6
Indigenous House Plans and Land in Mexico City (Sixteenth Century)
Reflections on the Buying and Selling, Inheritance, and Conflicts Surrounding Houses and Land
Keiko Yoneda
Translated By Hannah Becker
This chapter examines a series of sixteenth-century documents that provide valuable insights into the organization of household space and the stewardship of private and familial property among Nahua-speaking people in the Valley of Mexico. It documents how indigenous notions of household organization and uses of space were translated into the idiom of Spanish legalism, laying the foundation for the means through which the descendants of the conquered would assert land title in the colonial and postcolonial eras. This dialog between indigenous and Western notions of property and land tenure created space for cultural continuities whose effects are still evident in contemporary Nahua-speaking communities. Some additional insights that emerge from this research involve questions regarding the role of different forms of property in indigenous society, as well as the complex historical and social relationships that often exist behind the seemingly simple concept of a “house.”
Central to this analysis are a series of narrative and pictorial texts derived from the rich corpus of colonial-era Nahua documents. The possession and demarcation of land and territories motivated the creation of different categories of pictographic documents in sixteenth-century New Spain. These include paintings that appear in present-day archive catalogs as large-scale historical maps; large-format site plans that depict large areas such as entire cities or parts of a city; and smaller-format site plans that depict plots of land, buildings, and agricultural fields.1 This work will analyze the small-format pictographic documents that are attached to files that document lawsuits over the privately owned lands and houses.2
As a compilation that includes many of the texts involved in this study, I will make frequent references to Documentos nahuas de la ciudad de México del siglo XVI (Reyes García et al. 1996).3 From this larger corpus, I focus on a number of pictographic site plans that were originally filed in the branch of Mexico’s National Archives (Archivo General de la Nación, AGN) that deals with land tenure (the Ramo Tierras). The study of these site plans, which focuses on the graphic elements of the plans themselves, formed part of an investigation that was carried out in a collective project.4 The texts of the files from AGN in the current chapter are taken from the book Documentos nahuas, which was the result of a separate project that focused on the publication of primary texts in Spanish and Nahuatl that were written in the Latin alphabet. This study was directed by Luis Reyes García. My analysis here will be based on sixteen of the twenty site plans in the original collection, with a close focus on four of particular interest (see, for example, figure 6.1).5
Figure 6.1. Plan 9 (AGN, Tierras, vol. 29, exp. 5, f. 14r) [Documentos nahuas 123] 1566.
In each of these sixteen site plans, I tried to locate the houses (calli) and the lands (tlalli) in question in four major neighborhoods or territorial divisions of Mexico-Tenochtitlan that surround the thirteen-block district that was designated for Spanish occupation. These peripheral neighborhoods were home to the city’s indigenous community and corresponded to the outer portion of the four original indigenous neighborhoods of Santa María Cuepopan (Tlaquechiuhcan), San Sebastián Tzacualco (Atzacualco, Atzacualpa), San Pablo Zoquipan (Teopan, Xochimilco), and San Juan Moyotlan (see Appendix 6.A). Of the sixteen site plans, nine refer to properties in San Juan Moyotlan and three to properties in San Sebastián Atzacualco (three planos), and four planos are not tied specifically to a neighborhood.
As a group, these plans provide priceless insight into the organization of lived space among sixteenth-century Nahua speakers. They contain drawings of houses, diverse plots of land, chinampas (raised agricultural fields), and water canals, as well as the measurements of these elements. In some cases these documents include additional glyphs such as human figures that represent couples that currently or formerly owned the property, glyphs that state the price of their estates, or calendrical glyphs that state the years of possession of houses and lands. The houses are depicted with parallel lines, leaving the entryway open. The canals are often represented by curving lines or swirls that recall the rivers in historical-cartographic documents in the indigenous tradition.
A number of additional glyphs are used to document the size of different lands and structures, also providing insight into common units of measurement in colonial Mexico. For example, the measurement known as maitl is commonly represented with the hieroglyph for “hand,” and translated in Documentos nahuas as braza (roughly equivalent to an English fathom). Mitl, represented with the glyph for “arrow,” is translated in paragraphs 403 and 981 as “the span from the elbow to the other hand.”6 Yolohtli, represented by the glyph for “heart,” is translated as “the span from the chest to the hand.” Omitl, represented with the glyph for “bone,” is translated as “an elbow.”7
The close association between the written documents in Nahuatl and these site plans hint at the close relationship between the content of these paintings and the larger cultural and linguistic world of Nahuatl speakers from central Mexico. It must be noted, however, that the style of the glyphs such as maitl and yolohtli have features that remind us of the forms of these elements in Western art.8 We also find the cross element (three crosses in Plano 16 associated with the lines that unite the pairs in this plano) and posts drawn with white or black circles and in a more naturalistic manner in various planos. The posts are associated with the mediation or the act of possession of lands and houses. But these and other minor traces of Western influence notwithstanding, the terms and concepts of space embodied by these documents show clear continuities with pre-Hispanic forms of land tenure.
