation of information between the two documents is reinforced by the presence of at least seventeen testa-ments in the LT-Teo from the sindi of Ca/andaxu.16 This coincidence allows us to follow the lives of certain individuals through time. For example, according to the LT-Teo, Antonio López Nuchhuû, who made his testa-ment on 25 November 1610 (LT-Teo 50), mentions his “child,” Angelina Rhachzinga. He was the eldest son of the late María Teghiña (LT-Teo 9), the brother of Domingo Xinda/a (LT-Teo 107) and husband to Juana Sirho (LT-Teo 220). He had contributed to his sindi of Ca/andaxu for many years, serving as sindi administrator or tequitlato (xu chau in Ngiwa) on at least three occasions (LC-Ca 00:30, 03:1, 07:1). Within a year of writing his testament, Antonio Nuchhuû died and his sindi paid seven tomines for his funeral mass.17

In addition to the testament book from Teotongo, there is also one from Tulancingo. This document consists of 109 folios and contains 291 testaments, all in Ngiwa, dating from 1592 to 1636. The document is miss-ing a few pages at its beginning, although it is otherwise intact and has been well preserved. This Libro de Testamentos de Tulancingo (LT-Tul) is kept in the municipal archive of its native community along with the LC-Ca.

These three texts belong to two basic genres. One, that of the LC-Ca, can be interpreted as a continuation of precolonial tequitlato record keep-ing adapted to the format of the Spanish account book. Another indigenous account book is the so-called Codex Sierra (1550–64) from the neighboring village of Tejupan, which records community expenses through a double register of alphabetic Nahuatl writing and pictography. Nevertheless, while the Tejupan document is related to the Spanish-style community chest, or caja de comunidad, the LC-Ca is a sindi-level ledger.18 Although numerous isolated testaments in several indigenous languages have been identi�ed, the testament book, our second genre, is known through only a handful of examples. In addition to the two Ngiwa books examined here, such texts are also known to have been written in Nahuatl in the sixteenth century and in Yucatec in the eighteenth century, although these latter collections are substantially smaller in their total numbers of testaments (Cline and León-Portilla 1984; Restall 1995). Both the testament itself and the format of the book were introduced to the indigenous communities under the auspices of the Spanish civil-religious administration (Rojas Rabiela, Rea López, and Medina Lima 1999: 27–51). Since these books group testaments from all members of a single community over a relatively short period of time, they


allow for detailed case studies of community populations and important aspects of their organization.

Sindi in the Texts

All sindi belong to a larger unit, which in the texts under consideration is called a saçê. This Chochon word has readily identi�able cognates in modern Popolocan languages, and all of them are translated as pueblo.19 In Ngiwa today the word is pronounced xadë. In the texts, two saçê are repre-sented. The larger of the two is Teotongo, or in colonial Chochon, Thusagû. Today it is known as Duxö, which means “Divinity Hill.” The smaller of the two saçê is Tulancingo, which in the colonial documentation is Ningasingu, today Ningaxingu. It means “Cattail Depression.”20 These two saçê in turn recognize Tamazulapan as their political center, or curhuña. The etymology of this word remains uncertain. In the Spanish language documentation, this relation is referred to as one of a cabecera (administrative center) and its sujetos (subject settlements). It should be emphasized, however, that it is by no means clear to what extent the relationship between saçê and curhuña applied to the region prior to the congregaciones programs.

In the LC-Tul, 150 testaments—just over 50 percent of the corpus—indicate the sindi to which the testator belonged. In the LC-Teo, approxi-mately 80 percent are so indicated (see note 16). A total of eight names of sindi are given in these 150 testaments from Tulancingo; in the Teotongo testament book, a total of twelve sindi names appear (see table 1). The etymologies of the sindi names suggest concrete locations within the Xru Ngiwa landscape; for example, Thundaya means “Thorn Hill,” Tzasihi is “Capulín Ravine,” Thuncheçine is “Hill of the Yellow Earth,” and Tzaga just means “Ravine.” The proportion of testaments from the various sindi in the two testament books also suggests that they are of di�ering sizes. Thus where the Teotongo sindi Cundandaçi has probably little more than 13 tes-taments in the LT-Teo, Tzunchida has over 60. If the corpus of testaments in the LC-Teo is taken as a representative sample of the population, then it would appear that at least three sizes of sindi existed: those with a popu-lation representing over 11 percent of the total of testaments (Tzunchida, Tzetuchhuu, and Ninguda); those for which the population rests within 7 to 9 percent of the total (Thuncheçine, Thundu, Nguindandee, Tzaga, Ndutuhi, and Sandathu); and those small sindi, the population of which represents less than 5 percent of the total (Ndahui, Ca/andaxu, and Cun-dandaçi). Again, it is by no means clear to what extent this situation applied to the region prior to the end of the sixteenth century.

Our principal source of information on the activities of the sindi is


the LC- Ca. This text registers diverse expenses such as payment of long distance trips on behalf of the sindi, acquisition of items for the church of Teotongo, and payment of tribute. However, as can be deduced from the multiple references to expenses for communal agricultural labor, this was doubtlessly the principal focus of sindi activity. This focus later extended to livestock. By 1592, when the LC- Ca begins, the sindi of Ca/andaxu had already acquired sheep, and in 1606 it acquired oxen that it began to rent out.21 The sindi animals were attended to by xu thendaaua, or herdsmen, who might be speci�ed as either a shepherd (xu thendaa utuchhuu) or a cow-herd (xu thendaa uxinda). The LC- Ca also provides information as to the internal social orga-nization of the sindi. In this document, each year begins with an introduc-tory clause that registers the recounting of the previous year’s expenses and income by a group of men called ndoacha (elders). The number of ndoacha present at this counting varies from year to year. The maximum number of ndoacha recorded at this event was eighteen in 1608; however, in general there are fewer than half this number.22 Given that the tribute payments registered in the same document indicate a population of only �fteen to eighteen families in Ca/andaxu, it may be that the ndoacha were respected family heads making up a council for the administration of the sindi. This interpretation would seem to �nd reinforcement in the testaments of these individuals available in the LT- Teo, which reveal no signi�cant di�erences in either property or title compared with other average Teotongo testaments. Among the ndoacha, one individual received the speci�c xaa (or labor/charge) of xu chau (tequitlato), a function that generally lasted one year,

Table 1. Seventeenth- Century Sindi of Teotongo and Tulancingo

Teotongo Tulancingo

Ca/andaxu Ca/asagûCundacaçi CochiyNdahui NdachuaNdutuhi NdandaNguindandee ThundayaNinguda TzasihiSandathu TzetnuquiñiThuncheçine TzundaThunduTzagaTzetuchhuuTzunchida


ending in December. In the texts, the xu chau appears as the administra-tor of the sindi communal enterprises and obligations. During the year, he was responsible for attending to the �nances of the sindi. Following the acquisition of livestock, he was assisted by the aforementioned herdsmen (xu thendaaua). Furthermore, in the testament books, the xu chau appear as frequent witnesses. It seems that the xu chau and ndoacha enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy not only in matters of sindi-level economy but also in matters of justice. Thus, when in 1610 Lucía Rhacuhiña indignantly claimed a dog had eaten her meat, the tequitlato sought to settle the a�air by compensating her loss with a half tomin.23 Larger-scale questions of jus-tice, however, were not handled by the xu chau but rather were sent to the Tamazulapan cabildo (Spanish-style municipal council). There, the higher nobles of Teotongo and Tulancingo, occupying the position of regidores(councilmen), served as intermediaries. Cases concerning major crimes or disputes sometimes had to be transferred to the Spanish alcalde mayor(regional magistrate) for resolution and could continue thence up the Span-ish legal hierarchy (Doesburg and Swanton in preparation).

