Central Mexico

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eTlaxcala
Mexica Women on the Home Front
.su1tepec .Tepoztlan Housework and Religion in Aztec Mexico
.cuernavaca Cholula• •Puebla
Cuauhtinchan • eTepeaca
Atlixco•
• Tecamachalco
Louise M. Burkhart

Housewives and Friars

Women in Aztec Mexico occupied a symbolic and social domain that

was separate from and complementary to that of men. Although
Mexica 1 women were junior to men in status and had limited politi-
cal authority, to characterize their position in terms of "equality"
versus "subordination" is, as Susan Kellogg points out, to impose
Western categories that simplify a complex situation and undermine
any attempt to understand it on its own terms.2 In this chapter I
examine one aspect of the complex domain of Mexica gender sym-
bolics: the religious significance of domestic occupations that were
viewed as "women's work." I consider this topic important for two
reasons.
First, discussions of women's roles too often focus on a "public"
domain that is presumed both to exist and to be more important than
a (presumed) "private" domain. Mexica women worked as mar-
keters, doctors, artisans, priests, and perhaps, occasionally, rulers;
hence they were important and had high social status. Alternatively,
Mexica women may be viewed as primarily associated with domes-
26 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 27

tic duties; hence they must have been male dominated and of low so- and attitudes of the chroniclers be carefully examined; one must also
cial status-" just housewives." acknowledge that much of that woman's life is unknowable except as
But the Mexica had nothing like the "cult of domesticity," with a construct of colonial males.
the corresponding demarcation of the home as a private domain, that Women's domestic life was a subject about which the early friars
arose along with industrial capitalism in Europe. 3 Nor did they share had little knowledge and much fear. Large areas were often assigned
the patriarchal household structure long typical of Christian Europe, to a small number of friars unwilling or unable to visit outlying set-
with its ideals of male authority and female submissiveness. Just be- tlements regularly. Native families were obliged to carry their sick
cause Mexica women spent much of their time cooking, cleaning, and dying to the church to be blessed and shriven by priests who re-
sewing, and caring for children, duties assigned also to their Euro- frained from making house calls. One reason for this avoidance was
pean counterparts, it cannot be assumed a priori that these activities a fear of women. Friars rarely visited anyone but nobles at home,
were considered in any way trivial or marginal in relation to the male considering it unseemly to enter the houses of the common people.
domain. The significance of women's work and the constitution of For a friar to rub elbows with native women in such close and dimly
the domestic or household domain are variables that must be exam- lit quarters might give rise to temptation in his own mind and to sus-
ined in relation to their specific cultural and historical contexts.4 picion in the minds of others. That this attitude could be carried to
June Nash argues that Mexica militarism led to a decline in extremes is shown by a story told of the Franciscan chronicler Mo-
women's status and in male-female complementarity, since women tolinia: he was so devoted to chastity that he reprimanded a fellow
had no role corresponding to that of warrior.s I suggest that an ide- friar for having touched the face of a small girl whose mother had
ology of male-female complementarity was maintained through an carried her to church to be blessed. 7 ~-1
investment of the home with symbolism of war, not only by means Colonial descriptions of household rituals are embedded in a
of metaphor but also via direct ties to the battlefield front. Childbirth discourse about idolatry and its eradication: as with temple ritual,
was, as is well known, symbolically militarized: successful delivery the point of eliciting these descriptions was to enable priests to eval-
was equated with the taking of a prisoner, and death in childbirth uate native religious practices, determine what was and was not ac-
was equivalent to being captured or killed. However, there were other ceptable, and recognize the latter when they saw it. These categories
parallels between military and domestic contexts, which I will ex- were not fixed: what seemed harmless or even commendable to one
plore below. Most striking is how a man's fate in battle was linked to priest might to another reek with the Devil's own stench. Much of
actions his wife carried out at home. Domesticated central places and the information I use in this chapter was recorded precisely because
dangerous peripheral zones were complementary opposites, their someone thought it dangerous, idolatrous, and likely to be continu-
gender signs reversed, which together constituted a whole. Domestic ing behind the priests' backs. In the war against Lucifer, the Mexica
space was, quite literally, a "home front," and women were its army.6 woman was suspected of consorting with the enemy.
The second reason I consider this topic important has to do with The Mexica woman also appears in colonial texts as an industri-
the dialogue between native people (mostly men) and European men ous housewife and a mother devoted to the careful upbringing of her
(mostly priests) out of which the colonial ethnographies and histo- children. These representations were useful to the friars both as evi-
ries, including the sources I use here, emerged. In early colonial Mex- dence that the native people were "civilized" (and hence deserved . J
ico, the identity of the Mexica woman-who she was and what her better treatment from colonists) and as a foundation for preaching to V
proper attributes were-became a contested domain now to be ne- women about the proper behavior of Catholic wives and mothers.
gotiated not simply between women and men but also between in- Thus in the friars' minds the Mexica woman was split into an
digenous people and Europeans. To approach the Mexica woman by evil side and a good side, and the good side was perceived according
way of her representation in these texts demands that the motives to European notions of female submissiveness and domestic enter-
 28 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 29

prise. Indigenous discourse that associated women with the home The nonelite Mexica woman lived in a calli, a house consisting of