Besides tracing these continuities in ideas of lived space, my goal in examining these documents is to learn how the inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan used the stewardship of private property as a means of physical and cultural survival in the early colonial period. These survival strategies involved both household spaces and abutting properties and hydrological features. Thus, I will demonstrate how the testimonies of individual lives reflected in the plans and documents from the sixteenth century are evidence of how Nahua people responded to their natural surroundings in a specific historic moment and manifested themselves in the form of a sense of identity and continuity. This process is evident in a range of practices with pre-Hispanic roots that successfully incorporated Spanish influences during this period. The long-term ramifications of this process are also observed in the practices of present-day Nahuatl-speaking communities.
I should clarify that the present study is a first attempt that tries to systemize the data on the images found in the indigenous plans that were organized in: (a) a graphic catalog and the preliminary study (Yoneda 1996), and in (b) Nahuatl and Spanish texts written in the Latin alphabet published in Documentos nahuas. In this last book, they are edited together in the files of different cases, even though the published files concerning each lawsuit are organized according to their place in the National Archive and aren’t presented in chronological order. The presentation of these files in Documentos nahuas also stops short of explaining the motives of the production of each document in connection with the development of the lawsuit.
Through this new analysis, I have tried to find the particular conflict or strategies that animated a particular lawsuit, with a special focus on how these were filtered through the kinds of spatial knowledge that is represented visually in site plans. This approach was faced with some problems. Even after finding the connection between a file and a plan, there were often discrepancies between the narrative and visual description of a particular property, which required further analysis and explanation. Still, this particular confluence of narrative and visual descriptions of disputed properties was essential to understanding how particular perceptions of lived space were reproduced within the changing legal regimes of colonial Mexico. Before turning to the documents themselves, I will provide a brief sketch of the history of political geography and different regimes of land tenure in the Valley of Mexico.
Historical Background of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
Most historical scholarship, drawing on the migration myths recorded in the sixteenth century, state that the ancestors of the Nahuatl-speaking Mexica inhabited the northern part of Mesoamerica. They were nomadic chichimecas who practiced a subsistence system of hunting and gathering, trading occasionally with sedentary neighbors. It’s possible that some Chichimec groups had known the sedentary lifestyle, practicing agriculture in provisional establishments on the path of longer migrations (Yoneda 2002:12–15). These chichimecas arrived in waves of migrations toward the central and southern parts of Mesoamerica in the twelfth–fourteenth centuries, when climate changes motivated their movement south of the northern agricultural frontier (Rojas Rabiela 1991, tomo 2: 220–21).
The Mexicas’ mythological history notes that they departed from Aztlan Chicomoztoc under the guidance of their guardian god Huitzilopochtli. Sometime after 1325, they founded Mexico-Tenochtitlan on the site where they found an eagle devouring a serpent, in the location of tenochtli (tetl: stone + nochtli: edible cactus). Mexico-Tenochtitlan survived for two centuries, from the arrival of the Mexicas in the basin of Mexico to the arrival of the Spanish. López Austin and López Luján (2008:210) describe this 200 years as follows:
From 1325 to 1430, the Mexicas settled on an insular zone of Lake Texcoco and lived under the subordination of groups recognized as tepanecas. In 1337, a faction of the Mexica departed from Mexico-Tenochtitlan and moved to the islands immediately to the north and founded the twin and rival statelet of Mexico-Tlatelolco. Both Mexica polities of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Mexico-Tlatelolco continued to pay tribute to the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco, who enjoyed customary title over the islands. In the fourteenth century, the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco forged marriage alliances with native elite lineages of the Valley of Mexico, and successfully expanded their own territorial base through a series of conquests.9 By 1430, the basin of Mexico was reorganized in the Triple Alliance ruled by Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The Mexican expansion would transform both the political and natural landscape of central Mexico.
Under this alliance, Mexico-Tenochtitlan would construct a levee twelve kilometers long by twenty meters wide to stop the influx of salty water from the east.10 The regulation of soil and water salination influenced the quality of agricultural and hydrological resources in the valley, a process that was still evident in the different values that were ascribed to some of the sixteenth-century properties that will be discussed later. Of the sixteen site plans that I analyzed, ten have the drawing of water, of which eight site plans represent canals bordering chinampas that form part of the lands referred to in the files. This fact confirms the close relation that the litigants had with the chinampera zone.11 The lacustrine environment of Mexico-Tenochtitlan permitted agriculture in the chinampas or artificial parcels of land constructed in the wetlands and in the riverbanks. The chinampas were plentiful in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico, and probably also in Aztlan, where the Mexicas came from. I will cite what Navarrete Linares (1999:17) explains about the construction of the chinampas and their utility:
To construct a chinampa, one must first place rows of ahuejotes or willows and of posts and sticks to form a large square. In between them are placed, one by one, many layers of mud taken from the bottom of the lake. The mud doesn’t dissolve in water because the roots of the trees and the sticks enclose it. Once the land rises above the water level, the chinampa is ready to be cultivated. A well-kept chinampa is very productive due to the fertility of the mud and the abundance of water in the lake.
Thanks to the chinampas, the inhabitants of Aztlan and of Mexico could reclaim land from the lake to compliment the abundant food that they extracted from it with agricultural products like corn, beans, pumpkins, chilies, and tomatoes.