It appears that assignment to the “charge of tequitlato” (xaa chau) was predicated on age and previous performance. An example can be seen in the career of Melchor Chziyqhindu. We �rst learn of Melchor in 1600 when he marries. The following year he makes a trip to Puebla for the sindi, and in 1605 he travels to Mexico on behalf of the sindi. In 1607, Melchor is mentioned as bringing Mexican magnolia (yolloxochitl, or in Ngiwa zhuû cagû) for Holy Thursday, a task he repeats on various occasions. In 1608 he travels to Mexico on a special trip to deliver cheese for Friar Luis Vallejo. In 1611 he appears for the �rst time as a ndoacha, and thenceforth so appears regularly in the introductory clauses of the LC-Ca. In 1615, after four years of being called a ndoacha in the book, Melchor is named xu chau.24

Once the ndoacha observed the tequitlato’s declaration of the sindi’s �nances for the year, the �nal count was written in the LC-Ca by one of the escribanos of Teotongo and then signed by Teotongo members of the Tamazulapan cabildo. These cabildo members, usually regidores or algua-ciles mayores (sheri�s), almost invariably bore the Ngiwa title nchaa, indi-cating their membership in an elite class.25 The existing testaments of such nchaa indicate that they too belonged to a given sindi. However, unlike other sindi members, they possessed lordly houses (nduçe), and received services and goods in tribute. A clear example of such an elite �gure is the already mentioned Don Andrés de Zárate. According to their testaments, both he and his wife, María de Zárate, belonged to the Teotongo sindi of Sandathu, but whereas Doña María had her testament written in Ngiwa, Don Andrés linguistically identi�es himself as Mixtec.26 In 1587 he appears in Tamazulapan Spanish-language documentation as an alguacil mayor. Ten


years later he writes the LC- Ca yearly account as a “regidor escribano.” Shortly thereafter his career in the Tamazulapan cabildo takes o�, and in 1602 we �nd him as gobernador (the highest o¶ce in the cabildo), in 1604 as an alcalde (a municipal judge serving in the cabildo), and in 1606 again as gobernador.27 On 10 September 1607 he has his testament written in Mix-tec, in which he identi�es himself as in the yuhui tayu (señorío in Spanish and niña sitnau in Ngiwa) of Teotongo.28 By 30 November of that year, when his wife had her testament written, she referred to him as “the late nchaa, my husband Andrés de Zárate” (su nchaa xiña adres de çarate). His patrimony included two lordly houses with lands, one of which was located in the sindi of Ca/andaxu.29 The great frequency of the term sindi in the surviving Ngiwa documen-tation shows it to be a fundamental element in social organization. In the very few cases where a Spanish equivalent to this term is given in the colonial documentation, the word barrio appears (see table 2). An Ixcatec cognate of this term (chandi) has been identi�ed in a nineteenth- century vocabulary, where it is also translated as “barrio.”30 Today, the municipality of Teo-tongo is divided into eight barrios, seven of which have names in Ngiwa (the Barrio La Matanza has no indigenous name). Although the Spanish and Ngiwa names do not necessarily correspond, a quick comparison between the names of the modern barrios in either language and the Chochon- named sindi appearing in the LT- Teo reveals no simple correspondences.

Socioreligious Organization

The word xindi is remembered today in the community of San Miguel only in certain “fossilized” lexical items. A no longer exercised charge called tequitlato or mayordomo del barrio (barrio steward) was called llrimardu xindi (xindi mayordomo) in Ngiwa, and the agricultural �eld that was

Table 2. Barrios of Teotongo Today

Ngiwa Spanish

Uxlande Barrio 16 SeptiembreKuno Barrio BajíoNgilleeni Barrio GuadalupeNdatyo Barrio La LuzXru Tiye Barrio Piedras Negras (formerly El Calvario)Xaya or Llatyu Barrio San Isidro del Progreso (formerly El Chapulín)Ngidutyu Barrio Tecomate


reserved for his use (la milpa del mayordomo del barrio) was referred to as katxu xindi (literally, sindi magueyes). With the disappearance of this charge in the 1940s, the meaning of the word xindi has been largely forgotten, with certain Ngiwa speakers even proposing in 2001 that it might be the Ngiwa word for tequitlato.

The word xindi is, however, clearly remembered in Teotongo among the community’s last speakers of Ngiwa. These teotonguense elders consistently translate this term as sección (literally, section). They remember that until the early 1950s, their community had four functioning secciones. Although key in the organization of large-scale, communitywide projects, such as the �ring of lime, these xindi were associated with the church.31 Each had its own saint: Sección Primera had Santa Gertrudis; Sección Segunda, Santa Magdalena; Sección Tercera, San Antonio de Padua; and Sección Cuarta, San Francisco de Asis. The most prominent manifestation of the xindi was during the �esta titular, or in Chochon, llitse xadë (pueblo �esta). During this celebration, held on 25 July, each of the four secciones assembled a small altar in one of the four corners of the church atrium.32 The image of the patron saint was then carried in a procession around the atrium, begin-ning at the northeast corner with Santa Gertrudis and continuing counter-clockwise until reaching the southeast corner with San Francisco. At each altar the procession stopped and the priest said a prayer (�gs. 3 and 4).

Every teotonguense belonged to one of these four secciones. The sección with the greatest number of members at the beginning of the twen-tieth century was the third, and the smallest was the fourth. The Teotongo elders with whom we have consulted are unanimous in their a¶rmation that these secciones had no geographical basis whatsoever. Members of each sección could be scattered throughout any of the eight modern barrios, and neighbors were quite often of distinct secciones. The elders explained to us that membership was a matter of personal choice. In practice, how-ever, there may have been certain tendencies: although more investigation is certainly required, the examination of three Teotongo genealogies reveals a strong propensity for children to belong to the xindi of their father.33

The organization of each xindi was administered by a mayordomo who was assisted by three mandones (literally, bosses), the Ngiwa name for which, xru choo, is cognate with the xu chau of the three texts under exami-nation. The mayordomía was a one-year responsibility. On receiving this charge, the mayordomo of the sección was responsible for two wooden chests: one for wax, or caja de cera (llixru chingu), and one for cloth, or caja de ropa (llixru tute). The caja de cera stored candles, and the caja de ropa stored not only the curtains and other fabrics used in the construc-tion of the altars but also an inventario, or book of the belongings of the


xindi. These objects are currently kept in the parochial o¶ce of the Teo-tongo town church.

Key information about these xindi and their historical development comes from the municipal archive of Teotongo, which contains an account book from the Sección Cuarta de San Francisco (1758–1866) and a series of four padrones (censuses) for the years 1741, 1771, 1792, and 1809. These documents reveal the existence of �ve barrios in Teotongo at that time. The two latest padrones designate each of the barrios by its saint: Santa Gertrudis, Santa Magdalena, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Santísima Trinidad. The �rst four coincide with the four secciones remembered today; the �fth is what became the municipality of Trinidad Vista Hermosa in 1868.34 The two earliest padrones, however, give the names of these bar-rios in Chochon, respectively: Tzetucho/Tzetuxu, Thuchesine/Nduchesine, Tzuchidaa/Tzunchida, Thuthoo/Dundu, and Niguda/Ninguda. Addition-ally, the account book from the Sección Cuarta con�rms the Ngiwa name of this xindi as San Francisco Thundu.35 Interestingly, the names of these �ve coincide with the �ve largest of the twelve sindi of the LT-Teo (Tzunchida,

Figure 3. Procession around the church atrium to the altars of the four secciones of Teotongo, 25 July, ca. 1960. Photo courtesy of Teó�lo Soriano Rivera


Tzetuchhuu, Ninguda, Thuncheçine, and Thundu) if the proportion of tes-taments is taken to be a representative sample of the overall population. In fact, the third sección, which was remembered as being the largest xindi in the twentieth century, corresponds to the earlier Tzunchida; this, according the proportions of the LT-Teo, was also the largest sindi at that time, with over 14 percent of all identi�able testaments.

