8
Ruling “Purépecha Chichimeca” in a Tarascan World

Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Ethnicity

In Mesoamerica, especially as recounted in the mythic histories of ruling elites during the Postclassic Period, political strategies were tangled in issues of both class and ethnicity, often operating at multiple temporal and spatial scales (Stark and Chance 2008). In the Tarascan case, the political structure of the state, and the empire that expanded between 1350 ce and 1522 ce, is primarily known from documents and limited archaeological research within the imperial lands, including studies of the nature of Tarascan warfare, frontier fortresses, and the Tarascan-Aztec conflicts (figure 8.1). While these sources generally present a picture of a highly centralized, hierarchical polity, Purépecha-language documents and more nuanced analyses of the Relación de Michoacán (1541) raise important questions about how this new state, identity, and system of authority emerged and the degree to which the centralized model was a product of power struggles before or following the Spanish conquest (Castro Gutiérrez 2007; Castro Gutiérrez and Monzón García 2008; Espejel Carbajal 2008; Haskell 2008; Martínez Baracs 2005; Monzón et al. 2009; Roskamp 2012; Stone 2004).

Figure 8.1. Extent of the Tarascan empire and major lake basins referred to in text.

The primary document describing the Tarascan empire for the Spaniards is the Relación de Michoacán (Alcala 1980),¹ recorded in the capital of Tzintzuntzan in 1538–1540 by a Franciscan friar acting as scribe and interpreter for the state high priest (petámuti) and given to the first viceroy in 1541. The second part of the document contains the retelling of the official history of how the ruling dynasty came to create and rule the state—that is, how a group of nomadic, hunter-gatherer, warrior Chichimecs moved into Purépecha territory in the thirteenth century, joining other Nahua-speaking earlier migrants. Due to their superior skills and powerful patron deity, they married into local Purépecha elite families and, over the next century, came to dominate them. This process produced what David L. Haskell (2008) calls a “cultural logic of hierarchy,” as the once Chichimec leaders, now the Uanacase-Uacúsecha royal dynasty, ruled over Purépecha and Nahua elites and commoners. Only a personally felt supernatural link to Curicaueri could legitimate ruler status. While the local earth deities remain part of the state pantheon, and indeed are among the most powerful and ubiquitous supernatural beings, they are subordinated to the celestial deities. The original exchange of deer meat for fish that accompanied the Chichimec hunters’ and Purépecha fishers’ negotiation of the marriage that produced Tariacuri is replaced over time by the status markers that “nobles eat meat” and “commoners eat fish” (Relación de Michoacán and Relaciones geográficas in Martínez Gonzalez 2009).

As the empire expanded, additional ethnic/cultural groups were incorporated into the Tarascan domain. Other primary documents include the Relaciones geográficas of 1579–1581 (Acuña 1987) and local land titles (Albiez-Wieck 2011; Beltrán 1994; Carrasco 1986; Cerda Farías 2002; Kuthy 1996; Paredes Martínez and Terán 2003; Roskamp 1998). The most notable consistency in these documents is how often the lands are said to have been given to the community by the great King Tzitzipandáquare (1465–1490 ce), including communities in the geopolitical core that were part of the original state and were continuously occupied since the Late Preclassic Period. These purported gifts of land thus ignored the historical claims of these settlements in favor of the legitimacy of royal decree. Newer populations fleeing Aztec expansion also obtained land grants directly from the king in return for military service (Roskamp 2010).

Recent years have seen new, complete editions of two sixteenth-century Purépecha dictionaries and grammars (Gilberti 1989; Lagunas 1983) and the discovery and transcription of a third (Warren 1991), along with the careful analysis of several other relevant sixteenth-century Spanish documents (Aguilar González 2005; Albiez-Wieck 2011; Castro Gutiérrez 2007; Kuthy 1996; López Sarralangue 1965; Roskamp and César Villa 2003; Warren 1985). Finally, with the assistance of linguists, the first documents written in Purépecha have been translated and published (Castro Gutiérrez and Monzón García 2008; Monzón 2005; Monzón, Roskamp, and Warren 2009) and detailed historical linguistics of Nahua are more available (e.g., Kaufman 2001). These new sources and analyses have made it possible to better understand (1) how Purépecha-speakers conceptualized power (table 8.1) and the meaning of many state political offices (table 8.2); (2) the degree of multiethnicity in the empire, including non-Purépecha elites holding positions of power; and (3) the degree to which the imperial history as presented in the Relación de Michoacán simplified and ignored the role of elite factionalism in the creation and maintenance of the state.