I was heard by the friars as descriptions of dutiful housewives, whereas

; all evidence of the sacred power manipulated by women in that home
one or more windowless, four-sided rooms, constructed of adobe or
stone with a smokehole in the center of the thatched roof. Doorways
1
was read as tricks the Devil played on the weaker sex. I attempt here opened onto a rectangular courtyard or patio (ithualli); arranged
: to merge these two constructs of the native woman into a closer ap- around this patio were other calli occupied by her relatives. If the
proximation of a whole person. woman was unmarried, an assortment of grandparents, aunts, un-
I will consider the religious significance of the following house- cles, and cousins might occupy these other houses. If she was mar-
keeping activities: sweeping, the making of offerings, cooking, and ried, these were likely to be her husband's kin; however, in crowded
textile production. 8 I chose these because, in the ritual orations to Mexico City, household composition was very fluid and people could
young women recorded by the Franciscans Andres de Olmos9 and determine their living arrangements according to available space
Bernardino de Sahagun10-texts representing an idealized view of and personal choice. The "family" was conceived as a group of peo-J
women as presented to friars by native orators-these activities are ple who shared a resident~al compound-cemith~altin, "those of one
invoked to represent proper female behavior. I begin by discussing patio" -rather than as a fixed arrangement of km.
the Mexica home, this locus of women's power where friars-perhaps The residential compound was likely also to include a maize
quite wisely-feared to tread. granary (cuexcomatl) and a sweathouse (temazcalli) as well as a small
altar for religious offerings. Surrounding the compound were others
Home, Sweet, Home? belonging to neighborhood units called tlaxilacalli, or row of houses,
and calpolli, or big house. The calpolli functioned as an administra-
The home, though shared by men and women, was symbolically con- tive division for purposes of taxation and military draft, and had its
structed as female space. A baby girl's umbilical cord was buried me- own temple (calpolco, "place of the calpolli") and schools. 15
tlatitlan, tlecujlnacazco, "beside the grinding stone, at the corner of the At the center of the calli lay a hearth bounded by three stones,
hearth," since yn c;an cali ynentla, "only in the house is her place of conceptualized as female deities. Within this hearth a fire smoldered
dwelling"; a boy's was given to warriors to be buried on a battle- continuously, completely extinguished only for the New Fire Cere-
field.11 The respectable elderly woman, in Sahagun's description, re- mony every fifty-two years. Fire, too, was a god, the "old man god"
ceives these epithets: "Heart of the House" (caliollutl), which suggests Huehueteotl, who dwelled at the center of the cosmos just as he
a central, animating force, and "Banked Fire" (tlacpeoalli), the fire cov- dwelled here at the center of the house. So closely were home and
ered with ashes for the night. 12 Both terms are placed in the mouth hearth identified that when a new house was built, its fire could not
of the midwife addressing a baby girl: "You will be the heart of the be lit from someone else's hearth but had to be drilled anew, in the
house, you will go nowhere, you will become a person who goes presence of old men who perhaps represented the elderly fire god;
nowhere. You become the banked fire, the hearthstone. Here our lord difficulty in kindling this new flame foretold an unhappy life for the
plants you, buries you." 13 Although women did carry on activities inhabitants. 16
outside of the house, this symbolic association with the domestic in- ' The hearth as a symbol of centrality is, I think, nowhere so ele-
terior appears to have been quite strong. The conventionalized but gantly evoked as in a passage from the Coloquios, a passage that cap-
culturally specific terms in which it is expressed suggest that this is tures the center/periphery symbolism of home and battlefield as
customary usage and not simply an appeal to Sahagun's moral sen- well as the Mexica man's ordained oscillation between them. The text,
sibility. Immorality in women was, conversely, associated with a fail- written in 1564 but set in 1524, represents a Mexica noble explaining
ure to stay home, a tendency to hang about the streets and market- to Franciscan friars the noblemen's responsibility for warfare.17 "We
places or, worse, to take off on the road of the deer and the rabbit.14 attend to the work of the tail, the wing, so that he takes his heron
30 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 31

standard, his cord jacket, and his digging stick, his tumpline, thus
are left in front of the hearth."18 "The tail, the wing" is the vassal or '"
., '
.,.!.. ...
·'• .\ .
~
•
.. .....
.. .,....
~ ~ 1
' . ~

..... .
. · ·· ..·'-"\·
' ...
commoner; the standard and jacket are insignia of the warrior; the
digging stick and tumpline represent the common man's agricul-
tural labor. Being a Mexica man meant periodically abandoning
hearth and home and the familiar seasonal round of agriculture for
unknown lands and the dangers of battle. Perhaps that home fire
burning, his tools laid carefully by, was an image the soldier bore in
his mind as he followed his noble lords into war.
Beneath the packed earth floor of the Mexica house lay the pla-
centas of children born therein and the ashes of the family's dead;19
the daughters' umbilical cords were, as mentioned, buried by the
hearth. On the floor lay the family's possessions: the grinding stone
(metlatl), griddle (comalli), and cooking pots; straw mats, seats, and
storage boxes holding extra clothing and the women's spinning and
weaving supplies; the men's weapons and their digging sticks, nets,
or other tools depending on their trade. The broom leaned against the
wall outside.
The house provided a certain amount of protection from dan-
gerous powers. On the five days when the Cihuateteo, or woman
deities, associated with death in childbirth, descended to earth, chil-
dren had to be confined to the house to protect them from the dis-
eases these failed mothers could inflict on them.20 Figure 1.1, from
the Florentine Codex, depicts a woman sending her children into the
house on One Eagle, one of the days on which the Cihuateteo came
to earth. On the day Four Wind, when the power of sorcerers was
Fig. 1.1. Florentine Codex illustration for "the nineteenth sign; it is called One
particularly strong, people stuffed their smokeholes with a certain
Eagle." For this day, when the Cihuateteo were said to des~en~ to earth and
plant, called "sorcerer sour-fruit thorn," believed to protect the oc- harm children, a mother is depicted hurrying her offspring mto the com-
cupants from spells those sorcerers might cast.21 One could protect parative safety of the house. Fray Berna.rdino d~ S~hagun, Historia general ~e
the house from sorcerers on a nightly basis by placing an obsidian las cosas de Nueva Espana, Cadice florentino. Facs1m1le of the Codex :1orenh-
knife in water near the door or in the courtyard.22 During the nemon- nus of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenciana, supervised by the Arch1vo Gen-
temi, the dangerously unstructured period of five unnamed days oc- eral de la Nacion de Mexico, Florence, Italy, 1979, book 4, fol. 62r.
curring at the end of the 365-day year, r;an calonooaia, "people would
just lie in their houses."23
The home, though, was not a tranquil refuge from the signifi- better to see the Mexica cosmos as a house writ large. It was in that
cant currents of cosmos and history but a place where those currents smoky interior that the Mexica infant developed its orientation in
intersected forcibly with human existence. One could see the Mexica space and time. It learned that space is qu~dril~t~r.al and has a cen-
house as a model of the cosmos, writ small, but perhaps it would be tral point; it learned the pattern of the days achv1hes and the calen-
 Mexica Women on the Home Front 33
32 Louise M. Burkhart

