INDIAN MANUSCRIPTS OF SOUTHERN MEXICO 



Bj' Heiidekt J. Spixden 

 Brooklyn Museum, BrooUlyn, IsI.Y. 



[With 3 plates] 



New light on the personalities who ruled in southern Mexico dur- 

 ing the three centuries before the landing of Cortes and his Spanish 

 adventurers in 1519 has been obtained from the study of several 

 American Indian manuscripts in English libraries. Very few 

 written documents made by the aborigines of Mexico and Central 

 America in pre-Colombian times are known to have survived the 

 vicissitudes of the Spanish Conquest and Inquisition, and of these 

 the greater number are concerned with rituals and astrology rather 

 than simple political history. But the illuminated books which I 

 will now discuss are devoted primarily to genealogies, sequences in 

 political events, and other truly historical matters, fixed in both 

 time and place. 



This history concerns a part of Mexico which is poorly represented 

 in Spanish sources of the early colonial period, namely, the area in 

 which the Olmocs, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs had developed important 

 civilizations. In many respects these nations were more advanced 

 than those of the Mexican highlands. It is believed that they 

 temporarily became subject to the Toltecs in the twelfth century, 

 when these conquerors were operating from Chichen Itza in Yucatan 

 as well as from Tula, their capital city in the valley of Mexico now 

 represented by the ruins of Teotihuacan. After recovering autonomy 

 and flourishing independently for several centuries, these nations of 

 southern Mexico were partly subdued for a second time by the 

 Aztecs shortly before the coming of the Spaniards. While their 

 arts and ceremonies are based largely on those of the ancient Mayas, 

 their florescence came after the fall of the Toltecs, to whom also 

 they were indebted. 



BOOKS THAT FOLD LIKE SCREENS 



In the Bodleian Library at Oxford University are found the 

 Mexican codices of Laud, Bodley, and Selden, all of which reached 

 this repository shortly after 1600 as items in great collections of 



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