66 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 13 



ML 



6J.89 



saw 



75.79 

 7Cl7* 

 65.69 



6O.6H 



S.59 





S5-59 

 Sa3f 



25-29 



2a 14 



/TALES 



< mjtibio. or Pi&sons ) 



m 



"~ r 



FFMALIS 



<nu/iBie otpir50Hs 



~~ 





Fioure 2. — Composition of Tajin population. Age, sex, and speech are shown; the data come from our own 1947-48 

 census (see table 8). The key is the same as that of figure 1, except that all Spanish monolinguals (4 cases only) are 

 represented by diagonal hatch. 



pleted years). For this reason, we have followed 

 the usual age groupings, not the corrected form 

 used by Foster. 



It is little short of a miracle that both figures 

 show a certain semblance of symmetry, for the 

 Totonac are incredibly casual concerning age. 

 That of children seems to be fairly well known, 

 and a few families even treasure a baptismal cer- 

 tificate or a registry paper from Papantla. How- 

 ever, relatively few births are recorded. Ideally, 

 the parents of a newborn infant report the birth to 

 the local municipal office, where they are given a 

 paper to be presented to the authorities in Pa- 

 pantla. There, they are expected to buy a special 

 document and to present witnesses. The total cost 

 comes to about $5.00 pesos, which is regarded as a 

 needless extravagance. As a consequence, few 

 births are registered. 



Age among the adults is largely a matter of 

 guesswork, and several extreme cases may be cited 

 as examples : 



Carmen Pdrez Reyes claims to be 80 years old. But her 

 youngest child is 20, as attested by a birth certificate. 

 Accordingly, it seems likely that the mother is some 20 

 years younger than she believes. 



Vicente de Le6n gives the age of his wife as 60, although 

 she has a daughter 8 years old. He calculates his own age 



at 85. However, for the Federal census, in 1940, he gave 

 his age as 58 ; for a local school census, in 1945, as 65 years. 

 But when our census was taken, in 1947, he suddenly at- 

 tained the age of 85. As a matter of fact, he must have 

 been close to 80, for he remembers the Ojital y Potrero 

 subdivision of lands in 1876 and believes he was 8 or 10 

 years old at that time. 



Jose Maria Garcia calculates the age of bis daughter at 

 19 ; she herself thinks she is 30. 



Not all informants overestimate their ages: 



Nicolasa de Leon, who appears to be in her 50's, claims 

 to be 35; and her brother-in-law, Telesforo Hernandez, 

 apparently about the same age as she, coyly admits to 30 

 years. 



It seems likely that the errors have canceled one 

 another; at least, both figures 1 and 2 suggest a 

 relatively normal decrease in population according 

 to age. Even if the data are only approximately 

 correct, it is evident that the populace of Tajin is 

 essentially young ; according to our census, 73 per- 

 cent of the entire community is under 30 years of 

 age ; 84 percent, under 40. 



Sex ratio. — The 1940 census shows an identical 

 frequency of males and females — 359 of each sex. 

 On the contrary, our count, which is more com- 

 plete, reveals a noticeable preponderance of fe- 

 males — 522 males, 575 females. In the first two 