drical cycles. It learned that order is fragile and temporary: without According to fray Diego Duran's informants, who took their day
constant attention and renewal things get old, dirty, and worn out. signs rather literally, persons born on calli were stay-at-home _types
Lying on its cradleboard by the flickering fire, watching its mother who obeyed their parents and were afraid to venture abroad m the
spin and weave, cook and clean, make offerings and pray, the child world.25 While such a character might be fine for a woman, a
began to become a Mexica person. "mama's boy" was not likely to get far in militaristic Mexica society.
When that child was old enough to venture out into the city, she Indeed, years that began on calli were years of ill fortune. 26 Sahagun's
or he saw that the gods lived in houses too, teocalli, or god houses, astrological consultants recited a litany of nasty traits to be expected
arranged around quadrilateral patios in the sacred precincts. And of people born on calli: men were raggedy thieves and compulsive
outside of the quadripartite city lay the rest of the quadripartite gamblers who would die in battle or in sacrifice; women slept too
world that had the Mexicas' great temple as its central point. All of much and did no productive work.27
this order was fragile. Like the house and its furnishings, that whole Thus, like other important Mesoamerican religious symbols,
world had a tendency to become worn out and dirty if not tended calli had multiple and ambivalent associations. It was a symbolic cen-
carefully. Just as the housewife had to be constantly vigilant to main- ter and thus a place of (relative) order and security. But it was also a
tain cleanliness and order, so did the priests in their temples. Much womb, a cave linking life and death, earth and netherworld, a dark
Mexica temple ritual functioned as a kind of cosmic housekeeping: place unreached by the sun's purifying rays. It might absorb one's
the priests guarded the temple fires, made offerings, prayed, and initiative, causing one to do nothing but lie around the house all day,
cleaned; female priests and attendants also spun and wove clothing unfit for productive labors. It might even conspire with the forces of
for the deities and cooked their offerings of food. chaos and death and turn against its inhabitants. Sahagun's infor-
Calli was also the third of the twenty named day signs (tonalli) mants claimed that the horned owl's hoot could augur such a disas-
in the 260-day ritual calendar (itself an approximation of the human ter. If one heard this owl, "perhaps his or her house will disintegrate,
gestation period), and one of the four such signs on which the 365- the ground will wear away, water will appear here and there, d~y
day year could begin. This sign stands out within the series because leaves will spread about the doorway, the courtyard. The walls will
it is the only cultural artifact: the other signs denote plants, animals, lie about crumbled, will lie about ruined, will lie about in pieces." 28
or other "natural" phenomena such as rain, motion, and death. The People would use the property as a latrine and a trash dump. And
analogous place in the Maya calendar is occupied by the sign akbal, they would marvel at the fact that a respectable person once had
meaning "darkness," a natural phenomenon but one that is, indeed, lived there and kept the place clean.
characteristic of windowless houses. This dark, enclosed space repli-
cates other, more "natural" enclosures: the womb, the emergence The Power of Brooms
caves of Mesoamerican origin myths. Calli was one of the five day
signs associated with the west, the direction of sunset and hence ''.Attend to the sweeping, the picking up"; "arise quickly ... , seize the
coldness and darkness, and a direction associated, like the house it- broom, attend to the sweeping"; "take charge of the sweeping, ...
self, with women. The west was called cihuatlampa, "toward the arise in the deep of night."29 Thus were Mexica women advised, by
women," and was the dwelling place of the five Cihuateteo, who had their mothers, fathers, and in-laws, to begin their day.
as their calendrical names the western day signs with the coefficient For Mexica priests, sweeping was an essential service at the
of one (One House, One Eagle, One Rain, One Deer, One Monkey). houses of the gods. A priest sweeping a temple precinct is obviously
With them dwelled the souls of women who had died in their first performing a ritual of purification, but must such a~ act be divow~d
childbirth with the fetus still in the womb, unable to emerge from from its "practical" application in the home before it becomes a rit-
this its original "house."24 ual? A housewife, rising before dawn to sweep away the night's de-
34 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 35

bris, surely(saw herself as an actor in the regeneration of order, di-

1
Figure 1.2 is the depiction of Tlazolteot: a _n~tive ar~ist paintedto;,
viding day from night and protecting her family from dangerous Sahagun. During Tod's festival, Ochpamzth, Sweeping the Roads,
forces.' Housekeeping activities that were highly patterned, sur- the roads were indeed swept, as were the houses, baths, and court-
rounded by taboos, and linked to gods and important religious con- yards. Tod was represented by a bundle of straw-as if she were a
cepts can be considered ritual acts. broom-and mock battles were performed using inverted brooms as
In Nahuatl, to sweep is ichpana. The more general term for weapons instead of swords.39 . , .
cleansing or purifying is chipahua, a term borrowed by the church to The broom was a weapon: it was the housewife s defense against /
express concepts of moral and spiritual purity. The historical linguist invading dirt and disorder, peripheral forces that, like the en~mies of
Karen Dakin believes that the element chi- was once an independent the state threatened the maintenance of order and centrahty. The
morpheme meaning "straw." Metathesized as ich-, this element ap- broom w'as an object of power, ambivalent be:a~se it p~rified but was
pears not only in ichpana but also in ichpochtli,30 an irregular word itself a carrier of filth. The author of the Codzce carolzno, concerned
meaning adolescent girl or young woman. This suggests that the act about persisting "idolatries," wrote that ol~ women le~t their ~rooms
of cleaning a surface with straw was not only an important purifica- outside lest the dirt carried by the brooms introduce discord mt~ the
tory act but was also fundamental to the very notion of cleanliness. house. They called the broom Tlazolteuctli. The author glosses this as
Sweeping being a frequent activity of young women, for a girl to be V "god of anger," but it is clearly a variant .name for Tlazolteotl. These
called something equivalent to "she of the straw" makes some sense. women also forbade children to play with the broom. One further
Although both men and women could, and did, sweep, in the "superstition" is noted: a man wishing to seduce a woman could col-
domestic context the act was more closely associated with females. lect the straws that fell from her broom when she swept. Once he had
Baby girls were given small brooms, while baby boys were presented twenty straws (a full "count" in the vigesimal system), he coul~ tur.n
with a small shield and arrows.3i In the Codex Mendoza, the twelve- the broom's power against its owner and force her to comply with his
year-old girl is the child shown sweeping, at her mother's behest; the desires. 40
two males who are shown sweeping elsewhere in the codex are both During the nemontemi, the five unnamed days at th~ end of the
priests. 32 year, people especially feared disorder, as, for example, m the form
Sahagun's catalog of native offerings lists this early morning of quarrels, illness, and falls. And they dared not expose themselves
household sweeping along with such rites as bloodletting and temple to brooms. If a woman wished to clean the dust from her ho1:1 e, she
sacrifices.33 The text states that children of both sexes performed this had to blow it away using a fan, turkey feathers, or a mantle. 1
act; the accompanying illustration depicts a family of sweepers. How- Susan D. Gillespie has shown how, in Mexica history, ~oc­
ever, in Sahagun's earlier draft of this material, the Primeros memo- cupied positions of ambiguity and tra~sition, wherea.s penods. of
riales, a single sweeper is shown and it is a woman.34 stability were associated with men. 42 Thi~ contra.st applies to Mexi~a
Gods as well as mortals swept. Quetzalcoatl, god of wind, swept constructions of gender not only in relation to history. I_n the cosmic
the roads for the rain gods. 35 He was, it may be noted, a deity of scheme of things, women, with their dos.er links to. t~e earth.and the
priestly rather than warrior character; sweeping was more properly night were arbiters of disorder, of creation and dismtegrat10n, to a
the province of divine females. Coatlicue conceived Huitzilopochtli, degr~e that men were not. Women, after all, processed unfini~hed
the Mexicas' patron deity, while sweeping.3 6 Chimalman was sweep- materials into finished products: foodstuffs into meals, raw ft~ers
ing when she became pregnant with Quetzalcoatl.37 The closely re- into thread and cloth, sexual secretions into babies. A woman with a
lated deities Tlazolteotl, "Filth Deity," and Toci, "Our Grandmother" broom in her hands stood at the intersection of chaos and order: hav-
(also called Teteo Innan, "Mother of the Gods," and Yaocihuatl, ing a certain affinity with the powers that blew dust and debris into
"Enemy Woman"), carried brooms; Tod bore a shield as well.38 her tidy patio, she could also exert control over them and keep them
 Mexica Women on the Home Front 37

