Juan de Córdova's Zapotec grammar and dictionary (Mexico, 1578)

The first printed grammar of Zapotec and the dictionary printed beside it, both from Pedro Balli's shop at Mexico City in 1578. Their author had marched to Cíbola with Vázquez de Coronado before he took the Dominican habit, and finished the two books in a poor convent after the order deposed him from its highest office. The grammar ends in a treatise on Zapotec omens and marriage — recorded in detail, and then used to argue that Zapotec marriages had not been marriages at all.