EMPIRES children: THE PEOPLE OF TZINTZUNTZAN FOSTER 



233 



group are Almazan, Avila, Corral, Espinosa, 

 Fuentes, Gamez, Garcia, Hinojosa, Martinez, 

 Quiroz, Romero, Sanchez, Tovar, and Vargas. 



Surnames, to a considerable extent, can be 

 used to distinguish Tarascans from Mestizos. 

 Thus, names belonging exclusively to Indians 

 are Alejandra, Andres, Avilez, Baltasar, Cami- 

 lo, Campos, Cuanas, de Jesus, Domingo, Esta- 

 nislao, Francisco, Franco, Caspar, Jeronimo, 

 Guzman, Lucas, Nicolas, Nieves, Ojeda, Oroz- 

 00, Pablo, Picho, Ponciano, Sebastiana, Seras, 

 Teodoro, Timoteo, and Ventura. Most common 

 of all these Tarascan surnames, in order of fre- 

 quency, are Seras, Picho, Ramos, Reyes, Apa- 

 ricio, and Perez. A curious feature distinguishes 

 many of the names limited only to Tarascans: 

 the surname in reality is a Spanish given name. 

 Thus, of the 28 surnames limited to Tarascans, 

 15 are normally given names: Andres, Camilo, 

 Domingo, Estanislao, Francisco. Caspar, Je- 

 ronimo, Lucas, Nicolas, Nieves, Pablo, Poncia- 

 no, Sebastiana, Teodoro, and Timoteo. Two, 

 Nieves and Sebastiana, are given names of wo- 

 men. On the other hand, of the surnames limit- 

 ed to Mestizos alone or common to both groups, 

 only Alonso, Angel, and Cornelio are commonly 

 used as given names. 



Eleven surnames from the Tarascan language 

 are found in Tzintzuntzan. These, with their 

 meaning or derivations, are as follows: 



Chichipan — from chichiua. "bachelor." 



Cuanas — "frog." 



Cuiriz — "duck" (lake area) ; "penis" (sie- 

 rra) . 



Huetzen — "to sprout, to emerge" (as of 

 plants) . 



Huipe — name of an unidentified black bird. 



Picho— "dog." 



Oiiin — "bird" (also "penis"). 



Tiripitio — "place of gold" (from liripiti, 

 "gold"). 



Tzintzun — "hummingbird" (also "penis") . 



Zacapu — "stone." 



Zira — apparently from sirin. "friend of light- 

 ning," "lightning strikes." ' 



Curiously, most of these surnames are u^O 

 by Mestizos. Picho and Cuanas alone are limit- 

 ed to the Tarascans; Huetzen is found among 



5 I am indebteJ to Pablo Velasquez, a member of the field 

 party and a full-blooded Tarascan Indian, for these transla- 

 tions. 



both groups, and the remainder are found only 

 among Mestizos. 



Nicknames are ocasionally given to both 

 individuals and families. Los Venados ("the 

 deer") is applied to a family characterized by 

 prominent, dark, deerlike eyes. A group of 

 ugly, quarrelsome women, widows and maiden 

 ladies, is called Las Changas ("the monkeys"). 

 Another family is called Los Q nines ("the 

 birds"), a curious combination of Spanish and 

 Tarascan linguistic mixture {qiiin = "bird"). 

 For unknown reasons another family is referred 

 to as Las Cocas ("the coconuts"), while a man 

 with a sugarloaf head is called El Pilon (from 

 piloncillo, the crude brown sugar used in rural 

 Mexico). 



INFANT CARE 



Infants usually wear a short undershirt and 

 a longer cotton dress. Diapers as such are un- 

 known, though rags are placed in the cradle or 

 on the petate where a child lies. Often the 

 cradle is an oblong box with crossed rope bot- 

 tom, suspended from a rafter so that it can be 

 swung, and so as to be out of the way of dogs 

 and ground insects. Wlien carried about, babies 

 are almost invariably placed in the rebozo of 

 the mother and swung over the left shoulder, 

 head covered and completely sheltered. Fathers 

 may spend a great deal of spare time holding 

 the child inside the ubiquitous serape, talking 

 to it and coddling it. Such treatment appears to 

 result in the feeling that serape or rebozo is the 

 safest place in the world, and often older walk- 

 ing children, when surprised or frightened, seek 

 shelter with the nearest parent, trying to hide in 

 the garment. The breast is given to nursing 

 babies whenever they cry, and it is said that 

 many children sleep with the mother's nipple in 

 their mouth. Whether this is true, or possible, 

 infants normally sleep on the same petate as 

 the parents, often between the two. Infants 

 ideally are bathed in warm water every 3 days. 

 Formal toilet training is almost lacking. When 

 children begin to understand words they fre- 

 quently are told to go to the patio to relieve 

 themselves, and often by 2 years they are well 

 trained. Accidents are never punished. 



Heredity as a factor influencing the appear- 

 ance of children is recognized, and one may 

 hear the remark that the tall stature of children 

 comes from one grandparent, or the blue eyes 