Background to transformation

The Tarascan empire was the second largest in Mesoamerica (more than 75,000 square kilometers) and was ethnically dominated by a population the Spaniards called Tarascos, who spoke a language known as Tarasco or Purépecha. But while the empire only emerged in the two centuries before the Europeans’ arrival, Purépecha culture can be identified at least 2 millennia earlier. The massive transformations this cultural tradition underwent, along with the emergence of a centralized state and an expansionist empire, have dominated the archaeology and ethnohistory of this region for the last century (Espejel 2007; Michelet 2008; Michelet et al. 2005; Pollard 1993).

The Purépecha heartland was located in central and northern Michoacán, especially in the Zacapu, Cuitzeo, and Pátzcuaro Lake basins (figure 8.1). The available evidence confirms the presence of a distinguishable Purépecha cultural tradition in the Pátzcuaro Basin by the Late Preclassic Period and suggests that it is likely that these populations were cultural descendants of the earlier Chupícuaro tradition (Arnauld et al. 1993; Carot 2005; Pollard 2005, 2008). These Loma Alta phase populations (table 8.3) inhabited both lacustrine and non-lacustrine settlements and practiced canal irrigation with intensified agricultural production dominated by maize. In the Pátzcuaro Basin, at least one settlement was twenty hectares, including stone architecture. At the type site in the Zacapu Basin, sunken plaza/platform architecture appeared during the Loma Alta 2b phase (250–350 ce). This architecture included a central altar, walls of worked stone, and stairways made with basalt and clay brought from almost 10 kilometers away. A new burial tradition also appeared in which richness of interment is directly related to proximity to platform centrality. These burial deposits are currently the best evidence for the timing of the emergence of social ranking, documenting the existence of small-scale, socially ranked agrarian societies. Long-distance exchange in Pachuca obsidian and Thin Orange pottery suggests indirect linkages to Teotihuacan.

During the Epiclassic Lupe phase there was an increase in the number of settlements and larger populations, and some of these communities included plazas and ballcourts. The elite were buried in group tombs that were similar to each other in their methods of construction and their uses over multiple generations. Grave goods included precious items imported from other regions of Mesoamerica that, along with cranial deformation and dental mutilation, distinguished these families from the rest of the population. These items reveal the elite’s role as intermediaries with distant powers to the east and west. Grave goods also include projectile points, atlatls, maces, and war attire, showing the importance of the warrior identity for elite men.

During the Early Postclassic (Early Urichu phase) (900–1100 ce), the number of sites increased and the number of hectares occupied almost doubled in the lake basins of central and northern Michoacán as the climate of the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Anomaly) brought marked drops in lake levels. Small settlements were now located on newly exposed islands and in marsh zones, while many other communities occupied the malpaís zones (eroded lava flows) with terraces, mounds, and retaining walls in dense, large settlements with hundreds of stone structures. Elite burials were richer in grave goods, some of which appear to be ritual paraphernalia imported from Tula or in Toltec style (e.g., flutes, censers).

State Emergence

The Middle Postclassic or Late Urichu phase (1100–1300 ce) includes the two centuries during which the Tarascan state formed and to which the historically recorded accounts of state emergence and ethnic affiliation pertain. In these centuries the number of sites in the region increased and the area of occupation again doubled. As in the Early Urichu phase, settlement expanded onto islands as the lake level remained low, but also markedly expanded in upland zones and onto the malpaís in defensible locations. Nevertheless, basic resources such as obsidian, basalt, and pottery were being produced, distributed, and consumed in patterns unchanged since the Loma Alta phase. In the last decades of this phase lake levels rose again (in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin more than 14 meters), reaching their Contact Period levels. This resulted in the abandonment of low-lying communities and flooded agricultural land and the relocation of marsh production zones. Given the size of the population in the region, and the existence of sociopolitical elites in the larger communities, competition over expanding, diminishing, and shifting resources must have become fierce. For example, in the Zacapu Basin the Postclassic Period was marked by a 50 percent increase in sites and a shift to the malpaís above Zacapu, where up to 20,000 people inhabited thirteen sites covering 5 square kilometers (Michelet 2008; Michelet et al 2005). In addition, obsidian production from the Zináparo zone was reorganized and prismatic blade technology was introduced (Darras 2008).