at bay, maintaining the proper balance between her ordered center

and the disorderly periphery that threatened to engulf it.
Given these associations, it is not surprising that when men were
at war, their wives and other female relations were especially diligent
in sweeping. The Cr:6nica X annals describe the rituals of warriors'
w~v~s. I suspect that illustrations of these rites were incorporated into
the pictorial year-count histories as crucial aspects of certain mili-
tary campaigns. When these pictorial records were transposed into
alphabetic script, accounts of the rituals were included in the new
narrative versions.
Duran's description of a war with the Huaxtecs tells how the Me-
xica warriors' wives swept not only at dawn but also at midnight,
noon, and sunset: the four corners of the sun's path. Warfare was
"solar'' business: the war god Huitzilopochtli was identified with the
sun; dead warriors went to the sun's home. 4 3 Would the sun, seeing the
woman mark his passage by purifying her home space, reciprocate by
granting her husband favors where he labored on the field of battle? As
her broom conquered dirt, would his sword conquer enemy soldiers?
Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc's account of the war between the
two Mexica cities Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, during which the ruler
Axayacatl seized control of Tlatelolco from his brother-in-law Moqui-
huix, contains the following enigmatic episode. Toward the end of the
conflict, in a last-ditch defense of Tlatelolco's temple of Huitzilo-
pochtli, a group of Tlatelolca women came to face the enemy. They
exposed their breasts and buttocks; they beat their hands against
Fig. 1.2. Florentine Codex illustration of Tlazolteotl their abdomens and genitals; they squeezed milk from their breasts;
described by Sahagun as "the goddess of carnal they threw dirt, excrement, and chewed-up tortillas at the Tenochca
things, whom they called Tlai;ulteotl, she is an- warriors. They also threw brooms, weaving battens, and warping
other Venus." Tlazolteotl is depicted here with her frames. Axayacatl ordered his soldiers to take the women prisoner
broom and her headdress of spindles and unspun without hurting them; his definitive victory was soon established. 44
cotton. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Historia gen- The temple, symbolic center of the Tlatelolco city-state and house
eral de las cosas de Nueva Espana, C6dice florentino. of the Mexica patron deity, receives its final defense from women who,
Facsimile of the Codex Florentinus of the Bib- rather than directly emulate male warriors, instead turn the full force
liote~a Medicea Laurenciana, supervised by the of their womanhood against the invaders. Naked, flaunting their sex-
Arch1vo General de la Nacion de Mexico, Flo-
ual and reproductive anatomy, flinging dirty and disintegrated mat-
rence, Italy, 1979, book 1, fol. 11r.
ter, they embody the power ofTlazolteotl, deity of filth and childbirth.
And from the temple steps they throw not darts or spears but brooms. /
This is ~n:l~n as arbiter of chaos, putting forth a final defense of
 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 39
38

centrality and order while at the same time marking the transition of :-----------.....-------.;;;;;;;--------'·
power from one group of males to another. Whether the deeds of
these women warriors were expected to deter the enemy or were en-
tirely expressive, or, indeed, whether this episode actually occurred,
is unknowable. However, the story is grounded in the role of women
as broom-wielding guardians of the home front.
Sahagun records orations ascribed to merchant families on the
occasion of an expedition's departure. Older merchants, retired from
travel, advise the departing man; he, in turn, encharges them to
sweep and clean in his absence. 45 While these words are represented
as exchanged among men, that women would carry out much of the
actual sweeping may be assumed. The traveler's subsequent words
encharge the other men to look out for the welfare of his female rela-
tives while he is away, explaining that "perhaps somewhere our lord
will destroy me." Mexica women were not helpless dependents; I
take this statement to imply that his fate and theirs are so linked that
harm to them at home would provoke a corresponding threat to him
on the road. Figure 1.3 is a native artist's representation of a mer-
chant bidding farewell to his home and his female kin.
Friars, even if aware of the ritual character of sweeping, could
hardly forbid women to sweep their property. Duran, writing in the
\ late 1570s, suspected that the sweeping of domestic spaces continued
I
; . to have "idolatrous" significance.46 However, the practice was easily
transferred to Christianity. The Franciscans accepted the sweeping
- I

