Native Wills

from the
Colonial Americas

Dead Giveaways in a New World

edited by
Mark Christensen and Jonathan Truitt
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

The University of Utah Press

Salt Lake City

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 Copyright © 2015 by The University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

The Defiance House Man colophon is a registered trademark

of the University of Utah Press. It is based on a four-foot-tall
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Native wills from the colonial Americas : dead giveaways in a new

world / edited by Mark Christensen and Jonathan Truitt.
  pages cm
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-1-60781-416-0 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-1-60781-417-7 (ebook)
1. Indians of Mexico — History. 2. Indians of Central America —
History. 3. Wills — Mexico 4. Wills — Central America.
5. Mexico — History — Spanish colony, 1540–1810. 6. Central
America — History — To 1821. I. Christensen, Mark Z., editor,
author. II. Truitt, Jonathan G., 1977– editor, author.
F1219.N37 2015
972'.02 — dc23
2015017706

Printed and bound by Sheridan Books, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 CHAPTER 7

“One or Two of My Living Words”

Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
K’iche’ Testaments from Guatemala

Owen H. Jones

In the eighteenth century the Achí (Maya) of the Guatemalan town of

Rab’inal declared their final testaments upon their deathbeds and trans-
mitted what they humbly called “only one or two of [their] casliquil tzih”
or “living words.” They declared orally in the presence of witnesses and
community leaders their last wishes for the repartition of their property
and bequeathed all of their earthly possessions to their immediate kin. The
scribe of the municipal council wrote down their living words in their own
language.1 On March 12, 1768, the scribe in Rab’inal, Lucas Tauico, wrote in
the will of Diego Macha’: “We are witnesses. We are hearers of one or two
of his words of his testament, indeed, living words. This, well, his first word
of his testament is only for his own memory because we are only mortals”
(TULAL, 497.281, Q6d2).2 As this testament suggests, each will became a
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

script for the dying to relate a final message of “living words” or “words of
counsel” to their family members.
The sick and dying — ​young and old, male and female, relatively rich
and dismally poor — ​all made last testaments. Some K’iche’, like the elites
of Xelajú and San Miguel Totonicapán, well before they became terminally
ill, chose to have their wills recorded with the public scribe, a Spanish of-
ficial who acted as notary in specific pueblos that had Spanish colonial ad-
ministrators (Luján Muñoz 2011, 4). He drafted their testaments in Spanish
using an official interpreter if necessary. The K’iche’ elites of Xelajú were
bilingual in K’iche’ and Spanish, but the elites of San Miguel Totonicapán
needed a general interpreter to help produce their wills. Upper-­class
138

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 139

K’iche’ made their testaments with the public scribe because his signature
carried greater legal and political clout than that of the indigenous mu-
nicipal council’s scribe. In some instances the Spanish magistrate required
the public scribe to produce the testament in Spanish so that an account-
ing could be made of the individual’s acquired wealth. For example, the
will of Balthazar Guicol from San Miguel Totonicapán had an accounting
of 72,143 pesos and 5 reales, a small fortune that the colonial magistrate
wanted to account for to hedge against later conflicts (AGCA, A.1, 1500,
9988). Indigenous scribes, as bilingual indigenous leaders, often partici-
pated as witnesses in the drafting of these wills and strategically transferred
the formulaic language used by public scribes into the production of their
own testaments in K’iche’.
There are two corpora of fifty-­nine wills and sundry papers written in
K’iche’ from the cabildo book of Rab’inal, two small corpora of wills from
the towns of San Miguel Totonicapán and Espíritu Santo Xelajú de la Real
Corona (or Quetzaltenango), and one will from San Cristobal Totoni-
capán. The San Miguel corpus contains seven wills and the Xelajú corpus
five that span the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries. Four
corpora of wills from three K’iche’-speaking communities allow us to ex-
amine the differences in the drafting of testaments and their literary con-
ventions. The contextualization of these corpora of K’iche’-language wills
demonstrates indigenous innovation in testament making in some cases
and the reproduction of Spanish legal norms in others (Hanks 2010, 21).