This agricultural landscape was overlaid by territorial divisions and diverse property rights that reflected earlier political consolidations and the military expansion that took place from 1469 to 1502. This is the combination of ecological and political features that were reconfigured by Spanish property regimes after the conquest and consolidation of colonial rule. This is the context in which the documents published in the Documentos nahuas (Reyes García et al. 1996) were produced, including the plans of Mexico City, that are the focus of this chapter.
Political and Territorial Organization and the Land Tenure System in Central Mexico
Pre-Hispanic territories in the Valley of Mexico were composed of lands that produced for a more-or-less urbanized nucleus. P. Carrasco (1996:585) characterizes this territorial structure as follows: “The altepetl was a political unit ruled by a king, or tlatoani. That is, [an altepetl is a] tlatocayotl, the tlatoani’s government. Sometimes, the altepetl was an independent entity, but in general various altepeme [plural of altepetl]12 united in superior political entities of varying degrees of complexity, even though each of them maintained their own government.”
The cities were the principal seat of the nobility and the specialized artisans (P. Carrasco 1996:585). Each of the three polities that composed the alliance had their corresponding territories for subsistence production. The communities of farmers, organized in calpicaxgos led by majordomos, or calpixque, supplied the provisions for the palaces or gave other specialized services such as the care of forests and gardens (P. Carrasco 1996:585). Munehiro Kobayashi (1993:53) notes that the specific obligations that the towns had to the hueytlatoque (plural of hueytlatoani [huey: big + tlatoani: king, lord, ruler]) varied and could include military service, service work in the royal palace or public works, tribute in kind, work as a bonded agriculturalist, and other form of service.13 Scholars use the following terms from the colonial sources, whether from the historians or the archival documents, to refer to these territorial units: altepetl (town or city), tlatocayotl, calpulli,14 tlaxilacalli,15 for Mexico-Tenochtitlan (P. Carrasco 1996; Gibson 1967; Lockhart 1999); tlahtocayo and tecpan for Cuauhtinchan and Tepeaca, state of Puebla (Martínez 2000:196n4; Reyes García 1996) and tecalli, for Tlaxcala (Rojas Rabiela 1987).16
This variation in political autonomy and obligation is also evident in the different forms of land tenure exercised over the territories that were used for subsistence production. Based on the colonial sources, the following types of land can be recognized in the pre-Hispanic era in the Aztec Empire. Teotlalli, or land of the temples and the gods; tecpantlalli, or land of houses and the community palace (for the latter, Lockhart 1999:224; land of the palace); tlatocatlalli (tlatocamilli), or land of the tlatoque (rulers); pilalli and tecuhtlalli, or land of the nobles (pipiltin and tetecuhtin); milchimalli, or land of the army; and calpulalli, or land of the calpultin (Gibson 1967:263n1; Lockhart 1999:224).
Various researchers that address the topic of political and territorial organization in central Mexico and the states of Puebla-Tlaxcala have observed that the territories of different political groups or categories of landholder often overlapped (P. Carrasco 1996:586; Gibson 1967:270; Kirchhoff et al. 1976:224n5; Kobayashi 1993:52; Martínez 1984:53, 88–90, fig. 2; Reyes García 1977:94). In fact, in the Documentos nahuas we find this type of information for private properties. Pedro Carrasco (1996:586) explains this characteristic as follows:
The intermingling of territories means that all social segments are represented in the many or all territories. [Members of] the principal ethnic factions of the Mesoamerican empires—like colhuas, mexicas, and tepanecas in the tenochca empire—were found in all of the kingdoms. Neighborhoods—also related to distinct ethnic elements and with determined professions and cults—were also found in all of the cities. The factions and neighborhoods of a city had lands in their distinct rural dependencies. All of this is a manner of sharing resources of various places and in different environments. But it is also a mechanism of integration, not only economically, but also socially and politically, that acts against the fragmentation of the different segments into independent societies.
The complex tapestry of ethnic groups, factions, and other actors in the Valley of Mexico made certain categories of private or familial landholding particularly important in the reproduction of distinct social segments over time. In “Figure V.3. General perspective of the indigenous categories of land tenure” (Lockhart 1999:231), the following categories are found that relate to the analyzed planos:
5. calalli (land of the house): The parcel or parcels closest and associated most permanently with a determined domestic dwelling; they exist among nobles as well as among plebeians; . . .
6. hueca tlalli, inic oncan tlalli (distant land, land in another place): Parcels that possessed a domestic dwelling,17 in addition to calalli.18
7. huehuetlalli (old land, patrimonial land): Land inherited or that was expected to be inherited indefinitely in a domestic dwelling, and that therefore was under the discretion of the possessor; they existed among the nobles as well as among plebeians; in many cases coinciding with the calalli and contrasting with the calpolalli and tequitcatlalli.19
8. tlalcohualli (purchased land): Often contrasted with calpolalli and tequitcatlalli; they existed among the nobles; their existence among the plebeians in prehispanic times still hasn’t been definitively established, but is probable.