Fig. 1.3. Illustration from "another discourse that the same [elderly mer-
of churches and churchyards as an act of devotion.47 In the domes- chants] made to those who had already gone far away to trade." Having been
tic context as well, sweeping seems to have become as vital an act of exhorted by his elders, the departing merchant expresses concern for the fe-
service to the Christian god and saints as it had been in the pre- male relatives he leaves behind. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Historia general
de /as cosas de Nueva Espana, Cadice florentino. Facsimile of the Codex Florenti-
Christian context. Stephanie Wood, in an analysis of colonial wills
nus of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenciana, supervised by the Archive Gen-
from the Toluca Valley, observes that testators who kept Christian
eral de la Nacion de Mexico, Florence, Italy, 1979, book 4, fol. 40v.
images in their homes often encharged their heirs to sweep around
the domestic altars. 48 One man was not satisfied with ordering that
his wife and children sweep but also encharged his brothers to yell at and, "wash the mouths, especially do not forget the offering of in-
them to make sure they did it.49 cense."50 These references to washing are metaphors for the making
of offerings to the gods. Daily services to the gods were expected of
Serving the Gods all Mexicas, but the advice to women suggests that, on the household
level, these small reverences were their particular responsibility. The
A woman's second daily responsibility was to "[attend to] the cleans- catalog of eighteen offerings to the gods in Sahagun's Primeros memo-
ing of the hands, the rinsing of the faces, the washing of the mouths"; riales depicts women performing the following rites: the laying of of-
40 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Horne Front 41

ferings (tlamanaliztli), the offering of incense in an incense burner zomoc places these rites in the calpolco, or neighborhood temple,
(tlenamaquiliztli), the casting of copal incense into a brazier (copal- and includes the additional detail that the women also hung up the
temaliztli), the ritual eating of earth (tlalqualiztli), bloodletting from absent men's mantles-a way of making the soldier symbolically
the earlobes (nec;oliztli), and, of course, sweeping.51 On the day Four present at home, in association with relics of his victories. 60 The rev-
Movement, the day sign of the sun, women and children as well as erence paid to a man's former captives would, perhaps, lure other
men were expected to draw blood from their ears to nourish the enemy soldiers within reach of his weapons.
sun.52
The Florentine Codex description of the morning sweeping de- Beside the Grinding Stone
scribes the subsequent rites: "and when they had swept the first time,
when it was still early in the morning, then they used to make hand- Once the morning offerings were made, it was time for the woman's
fuls of offerings, they used to lay them before the Devil [Diablo]. next task: '~nd may you also attend to the water, the grinding stone;
And when they had gone to lay the offerings, then they used to take and take a firm hold upon, grasp tightly the sauce bowl, the basket";
their incense burners in order to offer incense."53 Whoever recorded "look well to the water, the food."6 1 Cooking was women's work,
this information for Sahagun had learned to refer to the ancestral ever since the divine Cihuacoatl ground on her grinding stone the
deities in demonic terms; he or she was also careful to represent dough for human flesh.62 At the grinding stone, beside the hearth,
these acts as occurring in the past. kneels the thirteen-year-old girl depicted in the Codex Mendoza. 63 Ac-
The ~l_y offerings were made to any images the Ja~ily might cording to the Cadice carolino, a girl's umbilical cord was buried not
hayei~ its keeping, and also to the fire. Duran indicates that the fire just by the hearth but directly beneath the grinding stone. 64 Given the
god was the focus of many domestic rites: food and drink were of- amount of time that women had to spend processing maize into its
fered out of devotion, a desire for health and wealth, or for the ben- various consumable forms, it is no wonder that cooking duties were
efit of one's children; "a thousand superstitions" were based on the constantly represented to women as their proper work, sacralized by
noises made by the fire and the sparks and smoke it emitted. Duran association with the household fire.
was none too confident that such behaviors had ceased.54 Elsewhere, Elizabeth M. Brumfiel suggests, based on varying proportions of
Duran describes how appalled he was to find images of saints set up griddles to cooking pots in archaeological assemblages, that the ac-
on household altars with offerings of food, incense, and candles "as tual foods women produced varied locally and historically depend-
if they were idols."55 On the fire's calendrical date, One Dog, wealthy ing on the need for mobility, with griddles prevailing in more urban
families would have banquets and offer to the fire paper, quail, contexts.65 In families whose members worked at or close to home,
pulque, and incense by the basketful; commoners would offer a food could be stewed or steamed in pots and eaten at home. However,
poorer quality of incense while the very poor burned aromatic urban workers engaged in marketing, public works, warfare, and
herbs.56 other extrahousehold activities required more portable foods like
Women whose husbands were at war paid extra attention to the tortillas and the ground and toasted maize employed as war provi-
needs of the gods, using the occasion of the morning offerings to sions. Production of the latter foods demanded more intensive labor
pray for their men's safety and victory.57 In a ritual similar to one on the part of women in the home: women's maize processing subsi-
performed by warriors themselves, these wives would take out the dized the urban economy and imperial expansion.
femurs of their husbands' former captives, which were kept in the Although cooking itself was not a ritual, there were various be-
home and called malteotl, "prisoner deity," wrap them in paper, and liefs and rituals associated with it. The following examples are from
hang them from the house beams. 58 Before these relics they would the appendix to Sahagun's book on omens. 66 This appendix is a cat-
offer incense and pray for their husbands' safety.59 Alvarado Tezo- alog of thirty-seven items that, in Sahagun's view, harmed the faith;
 Mexica Women on the Home Front 43
42 Louise M. Burkhart

