Cuixin / cuixtli / cuitli

[David Wright]

Alec:

By coincidence, I stumbled upon a few references to another variant of Cuixin, this time as the name of an "ancestor" of a specific town, along the migration route of the Otomi founders of Huamantla, Tlaxcala. I'll post this to the list in the hope that someone will have additional data or insights that relate to this matter.

In one of the fragments of the Huamantla Codex (which in reality was a huge historical map, similar to the "lienzos" but executed on amate paper), Humboldt fragment III in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, there is a tepetl sign with a thatched-roof calli sign on top; in front, on a little bench, is a male human figure with a red maxtlatl and two possible maguey spines in hand. His name sign is over his head, connected by two fine parallel black lines: the head of a bird of prey (see the facsimile and study by Carmen Aguilera, Codice de Huamantla, Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala, 1984, plates 47 and 50). Above the thatched-roof building is a tiny Nahuatl gloss: "Nica yahuayohca yn toca cuitli yn toconcol".

Eduard Seler ("The Mexican picture writings of Alexander von Humboldt in the Royal Library at Berlin", in Mexican and Central American Antiquities, Calendar Systems, and History, Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1904, p. 184) translates this gloss as "Here is a place called yauayohcan. Cuitli, 'hawk', is the ancestor". Seler adds: "Yauayocan might mean 'where they walk in a circle'. Cuitli is undoubtedly a dialect expression for cuixtli (cuixin, cuiztli), the name of a smaller bird of prey (cuixin, 'milano'). I find cuixtli as a proper name, for instance, in the list of names of Almoyauacan in the Manuscit Mexicain number 3, Bibliotheque Nationale (see a, figure 41)."

(Figure 41a is a full-figure representation of a bird with extended wings.)

Carmen Aguilera (, 1984, pp. 43, 44) comments on the quote from Seler given above: "Este autor reconstruye el nombre del ave como cuixtli, milano o halconcillo pensando que la alteracion de esta palabra se debe a un regionalismo del nahuatl que se hablaba en el area y posiblemente siguiendo la misma linea de pensamiento traduce toconcol o tococol como 'nuestro ancestro'; aunque la reduplicacion de col, de colli, 'abuelo o ancestro', parece una forma de enfatizar el sentido de la palabra."

Aguilera (1984: 36) identifies Yahuayocan as Cerro Gueyolacan. This topographical feauture is located less than 10 km south of Calpulalpan, in NW Tlaxcala, according to INEGI topographical maps. On the 1:250,000 map (E142) this mountain is called "Gueyolaca"; on the 1:50,000 map (E14B22) the variant "Yehualica" is used.

Interesting, huh?

Un saludo,

David Wright
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