Function and Structure of

K’iche’ Testaments
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

The indigenous leadership shaped the structure of the testaments that

they produced. The greatest influence in testament composition emanated
from the training of the scribe. Continuity in testamentary organization is
consistent from testament to testament and was transmitted from scribal
teacher to student. Scribal schools defined the formulae in which wills
would be written as teachers taught students the conventions of commu-
nity record keeping.
Testaments from some communities contain the voice of c­ ommunity
leaders — ​the municipal council and the chinamit (ward of the indigenous
township)—​as well as the testator’s.3 There were several chinamit in a ­single
community, as well as various leaders called chinamitales. The K’iche’

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 140 Owen H. Jones

r­eferred to them as tz’aqal chinamital, “advocates and lineage heads”

(Christenson, n.d.).4 Chinamitales assisted and advocated for their ral cual,
“child of a mother, child of a father,” a descriptor of the non-­elite who lived
within their chinamit. Thus, for the K’iche’, the inclusion of the chinamit
in a will seemed logical as it followed precontact traditions of community
configuration that hinged on the familial structure.
Justices present at the write-­up of a will could include first and second
alcaldes, an indigenous governor, a scribe (who was paid by the testator),
an indigenous fiscal (priest’s assistant), any number of aldermen, and many
of the chinamitales of the community’s different wards. Besides municipal
leaders and the testator, witnesses and family members were also in atten-
dance. Not all of the justices had to be present; for some wills only china-
mitales and the scribe presided over the event, as was the case in the will of
Manuel Xpattaq’ (included below). Production of a will was a complicated
and important community action that included the participation of a large
number of societal leaders who not only helped to guide the words of the
testator but also aided in relieving community strife through their witness
to the dying person’s spoken words. They identified themselves as the taol,
“the hearers” of the “living words” of the testator, and they used the tes-
tament as a document that confirmed the restructuring of land and the
bequeathal of personal property.
Production of a K’iche’ testament had several stages. In the initial cre-
ation of the will, the testator related the casliquil tzij (living words) or pixab
tzij (words of counsel) that would express his or her wishes. The second
stage of the testament was the probate proceedings, in which Rab’inal’s
municipal leaders, who called themselves the jachol (disseminators), parti-
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

tioned the deceased’s assets to the intended family members. The last stage
of a will could include any and all contestations to the bequeathal of prop-
erty, for which the community leaders could consult the will of the testator
and also those of his or her ancestors. Some of the Rab’inal wills are not
the testator’s first testament but suculiquil (a correction) to the first will.
Not all testaments written in K’iche’ contain the testator’s “living
words” or “words of counsel.” If someone died intestate, before they could
leave a last will, the community leaders from the municipal council or the
chinamit attempted to reconstruct the individual’s probable wishes. The
creation of a testator’s probable wishes is unique to indigenous language
testaments. It involved gathering the family members together to make

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 141

the appropriate repartition of assets and property. The community l­ eaders

from Rab’inal called themselves “we the banol”—t​ he doers, makers, or cre-
ators of the words of the deceased. These testaments still had the same
literary conventions as wills produced from the “living words” of the testa-
tor: a dialogue still takes place within the document between the deceased
testator and the community leaders. The will then proceeds to follow the
same conventions as those in which the testator is dictating his or her
wishes to the community leaders. Whether this dialogue was the product
of divination is not entirely clear but is clearly implied. What is certain
is that the will was a community document that involved the communal
leadership of the tinamit amaq’, the town and nation.
Community leaders advocated for the deceased as jachol, dissemina-
tors of the bequeathed goods or executors of the testator’s wishes. The
documents they created related directly to testaments and recorded the
process of the repartition of property, similar to probate proceedings. Of-
ten in their role as jachol, community leaders dispensed justice, with the
testator threatening community intervention at the end of testaments. In
some wills, testators beseeched town council members, lineage elders, or
chinamitales to resolve disputes that might arise between their family mem-
bers. Still, in other wills testators threatened that the community leaders
would punish their family members with lashes if their heirs ignored their
wishes. The standard was sixty lashes, to be witnessed by the community
elders themselves. In some probate proceedings, which occurred after the
testator died, the community elders dispensed justice on those family
members who did not cooperate with their mandates (AGCA, A1.20, 1784,
55535, Testament of Pedro Gomes Xiquitzal).
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