Cultural Geography

In order to investigate further the cultural geography recorded in these texts, we have conducted a series of projects, some still in progress, in order to form the most complete register possible of the Ngiwa language toponyms of the region. The �rst of the projects comprised two intensive toponym workshops carried out in the municipalities that formerly constituted the saçê of old Tulancingo, or Ningasingu: San Miguel Tulancingo (Ninga-xingu) and San Antonio Acutla (Dundyalla). These workshops were orga-nized in collaboration with the local schoolteacher and Xru Ngiwa literacy

Figure 4. Altar of the second sección (Santa Magdalena) in the corner of the Teo-tongo church atrium, 25 July, ca. 1960. Photo courtesy of Teó�lo Soriano Rivera


promoter Agustín Jiménez García together with the municipal authorities of these two communities. In the �rst, held in San Miguel, six elders of the community selected by the municipal authority carried out, in collabora-tion with the organizers, a toponym survey and produced a map of their municipality which registered over 250 Ngiwa-language toponyms in an area of only �fty square kilometers. A similar workshop was then realized in the even smaller community of San Antonio. As the Ngiwa language in this community has been reduced to the memory of a handful of “remem-berers,” only about forty toponyms could be recorded.36

Taking into account regular sound changes that have occurred in the Ngiwa language over the last four centuries, the almost three hundred toponyms registered in these workshops correlate remarkably well with those that appear in the LT-Tul. For example, in 1597 Juan Xiguichû of Tulancingo left an agricultural �eld to his daughter Luçia Rhosacû in a place named Tzarhaa (LT-Tul, 21). Today a swath of farming land called Tsarja in Ngiwa is located to the south of the town center of San Miguel. These correspondences between the colonial testament toponyms and those of the San Miguel–San Antonio landscape of today have allowed us to plot the bequeathed lands on a modern map, thus revealing aspects of the late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Xru Ngiwa system of land tenure.37 Interestingly, such correspondences between modern toponymy and place names appearing in the colonial texts include the names of the late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Tulancingo sindi themselves. Of the eight sindi of this early colonial community, �ve so far have been cor-related to the Xru Ngiwa landscape of today (see �g. 5): Ca/asagû (today, Gaxö), Cochiy (Kulli), Ndachua (Nki ndyallua), Thundaya (Dundyalla, the modern Ngiwa name of San Antonio Acutla), and Tzasihi (Tsaxii, the rancho El Capulín). These �ve localities present an abundance of post-Classic ceramics on the surface.38 The distribution of these sites reveals a dispersed settlement pattern in which populations were located on low hills adjacent to productive agricultural lands. This suggests that prior to the late-sixteenth-century congregation programs, the Tulancingo sindi were small, scattered hamlets.

The realization of intensive toponym workshops was not possible for the former lands of old Teotongo given the di�erent sociolinguistic situa-tion. The saçê of old Teotongo, or Thusagû, included the modern munici-palities of Teotongo (Duxö), Trinidad Vista Hermosa (Xadë Gatse) and San Pedro Nopala (Dukala). In Teotongo at the time of our surveys, the number of speakers did not reach ten, and almost all were quite old and had di¶culty traveling. We know of no speakers of Ngiwa in Nopala or Vista Hermosa, though in the latter there are a very few rememberers of


the language. In 2001 and 2002, approximately seventy Ngiwa place names within the boundaries of the municipalities of Teotongo and Vista Hermosa were recorded by interviewing elders individually.39 As in the case of old Tulancingo, the correlation between modern and colonial Ngiwa toponyms includes the names of sixteenth- century sindi (�g. 5). Located to the north-west of the municipal center of Teotongo is Río Tecamachalco, whose name in Ngiwa—Ninguda—is identical to the name of one of the largest of the colonial- period sindi. To the far northeast, El Carrizal (Tsalaxu), Cerro Amarillo (Kunchesine), and the foot of Cerro Columna (Ngindande) corre-spond to the sindi Ca/andaxu, Thuncheçine, and Nguindandee. As was the case in San Miguel and San Antonio, these localities present an abundance of post- Classic ceramics.40 Although the data are much more incomplete for old Teotongo, a picture similar to that of old Tulancingo emerges: the sindi prior to the colonial congregaciones appear to have been settlements scattered across the lands of the saçê.

Figure 5. Map of the Tulancingo region, showing the location of the identi�ed pre- congregation sindi. Black line indicates limits of Byland’s archaeological sur-vey (1977). Numbers refer to Byland’s site inventory (see Byland 1980). Figure by Bas van Doesburg


A Regional Comparison: San Cristóbal SuchixtlahuacaOutside the valley of Tamazulapan, the town of San Cristóbal Suchixtla-huaca is located just 4.5 kilometers to the west of Coixtlahuaca, the seat of the second major Dominican monastery complex in the Chochon region. Today, no one in Suchixtlahuaca speaks Ngiwa, the language having disap-peared completely during the second half of the twentieth century. How-ever, thanks to a unique set of documents housed in the village archives, complemented by the memory of elders, the interesting development of the sindi of Suchixtlahuaca can be traced from the mid-sixteenth century up to the 1990s. Today, Suchixtlahuaca has two secciones, but they do not appear to have the historical depth of the four secciones of Teotongo.

Among the oldest documents preserved in Suchixtlahuaca is a 1683 copy of a 1582 title issued by the alcalde mayor Francisco de Mojica in order to protect the lands of the community following the congregaciones pro-gram. Four other Xru Ngiwa communities—Nativitas, Calpulalpan, Ihui-tlán, and Tequixtepec—also have titles issued by Mojica in 1582 and 1583. The alcalde mayor states that for the elaboration of these documents he walked with the cabildo o¶cials and the principales (indigenous notables) of the respective communities through the lands that were left unprotected following the congregaciones and recorded the major boundaries with neighboring communities. In the Suchixtlahuaca title, �ve “barrios” are mentioned, but due to transcription errors in the seventeenth-century copy the orthography of the names appears somewhat scrambled: Hosthquaula, Chilla, Ssocolanttongo, Poscuautla or Ustla, and Xuxuyttongo.41 All were congregated into the village of San Cristóbal by 1582, but the remains of their precolonial settlements were still visible. Mojica also recorded the names of each sindi’s principales, who numbered from two to six.

Curiously, four of these sindi names appear in late–nineteenth- and twentieth-century documents as the sociedades agrícolas (agricultural soci-eties) of Suchixtlahuaca.42 According to the documents of the sociedades, the goal of their members was “the cultivation and use of the �elds and the house-plot . . . in order to help each other in their mutual needs, as well as to contribute with their donations to the expenses that the municipal council of their pueblo might create on the occasion of some improvement carried out for the bene�t of the population” (el cultivo y usufructo de los terrenos y solar . . . para ayudarse en sus mutuas necesidades, así como con-tribuir con su óbulo a los gastos que el ayuntamiento de su pueblo erogue con motivo de alguna mejora que emprenda en bene�cio de la población).43At the head of each sociedad stood two socios administradores (adminis-trating members), who served for one year. They kept the o¶cial seal and paid the taxes on the property of the sociedad. However, behind this secu-


lar mantle lay a religious base. Many years ago, as elders still recall, each sociedad was dedicated to the cult of a certain saint: Sosola (corresponding to the old Ssocolanttongo) venerated the Virgen de la Soledad; Sosoitongo or Siositongo (corresponding to Xuxuyttongo) venerated the archangel San Rafael, though the sociedad was also called the “barrio del Carmen”; Chila venerated San Bartolomé; and Escotla (corresponding to Hosthquaula) was dedicated to San Miguel. In one document they are even called “socie-dades católicas” (Catholic societies), governed by a mayordomo and a man-dón or depositario (treasurer). They kept and recycled the wax for the fes-tival candles and possessed land and cattle, which they used to generate an income to pay for the festivals of their saints and the community �esta. The agricultural activities of the sociedades were carried out by their members through tequios (unpaid communal labors/responsibilities). Each sociedad, sometimes still called “barrio” in the documents, had its own house in the village, which served as a meeting place for its members and as a depot for the harvest and for the cult paraphernalia. The house of Sosola was located to the south of the village center, the house of Sosoitongo to the northeast, and the houses of Chila and Escotla to the northwest (�g. 6).44 This double face of the Suchixtlahuaca sindi appears to have emerged shortly after the 1856 Lerdo law on the desamortization of community

Figure 6. Map of Suchixtlahuaca town center with locations of barrio houses and some of the barrio lands. Figure by Bas van Doesburg


property, which took a serious toll on indigenous confraternities. It seems then that by adopting the name and the exterior guise of secular agricul-tural societies, the Suchixtlahuaca sindi were able to adapt to the newly imposed political regime. Nevertheless, with an ever-diminishing popula-tion due to the massive migration out of the region from 1940 onward and an increasing resistance to the communal labor demands that were required by the sociedades, the dissolution of the sociedades did �nally come in the 1990s. Sosola handed over all of its lands and property to the community on 30 January 1994. By then, the sociedad had only thirteen members left. After their public delivery, all goods of the saint of Sosola were formally turned over to the members of a junta vecinal (neighborhood council) who placed them in the church; the two �elds (Ciducina and Tundachi), along with the house of the sociedad, came under the administration of the síndico(municipal syndic) of Suchixtlahuaca.

