AMERICAN CONTACT
Creators: Anonymous
Date of Creation: May 1790
Place of origin: Caracas, Venezuela
Physical measurements: Approximately 24 cm. x 18 cm.
Materials: Paper, ink, and pencil
Process by which it was made: Writing and illustration
Current location: Archivo General de Indias (Seville).
Information contributed by Cristina Soriano.
Creators: Anonymous
Date of Creation: 1813
Place of origin: San Antonio, Texas
Physical measurements: 12 pages. 12” x 8.25”
Materials: Paper and ink
Process by which it was made: Handwritten
Current location: Herbert Bolton Papers, Carton 45, Folder 22, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Information contributed by Raúl Coronado.
Creators: Anonymous Nahua Scribes
Date of Creation: ca. 1578, updated over time
Place of origin: Mexico City
Physical measurements: 51 leaves, 102 pages, 10 cm x 20 cm
Materials: Paint on Native bark paper
Process by which it was made: Painting
Current location: Bibliothèque National de France.
Further Reading
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mexica. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
Delbrugge, Laura. Reportorio de los tiempos. London: Tamesis, 1999.
Diel, Lori Boornazian. The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
Information contributed by Lori Boornazian Diel.
Creators: Unknown (Nahua)
Date of Creation: ca. 1530
Place of origin: Huejotzingo, Mexico
Physical measurements: 8 sheets of various dimensions: p.1, 45 cm wide x 44 cm. high; p. 2, 42 cm wide x 27 cm high; p. 3, 20 cm wide x 52 cm high; p. 4, 44 cm wide x 23 cm wide; p. 5, 52.5 cm wide x 41.5 cm high; p. 6, 42 cm wide x 43.5 cm high; p. 7, 24 cm wide x 45.5 cm high; p. 8, 40 cm wide x 26 cm high.
Materials: Amatl paper, agave paper, pigments
Process by which it was made: Painting
Current location: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Information contributed by Barbara E. Mundy.
Further Reading
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Mundy, Barbara E. “The Emergence of Alphabetic Writing: Tlahcuiloh and Escribano in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.” The Americas 77, no. 3 (July 2020): 361–407.
Wolf, Gerhard, Joseph Connors, and Louis Alexander Waldman, eds. Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún. Florence; Cambridge, MA: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut : Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; Worldwide distribution by Harvard University Press, 2011.
Creators: Pedro Cortés y Larraz; printer: Don Antonio Sanchez Cubillas
Date of Creation: 1772
Place of origin: Santiago de Guatemala (current day Antigua, Guatemala)
Physical measurements: 20 pages
Materials: Paper
Process by which it was made: Print
Current location: Archivo Histórico del Arquidiocesano de Guatemala
Further Reading
Alfred Lemmon, “Reglas y estatutos del coro de la Santa Metropolitana Iglesia de Santiago de Guatemala,” Mesoamérica: revista del Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica 11, no. 19-20 (1990): 299-314.
Ana María Martínez de Sánchez, “Fuentes de archivo para el estudio del derecho canónico indiano local,” Revista de estudios histórico-jurídicos, no. 30 (2008): 485-503.
Kate van Orden, Materialities: Books, Readers, and the Chanson in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Information contributed by Diane Oliva.
Creators: Don Manuel, cacique of Asile
Date of Creation: 1651
Place of origin: Asile, Timucua town of Florida
Physical measurements: 2 pages
Materials: Paper
Process by which it was made: Handwriting
Current location: Original housed at the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Spain.
Further Reading
Alyssa Mt. Plesant, Caroline Wigginton, and Kelly Wisecup, “Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies: Completing the Turn,” The William and Mary Quarterly 75:2 (2018) 207-36.
Amy Turner Bushnell, “Patricio De Hinachuba: Defender of the Word of God, the Crown of the King, and the Little Children of Ivitachuco.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 3, no. 3 (1979): 1-2George Aaron Broadwell & Alejandra Dubcovsky, “Chief Manuel’s 1651 Timucua letter: The oldest letter in a Native language of the United States,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Forthcoming.
Alejandra Dubcovsky and George Aaron Broadwell. “Writing Timucua: Recovering and Interrogating Indigenous Authorship.” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15, no. 3 (2017): 409-41.
Jerald T. Milanich, The Timucua. (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).
Information contributed by Alejandra Dubcovsky and George Aaron Broadwell.