This system of property—intimately linked with the larger webs of ethnic and factional affiliations that defined the political and social life of the Valley of Mexico—entered into dialog with Spanish legal frameworks in the arguments and site plans that are the focus of my work. These plans contain characteristics that suggest that they come from a pre-Hispanic system of records. This raises larger questions regarding the traditional assumption that pre-Hispanic land use had been dominated by different forms of collective tenure. Given the content of these plans and the way in which legal cases were argued in the sixteenth century, there is evidence that purchases of lands also occurred in the pre-Hispanic period and that many of the negotiations over inheritance or sale that took place in the sixteenth century have earlier indigenous precedents. Felipe Castro Gutierrez (2010:121) observes that in the colonial era, the macehuales (the commoner indios) had private lands that they inherited, bought, and sold: “It must be taken into consideration . . . that not all lands of the towns and neighborhoods of indios were communitarian; patrimoniales existed as well, assimilated during the colony as private property . . . It would also appear that the common claim that the macehuales only had the usufruct of community lands isn’t completely true; there are common indios that inherited, bought, and sold lands.”
James Lockhart (1999:224) notes that there is a clear disparity in period sources between the names of lands that reflect the sociopolitical life of the lords in the pre-Hispanic era, on one hand, and lawsuits regarding lands whose litigants are individuals and not factions, lords, or entire communities on the other hand. This is evident in the texts collected in Documentos nahuas, which evidence a distinction between lands belonging to the lordly estates, communities, and the private lands of much smaller scale. Accordingly, the dimensions and characteristics of the pictographic documents differ from one category to the other, just as the corresponding lawsuits involve more or fewer litigants or territories of smaller or larger scale.20 So, for example, there are cases that air out territorial conflicts between lords or communities that were motivated by the rulers,21 while others discuss other types of lawsuits initiated between individuals. These questions of scale also seem to be reflected in the gender of the principal litigants. Susan Kellogg (1995) observed that in the suits filed between estates or communities, men are the principal participants. Conversely, in various disputes between individuals, women appear as litigants or as involved in the trials.22
It is also important to note that litigation does not appear to have been the purview of a particular social class. Some litigants in the sixteenth century seem to have been relatively well off in the colonial society, given the quantity and quality of lands and items listed in their wills. In other cases it seems that the litigants don’t own much of anything but the house and the land in dispute. As Kellogg (1995:64–65) observed: “One social type that appears frequently in the earliest legal texts is the lone woman or widow defending her rights. Another is the noble, descended by kings, surrounded by supporters, and tied politically to Spaniards. Yet another character type is the ‘common’ man who claimed ownership of modest holdings. Sometimes he appeared before the audiencia to make a claim for his own holdings; sometimes he went to defend his wife’s ownership of property” (Kellogg 1995:64). Further, she notes, “In case records from the beginning of the colonial period, litigants tended to present themselves in certain stereotypical ways: female litigants constantly referred to themselves as poor; male commoners identified themselves as hardworking and responsible craftsmen or agricultural laborers; communities portrayed themselves as steeped in tradition” (Kellogg 1995:65). These observations from Kellogg suggest that the descriptions that the litigants make about themselves may have common standards that follow the ideology or the customs of this era.23 Next, I closely analyze how these different categories of landscape, property, and landholder are articulated in site plans.
Site Plan 9 (AGN, tierras, vol. 29, exp. 5, f. 14r) and Site Plan 9b (AGN, tierras, vol. 29, exp. 5, ff. 23v–24r) 1563–1566
It was already mentioned above that the rulers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan constructed a levee twelve kilometers long by twenty meters wide to stop the influx of saltwater from the east of Lake Texcoco. The management of drinkable water resources continued to figure in land use and property rights in the decades that followed the conquest. I found a site plan that depicts a house called acalli, or “water house,” which a couple owned and operated after the death of an individual named Ezhuahuacatzintli. It appears that Ezhuahuacatzintli started with this occupation when saltwater flooded the canals, surely because it was necessary to supply freshwater for human consumption. Details about the history of the water house and its place in postconquest society are detailed in the documents referred to as Site Plans 9 and 9b.
Site Plans 9 and 9b (figures 6.1 and 6.2) are enclosed in the file published with the title of “Diego Yaotl against Gabriel Yaotl and María Teuchon,24 indios, regarding a piece of land called Amanalco. Year 1570” (Documentos nahuas 118). According to this lawsuit, Diego Yaotl and his wife, Ysabel Tlaco, bought a house and three chinamitl (enclosures) from Baltazar Mocnoteca and his wife, María Papan, with the former receiving formal title on December 29, 1563 (document 2). Diego Yaotl and Ysabel Tlaco sued Gabriel Yaotl and his wife, María Teuchon, because the latter sold their water in an acalli that is located in the former’s property. On this occasion, in accordance with the verdict, the court imposed a fine of 10 tomines to the Cámara de su Majestad on those who sell the water (December 10, 1563) (document 1).
Figure 6.2. Plan 9 bis (AGN, Tierras, vol. 29, exp. 5, ff. 23v–24r) [Documentos nahuas 126] 1563.
The three chinamitl and plot of land of seven brazas in width that is drawn in Plano 9b coincide with what is mentioned (document 1, paragraph 176) in the file.25 However, the length of eleven brazas doesn’t coincide with Site Plan 9b because they appear drawn about 20–22 brazas. This may be because this measurement includes the length of chinamitl.26 In the site plan, apart from the three chinamitl and four canals, there are three houses located within the walls that enclose the group. There is a small house beside the canal that is located on the extreme lower left. This could be the acalli or “water house” that is drawn in detail in Plano 9.