Among the documents of Escotla that were turned over to the commu-nity around the same time and that are now kept by the síndico was a libro de cuenta of the “barrio” of Oscuautla, or Ntadhuo in Chochon, covering the years 1724–95.45 The “cuentas” only indicate the total sums of money spent and gained, plus an inventory of goods belonging to the barrio and the election results of the new administrators. Thus in their content they dif-fer from the more detailed income and spending accounts provided by the LC-Ca. The registers of the years 1724, 1725, 1729, 1730, and 1732 were written in Ngiwa.46 They reveal a remarkable continuity in barrio struc-ture, even under the later guise of the “secular” sociedades agrícolas. Like the latter, the barrios were administered by two men: a “nduacha,” trans-lated as tequitlato in the Spanish texts, and a mayordomo, always in this order. As shown by the Tamazulapan Ngiwa texts, the tequitlato seems to have been always chosen from the group of ndoacha, which could explain the basis for the Suchixtlahuaca title. In fact, the phrase nchaa nduacha republicanos appears in the Ngiwa texts of the libro de cuenta of Oscuau-tla (or Escotla) with the translation “principales republicanos” (republi-can notables) and indicates the group of village principales accompanying the cabildo o¶cials at the presentation of the year’s accounting. Later, the mayordomo probably acquired more prominence when the barrios took on characteristics typical of confraternities.

Curiously, the expression xu chau, meaning tequitlato in the Tama-zulapan materials, seems to be used in Suchixtlahuaca as the title of the topil (constable) of the barrio. The two administrators and the topil were chosen by and from the xu xindiy (literally, sindi people). These persons met once a year in a nchia xindiy, or sindi house, to write down the accounts. In the inventory, the real estate of the sindi is described: “There is the escri-


tura de venta paper for the house and there is only our solar land and both �eld lands at Nguitandio” (Then xuon escritura de benta sixin nchia cau the nguone nonde solar toñaa cau caayuinñe nonde yno nguitandio). In the twentieth century, Escotla still owned a �eld called Nguidandio, but by then it had acquired other �elds in places called Sichitu and Surano.47 The cuenta was signed by the alcalde and the three regidores of Suchixtlahuaca.

Pictographic Documentation: The Lienzo de IhuitlánA di�erent, complementary perspective on the relation between sindi and saçê is given in the pictographic documents, or lienzos, of the Xru Ngiwa elite. The documentation from the Chochon community of Santiago Ihui-tlán, located in the northern portion of the Coixtlahuaca Valley, is perhaps the most explicit. The Mojica titles of Ihuitlán (mentioned earlier in this text) provide four names for the abandoned barrios (sindi) of the saçê: “the ancient villages that they had when they governed themselves by barrios and were separated from one other with the names of Tlapiltepec, Tlapis-tlahuaca, Sonzopastla, Tlacotepec and others that they left depopulated when they were assigned and congregated in the place that today is named Ynihuitlan from which the said village of Santiago takes its cognomen” (las antiguas poblaciones que tuvieron cuando se gobernavan por barrios y esta-ban dispersos unos de otros con los nombres de Tlapiltepec, Tlapistlahuaca, Sonzopastla, Tlacotepec y otros las que dexaron despoblados cuando se les asignó y los congregaron en el paraje que hoy tienen nombrado Ynihuitlan de quien tomó el cognomen el referido pueblo de Santiago).48 The Lienzo de Ihuitlán, currently kept at the Brooklyn Museum after it was stolen from the village at the beginning of the twentieth century, can be read as a rough map of the Ihuitlán territory; the early colonial open chapel, glossed “Sanctiago Yuitla,” represents the center of the new settlement. Toward the western part of the depicted territory, the �rst four sindi of Ihuitlán appear glossed: Tlalpitepec, Tlaluixtlavaca, Tzotzopaztla, and Tlacotepec (�g. 7).49

Besides being a map, the lienzo is also an explanation of the gene-alogical relations between the elite rulers of these settlements. Each sindi is accompanied by a representation of a ruling couple (the nchaa) and lines of footprints indicate that they all descended directly from the main lineage of Ihuitlán. What this meant in political terms was explained in 1573 by the Dominican friar Bartolomé Roldán, who described a similar relation between Coixtlahuaca and its subject settlement (sindi) Juquila: “The prin-cipal cacique [of Juquila] . . . told him . . . that he and his wife and all their ancestors are and were natives of Coixtlahuaca, and that, when any of them was absent, there not being any successor, [the succession] would come directly from the señorío of Coixtlahuaca, because they stemmed from the

Figure 7. Left half of the Lienzo de Ihuitlán, showing how the elite of the Ihuitlán sindi descended from the main Ihuitlán lineage, which itself branches from the Coixtlahuaca one. Drawing by Martijn van de Bel


same lords of Coixtlahuaca” (El principal cacique . . . le dijo . . . que él y su mujer y todos sus ascendientes son y fueron naturales de Coixtlahuaca, y que, falta[n]do el cualesquier de todos ellos, no habiendo sucesor, venía [la sucesión] derechamente en el señorío de Cuextlauaca, porque procedía de los propios señores de Cuextlauaca).50 What becomes clear from these frag-ments is the strong integration of sindi within the saçê through elite ancestry and associated privileges.51 The document also records that this structure of genealogical descent was created sometime during the thirteenth cen-tury. It may be that this delegation of power is partially attributable to the colonization of earlier uncultivated areas, especially the higher ridges, in order to accommodate the growing post-Classic population. This process was surely supervised by nobles and probably coordinated by the rulers.52

In 1583, when the Mojica titles were written, each Ihuitlán sindi was still associated with a group of nobles, or nchaa. However, only the nobles of Ihuitlán proper and Tzotzopaztla bear the Spanish title don.53 This situa-tion parallels the Mojica titles of Suchixtlahuaca, in which only the nobles from Chila carry the title don. This would suggest that Chila, like Ihuitlán, was the seat of the señorío (see Doesburg 2010).

Sindi Revisited

With this review of some of the most relevant �ndings of our investiga-tions into the cultural geography and socioreligious organization of the Xru Ngiwa communities, we can now place the late-sixteenth-century sindi mentioned in the Tamazulapan texts within a broader temporal and geographical context. Sindi were named after features of the landscape, which suggests that originally they may have been geographically situated units, in charge of settlement and maintenance of agricultural “niches” in the mountainous landscape. The colonization of these niches may have occurred under the guidance of the indigenous nobility, explaining their control of the sindi and the fact that every noble had a palace (nduçe) and patrimonial lands in at least one such subdivision. These nobles may have been considered the ultimate “owners,” in a residual sense, of all of the sindi lands, though there is little evidence for any direct interference besides the regular assessment of tribute, probably in exchange for use of the land. In the case of already established sindi, conquest—doubtlessly organized by the nobility—was another way of attaining control over its lands and population.

It was the sindi’s communal labor that apparently was the primary articulation of the household level with the larger community. Organized in an orderly, rotational manner and probably accompanied by ritual action


and feasting, communal labor maintained the sindi’s infrastructure, pro-duced crops for both local consumption and tribute, and contributed to the saçê center. Living and working together contributed to establishing a shared group identity that was su¶ciently resilient in some cases to endure the congregación projects of the Spanish administration. This characteriza-tion of the sindi—as a division of a saçê that performed rotational, com-munal labor for its own bene�t as well as that of the community—applies throughout the documented history of this form of social organization.

