#aztatlan

As some of you may have noticed on Reddit’s AskHistorians, I really enjoy answering questions related to food in Mesoamerica. Personally, I love to cook and cook new things from a variety of different cuisines. So understanding the foods people ate in the past helps me to connect and understand those that came before us. Today, as I was reading Carl Sauer and Donald Brand's Aztatlán prehistoric Mexican frontier on the Pacific coast (1932), I was treated to some new information on the foods of West Mexico that I had not previously known. To be fair, the source they cite is one that I have been meaning to read but have not yet read. Sauer and Brand largely  cite Antonio Tello's Cronica Miscelanea de la Sancta Provincia de Xalisco, Libro Segundo, Vols. I y II a 17th century manuscript containing important information on the peoples of Western Mexico. Tello, according to Sauer and Brand, had repeated the information recorded by the indigenous author Pantecatl whose original account is currently lost to us. There is definitely uncertainty as to the validity of the information, but some of it appears to be supported by other sources such as the sworn depositions of the soldiers who accompanied Nuño de Guzmán in his destructive entrada through West Mexico. I am going to copy what Sauer and Brand have written in their book on the foods grown and eaten by the Contact peoples of Nayarit and Sinaloa (pages 51 to 54). I know many of the names, places, and events will be unfamiliar to you all, but I hope you find it fascinating nonetheless.

OBSERVATIONS ON MATERIAL CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS

The scale of agriculture has been suggested in the ample supply of provisions that Guzmán's army found. There is no mention whatsoever of irrigation. Guzman reports from Omitlán that three crops of maize were raised annually, a condition that still holds for the flood plains of Nayarit. Maize, calabasas or squash, and frijoles were the principal crop throughout. Cotton was generally grown and provided the principal clothing of the population. The district of Culiacan was claimed by Flores as the most abounding in maize, frijoles, and peppers (aji). Ponce reported the cultivation of the egg plant. Lopez stated that "the whole land is virtually of one sort, has a great supply of food, bears fruits, ciruelas (plums?) and guayabas (guavas) and guamuchiles in great abundance, and some black zapotes." As to the mode of farming Pantecatl asserted

that in the days of their heathendom, they had no other manner of sowing than by making clearings in monte-covered places, and when that which they had cut was dried out they set fire to it (this taking place at the beginning of the rainy season). They made holes in which they put the seed of maize or cotton, covered it with earth, and because it was moist and there were always clouds, the seed sprouted, grew and gave abundant harvest from small seedling.

Fowls were domesticated and were an important food in the southern districts. They were ordinarily called gallinas, at times "fowls of Mexico." There is also reference to ducks, to fowls "like those of Castile." Samaniego returned to the desolate camp at Aztatlán from Chametla with a hundred and fifty porters loaded with fowls. Before the flood there had been fowls at Aztatlán in such numbers it was "a strange sight to behold". North of the Piaxtla, which was a culture line, the gallinas were few. Lopez complains of the Culiacan valley, "there are few flows in it; I do not know if that came about because they ate them, knowing that were coming, because there was one pueblo in which I found four gallinas killed and plucked." The other witnesses however all report a diminution in *gallinas* in the north. There can be little doubt that domesticated fowls are being described, and that in good part they were turkeys. The variety of terms used however suggests that more than one kind of bird may have been domesticated. At present chachalacas (ortalis) are kept to some extent. There is also some possibility that the chicken-like creature of the south may have been a domesticated curassow. There is one notation from the south of dogs as food. In invading the lagoon pueblo south of Aztatlán, which is thought to be at the Laguna of Pescadores, the Indian allies found "many dogs of which the amigos loaded as many as they could carry."

The domestication of bees is reported by Oviedo (Chametla in particular) as follows:

Their second interest and a very general one is to raise swarms of bees, and they keep them suspended in the houses; and in place of hives (which they do not have) they take as containers for the bees a part of a tree trunk, which they hollow out, in the matter and size which is employed in Spain for the bark taken from the cork-oak; and in one house they have suspended ten, in another twenty, or thirty, more or less, of such beehives, in which combs and honey of excellent quality are produced . . . . The bees are small, no larger than flies, and are very many, and do not sting nor do hurt, for they are without sting. To get the honey, which they eat and put into their victuals, they have one or two hives set aside for ordinary use (for the rest are kept for the trade in honey and wax, which is merchandise of much significance and secures for them other items that these Indians do not produce). By a certain opening in the hive, from which they take out a plug, they insert a wooden tube made for this purpose, through which there are distilled and drained two or four quarts (1-2 acumbres) of honey or whatever amount they wish, without destroying the hive or causing damage or disturbance to the bees; and as there are many swarms, thus there is also a very great quantity of very good wax secure.

