Chimalpahin's sixth and seventh relations: a Nahua lord's annals of Chalco Amaquemecan, 1258-1612
Chimalpahin, born at Amaquemecan in 1579 and descended from its rulers, wrote his own altepetl's history in Nahuatl, in the alphabet the friars had brought, keeping the Nahua year count and the Christian year in one line: year 6 rabbit, 1550, the viceroy arrives, the Amaquemeque dance for him, people die of quinsy, the Dominicans come. Almost nothing is known of his life, and the annals were first printed in 1889 — in Paris, in French, from a manuscript by then in a French private collection.
Why this wins its question: In English, Chimalpahin is normally a name in a list of colonial Nahua annalists, with a birth year, a place and a sentence about the importance of his work; the work itself is quoted only in specialist literature. This object goes to the 1889 Paris edition and prints what is actually on the page: the double dating that runs the Nahua year count and the Christian year in one line, a single year's entry in which a viceroy's arrival, an epidemic of quinsy, the deaths of two named indigenous rulers with their titles and the first arrival of the Dominicans stand side by side, and the marginal addition in the annalist's own manuscript. It also takes the editor's word for how little is known — "on a infiniment peu de détails sur sa vie" — rather than filling the gap, keeps the translation of Gómara at the low confidence a second-hand nineteenth-century attribution deserves, and states the cost the bibliographies bury: an indigenous history of Chalco written to 1612 was first printed in 1889, in Paris, in French, from a manuscript in a French private collection.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The volume read here has for its title page "ANNALES DE DOMINGO FRANCISCO DE SAN ANTON MUÑON CHIMALPAHIN QUAUHTLEHUANITZIN, SIXIÈME ET SEPTIÈME RELATIONS (1258-1612), PUBLIÉES ET TRADUITES SUR LE MANUSCRIT ORIGINAL PAR RÉMI SIMÉON, LAURÉAT DE L'INSTITUT", with the imprint "PARIS, MAISONNEUVE ET CH. LECLERC, ÉDITEURS, 25, QUAI VOLTAIRE, 25" and the date 1889; the half-title places it as tome XII of the Bibliothèque Linguistique Américaine. The book prints the Nahuatl text and a French translation on facing columns, with the Christian year set in the outer margin.
The editor states in his first paragraph what he believes the publication to be: "C'est la première fois, en France, qu'on publie un texte nahuatl étendu et complet, accompagné de la traduction et de notes explicatives." Until then, he writes, Mexican literature was known only through more or less connected fragments — the brief annotations entered on the Indians' figurative paintings, the tlatolli or discourses and harangues of kings and lords to their vassals and exhortations of fathers to their children, and prayers and other pieces of Christian liturgy put into Mexican by the Spanish monks who went to catechise Mexico shortly after the conquest. Against those, "le livre que nous publions forme un tout suivi".
Of the author the introduction gives a birth and a lineage and little else. Chimalpahin "naquit à Amaquémécan, dans la nuit du 26 au 27 mai 1579, et reçut les noms de Domingo Francisco de San Anton Muñon Chimalpahin Quauhtléhuanitzin"; he descended from the ancient kings of Tzacualtitlan-Ténanco-Amaquémécan-Chalco, whose founder Cuahuitzatzin reigned nearly seventy years, from 1269 to 1338, and died at a very advanced age. The genealogy of his own family is given by Chimalpahin himself, in the seventh relation.
Beyond that, the editor says plainly, "on a infiniment peu de détails sur sa vie". What is known is that he received a careful education matching the high position of his parents; that he knew the history and geography of his country perfectly, was versed in astronomy and had varied notions of the civilisation of the old continent; and that he composed, in Mexican and in Spanish, writings of which it would be difficult today to draw up an exact and complete list. The gap in the record is the editor's own statement, not an inference.
Such list as exists is second-hand, from Boturini's catalogue: a Mexican history in Spanish stopping at the year 1526; a Mexican chronicle in Nahuatl running from 1068 to 1597; essays of Mexican history, also in Nahuatl, from 1064 to 1521, which Gama attributed to Tezozomoc; and "différentes histoires originales, en nahuatl, des royaumes de Colhuacan, de Mexico et d'autres provinces, depuis les premiers temps de la gentilité jusqu'en 1591" — the annals of which, the editor adds, "M. Aubin possède huit Relations extrêmement importantes pour l'histoire du Mexique". He notes that it is not possible to tell from Boturini's over-general indications whether that is the whole of what Chimalpahin left.
One further attribution is reported at one remove and is worth keeping at that distance: on the authority of Carlos María de Bustamante, who published an edition of Gómara's Historia de las conquistas de Hernando Cortés at Mexico in 1826, the introduction states that Chimalpahin had translated that work into Mexican. A Nahua annalist rendering the standard Spanish narrative of the conquest into Nahuatl is a striking claim, and it is entered here as a nineteenth-century editor's report of another nineteenth-century editor's statement.
The annals themselves are dated twice over, in two calendars, entry by entry: "VI tochtli xihuitl, 1550" and "XIII tochtli xihuitl, 1570 años" — year 6 rabbit and year 13 rabbit of the Nahua count, each with the year of the Christian era printed in the same line of the manuscript. The apparatus of a European chronicle is not substituted for the indigenous one; the two run together.
What such an entry holds can be read in the one for 1550, which sets four things side by side without comment: the arrival of the viceroy — "Nican hacico huehue Don Luis de Velasco, visurrey", and the Amaquemeque went to meet him at Chollolan and danced; a mortality, "No yhquac quechpoçahualiztli yc micohuac", people died of the swelling of the throat; among the dead, "Don Juan Ytztlitentzin, tlayllotlac teuhctli, tlahtohuani Tenanco" and Don Carlos, ruler of Mamalhuaçocan, both named with their titles; and, that same year, the first coming of the Dominican fathers to Amaquemecan. A viceregal entry, an epidemic, two indigenous rulers' deaths and the arrival of a religious order, in one year's paragraph.
The manuscript carries the annalist's own additions in its margins. Against the year 1550 the editor prints, from the margin, "Yquac ye micouac quechpoçahualiztli. No yquac in mohuicac yn Don Antonio de Mendoça, visorey" — then people died of the quinsy; then also departed Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy — with the editor's note that he was going to Peru. The entry for 1570 records the death at Mexico of Don Pedro Tlacahuepantzin, whom the editor identifies as a prince of Tenochtitlan-Mexico, and names the friars concerned in that year's business at Tlalmanalco, "Padre Fr. Luis de Unade, vicario, yuan Fr. Luis Regino, presidente".
The cost is in the publication history and needs no commentary. A history of Chalco Amaquemecan written in Nahuatl by its own lord, reaching to 1612, was not printed in New Spain, nor in Spain, nor in the two centuries and a half that followed. The sixth and seventh relations reached print in 1889, in Paris, from a manuscript that had passed through Boturini's collection into the private hands of the French collector Aubin, and they reached it in French. The edition read here is both the reason the text survives in print and the measure of how far it had to travel to get there.