One of the earliest texts written in a Native American language, the Codex Sierra is a sixteenth-century book of accounts from Santa Catalina Texupan, a community in the Mixteca region of the modern state of Oaxaca. Kevin Terraciano’s transcription and translation, the first in more than a half century, combine with his deeply informed analysis to make this the most accurate, complete, and comprehensive English-language edition of this rare manuscript. The sixty-two-page manuscript, organized in parallel columns of Nahuatl alphabetic writing and hand-painted images, documents the expenditures and income of Texupan from 1550 to 1564. With the alphabetic column as a Rosetta stone for deciphering the phonetic glyphs, a picture emerges of indigenous pueblos taking part in the burgeoning Mexican silk industry—only to be buffeted by the opening of trade with China and the devastations of the great epidemics of the late 1500s. Terraciano uses a wide range of archival sources from the period to demonstrate how the community innovated and adapted to the challenges of the time, and how they were ultimately undermined by the actions and policies of colonial officials. The first known record of an indigenous population’s integration into the transatlantic economy, and of the impact of the transpacific trade on a lucrative industry in the region, the Codex Sierra provides a unique window on the world of the Mixteca less than a generation after the conquest—a view rendered all the more precise, clear, and coherent by this new translation and commentary.
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-03-25 - Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
One of the earliest texts written in a Native American language, the Codex Sierra is a sixteenth-century book of accounts from Santa Catalina Texupan, a community in the Mixteca region of the modern state of Oaxaca. Kevin Terraciano’s transcription and translation, the first in more than a half century, combine
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-07-01 - Publisher: Stanford University Press
A history of the Mixtec Indians of southern Mexico, this book focuses on several dozen Mixtec communities in the region of Oaxaca during the period from about 1540 to 1750.
Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History is a sourcebook of primary texts and images intended for students and teachers as well as for scholars and general readers. The book centers upon people-people from different parts of the world who came together to form societies by chance and by design in
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-02-07 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
An Object of Seduction explores the early modern trans-Pacific export of Chinese silk to New Spain. It argues that the increasing demand for silk contributed to the parallel development of silk fashion and sericulture in China and New Spain, and also created conflicts on imperial regulations about foreign trade and
Authors: Matthew Restall, Associate Professor of Latin American History Women's Studies and Anthropology and Director of Latin American Studies Matthew Restall, Lisa Sousa, Kevin Terraciano
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-11-07 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press
A 2006 collection of indigenous-language writings from central Mexico and Guatemala, written during the colonial period.