QUIROGA: a MEXICAN MUNICIPIO — BRAND 



15 



Cuerno, and Doblado. This would represent the 

 Ydcata del Calvario-Petatario group. San Bar- 

 tolo (also known as barrio de los Tecolotes and de 

 los Negros) occupied the area from the hospital 

 and the present CaUe Nacional south and west to 

 and across the Arroyo de Quiroga. Its chapel in 

 the early part of the nineteenth century was in 

 block 4 of cuartel I. The location of the other two 

 barrios is uncertain. La Ascensi6n most probably 

 was the northeastern one that embraced the 

 Tep6ricua area, which would place San Francisco 

 in the center west toward Atzitzindaro. 



In this connection we will mention two apoc- 

 ryphal stories about the foundation of Cocupao. 

 NicoMs Le6n (1887-88), writing in 1884, states 

 that the original settlement was located at the 

 spring La Tep6ricua (also known as the Ojo de 

 Agua de Cocupa), and that the name Cocupao 

 was a corruption from Cucupa or Xucupan; and 

 Le6n goes on to discuss the occurrence and mean- 

 ing of Xucupan on the map or Lienzo de Jucutacato 

 and the visit of the inspector-general Ponce to the 

 village of Tacupan in 1586. At present no one in 

 Quiroga admits the possibility that the original 

 settlement was at La Tep6ricua, and some of the 

 old Indian residents say that the original settle- 

 ment was around the Ydcata del Calvario, and 

 others claim that the earhest settlement was in the 

 region of the hospital or guafapera, and that they 

 were slowly dispossessed and forced northward into 

 the barrio of San Miguel during the middle part of 

 the nineteenth century. As for Xucupan or 

 Tacupan, historians cannot agree on the meaning 

 of the Lienzo de Jucutacato, although one school 

 insists that it represents the advance of Augustin- 

 ian missionaries into Michoacdn; in which case it 

 cannot apply to Cocupao since the Quiroga region 

 was Franciscan throughout the colonial period. 

 Le6n, and others after him, have accepted the 

 identity of the pueblecito of Tacupan visited by 

 Ponce in 1586 with the pueblo of Cocupao, but 

 they did not examine the Relaci6n de Alonso Ponce 

 and other contemporary records critically. Ponce 

 expressly states that on his way from Pdtzcuaro to 

 Tzintzuntzan he passed by an important wheat 

 mill or molino, that one-quarter of a league past the 

 molino he encountered the little settlement of 

 Tacupan, that the same day he continued on to 

 Tzintzuntzan, and that after leaving Tzintzuntzan 

 he followed the lake closely leaving Santa Fe to his 

 right as he proceeded to Piu-enchecuaro. When 



the Spaniards arrived in Michoacdn, Lake 

 Pdtzcuaro completely encircled the present Cerro 

 Blanco or Apohuato, and during colonial times the 

 road from P^tzcuaro to Tzintzuntzan had to circle 

 far to the east so as to avoid the lake and swamps 

 which extended nearly to the present Hacienda 

 Chapultepec. Furthermore, there are numerous 

 records of the settlement of San Antonio Tacupan 

 which in the seventeenth century became the 

 Hacienda de San Antonio Chapultepec and in- 

 cluded the wheat mill or Alolino de San Rafael. 

 Undoubtedly the location of Ponce's Tacupan was 

 the present San Jose about half a mile north of the 

 mill within the ex-Hacienda of Chapultepec. 



The other story we obtained from Don Agustin 

 Ponce, one of the older residents who speaks 

 Tarascan, which he learned as a child while living 

 in Santa Fe. According to this story, after Don 

 Vasco de Quiroga had founded Santa Fe and had 

 given it lands (1534), an old widow stopped Don 

 Vasco as he was riding past, knelt before him (in a 

 position called cucutaco, which has been corrupted 

 into Cucupao), and begged him for a grant of land 

 to support her family. Don Vasco promised to 

 give her all the land within the radius of a sling- 

 shot Qionda) throw, but she was weak in her throw, 

 so Don Vasco arbitrarily gave her all the lands 

 from those of Santa Fe to La Tep6ricua. Then 

 the first settlement was made in what is now the 

 barrio of San Miguel. Considering the testimony 

 of the tifulos, the whole story seems to be a patch- 

 work of fact and fancy. Furthermore, to derive 

 Cocupao (which means place of the corcova or 

 hump or humpbacked, in good Tarascan) from 

 cucutaco (squatted, or en cuclillas, on haunches with 

 elbows on the knees) seems rather farfetched. 

 Practically all authors who have dealt with 

 Tarascan place names give the "hump" derivation 

 of the name. However, the reason for assigning 

 such a name seems rather obscure. It is possible 

 that the place was named after some early hump- 

 backed resident, just as one of the origins of the 

 name of a nearby town (Coeneo) is given as the 

 place of the person with tisis or tuberculosis. It is 

 more hkely that the name was derived from some 

 salient natural feature, such as the Cerro de Hua- 

 rapo which (according to the Beaumont map) 

 already in. the sixteenth centiu-y possessed a 

 humpbacked profile; and Romero (1863) claims that 

 the name was derived from a hill with a hump. 

 Torres (1915, vol. 3) gives a garbled form of the 