Thus, during the Early and Middle Postclassic Periods, the Purépecha cultural heartland came to be composed of several competing small polities. This was a transition period when settlements shifted and elite mortuary patterns changed. Both the archaeological and ethnohistoric records suggest that patterns of leadership and control were in flux.

Tarascan State Structure

During the Late Postclassic or Tariacuri phase, after low-lying sites were flooded, settlements shifted to the new, higher lakeshore and upland areas of high agricultural fertility. Tzintzuntzan was the largest of over ninety Tarascan settlements located around Lake Pátzcuaro (figure 8.2). Of the basin’s estimated total population of 80,000 in 1522 (Gorenstein and Pollard 1983), Tzintzuntzan had about 35,000, with several secondary and tertiary administrative centers, each with 5,000 to 15,000 people (Pollard 1993, 2008). By the fifteenth century Tzintzuntzan was a primary regional center not only because of its population size, but also because of its control of the administrative, tributary, market, religious, and social hierarchies. Throughout the Tarascan heartland, population density reached its zenith, and the largest and most populous settlements within any single region, whether ceremonial centers or cities, also date to the Late Postclassic (Cerda Farías 2002; Macías Goytia 1990; Macías Goytia and Vackimes Serret 1988; Michelet 2008; Michelet et al. 2005; Pollard 2004, 2008).

Figure 8.2. Major Late Postclassic urban sites in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin.

Given the denser occupations, occurring during a time when previously irrigable lands were flooded, new economic mechanisms were required to support local populations. The core of the Tarascan state in the Pátzcuaro Basin was not viable economically on purely local terms, and it thrived only by the exchange of goods and services through local and regional markets and various state institutions (Pollard 1993). While documents indicate the existence and location of markets, the tributary relationships of many communities, and the nature of goods acquired by state long-distance merchants, detailed sourcing analyses of archaeological collections are clarifying the complex nature of the production, distribution, and consumption patterns of obsidian, pottery, shell, and metal objects (see Darras 2008; Hosler 2009; Maldonado 2008; Pollard 2005, 2008). Analyses of obsidian artifacts, for example, suggest that while Zináparo obsidian production was widely dispersed and exchanged in local and regional markets (Darras 2008), much of the production or distribution of prismatic blades from the Ucareo sources was under state control (Pollard 2008). Metal objects of gold, silver, copper, and bronze alloys were produced within the empire and used for ritual, status, and utilitarian purposes (Hosler 2009; Pollard 1993; Roskamp 1998). Some of the mining, smelting, and production of objects was carried out by full-time craft specialists and tenants under the direct control of the state (Pollard 2008). The production of ingots took place at smelting centers in the Balsas River drainage and some of the crafting of objects took place in the Tarascan capital, possibly within the king’s palace. Other metals or smelted ingots were obtained through tribute, particularly for gold and silver, especially from the frontier zones of the southeast and the west, where there is some evidence of independent production and distribution in local or regional markets. Those markets were associated with elite administrators’ residences, probably reflecting redistribution of state goods to officeholders. Limited metal sourcing suggests artifacts were produced from ores mined in the Balsas Basin and adjacent Jalisco (Hosler 2009).