Provenance
As Robert Hill II (1998) similarly notes for Kaqchiquel wills, K’iche’ tes-
taments, at least from Rab’inal, do not stress the provenance of the testa-
tor but rather focus on the testator’s affiliation with his or her chinamit,
the ward or neighborhood in which the testator resided. It is perplexing
that in the Rab’inal wills the scribe did not include the names of the chin-
amit. In fact, for the Rab’inal wills, the only instance in which a testator’s
provenance is mentioned is when they were foreign to the tinamit amaq’
in which the testator made the will. The same cannot be said for wills from
tinamit amaq’ where the leadership links themselves to Spanish precedents,

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 142 Owen H. Jones

as in Xelajú and San Miguel Totonicapán, and the testators announce their
towns of origin, stating that they are a natural of said town.
One reference to a tinamit amaq’ is Josepha Lucas’s statement that
she is ah Zalama, “she [of the town] of Salamá,” a township adjacent to
Rab’inal.5 The identification of town of origin is a concept originating from
Spanish legalism and became general practice in the testaments of K’iche’
tinamit amaq’ in which the indigenous inhabitants had frequent contact
with the public scribe. The names in the Rab’inal testaments can be com-
pared to other documentation from Rab’inal, and the references to local
areas prove that the wills originated there. Connections to people within
the community rather than to place seem more prevalent in Rab’inal wills.

Q’a Chuch Q’ahau

In Rab’inal testaments, community leaders held a title reserved for ­diviners
and day keepers in modern K’iche’ communities in Guatemala. In his tes-
tament, Sebastian Gotierres describes them using an uncommon term:
“First, well, his word in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Ghost with my lady Mary. And may there be, well, someone
to help him, to say one or two of my words before them, these, my mothers
my day keepers” (TULAL, 497.281, Q6d2). It is unusual in Rab’inal testa-
ments for the scribe or testator to consider the town council elders as “my
mothers, my day keepers.” Usually the expression is q’a chuch q’ahau (our
mothers, our fathers) (Tedlock 1982). Although unusual, it is not strange
that the scribe, Lucas Tauico, chose to use the phrase “these, my mothers,
my day keepers” to describe the council members. Barbara Tedlock asserts
that “the mothers, fathers” are first ah q’ij (day keepers) before they be-
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

come diviners. They function as counters of the days, keepers of time, and
as redistributors of space and land. They become intercessors between the
gods, even the Christian gods, which include the trinity, and because of the
quadripartite nature of K’iche’ thought in reference to time and space may
include the Virgin Mary as a fourth deity.
The dying had the reassurance that their words continued on long after
they had passed away and that their wills would be consulted if there were
any contest or infighting among their heirs. They believed that the words
of the dead could speak from the mouths of those who had access to the
voices of the ancestors, q’a chuch q’ahau. Their duties included knowledge
of the proper days on which to perform rituals and ceremonies to receive

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 143

inspiration and messages from departed ancestors, especially those who

held their same leadership position in life. The title “mothers, fathers” in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was one that every member of
the indigenous cabildo held and one that every chinamital (ward lineage
head) also possessed. In K’iche’ ideology, the deceased community l­ eaders
had what they would consider to be better sight: an understanding of the
past and a vision for the future that could aid contemporary leaders in
making important decisions that would affect the community’s well-­being.
Fray Francisco Ximénez, translator of the Popol Vuh and a resident
priest in the head town of Rab’inal, alludes to this practice related to death
and dying. He states that when the dying were terminally ill, the K’iche’
used herbal medicine and then called in the magician, the necromancer, or
augury specialist to prescribe sacrifices to cure the sick (Ximénez 1929, 99).
In the correction of the last testament of Mateo Q’onibel in Rab’inal
in 1776, the town council acted as diviners and summoned up the words
of the testator’s deceased grandfather. Scribe Lucas Tauico wrote, “he says
well his word of this our grandfather Mateo Q’alah God received me. With
their mother every one of you come together in common and do a mass
with our mother.” 6 The first words here are those of a man who was al-
ready dead. He was advising his family that he did not need a mass said
for him because he was already in the presence of God. The town council
channeled his wishes from beyond the grave, proclaiming that the family
needed to arrange for a mass for their mother ( Jones 2009, 183).