We have little information on the pre-Hispanic period, but the late-sixteenth-century documentation indicates that a council of elders (ndoa-cha), probably representing the households of the sindi, constituted its internal organizing body. Assisted by a tequitlato (xu chao), they were responsible for collecting tribute, organizing work, and managing sindi community a�airs and enterprises. The households were the depositories of the sindi lands, which they could transmit within the sindi. There is no reason to doubt that this was a pre-Hispanic principle.

During Spanish colonial rule, we see the numerical decline of the sindi. Prior to the resettlement programs, there were probably twenty sindi scat-tered across the lands of Teotongo and Tulancingo, generally near agricul-turally productive lands. A comparison of identi�ed sindi with archaeologi-cal survey data suggests that there was no “urban center” in either Teotongo or Tulancingo.54 The sindi were subsequently drawn, with varying success, into two nucleated villages in the late sixteenth century, but they retained the old sindi names and identity. In this new setting, the sindi would still ful�ll important administrative tasks such as organizing communal work and tribute and attending to estate administration. Nobles represented the sindi in the cabecera cabildo as regidores or as the alguacil mayor. Late in the seventeenth century, when Teotongo attained its independence from Tamazulapan, the saçê formed its own government, and, to demonstrate its new status, built a church, undoubtedly drawing from the traditional sindi-organized communal labor.55 By the eighteenth century, in Teotongo only the �ve largest of the sixteenth-century sindi, then still called “barrios,” were extant. Each adopted its own patron saint and built its correspond-ing chapel. At this time, the sindi were almost indistinguishable from the many popular confraternities of the region. Important changes in the sindi structure occurred in the nineteenth century, when the so-called Leyes de la Reforma a�ected the existence of religious corporations like confraternities and thus also threatened the sindi. In some areas, the sindi took on the guise of administrative secciones; in other villages, they turned into agricultural societies. Since around 1940, increasing emigration has resulted in a dra-matic population decrease in the region and consequent di¶culties in culti-


vating the sindi �elds. As a result, the second half of the twentieth century saw the end of the sindi structure in most of the Xru Ngiwa communities. By the end of the twentieth century, the last four Teotongo xindi, no longer equated with the Spanish term barrio, were attested only in the memory of elders and by a few objects kept in the church. Gradually ceding power to the cabildo over four centuries, the last four Teotongo sindi transformed from semiautonomous settlements into �esta and communal work commit-tees with little in the way of individual geographical identities.

Some sixteenth-century sindi, however, had di�erent fates and devel-oped into independent municipalities. Such is the case of the old Tulancingo sindi Thundaya, which apparently resisted the congregaciones project. It obtained its own saint in the sixteenth century and its independence as a pueblo in the eighteenth. It is now the municipality of San Antonio Acutla. Another example appears to be the old Teotongo sindi Ninguda, which prior to the congregación projects was probably a settlement located to the northwest of the modern center of Teotongo on Río Tecamachalco. Despite the long period during which it was incorporated as a barrio of Teotongo, Ninguda was recognized following Mexico’s Second Empire as a separate municipality—Santísima Trinidad Vista Hermosa—now established to the far northeast of Teotongo’s center following a long and violent struggle.56The case of Suchixtlahuaca shows that even over very short distances, there were some regional di�erences in the changes that took place in the Cho-chon sindi and that this even included variation in the semantic evolution of Ngiwa-language terminology concerning the sindi.

Thus it seems that sindi organization was a fundamental element in Xru Ngiwa social organization from at least 1300 until quite recently. This longevity attests to the reinforcement of internal cohesion and composition of the sindi on several levels: not just in geography, land and property hold-ings, or kinship, but also in terms of religious activity, the administration of small-scale justice, and, most importantly, the undertaking of a common enterprise through communal labor. It is precisely this quality of organizing communal labor that emerges as the sindi’s most durable, long-term char-acteristic across the centuries.

Part of the success of the sindi’s adaptations to the changing colonial setting was certainly due to its capacity to don the accoutrements of Spanish or national Mexican institutions; however, some of these latter institutions shared qualities found in the sindi. It has been argued that the proliferation of uno¶cial confraternities around individual saints in indigenous commu-nities was a late-colonial phenomenon.57 Indeed, in 1589, the o¶cial and typically Dominican confraternity of the Holy Rosary was already estab-lished in Coixtlahuaca, but by 1829 more than one hundred other confra-


ternities existed in the Coixtlahuaca parish, most of which were founded after 1700 (Mendoza García 2004). The Ngiwa case suggests these confra-ternities might also have been informed by preexisting sindi structures of corporate enterprise and property management, perhaps explaining in part why the uno¶cial confraternity was so successful and popular in indige-nous society.

From a Mesoamerican perspective, the Chochon sindi provide a detailed case study of an indigenous customary subdivision. On one hand, they reveal principles identi�ed in other regions. In their relationship with the saçê, the sindi show a symmetrical, cellular organization like that which the Nahua tlaxilacalli have in relationship to the altepetl and the Mixtec siqui and siña have in relationship to the ñuu. Additionally, the Chochon case sheds light on the subdivision’s internal organization and functioning, which are elusive in colonial sources (Lockhart 1992; Terraciano 2001).58On the other hand, when compared to the few other diachronic case studies of Mesoamerican subdivisions, great di�erences show up in size and his-torical trajectories, evidencing the ³exibility of this cellular principle. For example, in the case of Santiago Tecali, its four current customary subdivi-sions have evolved in distinct ways out of di�erent pre-Hispanic and colo-nial antecedents, among these the teccalli (and their hamlets) and the Toltec calpolli (Chance 1996: esp. 121).

While social factors such as population density, di�erent precolonial antecedents, natural environments, and Spanish presence doubtlessly laid out the terrain for the di�erent historical paths along which the indigenous subdivisions have traveled, their considerable diversity also points toward consciously taken decisions on how best to deal with changing internal and external circumstances. As is indicated by both their persistence and their diversity, the subdivisions must have been essential spaces for the adapta-tion and maintenance of indigenous communal identities under colonial and national rule.59 These more autonomous “internal” spaces, which critically bridged the household and the territorial community, were where indige-nous people could deploy their own adaptive strategies of social, and per-haps religious, organization; where cultural reproduction that began in the household was socialized; and where guiding values were publicly expressed and reinforced. In this perspective, the customary subdivisions are the sum of decisions taken with the ultimate goal of maintaining autonomous spaces for social and cultural reproduction and communal undertakings (and con-sequent economic and political control). This goal is not only in relation to Spanish or national institutions and infringement but also in relation to the other constituent parts of the communities—hence the separations of sindi from saçê, saçê from curhuña, and, today, subject villages from


municipal centers. Since di�erent decisions can lead to di�erent results, it is in diachronic case studies of customary subdivisions that we can perceive numerous, creative ways in which indigenous people, often anonymous to us today, have acted to preserve, uphold, and consolidate their own cultural autonomy in the face of colonial reality.

Final Remarks

The sindi of the Ngiwa area produced their own written record dating from the late sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century. These Ngiwa writings of the sindi constitute an exceptionally rich and detailed documentation, through which fundamental elements of colonial Xru Ngiwa social organization can be perceived. These insights have been attained largely through the dia-chronic contextualization of the writings. Since continuity of Ngiwa termi-nology and self-ascription connect the various diachronic manifestations of the sindi, text in this language had to be the central axis of this study. This has meant that the translation and internal analysis of these texts, remark-able as they are, had to be complemented by other textual material from other times, such as secondary documentation, interviews with elders, and toponymy. This set of diverse textual materials in turn opened the doors to additional, interdisciplinary types of contextualizing data, such as geo-graphic and archaeological �ndings. We believe this type of philological approach can be fruitfully applied to other corpora of indigenous text.

This approach, however, has been crucially dependent on endangered cultural knowledge and patrimony. The linguistic and cultural knowledge required for the reading of these documents is to be found only in the Xru Ngiwa communities. However, it is precisely this knowledge that is dis-appearing. There are fewer than one thousand speakers of the Ngiwa lan-guage, almost all of whom are community elders. Furthermore, as we have pointed out, the second half of the twentieth century has witnessed the dis-appearance of the sindi itself in many of the region’s villages, and today much of the relevant information is to be found only in the memory of the oldest generation. The majority of the documents necessary for this study are kept in local archives, which, after the progressive increase of adminis-trative correspondence during the twentieth century, are often in dire states of preservation (Spores 2002). Given this situation, we would suggest that future research into Mesoamerican philology take into account not only the value but also the urgency of documenting local knowledge and sources as a research priority.