priests ~hould preach against them and inquire about them during ............. .............--------------------------------
~,.. -.
confess10n. Almost all occur in the home, and most involve women
and c~ildre~. This attests to the frustration of an elderly priest, his life
spent m cloisters and churchyards: women's domestic space has be-
come the church's final frontier.
O~e of these items is the hearthside burial of the girl's umbilical
cord, given the ~xplanato.ry statement, "She is entirely in charge of
water, food; beside the grinding stone she dwells." Perhaps this did
not merely "symbolize" a woman's connection to the hearth but was
th?u~ht actually to tie her to that spot, to draw her irresistibly to the
grmdmg stone. This would account for the practice's inclusion in this
list of :'superstitions:" for it is this sort of "magical" reasoning that
Sahagun found particularly offensive.
The hearthstones and the grinding stone had to be treated with
caution. In another connection between battlefield and home men
who kicked t~e hearthstones would suffer numb feet when facing
the enemy. Children were told not to lick the grinding stone lest they
Fig. 1.4. Illustration for "the fourteenth chapter, about the maize." A woman
lose their teeth. If the grinding stone broke while in use, the woman addresses the maize as she pours it into the cooking pot. Fray Bernardino de
or a member of her household would die. Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de N11eva Espmla, Cadice florentino. Fac-
Maize, like fire, was a god who lived in one's home and had to be simile of the Codex Florentinus of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenciana, su-
accorded due respect. Women warmed the maize with their breath pervised by the Archivo General de la Nacion de Mexico, Florence, Italy,
before cooking it, claiming that this way it would not fear the fire's 1979, book 5, fol. 16r.
heat. If maize spilled onto the ground, where it was thought to suf-
fer and weep, it had to be gathered up with care. The text here shows where the merchant's house appears to float above its "landscaped"
an accommodation to Christian discourse, for this careless treatment
occupants).
does not constitute an offense to the maize deity, but rather is to be Like the fire, with its "thousand" prognostications that so irked
reported to "our lord," before whom the maize will testify as to its ill Duran, the maize could convey messages to the housekeeper. If a tor-
treatment, demanding that "this vassal" be punished. Or the result tilla became folded over on the griddle, the woman expected the ar-
might be famine: an outcome more in tune with a traditional cult of rival of a guest or the return of her husband; this approaching per-
maize than the p.receding scenario of accusation and judgment.
son was said to have kicked the tortilla.
. A~compa~ymg Sahagun's text on these maize-related practices
Certain ritual precautions had to be taken when consuming
is the .1llustrat1on shown in figure 1.4. The painting shows a woman food. If girls did not sit down to eat, their mothers worried that they
~peakmg to, or ~erhaps simply breathing on, the maize as she pours
would marry far from home-as if the mystical link to their central
it from a basket mto the cooking pot, which rests on the three hearth- place, the floor by the fire, would be broken. Cooking is, again, linked
stones. The artist has placed the scene into a landscape, making it ap- to warfare: the cook had to keep her menfolk from dipping food di-
pear to be ~et. outdoors:. this is a partial and formulaic adoption of Eu- rectly into the cooking pot, or they would lose their (future) war cap-
rop:an artistic co~vent10ns and should not be read as literally placing tives. Did the tortilla or tamale being dipped represent the prisoner,
an mdoor scene m a grassy meadow (the same is true of figure 1.3,
 44 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 45

on whom the man risks losing his grip in the heat of the pot, as in the foods, as well as toasted maize ground and mixed with water, would
heat of battle? And she must not eat tamales that stick to the cooking be offered in the household rites. 72
pot, lest a fetus adhere to her womb and she die in childbirth. The
tamale:pot::fetus:womb analogy is more obvious than the reasoning The Spindle Whorl, the Weaving Batten
behind the captives getting lost in the sauce! However, she could not
allow her men to eat these tamales either, or their battle arrows would Once she had swept, made offerings, and fed her family, a woman
not shoot. Perhaps they would stick to the men's quivers like the could turn to another task that defined and constrained her female
tamale to the pot. identity, a task that was vel ic cioatequitl, "real women's work," 73 fail-
Special foods had to be cooked for many calendrical rituals. Sa- ure at which meant failure at womanhood itself. 74 "Take charge of the .J
hagun's account mentions various ceremonial foods used in the tem- spindle whorl, the weaving batten," the mother told her daughter,75
ples, presumably cooked by women. For example, on the day One and from an early age the girl's hands were trained to turn, first,
Flint Knife food offerings were brought to Huitzilopochtli from peo- fiber into thread and, later, thread into cloth. The Codex Mendoza de-
ple's houses, including those of the common people.67 Occasionally, picts girls of three and four being shown how to spin; at age five, the
the text refers to ritual uses of food in the home. As part of the Huey girl works the spindle herself. At fourteen, she weaves on the back-
Tozoztli ceremonies for the maize gods, women spent the night cook- strap loom.76 Figure 1.5, which depicts the assemblage of a woman's
ing atolli (maize gruel), which, after sweeping the neighborhood spinning and weaving tools, illustrates a chapter of the Florentine
temple, they poured into gourd vessels set about outside, where the Codex dedicated to the training of young noblewomen-a process
hot, steamy mass cooled and thickened in the night air.68 On the the text equates with mastery of textile arts.
eighth day of Izcalli, a feast called Huauhquiltamalqualiztli, "the eat- The midwife who delivered a baby girl presented her with the
ing of tamales made with amaranth greens," was held. In every home tools of textile production as well as a blouse and skirt at the bathing
these tamales were prepared and shared from household to house- and naming ceremony, while a baby boy received weapons, a loin-
hold. The family then assembled for the meal, but before eating they cloth, and a mantle.77 When a man died, his weapons, the femurs of
laid a dish of five of the tamales beside the hearth as an offering to his war captives, and his mantles were cremated with him; a woman
the fire and also gave some to each of the dead family members at took her weaving tools and combs with her into death. 78 The analogy
their burial places within the house.69 weaving:warfare::women:men is operating here. Similarly, the duty
A festival called Atamalqualiztli, "the eating of water tamales," of merchant men to go to distant places could be expressed as "not-
was held every eight years. For several days people ate nothing weaving": parents sending young boys on their first trading expedi-
but unseasoned tamales, once a day. This was thought to give the tion would say, "Is he perhaps a woman? Perhaps I will place in his
maize a rest from the chile, salt, and other seasonings normally eaten hands a spindle whorl, a weaving batten?" 79
with it.70 This identification of tools and garments with gender categories
Special foods were also demanded of the woman whose hus- deserves additional comment. The concept of identity was, for the
band was at war. She would, according to Duran, engage in the mid- Mexica, a construct based not so much on intrinsic qualities as on at-
night cooking of small tortillas, some with corners and others shaped tributes and accoutrements. Images were turned into gods by placing
like rolls. 71 She would then grind a little toasted maize (such as was on them the appropriate vestments. A human being could, by dress-
used for warriors' provisions) and place it in a gourd. These foods ing in a deity's costume, "become" that deity in the ritual context; a
would be offered at the household altar. Alvarado Tezozomoc's ac- man could even become a female deity. At the arrival of Cortes, Mo-
count states that these women would prepare "butterfly tortillas" teue<;oma sent the accoutrements of an assortment of deities, as if by
and toasted maguey worms to offer at various temples; both these his choice of garb the mysterious stranger would reveal his identity.so
 46 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 47