Dialogocentrism
Many of the wills from separate scribal schools contain the same literary
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

conventions, suggesting the strong influence of the scribes in using the

proper formulae. These elements coincide with the access that scribes and
other community leaders had to Spanish legal customs through their in-
teractions with public notaries. The wills from San Miguel Totonicapán
and Quetzaltenango, for example, are much closer to Spanish testaments
than are wills from Rab’inal. Scribes appear to have had a fair bit of artistic
license in writing testaments given that they did not include every element
of Spanish-­language wills made by public notaries; instead they impro-
vised, making the testaments coincide with K’iche’ customs.
Most Spanish wills from the same period represent only the testator’s
monologue of individual bequeathals of property and effects, but the

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 144 Owen H. Jones

Rab’inal wills are written in a narrative style that cuts in and out of the
third and first persons as if it were a dialogue between the testator and
the community’s leaders. This style is similar to the way that the K’iche’
tell stories and betrays an oral tradition that follows a K’iche’ and a larger
Meso­american method. The dialogue of the testament reveals the wishes
of the testator in the first person, but reveals the intervention of the munic-
ipal council and chinamitales as third-­person narrators.
Matthew Restall refers to this notarial style in Yucatec Maya testaments
as the “dialogocentric” nature of Maya thought (Restall 1997, 242).7 Dia-
logocentrism appears only in the K’iche’ language wills from Rab’inal. The
1762 testament of Sebastian Pio states, “This is the first of his words thus
this for my mass to help my soul before God.” 8 The community leaders are
the third-­person narrators, and Sebastian Pio’s voice is in the first person.
This dialogocentrism is also present in the Popol Vuh and in K’iche’ dance
dramas such as the Tum Teleche and Rab’inal Achí, and is an indicator that
last wills and testaments were a form of ritual performance: a script for the
dying ( Jones 2009, 262).
The Xelajú and Totonicapán testaments lack the strong dialogocentric
format of the wills from Rab’inal. The community leaders did not usually
assert their primacy in these testaments, nor act in defining the desires of
the individuals involved. The wills were not made in the testators’ homes
but rather pa ja tzib (in the house of the scribe). The invocations include
a much longer and more detailed statement of faith, and the wills include
the same sorts of conventions found in Spanish-­language wills, such as the
testator claiming that witnesses were “within [their] five senses” (AGCA,
A1.20, 1504, 9981, 208, Testament of Anttonio Marin). They also tend to
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

name the missionary friar as the benefactor of the last rites, which included
the Eucharist and the unction of holy oil.
The fact that the testaments from Xelajú and Totonicapán are not di-
alogocentric does not mean that community leaders were not involved in
their production. K’iche’ leaders in Xelajú enjoyed a privileged relationship
with the regional magistrate and other Spaniards who lived in their tina-
mit because of their elite status and recognition as indios ladinos (latin­ized
­Indians) bilingual in Castilian and K’iche’ (AGI, Escribania 356B). The
strong connection between indios ladinos and Spanish colonial leader­
ship profoundly influenced the production of wills in the tinamit amaq’
of ­Xelajú.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 145