The sources of revenue for the state included (1) basic goods (especially maize, beans, chili, cotton, salt, and firewood) and scarce goods (e.g., turquoise, gold, silver, copper, feathers) collected by a hierarchy of officials at the local and regional level, and (2) labor on the king’s fields and for public works. A separate group of officials (quengue) oversaw the state storehouses for this tribute. Other strategic, but statewide, tribute included men serving in military campaigns. Populations located along the frontiers served their tribute in both manning fortresses and providing basic supplies for warriors. Recent research indicates that unlike most of the empire, in the Pátzcuaro Basin the local tribute collectors (ocámbecha) were probably organizers of tribute-in-labor, not goods (Aguilar González 2005, 2012) (table 8.2).

The royal dynasty officially allocated all access to land, water, forests, and mineral resources, although in practice access to land was distributed within communities by traditional kin ties and land was acquired by kings for support of state administrators (angámecha) and state temples. In addition, there were state copper mines, obsidian mines, forests, fisheries, and craft workshops. The documents are unclear about the degree to which they were seen as resources traditionally held by specific communities or resources to which communities were allowed access by the king. Sixteenth-century documents suggest the latter, but, if so, this was a change in the ideology of resource ownership that would only have emerged with the unification of the state in the Middle Postclassic Period (e.g., Acuña 1987). The royal dynasty did claim large landholdings in the southeast portion of the Pátzcuaro Basin and smaller parcels in many other communities (e.g., Beltrán 1994; Martínez Baracs 2005; Warren 1985).

Figure 8.3. Local elite identity in burial 9 at Urichu. Spouted polychrome vessel and several bronze and shell earrings.

According to the Relación de Michoacán, the division between noble and commoner was absolute, as lineages did not cross class boundaries and marriages were within one’s class. Among the nobility, a distinction was made among the royal dynasty, the upper nobility, and the lower nobility; commoners varied by ethnicity (although overwhelmingly Purépecha in the highland lake basins), occupation, and if they were slaves (generally war captives) (Carrasco 1986; García Alcaraz 1976). The royal dynasty was located in the capital (Tzintzuntzan) and at the sacred religious center of Ihuatzio (figure 8.3); members of the upper and lower nobility were found in at least eleven settlements in the Pátzcuaro Basin. Elites and commoners located in secondary and tertiary centers of the Tarascan heartland consumed the same goods, as did the residents in the capital, sharing Tarascan elite/commoner identity and participating in a single social system (Pollard 2008) (figure 8.4).

Figure 8.4. Ritual center of Ihuatzio.

The establishment of a new ideology that made the Pátzcuaro Basin the center of cosmic power accompanied the creation of the Tarascan state (Espejel Carbajal 2008; Monzón 2005; Pollard 1993, 2008; Alcala 1980). The patron gods of the now dominant ethnic elite were elevated to celestial power while various regional deities and worldviews—themselves products of generations of change—were elevated, incorporated, or marginalized. The clearest evidence of this process involved the joining of the ethnic Chichimec or Uacúsecha deity Curicaueri with the ethnic “islander” or Purépecha goddess Xarátanga. In the prophetic language of a great epic, the Relación de Michoacán states, “Curicaueri will conquer this land, and you for your part will stand with one foot on the land and one on the water . . . and we shall become one people” (Alcala 1980:40, my translation). While the culture hero Tariacuri was the son of a Chichimec leader and the daughter of the Purépecha lord of the island of Xarácuaro, his god is Curicaueri, and over the course of the Relación this patron deity comes to represent the protector of all the people (Martínez Gonzalez 2009:55, 58). Indeed, his god and the other celestial deities are considered the powers of Tarascan sacred kingship, while the earthly deities, especially Xarátanga and Cuerauaperi, the mother goddess who controls rain and springs, are considered “foreign”—that is, non-Chichimec. In kinship terms, the celestial (Chichimec) deities are patrilines (fathers and brothers) and the earthly deities are marriage partners, or in-laws (Martínez Gonzalez 2009).

Thus, Tariacuri is both a lineal descendant of Chichimecs and “Islanders,” a ruler who can unite all people, and also the human representation of the celestial sun, Curicaueri, with whom he has established a supernatural link. In the complex story of Tariacuri, recounted in the Relación, he is characterized as first Chichimec, then Islander, and eventually his designated “heirs,” his two nephews, become patrons of Curicaueri and Xarátanga, respectively.

