TIIK TKIBUTE ROLL OF MONTEZUMA. 59 



Part II. 



THE TRIBUTE ROLL OP MONTEZUMA. 

 BY HENRY PHILLIPS, JR. 



The manuscripts here reproduced came into the possession of the American 

 Philosophical Society in the year 1830, having been presented, together with about 

 twenty-five hundred objects of Mexican antiquities, by Hon. Joel P. Poinsett, who 

 had been Minister of the United States at Mexico. 



The colored pictures will be found engraved [uncolored] in Lorenzana's Historia 

 de Nueva* Espana, Mexico, 1770. They are numbered in that work respectively as 

 1, 2, 27, 28 and 30, and are desiguated as the catalog of the tributes paid to Monte- 

 zuma, their amounts and species and the peoples by whom they were paid. 



The tributes as paid consist of various manners of dresses, military and civil, 

 arms, banners, etc., cotton, gums and spices, ornamented vestments and other arti- 

 cles, [even as it is said, lice and ants], precious stones, apparently cut, and necklaces 

 of similar objects. 



The pictures now presented will be found absolutely correct. Upon comparison 

 with those in Lorenzana it will be seen that there are many discrepancies in form, 

 shape, size and position ; that in the printed volume some written matter is inter- 

 polated as explanations on the plates, and in other cases there are inscriptions omitted 

 from the roll. The plates represent the tributes paid by Tlatelulco (PI. 1), Tcpetlap- 

 lalco (PL 2), Tlauhquitepec (27), Tuxpa (28), Tazco (30) and others. 



Part III. 



PHYSICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 



BY DR. J. CHESTON MORRIS. 



The fragments of the tribute roll are four in number, those of the calendar, two. 

 They are all of maguey paper, made from the fibre of the Agave americana by a very 

 simple process : A section of the stem is shaved or cut so as to give a long thin 

 strip which is macerated and rolled into the required density, texture, smoothness 

 and thickness ; in this case the width of the sheet was between eight and eight 



* Cordillera de los Pueblos que antes de la conquista pagaban tributo a el Emperador Muclezuma y eu que especie 

 y canlidad. 