Notes

This article was originally given as a talk at the conference “Mesoamerican Ethno-history and Philology,” University of California, Los Angeles, 26 October 2002. We would like to thank the organizers of the conference for the invitation and fruitful exchange. We are grateful for the support provided by the Project for the Documen-tation of the Languages of Mesoamerica, directed by Terrence Kaufman, John Juste-son, and Roberto Zavala, and by the Onderzoekinstituut CNWS of the Universiteit Leiden. John K. Chance and Ronald Spores read earlier drafts of this manuscript; we are grateful for their cogent suggestions. We also thank the three anonymous Ethnohistory referees for their careful, critical review of this article and their valu-able observations. We furthermore wish to express our gratitude to the municipal authorities of Teotongo, Tulancingo, Ihuitlán, and Suchixtlahuaca for their enthusi-astic participation during our visits to their communities.

1 Michael Swanton (forthcoming) thoroughly reviews the various names that have been used to refer to the Chocholtec people and their language.

2 For the literature on the pictographic documents of this region, see the classic study of Ross Parmenter (1982), the contributions of Jansen (1992, especially pages 27–30), the overview in Doesburg and Buren (1997), and Doesburg (2010) and references therein.

3 For reconstructions of Popolocan (also called Mazatecan) linguistic history, see Fernández de Miranda (1951); Gudschinsky (1959); Hamp (1958, 1960); and Veerman- Leichsenring (2000, 2001a, 2001b). For Otomanguean, see Rensch (1976) and Terrence Kaufman’s classi�cation (in Campbell 1997: 158). Ngiwa is spoken principally in the Oaxacan municipalities of Santa Catarina Ocotlán, Santa María Nativitas, and San Miguel Tulancingo, but it is also known or “remembered” by a very small number of persons in Teotongo, San Antonio Acutla, Trinidad Vista Hermosa, Santiago Tepetlapa, and San Miguel Tequix-tepec. In addition, there are important Xru Ngiwa communities in Mexico City and adjacent areas.

4 Although recognizing the plurality of textual meaning and interpretation across time and among di�erent audiences, the emphasis of philology is, in the words of the great Hellenist Milman Parry (1971), the “common stock of experience” of an author and his or her contemporary audience (2).

5 We should recall that the discipline of archaeology itself includes among its founding �gures Renaissance humanists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Flavio Biondo, and Giulio Pomponio Leto, who used topography and exploration of ruins as complements to the philological interpretation of texts of classi-cal antiquity. See Trigger (1996) and, for examples of such early “�eldwork,” Muecke (2003).

6 Throughout this article we make use of two orthographic traditions for the Ngiwa language. For colonial Ngiwa, we present the orthography given in the texts themselves. This “Tamazulapan” orthography, though clearly based on Spanish, included conventions to represent many of the sounds particular to the language. Thus vocalic nasalization is generally represented with a circum³ex accent, laryngealized vowels with </> or </h>, and aspiration with <h>. The dental, palatal- alveolar, retro³ex fricative, and a�ricate series are represented respectively with <ç, s, x> and <tç, ch, chz>. In later orthographies, especially


from around Coixtlahuaca, there are various simpli�cations in the representa-tion of the system; <x>, for example, is used for both the palatal and retro³ex fricative. For further discussion, see Sebastián van Doesburg and Michael Swan-ton (in preparation) and Swanton (forthcoming). Colonial Ngiwa vocabulary used in this article appears in italics on its �rst occurrence. The orthography used here for the Ngiwa language of today is essentially that proposed by the cultural organization Kadiaa Ngigua, A.C. In this orthography, nasalization is indicated with a diaeresis, laryngealization with an apostrophe, and aspiration with <j>. The fricative and a�ricate series given above are represented with <s, x, xr> (with a corresponding voiced series <z, ll, llr>) and <ts, ch, tx>.

7 We use here the anthropological expression “customary subdivision,” proposed by Eileen M. Mulhare (1996), to avoid terminological confusion that would result from the use of words such as barrio, with its multiple meanings. Mul-hare describes customary subdivisions as alliances of households or domestic groups that merge kinship, territoriality, and other criteria to di�ering degrees and exhibit the following features: “an established set of co- equal subdivisions; community rules for changing the number of recognized subdivisions; commu-nity rules for assigning subdivision a¶liation, such that all or virtually all the households in the community are incorporated into the system; and the formal or informal authority to draft labor from the members for both the bene�t of the constituent households and the bene�t of the community” (94). We also include in this category older constituent parts and community subdivisions with greater social strati�cation than is typical today, such as the so- called teccalli (Carrasco, 1971, 1979; Reyes García 1996 [1979]; Hicks 1982, 1986; Chance 2000, 2001; Martínez 2002). See also Norman D. Thomas (1979) for a survey of di�erent forms of modern Mesoamerican barrios.

8 The �rst theoretical discussions of the calpolli in the anthropological literature reach back to Lewis H. Morgan (1877) and Adolf F. A. Bandelier (1877, 1878, 1879, 1880; see also Waterman 1917 for discussion). This early work fed into later Marxist- inspired interpretations (cf. Moreno 1962 [1931]; Monzón 1949; Katz 1966) and has been incorporated into earlier general syntheses of Aztec civilization (cf. Vaillant 1941; Soustelle 1955). A more recent summary of the dis-cussion can be found in Escalante Gonzalbo 1990.

9 Red�eld and colleagues centered in the University of Chicago carried out much of the early investigation within this framework (Red�eld 1928; Guiteras Holmes 1951; Tax 1952; Villa Rojas 1964). See also the “Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation” (Red�eld, Linton, and Herskovits 1936).

10 Early, pioneering investigations were also carried out with Yucatec and Chontal Maya sources (see, for example, Roys 1943; Scholes and Roys 1948).

11 These recent achievements can be exempli�ed by John K. Chance’s studies (1996, 2000, 2001) of the barrios of Tecali, based on a continuous set of docu-ments kept in the parochial archive.

12 Surprisingly, Mesoamerican archaeologists, though interested in questions of social organization, have usually drawn only general, hierarchal social models and terminology from the texts and have not sought to relate their �ndings more directly to the textual documentation. Particularly unfortunate is the use of tex-tually attested indigenous or colonial terminology of social organization for the analysis of archaeological settlement patterns without further argumentation. By simply labeling a small, apparently outlying settlement that appears in the


archaeological record a “tlaxilacalli” or “barrio,” we run the risk of creating and confusing two sets of de�nitions for these words, one based on the actual use of the word in textual sources and another based on archaeologists’ use of these words in their interpretations of settlement hierarchies.

13 Another stimulus may have been the ambitious project of translating the mono-lingual 1568 Doctrina Xpiana en lengua Misteca of fray Benito Hernández from Mixtec into Chochon (see Doesburg and Swanton 2008).

14 References to this document are given by the last two numbers of the year, fol-lowed by the number of the entry for that year. Thus the sixth entry for the year 1619 is given as LC- Ca 19:6.

15 References to the testament books give the numbers of the testaments in the order in which they appear. One “testament” of an individual who has already died appears to date to 1605 (LT- Teo 32). Furthermore, one testament, that of Tomás Nuchau (LT- Teo 235), is from the Tulancingo sindi of Thundaya. See Swanton (forthcoming) for an index of these two Chochon testament books.

16 Approximately 80 percent of the testaments appearing in the LT- Teo have the sindi of the testator explicitly indicated, and this can be read. The remaining 20 percent either do not have the sindi so indicated or are too faded to be read. Of the seventeen testaments attributed to the sindi of Ca/andaxu, sixteen have the sindi clearly and explicitly indicated as that of Ca/andaxu (LT- Teo 1, 9, 44, 50, 106, 107, 213, 220, 222, 251, 261, 265, 272, 295, 317, and 458). The seventeenth is the testament of Juana Turho (LT- Teo 250), probably also an individual from Ca/andaxu, since at least two of the three witnesses are from this sindi, and one of them, Antonio Chziygahu, was tequitlato (tribute overseer) of Ca/andaxu that year. Although tequitlatoque sometimes do appear as witnesses of individu-als from other sindi, the clear tendency is that they appear as witnesses to testa-tors in their own.