Taríacuri’s prophetic dream of a unified state mandated by his god is interpreted in the following decades as the “event” that delegitimized all previous and competing claims to authority. Each Tarascan king (irecha) must personally establish this link to the supernatural to be considered legitimate, but only those of the Uacúsecha line are eligible. This union of deities can also be seen in Tarascan ritual architecture. A specialized pyramid form, the yácata, consisting of a keyhole shape, was constructed at major religious centers associated with the Tarascan sun god, Curicaueri. The greatest number (five) was located in Tzintzuntzan, but at Ihuatzio there were three yácatas as well as two rectangular pyramids associated with Xarátanga, adjacent to a ballcourt (figure 8.3). Ihuatzio is the only ritual center that was aligned to the cardinal directions, with a north-south principal orientation. It is also the only major Tarascan center with astronomically oriented structures in the basin. Directly east of the plaza with the two rectangular pyramids are three small hills (los Coyotes, or iuatsi). A line projected east from the corridor between the two rectangular pyramids falls midway between the two northern hills; when viewed this way the hills bracket one lunar phase cycle on either side of the equinox (Anthony Aveni, personal communication 1989). The sighting of the sun or Venus along this line was reported as part of major state religious celebrations (Pollard 2003:373). Stone chacmool sculptures, associated with human sacrifice, were placed in front of the yácatas at Tzintzuntzan and Ihuatzio, scenes of major ceremonies celebrating the state and cosmic order.

The transformation associated with the emergence of a politically unified Pátzcuaro Basin and its expansion throughout and then beyond the Tarascan heartland involved a shift in elite identity from one primarily associated with imported finished goods from distant powerful centers and control of prestige goods networks, as documented for the Classic and Early Postclassic elites, to an identity primarily associated with locally produced, distinctively Tarascan goods and control of tributary, military, political, and ideological networks in the Late Postclassic (Pollard 2008). Thus, the emergence of a new political economy was also associated with a new state religion and a new regional elite identity.

For the Purépecha (commoners) of central and northern Michoacán, this new society was a major transformation on the macro level but also permitted continuities on the household and village scale. The social continuity represented by the long cultural tradition from the Preclassic to the Postclassic is visible in ceramic technology, ceramic designs and the use of negative (resist) on polychrome pottery, types of figurines, mortuary patterns, basic technology, diet, and household organization of labor. These traditions emphasize the degree of continuity at the level of the household, despite major changes in the political economies that took place during those two thousand years.

“Purépecha Chichimecs”

While the legendary histories record several episodes of migration of non-Purépecha populations into the region from the bajío (lowlands) to the north and northwest, these population movements are not visible in the archaeological record of either the Zacapu or Pátzcuaro Basins to which they refer (Michelet et al. 2005; Pollard 2008). In the legend recorded in the Relación de Michoacán, these migrants are described and illustrated as northern nomadic hunters of deer and followers of their patron deity, Curicaueri, to whom they were obliged to offer wood for ritual fires. But the evidence from the region of Zacapu, stretching from the Lerma River to the northwest edge of the Pátzcuaro Basin, provides no support for these cultural “Chichimecs.” What is documented, however, is the spread of the Loma Alta and Lupe ceramic traditions along parts of the Lerma and southern Guanajuato (table 8.3), followed by widespread abandonment of these settlements at the close of the Epiclassic and beginning of the Postclassic Periods (900–1000 ce) (Pereira et al. 2005). Some of these abandonments are matched by the appearance of Postclassic sites occupied by what has been interpreted as the descendants of these population movements (Michelet et al. 2005). During the Middle Postclassic, significant cultural changes become visible in (1) settlement nucleation in malpaís defendable sites with walls and terraces; (2) ritual architecture separated from residential zones and no construction of ballcourts; (3) new artifacts, including polychrome pottery, ceramic pipes, copper and alloyed metal tools, and locally produced prismatic obsidian blades; and (4) a new mortuary pattern distinct from earlier phases. While these changes occurred at the time and place of the legendary arrival of “Chichimecs,” they better reflect the cultural continuities and changes in a rapidly shifting sociopolitical (and natural) environment that was non-Chichimec. Christine L. Hernández and Dan M. Healan (2008) have demonstrated the ability of archaeology to detect ethnic variation within the Tarascan domain, strengthening the “absence of evidence” as reflecting the true absence of “Chichimecs.”

