Formulating the concept of " ethno-ethnohistory, " Ray Fogelson urged ethnohistorians to seek out... more Formulating the concept of " ethno-ethnohistory, " Ray Fogelson urged ethnohistorians to seek out indigenous people's perspectives on their own pasts, which might differ from Western academic modes of representing history. In this article, slightly expanded from my 2014 Presidential Address at the American Society for Ethnohistory's Indianapolis conference, I examine two indigenous-authored texts from colonial Mexico that adopt a Western discourse — Christian salvation—but appropriate it in such a way that it grants legitimacy to indigenous communities. The genres in question are not conventional modes of historical writing, either indigenous or Western, but in the first case a Roman Catholic catechism adapted into pictorial form and in the second a religious drama linked to Renaissance and baroque European performance traditions. Both genres had been assimilated into indigenous textual practices in the sixteenth century. The authors, Nahua noblemen, counter dominant views of indigenous religiosity by asserting full and competent participation in the Christian order.
The Conquest all Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism, edited by Susan Schroeder, Sussex Academic Press, 2010
Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico, edited by Rebecca P. Brienen and Margaret A. Jackson, Universtiy Press of Colorado, 2008
El teatro franciscano en la Nueva España: fuentes y ensayos para el estudio del teatro de evangelización en el siglo XVI, ed. María Sten, Óscar Armando García, and Alejandro Ortiz Bullé-Goyri, 2000
Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America, edited by Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes, The University of Birmingham Press, 1999
World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, vol. 4, South and Meso-American Native Spirituality, ed. Gary H. Gossen and Miguel León-Portilla, 1993
Formulating the concept of " ethno-ethnohistory, " Ray Fogelson urged ethnohistorians to seek out... more Formulating the concept of " ethno-ethnohistory, " Ray Fogelson urged ethnohistorians to seek out indigenous people's perspectives on their own pasts, which might differ from Western academic modes of representing history. In this article, slightly expanded from my 2014 Presidential Address at the American Society for Ethnohistory's Indianapolis conference, I examine two indigenous-authored texts from colonial Mexico that adopt a Western discourse — Christian salvation—but appropriate it in such a way that it grants legitimacy to indigenous communities. The genres in question are not conventional modes of historical writing, either indigenous or Western, but in the first case a Roman Catholic catechism adapted into pictorial form and in the second a religious drama linked to Renaissance and baroque European performance traditions. Both genres had been assimilated into indigenous textual practices in the sixteenth century. The authors, Nahua noblemen, counter dominant views of indigenous religiosity by asserting full and competent participation in the Christian order.
The Conquest all Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism, edited by Susan Schroeder, Sussex Academic Press, 2010
Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico, edited by Rebecca P. Brienen and Margaret A. Jackson, Universtiy Press of Colorado, 2008
El teatro franciscano en la Nueva España: fuentes y ensayos para el estudio del teatro de evangelización en el siglo XVI, ed. María Sten, Óscar Armando García, and Alejandro Ortiz Bullé-Goyri, 2000
Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America, edited by Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes, The University of Birmingham Press, 1999
World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, vol. 4, South and Meso-American Native Spirituality, ed. Gary H. Gossen and Miguel León-Portilla, 1993
Painted Words presents a facsimile, decipherment, and analysis of a seventeenth-century pictograp... more Painted Words presents a facsimile, decipherment, and analysis of a seventeenth-century pictographic catechism from colonial Mexico, preserved as Fonds Mexicain 399 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Works in this genre present the Catholic catechism in pictures that were read sign by sign as aids to memorization and oral performance. They have long been understood as a product of the experimental techniques of early evangelization, but this study shows that they are better understood as indigenous expressions of devotional knowledge.
In addition to inventive pictography to recount the catechism, this manuscript features Nahuatl texts that focus on don Pedro Moteuczoma, son of the Mexica ruler Moteuczoma the Younger, and his home, San Sebastián Atzaqualco. Other glosses identify figures drawn within the manuscript as Nahua and Spanish historical personages, as if the catechism had been repurposed as a dynastic record. The end of the document displays a series of Nahua and Spanish heraldic devices.
These combined pictorial and alphabetic expressions form a spectacular example of how colonial pictographers created innovative text genres, through which they reimagined pre-Columbian writing and early evangelization—and ultimately articulated newly emerging assertions of indigenous identity and memorialized native history.
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In addition to inventive pictography to recount the catechism, this manuscript features Nahuatl texts that focus on don Pedro Moteuczoma, son of the Mexica ruler Moteuczoma the Younger, and his home, San Sebastián Atzaqualco. Other glosses identify figures drawn within the manuscript as Nahua and Spanish historical personages, as if the catechism had been repurposed as a dynastic record. The end of the document displays a series of Nahua and Spanish heraldic devices.
These combined pictorial and alphabetic expressions form a spectacular example of how colonial pictographers created innovative text genres, through which they reimagined pre-Columbian writing and early evangelization—and ultimately articulated newly emerging assertions of indigenous identity and memorialized native history.