17 The funeral expense was recorded as follows (LC- Ca 11:11): “yadu t[omin]es cuiyngui misa caune ndi cuhi nchincha thi cuee su anto nuchhuu” (Seven tomines were used for the mass and what went for the candles when the late Antonio Nuchhuû died).

18 Although such “cajas” were the depositories of community pro�ts, there is no reference to such a box in the LC- Ca. On the other hand, LC- Ca 06:29 does mention suggestively the purchase of a “skin in which money is kept” (rhu/ua thethiyngasiñaxi tomines).

19 James Lockhart (1992) observes that the word pueblo, meaning “people,” in the sixteenth century does not appear to imply a small social unit like a village but rather an indigenous polity or settlement of any size (15).

20 The Chochon etymologies correspond closely to the Nahuatl ones: Teotongo (“at the small divinity/sacred place”) and Tulancingo (“at the small cattail place”). In Mixtec, Teotongo was called Tiñuhu, again with a similar meaning. In a few testaments of the LT- Tul, Tulancingo is called Ningutze. For discussion and a possible identi�cation, see Doesburg (2004).

21 In 1606, Ca/andaxu spent the considerable sum of twenty- six pesos and six tomines on the “oxen that are in the sindi” (uxindaa thengu sindi; LC- Ca, 06:19). In addition, the sindi spent �ve pesos and four tomines for the “coa rejas [plowshares] with which the animals work the land” (ñingue rrejas tnauxi/ua; LC- Ca, 06:20); three tomines for “rope with which the animals are tied”


(ñu/u tiychzexiua; LC- Ca, 06:21); and four tomines for the “leather barzón [yoke strap] with which the oxen work the land” (rhu/ua paço tnauxi uxindaa; LC- Ca, 06:44). Prior to this date, Ca/andaxu rented oxen for plowing. After this date this expense disappears from the LC- Ca and income from renting out the oxen appears. See Doesburg and Swanton (in preparation).

22 It may be that some of the eighteen ndoacha present in 1608 were from sindi other than Ca/andaxu. Tomás Rhaxhy, Tomás Tuchzu, and Tomás Nisagu appear as ndoacha only for that year. In the LT- Teo there appear testaments for people with these names, all of whom are from the sindi of Nguindandee (LT- Teo 166, 271, 234). Although it is still unclear why ndoacha of other sindi might be present at the annual recounting of Ca/andaxu’s expenses and earn-ings, it is perhaps relevant that according to our reconstruction, Nguindan-dee was adjacent to Ca/andaxu prior to the congregaciones. See Doesburg and Swanton (in preparation) for details.

23 Compensation was recorded as follows: “melio xengana ndi cuhine uñia ndau/e lucia rhacuhiña” (A half tomin paid what the dog ate of Lucía Rhacuhiña’s meat). LC- Ca 10:36.

24 The relevant passages from the LC- Ca are: “ñuu t[omin]es quaañaa melchior chiquhindu thi cuiturha” (Melchor Chziyqhindu borrowed four tomines when he married; 00:40); “ñee t[omin]es cuirhû/e xi melchior chiyguindu cuhixe ndaxiña” (Melchor Chziyqhindu, who went to Puebla, received three tomines; 01:12); “yuu t[omin]es cuirhu/e melchior chiyqhindu cuhi ndasingu qhe” (Mel-chor Chziyqhindu, who went to Mexico, also received two tomines; 05:34); “yuu t[omin]es cuiru/he melchior chzyqhindu cuhicaa zhuûcagû cuhitathe sixu thy jueue sancto” (Melchor Chziyqhindu, who brought the yolloxochitl [Mexican magnolia] that was put in the box [the monstrance] the day of Holy Thursday, received two tomines; 07:17); “ñu/u t[omin]es cûruua melchior chziyghindu cuhi ndasingu cuhiyaa queso ndi/e nchaa frai luis balexu proui-çial maestro ndasingu” (Melchor Chziyqhindu, who went to Mexico to deliver the cheese that is of lord friar Luis Vallejo, a provincial maestro in Mexico, [received] �ve tomines) (08:35). Entries in which Melchor is quali�ed as a ndoa-cha are 11:01, 13:01, 14:01, 15:01, 16:01, 17:01, and 20:01; and he is referred to as a xu chau in 15:01.

25 In the lost Lienzo de Santa María Ixcatlán (Lienzo Seler I), the names of the pre-colonial lords were quali�ed with the title of nchaa (Swanton and Doesburg 1996).

26 LT- Teo 6, 16. There are three known, extant texts authored by Andrés de Zárate, all in Mixtec. Besides the two already mentioned, there exists an investigation into the death of an elderly man in a temazcal, written 16 October 1602 in Mix-tec by Don Andrés (Archivo Histórico Judicial de Oaxaca, Oaxaca City [here-after AHJO], Teposcolula, Penal, leg. 6, exp. 24).

27 Regarding Don Andrés’s rise in the cabildo of Tamazulapan, see 1587: AHJO, Teposcolula, Civil, leg. 3, exp. 86; 1599: LC- Ca; 1602: AHJO, Teposcolula, Penal, leg. 6, exp. 24; 1602: LC- Ca; 1604: AHJO, Teposcolula, Penal, leg. 6, exp. 47; and 1606: LT- Teo 7. He was one of the �rst to assume the title of gober-nador as a rotational, temporary charge and not as a lifelong hereditary title. On this latter point, see Kevin Terraciano (2001: 183–86) for the Mixteca.

28 Regarding this social institution, see Terraciano (2001). Both the Mixtec


expression yuhui tayu and the equivalent Ngiwa expression, niña sitnau, etymo-logically mean “petate, icpal.” For discussion, see Doesburg and Swanton (in preparation).

29 In the testament, Ca/andaxu appears with its Mixtec name of Nduhuayoo, as it also does in the LC- Ca for the year 1599. Terraciano (2001) misread this topo-nym and another in Don Andrés’s testament: “Don Andrés de Zárate referred in 1607 to ravine and slope lands (‘ytu aniñe nduhua’ and ‘ytu aniñe ytnu’) asso-ciated with his aniñe in Santiago Tiñuhu” (209). The Mixtec phrases in ques-tion should be read as “�eld of the palace at Nduhuayoo [Ca/andaxu]” (ytu aniñe nduhuayoo) and “�eld of the palace at Ytnuchii [Sandathu]” (ytu aniñe ytnuchii).

30 This word appears in two toponyms—Ñaá chandit (“cerro del barrio”) and hinda lá móho chándit (“arroyo del barrio”)—appearing in a list of Ixcatec place names collected by Cristino Bautista and sent to Manuel Martínez Gracida in 1893. This list is found in a manuscript volume titled “Documentos para la histó-ria de Oaxaca: Civilización Mixteca y Dibujo,” which is presently kept in the Biblioteca Pública de Oaxaca. The word chandi is also recalled today in the Ixca-tec expression dichandi (chandi man), meaning tequitlato.

31 Although sharing certain similarities with the numerous confraternities in Teo-tongo, the xindi are nevertheless distinct. The �rst did not participate in the �esta titular but rather organized the �esta for their particular saint. Furthermore, unlike the confraternities, the whole community was divided into secciones.

32 In 1967, Teotongo removed its patron saint, Santiago, from the o¶cial name of the municipality.

33 The apparent scattered distribution of xindi membership might be a recent inno-vation, similar to the situation described by Michael Kearney (1972: 22–24) for Ixtepeji.

34 The Ngiwa name of Vista Hermosa, Xadë Gatse, means new pueblo. According to the Oaxacan historian Manuel Martínez Gracida (1888 [1883]), Vista Her-mosa was a barrio of Teotongo that was raised to the status of pueblo by decree number 54 of 19 March 1868: “Era barrio de Teotongo y se elevó al rango de pueblo por decreto núm. 54 de 19 Marzo de 1868” (417).