Despite more Spanish legal influence, these testaments are also typi-
cally K’iche’ in the preoccupations of the testators. The testaments from
Totonicapán and Xelajú both reveal the need to express pixab tzih (words
of council) even if the testator, as in the example of doña Anna Siqih, had
nothing to bequeath to one of her children (AGCA, A1.20, 1500, 9977,
fol. 6). Doña Anna’s will confirms that a piece of property in Xepettak was
inherited by her young daughter, Cathalina, from her mother, that she re-
ceived it before her mother’s death because of some necessity, and that
she had sold the property to Nicolas Xuruq y Borena before her mother
had made out her will. Not only did the land destined for her inheritance
become the property of Nicolas Xuruq, but the house on that land “with
the door facing east” and all of the portable goods that doña Anna had
intended for Cathalina.
Why would the K’iche’ place emphasis on a land sale in which the in-
tended inheritance of one party was purchased by another — ​a transaction
that had transpired before the production of the final testament? The will
became a statement of intent to enact future obligations or to record past
actions, a forum for council and advice, as well as a legal document that
represented bequeathed inheritance. The town council thus ensured that
the property in question would be respected as the property of Nicolas
Xuruq and not as the inheritance of Cathalina Siqih. Both individual tes-
tators and the town council used wills for this purpose, representing both
an individual and a collective voice ( Jones 2009, 285). The preoccupation
in some wills was to prevent future conflicts within the community. Testa-
ments were preventative judiciary documents that bound family members
to the words of a patriarch or matriarch after they had passed on to the
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

next life. The K’iche’, like other Mesoamerican groups, held, and still hold,
a strong connection to an unseen world of ancestors who float in and out
of their quotidian world.
Each corpus of wills has its own expressions that are particular to a
scribal school in each community and became part of the formula in pro-
ducing mundane notarial documentation. Formulaic expressions are used
repeatedly in each document. A particular scribal style often defined the
conventions that formulaic expressions would take, including not only
phrases from Spanish colonial exemplars (expressions that are routinely
part of the Spanish record-­keeping tradition), but also indigenous expres-
sions as part of a formulaic adaptation in testament writing.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 146 Owen H. Jones

Many of the formulaic expressions found sprinkled throughout the

wills prepared by K’iche’ scribes are illustrative of Mesoamerican concepts
and ideologies, and highly metaphoric. For example, one formulaic phrase
found in wills from San Miguel Totonicapán, chi be q’ij chi be saq, means
“in the road of the day/sun, in the white road [the road of the dawn].” The
phrase relates to the pan-­Maya concept of the road that the sun travels
daily across the sky, which is also symbolic of the road that the dead take
to the flowery afterworld of happiness, and that the spirits of the ancestors
use to return to advise the living. Francisco Ximénez (1929, 101) also spoke
of the road of the dead as a white or flowery road. It was an expression
used to convey the concepts of eternity and forever, comparing time to a
journey. This phrase appears in Totonicapán’s early titles, such as the Title
of Yax, written in approximately 1560, and was used exclusively among the
scribes of San Miguel Totonicapán up until the 1783 testament of Pedro
Gomes Xiquitzal (Carmack and Mondloch 1989, 93 n32).9 The phrase does
not appear in notarial documents in other K’iche’ tinamit amaq’ but does
appear in several eighteenth-­century wills in the Kaqchiquel-­dominated
town of Sololá as ti be q’ih ti be sak.10 It is illustrative of archaic formulae
and forms of speech that remained significant after the Spanish conquest
to the K’iche’ in San Miguel and to the Kaqchiquel of Sololá who live along
the road connecting these two towns.
Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the K’iche’ used language as a ve-
hicle to express multiple concepts. Mesoamerican languages use terms
that have multiple meanings and can be used to evoke several significances
within a single phrase. Each community seems to have had its own scribal
style. Formulaic expressions within the wills of Rab’inal, Totonicapán, and
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

Xelajú each reflect their unique scribal schools.

Wills in K’iche’ communities evidence a concern for exactness and
reverence in protecting the words of the dying — ​those who were soon to
become part of the multitude of ancestors of the tinamit amaq’. Some tes-
taments in areas with a closer connection to colonial leadership seemed to
adapt Spanish conventions, such as a first-­person narrative style; neverthe-
less, they retained indigenous concepts. Indigenous peoples used wills for
more than merely preemptive extralegal documentation. They adopted the
legalist tendencies of the Spaniards into their conceptualizations of juris-
prudence, providing evidence of judicial adaptation and a conscientious
legal strategy.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 147