Other documents detailing subsequent parts of the case are included in the file, and dated March 5 and 14, 1566. The March 14 document lists three witnesses—a seventy-year-old man, an eighty-five-year-old man, and a sixty-year-old woman—all of whom affirm that the land with a water house that they call acalli, the place where they sell water, two camellones of water (even though it’s not clear which are the camellones mentioned here), and their canoes were bought by Gabriel Yaotl and María Teuchon from Ana Tlaco cihuatl (woman) for 5 pesos approximately three years earlier [1563]. But they also note that those properties had already been occupied for forty-four years (paragraph 199–200).
Concerning the origin of this water house, the seventy-year-old male witness notes: “[f. 17r] He said that what this witness knows is where Graviel Yaotl and María his wife sell water, first belonged to an yndio named Ezhuahuacatzintli in the time when the salt-water lake was growing and when Motelchiuhtzin was becoming lord (tlahtoani) and later he died and said Gabriel Yaotl and his wife took it” (paragraph 202). The fourth document, dated July 5, 1566, mentions that
Appearing in front of us, Graviel Yaotl and María Teuchon his wife, residents (of the neighborhood) of San Juan Amanaldo and they said that they demand justice on their ownership of a house where they sell water that they call acalli[,]27 that has in back (measurements of said house) three brazas and of length it has four brazes. (paragraph 191)
That which they have and own for forty years this part, and now Diego Yaotl and Ysabel [Tlaco] his wife (they are worried and they want to leave said house) and that at forty years that they bring in cases on the said water house. (paragraph 192)
Paragraph 193 notes that the witnesses confirmed that Gabriel Yaotl and María Teuchon, his wife, had the water house in their possession for forty years. Furthermore, in paragraph 194 it mentions that Diego Yaotl and Ysabel Tlaco bought the house and the land, but didn’t buy the “house to sell water” that was still legal property of Gabriel Yaotl and María Teuchon.
Plano 9 contains only the house known as acalli (water house) and the surrounding plots of land with measurements.28 There is also a structure that seems as if it were made of boards and that perhaps represents steps to descend to the water, either to collect the water for sale or to board a canoe that is in the water.29 The water from the canals, depicted in the form of an inverted L, is drawn in light and dark blue with black lines that signal the movement of the water, in which there is a canoe drawn in brown.30
As represented in the site plan and in the narrative descriptions of the case, it is evident that when the brackish water rose, an indio named Ezhuahuacatzintli started to sell the freshwater that comes from this part of the canal drawn in Plano 9, and Gabriel Yaotl and his wife continued selling it for more than forty years. The acalli appears embedded in the land with a house bought by another couple, about seven by eight brazas and three chinamitl (paragraph 176).
Although the case began on December 10, 1563, in terms that seemed less advantageous to the water sellers, they received a favorable ruling on July 5, 1566. Great weight seems to have been given to litigants’ presentation of three elderly witnesses who could testify to the sale of water by this couple some forty-four years prior. The case is interesting in that it shows how the sale of freshwater (probably from a source in this canal) existed in the chinampa zone from the time when the brackish water rose, and that its sale lasted over forty years until this conflict was brought forth and dealt with. Furthermore, it hints at a range of different usufruct or customary rights to occupy different sites and use different resources that existed alongside the simple sale and purchase of plots of land. The next case study provides further detail on the complex ways in which families and other groups occupied sites, and the diverse meanings of the concept of “house” that emerge in these texts.
Calli Glyphs
When I started to analyze the small-formal site plans, I was drawn to the following aspects of the pre-Hispanic glyph calli. One of them is the similarity to an occurrence of this glyph in the plans to conventions in the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 (MC2), which uses parallel lines with raised entrances for representing the walls of buildings or of an enclosure. An example of these drawing conventions appears in the toponymic glyph that combines an eagle (cuauhtli) and a shield (chimalli), and two enclosed areas with walls drawn with two parallel lines with an opening or entrance (glyph P19) (figure 6.3). Another example of walls drawn with two parallel lines and openings for the entrances is the depiction of the enclosures of the architectural complex of Cholollan (Cholula) (glyphs D17–D28) (figure 6.4).31
Figure 6.3. Toponymic glyph cuauhtli (eagle), chimalli (shield) and two areas that are enclosed by walls with an opening or entrance (glyph P19). [The identification codes are based on Yoneda 2002 (thesis) and Yoneda 2005, and are also used in Carrasco and Sessions 2007, 2010]. [The drawing is based on the digital restoration of the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan núm. 2 by Castro Mainou, in Marina Straulino (2010:74, fig. 2.38)].
Figure 6.4. The archaeological complex of Cholollan (Cholula) (glyphs D17–D28). [The identification codes are based on Yoneda 2002 (thesis) and Yoneda 2005, and are also used in D. Carrasco and Sessions (2007, 2010)]. [The drawing is based on the digital restoration of the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan núm. 2 by Castro Mainou, in Marina Straulino (2010:74, fig. 2.38)].