loincloth, a mantle" was, thus, a part-for-whole synecdoche rather ~<

than a metonym. The ambivalent and sometimes warlike nature of ·
certain female deities was represented by dressing them in loincloths
(as in the famous Coyolxauhqui relief from the Mexica Great Tem-
ple). Giving a female baby a skirt and a spindle made her a girl, set /
her on a course toward a womanhood defined more by her garments
and her tools than by any more abstract notion of feminine emotions
or intellect.
Why spinning and weaving, even more than sweeping or cook-
ing, defined a woman as a woman may be linked to the relative eco-
nomic importance of these tasks. Whereas she might prepare food
only to feed her own household, a woman's textile production not
only clothed her family but also involved her in the larger economy.
Tribute was paid in cloth; cloth could be used as money in the mar-
ketplace.s1 The more cloth a woman produced, the more she and her
household prospered. Brumfiel, using archaeological data, suggests
that urban women, who spent more time processing maize and could
purchase cloth in the marketplace, may have spent less time at this
task than their rural counterparts; however, the symbolic association
between women and textile production pervaded urban culture as
well.82 Not surprisingly, the gods colluded with the economy to
guide women to this labor. 83
The deities most intimately associated with spinning were the
closely related Toci and Tlazolteotl, who wore headdresses made of
spindles and unspun cotton (fig. 1.2). These are the same ones who
Fig. 1.5. Illustration from the Florentine Codex account of "the exercises of the carry brooms: like sweeping, spinning involves an intersection of
ladies," depicting the tools of spinning and weaving. Fray Bernardino de order and disorder, as masses of fluff and fiber separate and rejoin to
S~h~gun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana, Cadice florentino. Fac- form a single smooth line of thread. An analogy may be drawn with
s1m1le of the Codex Florentinus of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenciana su- the process of gestation, also under the aegis of these deities, which
pervised by the Archivo General de la Nacion de Mexico, Florence, Italy, was seen as a consolidation of male and female sexual fluids into the
1979, book 8, fol. 31 v.
fetus. The spindle, swelling with thread, was compared to a pregnant
woman, as in a riddle that asked, "What becomes big with child in
Gender identity, though founded of course on the obvious dif- only a day?" 84 Thelma Sullivan notes additional sexual symbolism:
ference bet~een male and female babies, was, I suggest, similarly the insertion of the spindle's wooden shaft into the spindle whorl
embedded m what people wore and carried in their hands. A Mex- suggests the act that leads to this "pregnancy."85
ica, man or woman, was almost never naked, without the garments Eve, whom the colonial Mexica called "our first mother," was
that marked and helped to constitute his or her identity. That a also a spinner. After the expulsion from Eden, while Adam learned to
woman could figuratively be called "a blouse, a skirt" and a man "a work the land, she learned to spin and weave. A native artist's mural
 48 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 49

painting in the open chapel at Actopan, Hidalgo, shows this primor- as swords: the female deities Cihuacoatl and Ilamatecuhtli wielded
dial couple engaged in the same sexual division of labor as the native weaving battens along with shields.9 1 The women warriors of
couples: Eve sits and spins while Adam cultivates.86 Tlatelolco, in Alvarado Tezozomoc's account cited above, assailed the
Weaving and the specialized arts of brocade and embroidery enemy soldiers with battens and warping frames as well as brooms. 92
were the province of Xochiquetzal, a deity represented as younger Alvarado Tezozomoc, recounting the rites of women whose men
and less "earthy" than Toci or Tlazolteotl and apparently associated were at war, states that these women went at night to offer food at the
with the sexuality of "normal" adult women-Tlazolteotl being the temples, "carrying a twisted rope, as thick as a finger, signifying that
patro_n of promiscuous and adulterous women. This is not to say that through the gods their husbands would return victorious, with a
Xochrquetzal was sexually restrained: she could, if provoked, play great capture of their enemies, and these women carried a weaving
the seducer, as she does in the story of Yappan.87 The rhythmic, back- shuttle, tzotzopaztli, which was a sign that with swords their lms-
and-forth motion of weaving, its intertwining of separate threads bands and sons would conquer their enemies." 93 These objects,
into a single web, is, like spinning, an obvious source of sexual innu- brought from the home and connected with women's textile produc-
endo, and a deity of weaving might be expected to be sexually active. tion, the rope suggesting the umbilical cord as well as spun cordage,
That the daughter in the Codex Mendoza is not shown weaving until were to provoke the desired reaction on the field of battle. House and
the age of fourteen may be no accident: the girl has passed through battlefield were identified, with an inversion of gender, such that a
puberty. This is also the first depiction of the daughter that dresses woman's shuttle or batten94 was ritually translated into a weapon
her in a skirt and blouse bearing the same designs as those of her for her son or husband.
mother.88
The women who died in their first childbirth with the fetus un-
Weaving was so intimately tied to a woman's sexuality that born and who rose into the western sky to join the Cihuateteo were
women who specialized in ornate brocade and embroidery were as- called mocihuaquetzque, "they who arise as women." After they con-
sumed (at least by some consultants of Sahagun's) to display a cor- veyed the sun from the zenith to the underworld, these dead women
responding exuberance in the sexual sphere: "They used to live very would descend to earth and search for "the spindle whorl, the batten,
pleasurably, they used to go around having a good time, the embroi- the basket, all the woman's implements"; they would also call on their
derers."89 Perhaps the income generated from these arts granted former husbands to ask for blouses, skirts, and women's tools. 95 Sa-
these women such a degree of economic independence that they haglin's text indicates that it was actually "the tzitzimitl, the co/eletli"
could live as they pleased-or cause others to fear that they would. who used to pull this stunt, appearing to people as if he were one of
According to Sahagun's book on the 260-day calendar, women these women. These are names for malevolent nocturnal deities; by
who were_ embroiderers and workers of cotton would fast for twenty, this time these names had become associated with the Devil. What
fortr, or e_rghty days culminating in the day Seven Flower, Xochique- has happened here, as elsewhere in the Florentine Codex, is that noc-
t~a~ ~ festrval. 90 If such a woman broke her fast (which included pro- turnal, ghostly apparitions have been subsumed within the demonic
h1b1hons on sex and bathing as well as dietary restrictions), Xochi- identity the friars ascribed to all native deities. Sahagun-or, perhaps,
quetzal would mock her and punish her with infections. It was also his indigenous assistants-has interpreted the mocihuaquetzque as
said that such a woman would become sexually intemperate-per- manifestations of the Devil, "indigenizing" the Christian concept by
haps as a punishment from Xochiquetzal, perhaps as a direct conse- using the native terms. To older generations of Mexicas, these women
quence of her lack of self-control. The text does not indicate whether were surely numens in their own right and not the Devil in disguise.
ordinary housewives participated in this fasting. Why should these ghosts of nonmothers return in search of
In yet another parallel between the domestic context and the spindles? They had been buried in a new skirt and blouse; their tools
battlefield, weaving implements could, like brooms, be brandished were, according to the Cadice carolino, buried with them. 96 Perhaps
 50 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Home Front 51