The Xelajú leadership used Spanish legalist formulae, but rather than
give their traditions and practices away in K’iche’-language testaments,
they kept their rites in secret. A visit in 1744 to Quetzaltenango (Xelajú)
and the larger highland region by the archbishop of Guatemala and the
Verapazes, Pedro Cortés y Larraz, provoked these comments:
[I]t is true that there are fortune tellers, healers and enchanters,
but you cannot convince [the K’iche’] with witnesses, nor even do
some want to believe it, but that as proof the calendar that they use
for their government was delivered to me. . . . This is the almanac
that is used in all of the parishes of the Kaqchikel, the K’iche’ and in
the Mam, and it is the same, but written in their own languages. . . ;
and I am persuaded that it is the same that they had in their pagan-
ism.... (Cortés y Larraz 1958, 156–157).
Further reflections denounce the use of the calendar, and the day count
associated with it, claiming it was responsible for the spiritual transgres-
sions not only of the K’iche’ community in Quetzaltenango but of all other
ethnicities in the town (Spaniards, mestizos, mulattoes, and Africans).
K’iche’ testaments provide evidence that leaders used divination to
provide them with direction, including the last “living words” or “words
of counsel” from their community’s elders. The style, form, rhetoric, and
formulae may differ depending upon which community produced the tes-
tament, but the use of K’iche’ infused each will with cultural significance
innately embedded in the language.
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

The Testament of Manuel Xpattaq’

Transcription
En 12 de Mayo del año 1766 a.o xculun ui pa rochoch Man.l Xpattaq’ oh
chinamital oh taol rech hun caib u testamento tzih casliquil tzih chupam
u bi D.s Q’ahox.l, D.s caholax.l ruc D.s Espiritu [Link] q’aloq’olah chuch
[Link] M.a cacha cut u tzih uae [Link] co chic chupam u yabil are cut uae
hun ha e oxib ual cual pu ui Miguel P.o Pablo u achi cut qui Dios xaui = E
qui huhun quech chiquihunal are uae Migl. Hun Q’ahaual rech P.o xaui
q’i hun q’ahaual rech uae qui chaq’ Pablo caib chutiq’ tiox rech ecseomo
xaui ru hun niño = uae chi cut qui zolar xaui E qui e oxib pu vi hu nam
hach chi sucul chuach Dios Maui huñ he chel rech = uae chi cut uleu

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 148 Owen H. Jones

chaq’ih uleu ox rabah xaui q’i hutaq’ rabah quech chiqui huhunal are uae
Mig.l hu rabah rech ca cha culbat Andres Alvar.o, uae P.o hu rabah rech
co chu culbat Antt.o Garcia – xaui uae Pablo xaui q’i hu rabah rech co chu
culbat Pablo Q’ohom cha q’a be pa cux quehe cut mix Q’a ban Q’a pattan
oh ui chinamital chi rech u ha chic squetaq’ qui zolar xaui ruc squitaq’
culeu= fuera loq’om uleu, hun abir hach chi sucul – chuach D.s Mauihun
chuban ch’aoh chiquech ca cha u tzih Man.l quehe cut ca tzibax q’umal
o chinamital [Link] tzullen Nicolas Garnica Diego Raxcoco cuc caib
Q’anauinaq’ Pablo Gon.s Man.l Gon.s quehe caq’a tzibah ui Juan Tauico
Man.l Tzullen

Translation
On the 12th of May of the year 1766, we the lineage leaders sat here in the
house of Manuel Xpattaq’, we the hearers of one or two of his testament
words, living words. In the name of God the Father, God the Son, with
God the Holy Spirit and our sacred mother Saint Mary he says, well, his
word. This alcalde is here in his infirmity. There is, well, one house and
there are three of my children who own it, Miguel, Pedro, and Pablo. And
now, well, there are their gods also for every one of them and to be shared
between them. There is for this Miguel one Our Father and for Pedro sim-
ply theirs one Our Father. For this their younger brother Pablo two small
saints of the Excelentisimo also with one Niño. This other, well, their solar
is also theirs; the three own it equally. It is disseminated in truth before
God and no one can forcefully take it from them. This other, well, land,
dry land of three measures is theirs held between all of them. This Miguel,
one measure is for him. It is at the border marker of Andres Alvarado. This
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