The fact that the same conventions were used to depict a range of different buildings and architectural arrangements reflects the tendency of the same word, calli, to be translated as “bedroom” or “room” and not simply as “house” in the Spanish glosses and translations of the Nahuatl texts published in Documentos nahuas. The analyses of Site Plans 7 and 18 presented below try to further investigate the meaning of the glyph calli. First, I will explain the general observation about the glyph calli in the sixteen site plans as a whole, and later I will present the analyses of Planos 7 and 18.
As I already said above, this corpus of site plans uses two parallel lines to delimit the glyph calli, depicting structures as if they were seen from a certain height and with the different entrances and exits clearly visible. In many cases, these documents depict supports that hold up the walls by the entrance of the building, with small rectangles drawn from the same perspective. Only in the case of Site Plan 16 do we see the frontal part of the house with the entrance of the calli marked by doorposts and lintel like those in the glyphs that represent a tecpan, or residence of a ruler in the colonial codices. Site Plan 9b marks the entrance from the exterior to the group of calli (houses) and tlalli (land) with an arch made of bricks seen from the front. Probably, the element of the arch in the site plan is due to colonial influence. Plano 14 also has an element in the form of an arch as part of the construction of the house.
Aside from the glyphs of calli, these two parallel lines are also used to depict the boundaries of a tlalli, or plot of land, probably indicating the constructed walls. The fact that this convention is used to represent constructed walls seems more likely given that other documents use simple dotted lines to depict similar boundaries.32 Access points to plots of land or structures are also often depicted with human footprints, which are also drawn to depict paths.33 To note the orientations of the entrances of the houses and of the bedrooms and of the location of the same with respect to the terrain where they are constructed, they use expressions such as Tonatiuh iquizayampa (where the sun rises), Tonatiuh icalaquiyampa (where the sun sets), or references to Xochimilco,34 Coyohuacan, and Tenayocan, among locations.
In the documents of wills and lawsuits, these different ways of depicting the physical forms of structures and plots of land that were purchased or inherited were complemented by descriptions of different rituals of ownership or possession. These include entering the house or the bedroom, throwing stones from one side to the other, measuring the lands by placing stakes or digging up land with an agricultural tool next to the houses or bedrooms and scattering the dirt on the houses and land.35 Perhaps, as Lockhart (1999:243) notes, part of these rituals come from the Spanish tradition. However, rituals such as throwing stones are reminiscent of the act of shooting arrows in the four cardinal directions that the Chichimecs performed when taking possession a land or territory (Anales de Cuauhtitlan 1975:6).
Certain elements of the domestic spaces described in these documents remain somewhat obscure. This is the case with the terms cihuacalli and miccacalli.36 In the case of the plans reviewed for the present study, it seems that cihuacalli corresponds to a bedroom larger than the other bedrooms in a house. The structures referred to as miccacalli may have played a role similar to a present-day structure referred to as a santohcalli in Zongolica, state of Veracruz. Today, this is a room where members of a household put the body of the deceased to hold vigil:
During the funeral rites, they put the body of the deceased in the santohcalli, space in the indigenous house where they place the domestic altar, with the images of saints, candles, incense, flowers, and other ritual paraphernalia . . .
It is in the santohcalli, facing the altar, where they perform the vigil. On a bed of tables covered with a mat and white sheets, the body, barren and lifeless, [lies] surrounded by flowers and lit candles. (Rodríguez 2012:100)
Next, I present the analyses of different functions of calli in Site Plans 7 and 18.
Plano 7 (AGN, Tierras, vol. 22, 1a. parte, file 5, f. 122v) 1564
This site plan (figure 6.5) is included in a file that was published with the title “The case of Juan Quauhtli, indio, and Juana, india, about a house and chinampas (camellones) [1564].” Also appearing in the document are Doña María, wife of Don Diego, and Don Pedro Dionisio, residents of San Pablo Teocaltitlan, who are the sellers of a house (centetl tocal) and three chinampas of land (yetetl in chinamitl). The buyers are Juan Quauhtli, his son Miguel Popoyotl, his wife, María Tiacapan, and his daughter-in-law, Ysabel Jacobia. The property was purchased for twenty-five pesos. A second seller named Anton Tlahui sold a house and a chinampa for the price of six pesos of gold to the same buyers. Doña María and Don Pedro Dionisio clarify that they also have two separate houses that are in the west side of the property, though they appear as two houses with their entrances facing west.37 These were built by the indios Simón and María, of Tlatilco. They request that the sellers demolish those two houses and that they sell them with the remainder of the property; that is, the house, the dry land, and the chinampa.
Figure 6.5. Plan 7 (AGN, tierras, vol. 22, 1a. parte, exp. 5, f. 122r) [Documentos nahuas: 112] 1564.
On a first glance at the site plan, it would seem that the houses and the chinampas on the property belong to a family, being that the houses share the same patio and the chinampas are together. But, as I discussed above, the text of the file notes that they correspond to two different owners who sold properties to the same buyers, as well as two houses that were built by the couple from Tlatilco.
Site Plan 7 is significant because it illustrates the more complex social histories that can contribute to the origins of a household complex. Despite its initial appearance, the combination of land, houses, and chinampas that are drawn in this plan don’t belong to just one family. In the case of this site plan and the accompanying documents, calli is translated as “house,” reflecting the fact that they are from different families. This instance is in marked contrast to many of the other site plans that I reviewed, in which calli is frequently translated as “bedroom” or as “room,” being a component of a larger structure that belongs to a single family.
