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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Speaking of
the Crónica X, someone should point out that a detailed philological
examination of the subject has recently been published:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Peperstraete, Sylvie. 2007. <i style="">La «Chronique X». Reconstitucion et analyse d’une source perdue
fondamentale sur la civilisation Aztèque, d’après l’Historia de las Indias de
Nueva España de D. Durán (1581) et la Crónica Mexicana de F.A. Tezozomoc (ca.
1598)</i>. <span style="" lang="EN-US">BAR International
Series 1630, Archaeopress, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<br><br>--- On <b>Sat, 2/28/09, Gordon Whittaker <i><gwhitta@gwdg.de></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><br>From: Gordon Whittaker <gwhitta@gwdg.de><br>Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Aztlan-Chicomoztoc and the chronicles<br>To: nahuatl@lists.famsi.org<br>Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009, 6:16 PM<br><br><div class="plainMail">Dear Maria, dear colleagues,<br><br>Thanks so much for your contribution to the 2009 Great Aztlan Debate! It's<br>much appreciated, since you've done a lot of work in this area.<br><br>I fully agree with you (and Henry Nicholson) on the need to conduct a<br>careful critical examination of the sources, one that includes, among<br>other things, an exacting philological analysis of the texts and their<br>affiliations.<br><br>And you are perfectly right that one should be careful not to assume, just<br>because a number of 16th- and 17th-century
sources provide a particular<br>piece of information, that that information is independent in each. As you<br>point out, Motolinia was indeed a primary source for Lopez de Gomara,<br>Zorita, Mendieta, Torquemada, and so on. But, unless I am very mistaken,<br>no one has been suggesting so far that these sources are independent of<br>each other.<br><br>If I recall correctly, only Motolinia and Lopez de Gomara have been<br>mentioned so far in the debate, and not in connection with Aztlan or a<br>particular tradition. I had noted, in answer to a post from Roberto, that<br>Miguel Leon-Portilla was incorrect in asserting, on the one hand, that<br>Lopez de Gomara, following Cortes, only used 'los de Mexico' for the<br>Mexica and, on the other hand, that the term 'mexicano/a(s)' first came<br>into use after Diaz del Castillo made it popular. I mentioned in that<br>context that Motolinia was already using the term by 1541 at the latest.<br>I'm sure you will
agree with me that this is not the same kind of thing as<br>you were talking about.<br><br>Cronica X is a fascinating subject! We still need a painstakingly thorough<br>study and test of this hypothesis, as also of Cronica Y, and, of course,<br>of the various other lost or presumed sources to which we could, perhaps,<br>assign for convenience the other letters of the alphabet. Barlow set us on<br>this path with his initial astute study, but a lot more needs to be done<br>before we can confidently say that we have solved the puzzle. Duran's<br>primary source, the Historia that he repeatedly mentions, may well be the<br>Cronica X, or at least a close relative.<br><br>As you (and I) have already said, there are a number of variants of the<br>Aztlan cycle, and these can indeed be placed in different source groups.<br>And, as you know, the specifics vary considerably -- e.g. as to how many<br>calpoltin of the Azteca Mexitin there were and how Chicomoztoc
and<br>(Teo)colhuacan are treated geographically, geopolitically, and (if you'll<br>excuse the coinage) geomythologically.<br><br>For the sake of the discussion (since Susan Schroeder's extensive work on<br>Chimalpahin had been brought up), and to avoid unnecessarily long<br>documentation in what is just an exchange of ideas, I restricted myself in<br>previous posts to the Nahuatl texts of the Codex Aubin and Chimalpahin<br>(which includes passages adopted and adapted from Tezozomoc and Alonso<br>Franco that have not survived independently).<br><br>It is true, as you say, that Chimalpahin, like other sources of this early<br>period, frequently mixed materials gleaned from a variety of sources.<br>Ixtlilxochitl and Chimalpahin name quite a few of their primary informants<br>and materials. We know from this that Chimalpahin consulted learned Mexica<br>and Chalca nobles. The result is not a deliberate total synthesis (like<br>Ixtlilxochitl's Historia
Chichimeca in contrast to his Relaciones) but a<br>series of related and overlapping accounts that are more or less faithful<br>to their sources (to the extent that we can judge this), though refined<br>and emended according to Chimalpahin's perception of things. Thus, he was<br>certainly not averse to blending material from one source into another, as<br>Schroeder and you have shown.<br><br>What we should not forget, however, is that Chimalpahin, unlike Lopez de<br>Gomara, to name but one example, was not simply consulting informants and<br>documents. He was himself at least cursorily acquainted with the<br>traditions as a result of his upbringing and heritage. He grew up<br>surrounded by elders familiar with Aztec-period traditions, but, at the<br>same time, he was versed in the methods of European scholarship.<br>Ixtlilxochitl is sometimes lost at sea in his attempt to interpret<br>unglossed pictorials, as we can see in his repeated attempts to read
the<br>same glyphs. Chimalpahin was either much more skilled at this, or had<br>better consultants.<br><br>Chimalpahin indeed makes good use of what you call the Cronica X and Y<br>versions of the migration accounts. But BOTH versions (and Chimalpahin's<br>own retelling) support points I was making: namely, (1) that Aztlan was<br>generally understood in 16th-century Mexico, and probably earlier, to be<br>more than just the island of this name, as many in the past have<br>mistakenly assumed, and (2) that the Nahuatl ethnonym 'Azteca' included<br>more than just the Mexitin, although they are paramount and, in some<br>accounts, the only group explicitly named as such.<br><br>Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that Cronica X and Y are theoretical<br>constructs that, if they ever existed as discrete works or traditions, may<br>have included more -- or perhaps less -- than what we assume them to. If<br>we say that Cronica X only contained what is found in
similar form in all<br>the extant works known to have used it, we adopt a minimalist approach<br>with regard to this construct. If we say that Cronica X itself used and<br>incorporated more than one traditional account (the norm in 16th-century<br>historiography and mythography), based on additional elements found only<br>in, say, two known sources, then we have a maximalist approach. Just as<br>much as two authors can add to, or blend into, their common primary source<br>the same secondary source independently of each other, so too can two<br>authors leave out (again independently) a secondary strand contained in<br>their primary source, in order to concentrate on a particular unitary<br>narrative, one that may have been gaining currency at the time. There are<br>arguments that can be made for each stance. We simply don't know for sure.<br>But it sure is fun, and worthwhile, to consider and to debate the options!<br><br>Maria, thanks again for your
thought-provoking contribution. I'm really<br>looking forward to your upcoming article on the Seven Caves. Your<br>stimulating work in this area is something the 'Azteca', whoever they may<br>(or may not) have been, would have been very proud of!<br><br>All the best,<br>Gordon<br><br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br>Gordon Whittaker<br>Professor<br>Linguistische Anthropologie und Altamerikanistik<br>Seminar fuer Romanische Philologie<br>Universitaet Goettingen<br>Humboldtallee 19<br>37073 Goettingen<br>Germany<br>tel./fax (priv.): ++49-5594-89333<br>tel. (office): ++49-551-394188<br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Nahuatl mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:Nahuatl@lists.famsi.org" href="/mc/compose?to=Nahuatl@lists.famsi.org">Nahuatl@lists.famsi.org</a><br><a href="http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl"
target="_blank">http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl</a><br></div></blockquote></td></tr></table><br>