In the Pátzcuaro Basin to the south there is greater continuity in commoner material culture, especially in pottery, but the Late Postclassic is marked by the unification of the basin polities, the creation of a new common elite culture and a suite of traits marking the existence of the state, and a series of status markers used to assign sociopolitical rank among the elites. By the fifteenth century these traits are found throughout the empire at all state administrative installations and include (Pollard 1993, 2008):

While few of these traits are unique to the Late Postclassic Tarascans, they are unique in the cultural history of central and northern Michoacán and not part of the “Chichimec” traditions to the north. With the exception of the ceramic styles, they are closest to the Early Postclassic traditions of Tula (Healan 2012). Yet, unlike their Aztec counterparts, nowhere in the ethnohistory or historical records do Tarascan nobles link themselves to Toltec royal dynasties or ethnicities, and in several episodes of the Relación de Michoacán, the narrator refers (sometimes with disdain) to Nahua practices they do not follow, such as named and numbered days of the 260-day ritual calendar used to determine auspicious times for military campaigns (for a variant interpretation of this episode, see Roskamp 2012).

Understanding the “choice” to call on a “Chichimec” or Uacúsecha heritage while materializing the state with a selection of central Mexican state practices, and simultaneously identifying as ethnic Purépecha, can only make any sense by referring now to the newly restudied and newly translated documents that emphasize the large presence of Nahua populations within the Tarascan empire at the same time that Aztecs are seen as enduring enemies. The most surprising document dates to 1543, in which an earlier document is summarized in Purépecha (Monzón et al. 2009). In it a Nahua lord claims to be a descendant of one of twenty Nahua merchants who came to the military aid of the Tarascan king Tzitzipandáquare in “reconquering” Tzintzuntzan to his rule. In return, they are rewarded with rights and privileges, including the right to settle in a barrio of the capital, the right to noble status, and land and labor in the empire for them and their descendants. When the Spaniards moved the capital of Michoacán in 1540 from Tzintzuntzan to Pátzcuaro, the native nobility objected (Warren and Monzón García 2004), especially these Nahua nobles, who feared losing their special status in the move. What is not clear from this document is whether all or most long-distance traders were Nahua nobles. Other documents suggest the earlier presence of Nahua populations, including specialized metallurgists and Nahua nobles who held political office in Tancítaro and Uruapan (state administrative centers) (Albiez-Wieck 2011; Roskamp 1998, 2010).

The issue of ethnic Nahua populations within the imperial territory both before and after the Late Postclassic Period needs to be understood within the context of more than a century of military hostilities that dominated the Tarascan/Aztec relationship. While never a closed frontier, by the sixteenth century, parallel lines of Tarascan and Aztec fortified citadels defined the eastern border of the Tarascan empire (see Pollard and Smith 2003). Local groups on both sides of the border, including Otomí and Matlatzinca populations, became tributaries of these empires, generally manning the citadels and providing warriors. One result of this restricted interaction was the ease with which each government could develop negative stereotypes of their enemies (Pollard 1993:172). For the Tarascans, their language made them very vulnerable when crossing Aztec territory, and Nahua merchants and formal interpreters were used as messengers (uaxanoti) housed in the capital when communication with the Aztecs was necessary. The Irechequa Tzintzuntzani was clearly multiethnic, especially with Nahua nobles and commoners who had moved into Michoacán from the north and northeast during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic Periods. Those traits, beliefs, and practices that were incorporated into the emerging Tarascan state from Nahua, Toltec, and/or Matlatzinca cultures were due to interaction and emulation from these earlier periods. To the extent that “Aztec Nahua” refers to the Middle and Late Postclassic Periods, these peoples were contemporaries. Indeed there are a number of ritual practices shared by Tarascan, Matlatzinca, and Nahuatl elites that suggest they all shared some roots in Early Postclassic north central Mexican concepts of sacred rulership, despite variations by the fifteenth century.