Plano 18 (AGN, Tierras, vol. 48, file 4, f. 16r) 1566, 1576, 1582
Plano 18 (figure 6.6) is connected to a file that is composed of three documents that can be presented in the following chronological order (Documentos nahuas 17):38
Figure 6.6. Plan 18 (AGN, tierras, vol. 48, exp. 4, f. 16r). [Documentos nahuas: 179] 1582.
Document 3, dated to 1566, is the Will of Diego Tlacochcalcatl, which mentions his wife, María Tiacapan and his daughter, Ana Tepi.39 Document 1, which is dated 1576, is the will of Juana Francisca, resident of San Sebastián Tzaqualco. Finally, Document 2, which is dated 1582, provides information about the ownership of houses and lands that Balthasar Pedro and Marta Tepi inherited from Juana Francisca.
In this file, it is evident that the houses and bedrooms (calli) underwent different processes of construction and modifications throughout the years. House Plan 18 appears to be most closely associated with Document 2 (year, 1582), both due to the number of pages that make up the file and to its contents.40 This document mentions that “now only Ana Tepi remains” (paragraph 432), suggesting that the women who had inherited different calli the years before are already dead.41 It is also evident that Martha Tepi (the older sister of Juana Francisca) and Balthasar Pedro were in charge of the houses while Ana Tepi came to the “age of understanding” (paragraph 432). The site plan depicts a house that is labeled as “the large chamber that they call reception place for women, or ciucalli” (paragraph 439).42 The image of that structure is accompanied with the text of “yzcatqui ynical Ana Tepi (here is the house of Ana Tepi).” This document also includes two separately drawn calli. One is mentioned as caltepiton, or “small bedroom” (paragraph 439), and the other as “icalnemac Martha, or “house and bedroom given to said Martha” (paragraph 440). Document 3 (1566) refers to a miccacalli, which is translated as “the house of a deceased person.”
Reflections on the Analysis of Planos 7 and 18
In the two examples I analyzed, only Site Plan 18 deals with a group of houses or rooms that all belong to members of the same family and have their entrances to the same patio. At first glance, Site Plan 7 seems like a group of houses or rooms of one family that share the same patio with their chinampas, but further review of the file makes us realize that it isn’t so.43 Site Plan 18 contains information on the houses and lands of which Ana Tepi took possession in 1582. This property was inherited from generation to generation, starting with Diego Tlacochcalcatl and María Tiacapan, his wife. They seem to have built and modified the houses (which function as bedrooms) over time until they reached the hands of Ana Tepi in 1582. The houses, the patio, and the contiguous land were used by a single family until 1582, when Ana Tepi took possession of all of the property as the sole survivor of the family that had the rights to the houses and land. In summation, Site Plan 18 represents the patio around the houses (or bedrooms) and were occupied by the members of different generations of a single family, not by members of different families like in Site Plan 7.
As observed by means of analysis of Site Plans 7 and 18, the drawing of the group of calli that surrounds a patio—together with the canals, chinampas, and lands—doesn’t necessarily represent the groups of houses where members of the same family lived. To continue the discussion of this topic, I will turn to ethnographic research on the houses built and modified by the present-day Nahua people of Zongolica. Contemporary practices offer important insights into the larger linguistic and cultural context of household space among Nahua-speaking people. In particular, these ethnographic analogies are useful for understanding why calli is a polysemic term, which can refer to both (a) a single-family house composed of various structures, and (b) rooms that form part of a household unit.44 These analogies also offer insight into the different functional roles that these structures play in the everyday life of Nahua communities.
Ethnographic Reflections: Households in Zongolica, state of Veracruz (End of the Twentieth Century)
In her work Ritual, identidad y procesos étnicos en la sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz, Rodríguez (2003:58) describes the evolution of households in the Nahua-speaking municipality of Atlahuilco. The tendency in this community is for parents, their children, and their children’s spouses to share a house until the younger couples become independent. This act of becoming independent is often referred to with the metaphor of “light separate cook fires,” referring to the creation of a separate kitchen. Referring to the physical structure of houses, Rodríguez (2003:57) observes that
the majority of indigenous dwellings are wooden constructions, with a packed earth floor and a peaked roof of hay, shingles,45 tin sheets, or tiles of baked clay. Even though the mestizo families of the community have gas stoves, the whole population uses open kitchens with wood-burning hearths. The latter are placed on earthen floor at the farthest point from the center of the room in an earth-filled square brazier of about a meter in height. These houses almost always have also another, larger room that they call santohkalli (house of the saints), which is used as a bedroom, shrine, and storehouse for harvested corn.
The poorest homes in the community have only one room, in which they cook and sleep. [Even in these poorer homes] it is considered desirable to have a santohkalli, a space designated also for the reception of guests during ceremonial commitments. Although a shrine that is built expressly for ceremonial activities doesn’t need to exist, every home has an altar where they place images of saints, candles, grains of corn, medicinal herbs, eggs, incense, and other equipment for ceremonial use.
