INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 13 



zone. However, brief return visits, of a few days 

 only, were made in the fall of 1948 and in the sum- 

 mer and fall of 1949. 



During both seasons, we lived in a two-room 

 bamboo house, which ordinarily is part of the 

 menage of Lorenzo Xochigua, but which, for the 

 time being, was unoccupied by his family. The 

 house was centrally situated, just off the main 

 plaza, and on one of the chief trails to Papantla 

 (map 7, house a, lot No. 29). Once settled, we 

 slowly became acquainted with our neighbors, and, 

 little by little, our circle of friends was expanded 

 until, by the end of the second season, we probably 

 had visited and were acquainted personally with at 

 least half of the local population. Only 35 house- 

 holds cluster about the plaza, and most of the 

 families live in scattered house groups, some as 

 much as 3 hours on foot from our base. 



In 1947, three students participated. Gabriel 

 Ospina came as volunteer assistant and remained 

 a month, until he returned to Bogota, Colombia. 

 His assistance during the first few weeks of adjust- 

 ment was extremely helpful, and the original 

 forms of our census were largely the result of his 

 labors. Jose Luis Lorenzo likewise remained ap- 

 proximately a month, when he returned to Mexico 

 City because of ill health. Maria Cristina Alva- 

 rez worked the entire season, returning in 1948, 

 to be with us during the month of February. 

 Roberto Williams Garcia and Angel Palerm re- 

 mained the full 4 months of 1948, and Florencia 

 Muller joined us for about 10 days that spring. 

 The report is based on the pooled information of 

 all participants. Each student has made concrete 

 contributions to our general fund of knowledge, 

 of which the most outstanding are those of Miss 

 Alvarez and Mr. Palerm. 



As my guest during Holy Week of both 1947 and 

 1948, Bertha Harris likewise collaborated actively 

 in the field, and later, bore with me during the 

 writing of the greater part of the report. Her 

 untimely death is mourned not only by us but by 

 all academic circles in Mexico. The present study 

 is dedicated to her, as a friend, as a distinguished 

 librarian with a wide range of interests, and as 

 an outstanding figure in the field of cultural re- 

 lations between the United States and Mexico. 



Following the 1947 season, Miss Alvarez assisted 

 in clerical work in the Federal census office dur- 

 ing many weeks, gathering the data on which 



map 2 is based. At the conclusion of the 1948 

 season, Mr. Palerm, the junior author, collaborated 

 in the preparation of the report. The discussion 

 of sixteenth-century distribution and population 

 (pp. 3-12) is largely his. Moreover, he is responsi- 

 ble for the long chapters on history, from the Dis- 

 covery through the Colonial period (pp. 24-46), 

 and I have done little more than edit and translate 

 this section. Mr. Palerm also has prepared the 

 first drafts of table 1 and of maps 1 to 4, 7, and 

 10 to 18. Map 7 was one of his field undertakings : 

 map 9, we prepared jointly. 



We also have worked jointly on the problem of 

 the Mexican conquests. Both of us read the source 

 material, following which. I wrote the running ac- 

 counts which appear in the main text and in Ap- 

 pendix B, while Mr. Palerm embarked on the long 

 and onerous chore of attempting to identify the 

 conquests, pueblo by pueblo. When this task was 

 completed, the textual accounts were checked 

 against the lists and the maps, and the necessary 

 changes made. The original versions of the chro- 

 nological tables which appear in Appendix B were 

 prepared by me, limiting entries to those pueblos 

 which appear definitely in the sources as dated 

 conquests. Later, Mr. Palerm revised them, 

 checking my data and adding cases which appeared 

 dubious in a given source, but whose conquest was 

 confirmed by other evidence. In large part, there- 

 fore, these tables are his work; the maps of Ap- 

 pendix B are exclusively his, as are many of the 

 notes which accompany them. Last, but not least, 

 Mr. Palerm has taken the responsibility of check- 

 ing bibliographical citations. 



From time to time, Rafael Segovia and Hernan 

 Porras, both students at the Escuela, have volun- 

 teered assistance in the clerical work involved in 

 the analysis of our census data. 



Iu addition to the above participants, we are 

 under obligation to several institutions and to 

 many friends and colleagues. Particular thanks 

 go to both supporting institutions: the Institute 

 of Social Anthropology, of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution ; and the Escuela Nacional de Antropologia 

 e Historia, of the Instituto Nacional de Antro- 

 pologia e Historia. Of the first, Dr. George Fos- 

 ter and Miss Lois Northcott have been our towers 

 of strength ; of the second, Dr. Pablo Martinez del 

 Rio, Arq. Ignacio Marquina, Dr. Daniel F. Rubin 

 de la Borbolla, and Ing. Jose Garcia Payon. Dur- 