At Culiacan “ciruelos were abundant as olives in Andalucia and the Indains made wine thereof.” Maguey was used for conserves and for making pulque in the northern district. Pulque is unknown in this section at present. Fish and shell fish were used in great quantities than at present is probably to be thus explained. An interesting note is supplied concerning the clever inhabitants of the north, who has stretched at Horaba (Lower San Lorenzo” “a weir (zarzo) of cane across the river and set in it a contrivance (ingenio) to take fish which, though there had been there another Seville, would have sufficed to supply the population.” Salt making was noted only from the Rio Elota to which they gave the name of La Sal because of “*muchos montones de sal*.”

Leather was produced especially from cayman skins, in part used for covering shields. There was other leather “like cowhide,” which Guzman supposed might be made from tapirs (javali?). A plain of vacas is mentioned near Chametla, but what animal is meant is not known. Cotton was woven into mantas for the men and camisas for the women, and they were said to be well clothed, especially in the northern country. Ponce reported in the town of Jalisco the women wearing something like a bishop’s cloak, with two large points, one in front and one behind, worked in blue and white, and said that the same dressed was worn in Sentispeac and Acaponeta and even by the “Chichimec” Indians of the sierra, the cloak being almost the same as was customary in Nicaragua. The plumage of birds was much used for personal decoration, in particular for headdress. Shells, pearls, gold, silver, copper bells, and turquoise were used as ornaments. Tello makes the claim that Guzman demanded of “the cacique of Sentispac four hundred cane internodes filled with gold in grains and four hundred pieces of silver, all of which were sent, the silver being in square pieces smelted by fire.” In another connection he asserts that the gold and silver was received by the lowland chief as tribute from the highlanders. The Spaniards at first exclaimed about the gold used in girdles and headdress, but shortly murmured at the lack of plunder in precious metals. Torquemada said that the coastal section was poor in silver, “but in part very rich in pearls and there was also much gold in the rivers in those days, and our people seized it, with hurt and death to the Indian natives.”

Here are the interesting tid-bits that I found from this section.

Ponce mentioned that the coastal Nayarit and Sinaloan peoples cultivated the eggplant. However, the eggplant is an Old World domesticate from Southern or Southeastern Asia. Ponce must have been mistaken in his identification of the plant, though he should have been somewhat familiar with eggplant as it was grown widely in North Africa (and I am assuming up into Spain) at the time of the Reconquista.  I am left wondering what the heck this supposed eggplant was.

This is more of a note, but I have eaten guamuchiles. They’re alright, though I ate them raw. I’m not sure if you can cook them or prepare them in another manner for consumption. In its raw state, you chew a whiteish flesh off a seed found in a long pod containing several seeds. This pod hangs from a tree.

In regards to the various fowl species, I had not heard of any Mesoamerican peoples domesticating or taming *chachalacas* (ortalis) or curassow before. In fact, I had to look both of these birds up because I had no idea what they were. It would be interesting to see if faunal remains of these birds were discovered in any excavations of Aztatlán or later period sites to confirm or refute the Contact period accounts.

The account of beekeeping is what made me the most excited for this section. Whenever Mesoamerican cuisine comes up people almost inevitably bring up a lack of sweets or sweetener available to indigenous peoples. I often cite Sophie Coe’s work on beekeeping practiced by the Maya to counter this notion that there was a lack of sweets unavailable to Mesoamericans. But now I can also point to coastal West Mexicans, effectively a world away from the Maya, as another example of beekeeping in Mesoamerica with the explicit function of using bees to create honey for consumption. However, I am left wondering what they used the wax for and why the wax was such a commodity at the market. There are ceramic objects recovered from Teotihuacan dubbed candeleros

http://www.ancientresource.com/images/precolumbian/teotihuacano/teotihuacan-candelero-pr2121.jpg

because they look like they could hold a couple of candles. But candle making and use is, as far as I know, unknown in Mesoamerica. That’s not to say that someone did not make candles, but we lack the evidence for it so far.

Another exciting bit of information was the use of maguey as conserves. It was exciting because this past summer I finally tried a piece of roasted agave from the Jose Cuervo distillery (don’t judge, it was a nice place) in Tequila, Jalisco. The roasted agave was very sweet and I can understand why the sugars in agave are able to be made into pulque or tequila. What’s funny is that in the Jose Cuervo distillery gift shop they were selling agave marmalade as a novelty. I can’t wait to tell people that this novelty is just another indigenous invention.

Since we are on the topic of alcohol, I am interested in this ciruelo wine that is mentioned. It’s probably not actually wine. I’ve noticed Spaniards in the colonial period tend to call anything alcoholic a wine even though a more appropriate label like beer or fermented beverage is applicable. But again, this is the first time I have ever heard of a ciruelo and its function in the creation of an alcoholic beverage. It is something I should keep in mind in the future when discussing residue analysis of ceramic vessels.

Although the koshari are often seen dancing at festivals alongside kachinas, they are not themselves kachinas. Rather, they are "sacred clowns" who mock the kachinas, disrupt dances, speak rudely to their elders, sing off-key or one beat behind the song, and generally act like disruptive fools.