These ethnographic examples provide insight into the various uses of calli in sixteenth-century texts. Probably, various “houses” or rooms that appear drawn in the site plans of Mexico City have been used as a bedroom, storehouse, shrine, or kitchen. Given their location in the lagoon district of Tenochtitlan, and the fact that chinampas are depicted in a number of the site plans, it is also likely that corn for household consumption was stored in some of these structures, even if a broader range of produce was grown on the chinampas or if grain was purchased in the market.
Ethnographic analogy also suggests that households began to evolve when a nuclear family composed of a single married couple built one room. The construction of santohkalli occurs sometime after the initiation of the nuclear family in the house of the parents of the young husband.46 Its construction implied that the couple is more autonomous than in their initial phase. Rodríguez (2003:57) notes: “The construction of the santohkalli generally occurs after some years that accomplish the process of fission of the extended family, that is to say, that they make their ‘own cook fire.’”
The construction of a santohkalli thus represents the conclusion of a period in the cycle of development of a domestic group. It is the moment in which the social status of a new couple starts to be recognized. It is likely that a similar process was at work in the sixteenth century, accounting for the emergence of the different calli elements that are depicted in the various site plans. This construction also provides evidence of the multigenerational kinship relationships that existed between the inhabitants of different calli units depicted on the plans.
From this perspective, we can infer that the calli elements in the site plans can have the following meanings: a house of a family extended or nuclear, or a first room built by newlyweds that is a house of a nuclear family within the house of an extended family of two (or more) generations, which represents the house of the newlyweds. We can conjecture, also, that the element calli in the site plans can be interpreted in different ways for each file. In essence, this term could have had different connotations for each family, be it as a house or as a room with various functions depending on each group of the inhabitants.47
In this context of discussion, it is interesting to introduce the following reflection of P. Carrasco (1971:368, in Kellogg 1995:169): “Nahuatl words for family are mostly descriptive terms that refer to common residence and thus correspond more exactly to the English ‘household’: cencalli (‘one house’), cemithualtim (‘those in one yard’), techan tlaca (‘people in someone’s dwelling’), and cenyeliztli (literally ‘one stay’).”
Lockhart (1999:89) mentions that for Molina, cenyeliztli means “to be together” and corresponds with the idea of “people whole live in one house.” He observes that all of the words that have to do with the notion of “family” emphasize the place where life together happens.
Finally, we can’t forget that the residents of a calli are not only relatively young, recently married couples, but an extended family. In the lawsuits, some cases appear in which in these calli lived an unmarried sister of the husband, or a widow or widower of the first generation. Single people, widows, or widowers of both sexes could live in these calli. We have seen, as well, that the site plan and its components—calli, patio, land, and chinampas—apparently of one family, could pertain, in fact, to various families, as is the case of Plano 7.
Conclusions
In summary, this chapter has focused on investigating the Nahuatl-language documents and house plans drawn according to indigenous pictorial traditions, which can be found the Archivo General of Mexico City. The documents reflect disputes that were aired within the indigenous barrios of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, which I have sought to place in their larger social and historical context. To do this, I explained the pictorial system used to represent houses, land, canals, and raised fields, as well as various units of measure that establish their dimension. From there, I turned to the domestic organization of the units of property that were referred to as calli, (a term that can be translated alternately as “house” or “room”) as well as the different lands and water resources. In order to further contextualize the history of the particular properties described in these disputes, I outlined the broader trends within the politico-territorial organization of pre-Hispanic Mexico, as well as questions regarding the nature of land tenure.
Sixteenth-century documents are especially valuable for understanding this confluence of family and household structure, political geography, and land tenure, as they reflect the heritage of privately and collectively held lands that could be sold, purchased, and inherited through processes for which there are few available data from pre-Hispanic sources. From these early colonial documents, we can surmise that different practices of inheriting, buying, and selling houses and land among indigenous commoners in Mexico probably have pre-Hispanic roots. Through an analysis of house plans 9 and 9b, we see the dispute regarding an acalli or “water house” which was used to sell freshwater for over forty years after the salination of water in the lake. In plans 7 and 19, we can observe how houses and lands that bear the superficial appearance of single domestic units have more complicated histories and social compositions. For example, Plan 7 demonstrates a single plot of land with homes belonging to different families, while plan 18 shows a property whose use and form evolved as it was inherited by a single family over numerous generations.
Finally, the analysis of these two house plans alongside ethnographic data from the Nahua community of Zongolica, Veracruz, suggests some of the ways in which we can understand the different permutations of the concept of calli and the change of properties and domestic units over time. In particular, these data help us understand how the complexity of these different house sites reflects the changes, additions, and subdivisions that were created as families grew and split.
As a group, these site plans demonstrate elements of household structure and ownership in pre-Hispanic and early colonial Mexico that complicate both our ideas about the nature of domestic spaces and of traditional indigenous land tenure. Just as ethnographic analogies provide insight into the family histories that contributed to the development of different households, the process through which the site plans and legal cases translated indigenous land tenure into the idiom of colonial legalism hints at the mechanisms through which some of these cultural forms survived into the present. Together, ethnographic and historical materials provide a vivid record of the history of quotidian spatial practices and cultural adaptations that are the historical legacy of people like the Nahuatl speakers of Atlahuilco.