Pedro, one measure is for him. It is at the border marker of Antonio Garcia.
Also, this Pablo, there is also a measure for him. It is at the border marker
of Pablo Q’ohom. So that it shall go into their hearts, thus it is. We shall
do work and our service, we of their lineage to disseminate their humble
goods, their solar, also with their humble goods of their land that would
have been purchased, a year ago, it was disseminated in truth before God.
Not one of them shall fight between them says the word of Manuel. Thus
it is. It is written by us, we the lineage leaders, Francisco Tzullen, Nicolas
Garnica, Diego Raxcaco with they the two witnesses Pablo Gonsales and
Manuel Gonsales. Hence we write it here Juan Tavico and Manuel Tzullen.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 “One or Two of My Living Words” 149

Notes
1. The Achí Maya today speak a newer Mayan language that they call Achí
instead of the eastern K’iche’ that they spoke in the sixteenth through the
eighteenth centuries. The language has morphed over time and has become
distinct to the department of Baja Verapaz, Guatemala.
2. This derives from “Memoria of Diego Macha” in Tulane’s Latin American
Library, William Gates Collection, A Collection of Wills and Other Legal Papers
in Quiché, 1752–1778.
3. The colonial chinamit, defined as a ward or a moiety of the indigenous town-
ship, was a residual institution from precolonial K’iche’ society. For more on
the colonial chinamit see Hill 1989, 170–198.
4. My translation here derives from Christenson’s online K’iche’-English Dic-
tionary posted to the FAMSI website, [Link]
/­dictionary/christenson/quidic_complete.pdf, entry tzaqal tzih, “interpreter,
translator, lawyer.” The term can be found in the testament of Sabastian Piox,
November 8, 1762, and the testament of Domingo Leon Ernandez, February
11, 1768, in Tulane’s Latin American Library, William Gates Collection, A Col-
lection of Wills and Other Legal Papers in Quiché, 1752–1778.
5. For the assertion that these two corpora of wills are from Salamá see Sachse
2007, 14. For the assertion that Salamá was a Pipil town in the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries see Van Akkeren 2000. Hill (1998, 175) suggests that the
K’iche’ (Quiché) wills preserved in the Gates collection are from Quetzal­
tenango or environs. They are from Rab’inal. Not all the wills are short nor
scant in their information, as Hill proclaims. Some are quite elaborate and
lengthy, and bequeath a significant amount to the heirs, giving us the sense
not all members of the K’iche’ or Achi’ community of Rab’inal were paupers.
Some wills are shorter because the testator bequeathed fewer goods, reveal-
ing that there was a larger strata of society that made wills, not just the elite.
Carmack (1973) correctly proveniences the town of origin of these wills.
6. Testament of Matteo Q’onibel, 1776, in Tulane’s Latin American Library, Wil-
liam Gates Collection, A Collection of Wills and Other Legal Papers in Quiché,
Copyright © 2016. University of Utah Press. All rights reserved.

1752–1778.
7. The use of the term dialogocentric comes from Burns (1991).
8. Testament of Sebastian Pio, November 8, 1762, in Tulane’s Latin American
Library, William Gates Collection, A Collection of Wills and Other Legal Papers
in Quiché, 1752–1778.
9. See also AGCA, A1.20, 1784, 55535.
10. For example, see Jones 2009, 268–269; Testament of Juana Q’otuk, AGCA,
A1.20, 38560, 4551, fols. 7–8; Testament of Juana Maqas, AGCA, A1.20, 28561,
4551, fol. 20; and Testament of Nicolas Mixixyacan, AGCA, A1.20, 38564, 4551,
fols. 1–2.

Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].
 150 Owen H. Jones

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Christensen, Mark Z., and Truitt, Jonathan, eds. <i>Native Wills from the Colonial Americas : Dead Giveaways in a New
World</i>. University of Utah Press, 2016. Accessed May 17, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from gmu on 2023-05-17 [Link].