In contrast, the Tarascan ruling dynasty and related lineages that made up most of the Uacúsecha in general—the lower and upper nobility—were Purépecha speakers and self-identified culturally as Purépecha. They were able to hold office by the sacred authority and duty to maintain the worship of Curicaueri—women and non-Purépecha were unfit for this task. In the depiction of the family tree of the ruling dynasty (Relación de Michoacán folio 140r), the founder is shown holding a bloodstained blade used by axamencha (sacrificers), a role limited to rulers (Afanador-Pujol 2010). I believe the calls to special Chichimec heritage advanced the claims of legitimacy of the Uanacase branch over other ruling elites of the Pátzcuaro Middle Postclassic polities—that is, as part of the internal factional fights among qualified elite lineages that apparently lasted throughout the fifteenth century. The fierceness and success of Chichimec warfare served the Uanacase well in their construction of power. Indeed, their very concepts of power, rulership, and class (table 8.1) incorporate physical control and fear. Of the ten known state rituals, at least two of them foregrounded this theme on a yearly basis, including Hanciuanscuaro (the imprisoning of rebels) and Purecatacuaro (the initiation of warriors) (Pollard 1993:145).

The sixteenth-century documents already used in this analysis demonstrate that Tarascan rulers could and did shift between reference to their Chichimec heritage or their Purépecha heritage to legitimize access to political power and communication with supernatural beings, especially Curicaueri. However, all of these documents were written after the Colonial Period process of transformation had begun. This means that it is difficult to know how these multiple aspects of identity were actually used before factions of indigenous nobles and Spaniards began using “history” to prove why one lord or lineage should become irecha or retain power. Reading these texts always makes me wish I had samples of histories in the same way I can sample assemblages of artifacts. What the documents do reveal, however, is how nimble, flexible, and political were the categories of ethnicity, heritage, allies, and enemies.

Despite this, they took as their model of state-building the traits of a powerful Nahua culture to the east. Central Michoacán had long had indirect ties to Toltec ideas and practices, as revealed by imported ritual goods (censers, flutes), “warrior” burials with mosaic shields (Pollard 2008), and, particularly between 900–1000 ce, by the flow of people and obsidian to Tula (Healan 2012). This model of political hierarchy also included the notion of multiethnic communities and states that were highly centralized. As ironic as it may seem now, while Nahua populations were gradually assimilating to Purépecha culture and language, the Purépecha rulers were incorporating Nahua models of governance. In this process, as Eric R. Wolf notes, “Old ideas were rephrased to fit different circumstances, and new ideas were presented as age-old truths” (1999:275).

Summary

The emergence of the Tarascan state late in the prehistory of Mesoamerica (after 1350 ce), in a region where states had never existed previously, has provided us with the opportunity to use both archaeological and documentary sources to bear on the topic of pre-Columbian elite political strategies. These sources present a complex, and somewhat counterintuitive, pattern of ruling elites who claim an immigrant Chichimec heritage to justify their co-option of the native Purépecha nobility, while at the same time presenting themselves as fully ethnically Purépecha. Moreover, they have materialized the state and its institutions using a template from the Toltec world of Epiclassic and Early Postclassic north central Mexico. This was balanced by essential continuities in patterns of production, distribution, and consumption of basic commodities and maintenance of local social and political relationships, as the Chichimec patron deity, Curicaueri, became the Tarascan solar deity, creator of sacred kingship and husband of Purépecha goddess Xarátanga, and son-in-law of the great Purépecha Cuerauaperi, earth mother and rainwater deity.

These strategies allowed Tarascan rulers to overcome the contradictions inherent in political authority. Ethnic similarities to Purépecha subjects legitimized royal claims to power through proper veneration of Curicaueri, while Chichimec identity simultaneously distinguished these same rulers from rival elites. The use of material culture of Nahua origin also allowed rulers to express their similarities to this distant and prestigious form of governance while simultaneously maintaining open hostilities with the neighboring Aztec empire. In the ecologically and politically unstable world of the Postclassic, both commoners and elites alike saw benefits in following this new form of society and internalizing it as the only true society they had ever known.