35 This account book has the year account of 1760 written in Ngiwa. See Doesburg and Swanton (forthcoming- a) for a transcription and translation of this text.

36 The San Miguel workshop was carried out from 20 to 24 August 2001. The participants were Cesario Ángel Pérez, Clotilde Nieto Aquino, Emilia Ángel Ángel, Pedro Velasco Espinosa, Petra Jiménez López, and Petra Pérez Aquino. Additional language consultation was given by Abram Ciprian Ángel. The San Antonio workshop was held from 22 to 24 October 2001, and the par-ticipants were Rodolfo Mendoza Pérez, Timoteo Pérez García, Tereso Velasco García, Concepción Velasco García, María Antonia García, Francisca López Rivera, and Guadalupe Pérez Ángel. The great majority of the Ngiwa- language toponyms were furnished by Doña Guadalupe. Some additional toponyms were provided by Agustina Cruz Reyes.

37 Among these aspects are the spatial distribution, the quality, and the use of lands as well as the way in which the lands are passed down across generations. An initial examination of the distribution of these bequeathed lands shows that it is not at all uncommon for a testator to lay claim to lands far from his sindi (see Doesburg 2004). A similar example seems to concern the so- called sindi �elds,


or ynu sindi. For the early seventeenth century, the LC- Ca makes a small num-ber of references to ynu sindi in localities named Nchechhi (06:42), Nguinda-qui (08:8), and Saya (08:23, 29). Although the �rst two localities have still to be securely identi�ed, there is little doubt regarding the third, which bears the same name as lands of the modern barrio of San Isidro del Progreso. It does not seem possible that these �elds in Saya can be contiguous with those of Ca/andaxu, the two being separated by Nguindandee.

38 In particular, the regional post- Classic diagnostic Yanhuitlan red- on- cream and, in lesser quantities, Coxcatlan stamped- bottom gray trade ware (see Byland 1980; Spores 1972; and MacNeish, Peterson, and Flannery 1970). An archaeo-logical survey in the municipality of Tulancingo might help strengthen our identi�cations and aid in the localization of the “missing” sindi (Tzetnuquiñi, Tzunda, and Ndanda).

39 Again, in this we have been aided principally by Don Antonio Santiago Rivera. Also a small number of Ngiwa place names were registered by the anthropolo-gist Robert Weitlaner during his visit to Teotongo in May 1948. His unpublished notes are kept in the Dirección de Etnología y Antropología Social del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH); see, in particular, Fondo Weit-laner, XLI- 2, doc. 7, and L- 4, doc. 6.

40 For a thorough discussion of these geographical identi�cations taking into con-sideration Ngiwa linguistic history, the archaeological record of the region, and colonial- period historical data, see Doesburg and Swanton (in preparation).

41 In a letter to the priest of San Cristóbal Suchixtlahuaca that is kept in the Tequix-tepec municipal archives, the Ngiwa name of xuxuitongo is given as ngitunduiui (Archivo Antiguo de Tequixtepec, exp. 79, 1766).

42 The �fth name coincides with that of the village of San Jerónimo Otla, today an Agencia of Coixtlahuaca. In the sixteenth century, Otla was called Octla (Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City [hereafter AGN], Indios, vol. 5, exp. 1030, 1591; vol. 6(II), exp. 797 and 811, 1593). See Doesburg (2010) for a detailed discussion of the Otla congregation and separation.

43 Escritura de Sosoitongo, 1906, Archivo Municipal San Cristóbal Suchixtlahuaca. 44 All four houses still exist: three are now private homes, while the house of Sosola

is used by the municipality for storage. Local tradition states that the house of Chila was changed to its current location after an earlier house was demolished to build the town hall. As explained by Don Cresenciano Córdoba Cruz, who led us on our �rst tour of the houses, each suchixtlahuaqueño belonged to one of the barrios, and, as in Teotongo, there was no geographical grouping of bar-rio members. Membership depended on the a¶liation of one’s father. A woman marrying a man from another barrio would take on his a¶liation, as would their children.

45 Oscuautla, Hosthquaula, and the like are copying errors, presumably of an unattested form like Ezquauhtla (place of abundant ezcuahuites), and so corre-sponding with the modern pronunciation Escotla.

46 See Doesburg and Swanton (forthcoming- a) for a transcription and transla-tion of the 1724 register. The book in several instances presents the Chochon name of Suchixtlahuaca (³ower valley, in Nahuatl) as San Christobal Nguitzuo Nguinchee, “³ower valley, snake valley.” The second name, Nguinchee, is also the Ngiwa name of Coixtlahuaca, which, like its Nahuatl equivalent, means “snake valley.” The double name would suggest Suchixtlahuaca and Coixtla-


huaca were somehow seen as parts of a single settlement. This same expression is found in the Chochon testament of Gracia de Salinas of the Coixtlahuaca sindi of Cuxaga (AHJO, Teposcolula, Civil, leg. 29, exp. 13, 1695), which refers to Coixtlahuaca as San Juan Bautista Nguizho Nguichee.

47 Interestingly, in 1738 the cacique of San Miguel Aztatla mentioned in his tes-tament that he also owned two pieces of land of his cacicazgo in a place called Guidadio in Suchixtlahuaca (AHJO, Teposcolula, Protocolos, 1738).

48 AGN, Tierras, vol. 2787. 49 See Doesburg (2000) for a more complete and detailed analysis of this document. 50 Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Escribanía 160B, f. 1119v.

Roldán is the author of the only colonial- period printed text in Popoloca, the 1580 Cartilla y Doctrina Christiana . . . en la lengua Chuchona del pueblo de Tepe-xic de la Seda. There is only one currently known example of this book, located in the Nettie Lee Benson American Collection of the University of Texas; it is incomplete. See Doesburg and Swanton (forthcoming- b) for a description of this work and the corpus of colonial Popoloca writing.

51 An important topic not treated in this study is the disappearance of the noble lines of the sindi. While clearly present in the late sixteenth century, there is no trace of these nobles in the documents of the nineteenth century.

52 Already in 1969, Spores pointed out the increase in the building of the so- called lama- bordo terraces during the Natividad phase (coinciding with the post- Classic era). He interpreted this as “a mechanism aimed at increasing agri-cultural production in response to increasing needs of a growing population” (1972: 189). The colonization of new areas and the reuse of earlier systems may explain the dispersed settlement pattern and the dominance of the dependency type settlement during the post- Classic period.

53 AGN, Tierras, vol. 2787. See also Doesburg (forthcoming). 54 There almost certainly were religious and administrative centers in these two

communities in the post- Classic era. See Doesburg (2004) with regard to Tulan-cingo; see the archaeological survey data in Byland (1980) for Teotongo.

55 The request and license to form its own government is preserved in AGN, Indios, vol. 33, exp. 229, 1678. The new church built as a consequence is still standing in the village today.

56 Other examples of sindi that managed to separate and form their own inde-pendent pueblo are Santiago Tepetlapa, which was supposed to join Tequix-tepec, but never did; San Mateo Tlapiltepec, which joined Ihuitlán between 1563 and 1583; and San Gerónimo Otla, which joined Suchixtlahuaca between 1556 and 1591. An even more extreme case is the actual municipality of Tlacotepec, which, after having been incorporated into Ihuitlán in 1563, separated in 1868, breaking the former village in two. Now, as two municipalities, the villages are divided only by a street!

57 For a discussion of confraternities, see Lockhart (1992: 218–29). On the relation between barrios and confraternities, see John K. Chance and William B. Taylor (1985); and among the Mixtec, Terraciano (2001: 286, 308–39, esp. nn236, 341, 364).

58 It is also tempting to see a parallel between the ndoacha elders and the hue-huetque (elders) and calpulhuehuetque (calpolli elders) mentioned in Nahua sources. See Luis Reyes García (1996 [1979]).

59 This is re³ected in the Chochon language itself: unlike the community level,


where social structures usually took on the Spanish names of colonial insti-tutions and o¶ces (like cabildo, alcalde, and regidor), those at the sindi level maintained Chochon names throughout Spanish colonial rule and after Mexi-can independence. However, as we have seen, the speci�c, toponymic names of the sindi were more likely to disappear than were those of the saçê.

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