they sought to compensate for their failure to reproduce through an If the weaving came out poorly, a woman was likely to experi-
exaggerated attachment to other signs of womanhood. Or perhaps, ence anxiety. Sahagun's book on people and their virtues and vices
being warriors of a sort-like Cihuacoatl, who wielded a shield and includes, in the chapter on nonelite women, descriptions of the
batten and with whom they were identified-they sought the female weaver, the spinner, and the seamstress. 102 In interpreting the de-
analogues of weapons. scriptions of "good" and "bad" individuals in this book, it must be ;
Like the house or patio in which she sat and like the field in kept in mind that this categorization was imposed by the friar to elicit v
which her husband labored, the cloth a woman wove was quadrilat- terminology useful for preaching and confessing; for example, a
eral. In the Quiche Maya Popol Vuh, the gods lay out the earth by woman might be questioned during confession to see if she did any
stretching and folding cords, like a man measuring out his field or a of these "bad" things. However, some of the terms of abuse applied
woman preparing the warp for her loom.97 Did the weaving woman to poor processors of fiber suggest that such women truly were
occupy a position of significance in the cosmic scheme? viewed with alarm. The bad weaver was not only careless and un-
Ceceli~ F. Klein sees imagery of thread and cloth pervading skilled with her hands; "she damages things, she breaks things, she
Mesoamencan cosmology: the layered cosmic planes are analogous ominously destroys things, she ominously destroys the surface of
to a folded length of cloth; the underworlds resemble a maze of tan- things."103 The first couplet implies immorality and criminality; the
gled threads while the upper worlds are ordered like a neatly woven second, with its use of tetzahuitl (omen, portent, scandal), implies
textile. 98 For the Quiche, Barbara Tedlock and Dennis Tedlock note that the woman is some sort of holy terror, an augury of ill fortune.
various associations between weaving and other domains, such as Something is definitely wrong with her: her lumpy, lopsided weav-
agriculture, the growth of forests, the building of houses and shrines, ing just may indicate a flaw in the cosmic fabric.
divination, and speech, as well as the solar movements that establish Sahagun's catalog of nasty superstitions includes only one that
and regulate space and time.99 Dennis Tedlock suggests further that involves weaving, and the text is difficult to interpret. If a woman's
Mesoamerican calendrical periods should not be seen as wheel-like weaving came out crooked, it was said that the owner of the garment
"cycles"; a model more consistent with native thinking is that of cloth being woven was a perverse, ungenerous person. A mantle is used
on a loom. 100 The weft travels back and forth in a continuous se- to represent the garment in question; the term given is tilmaoa, "pos-
q~ence; designs are repeated at regular intervals but show slight vari- sessor of the mantle," or, perhaps more accurately, "the one in rela-
atrons from one occurrence to the next. Similarly, episodes of Meso- tion to whom exists the mantle."10 4 In his Spanish gloss, Sahagun
american history do not really repeat themselves but resemble each refers to this person as aquel para quien era, "the one for whom [the
other, as if woven from the same pattern or template. Klein sees the garment] was."105 Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. 0. Anderson's
tree or house pole, around which the weaver looped her backstrap translation presents the weaver herself as the guilty party,106 as does
loom, as "the implicit center of the woven cosmos."101 Jacinto de la Serna where he borrows this tidbit from Sahagun. 107
As a woman sat there, weaving space and time into a skirt for her Sahagun's Spanish glosses do occasionally misrepresent what the
daughter or a mantle for her husband, perhaps she was more preoc- Nahuatl actually says, but in this case I do not think the friar was
cuJ?ied with the children's health or the evening meal than the mys- careless or confused. It seems odd to me that the weaver should be
teries_ of the cosmos. However, that there was something in the act of referred to as the garment's owner rather than its maker. Given the
":'eavmg that replicated_ ingrained patterns of thought and percep- importance of garments and other accoutrements to the construc-
tion need not be something she contemplated consciously for the act tion of a person's identity, it does not seem so peculiar that the char-
of weaving to be imbued with a sense of rightness, a feeling that acter of the intended wearer might affect a garment's construction.
things were in their proper place. Such a belief would, however, strike Sahagun as an illogical super-
 52 Louise M. Burkhart Mexica Women on the Horne Front 53

stition worth including in his list of devilish absurdities. The idea But how well did the friars know their enemy? Confronted with/
that a bad woman would be a bad weaver would not have seemed so seemingly contradictory evidence of women's devotion to house~
outrageous to him. work and women's power, they responded by projecting the poweJ
onto the Devil and attempting to reconcile the associated behavio9
Conclusion with their own models of female submissiveness and female seclu\
sion. The friars' failure in the field of female education is worth notj
The religious orientation of Mexica culture thoroughly permeated the ing here. While their schools for boys flourished, efforts to establish
domestic context, such that the seemingly mundane work of running girls' schools floundered from the start. A school staffed by Spanish
a ~ousehold was imbued with symbolic meanings and hedged about women recruited by the empress, in which native girls, in Motolinia's
with rules and omens. Housework was serious, and risky, business. approving words, "were taught no more than how to be married
The home, engendered as female space, was a place of power that, in wornen," 108 survived for only ten years. Its failure was blamed on
its womblike darkness and its centrality, was the opposite of the lack of teachers, but there is no indication that mobs of native girls
J bright and distant battlefield where the soldiers of the sun acted out were clamoring for Spanish-style housewifery. Instead, and in the
their own cosmic drama. And yet both stages, house and battlefield, face of efforts to undermine the consanguineal family system, Mex-
were intimately and ultimately joined into one, just as woman and ica women clung to their traditional position within the family, pass-
man, in being the two parts of a duality, were, though dressed in dif- ing their property rights to heirs of their choice and, when necessary,
ferent costumes and carrying different props, really one. defending themselves in court. 109
To approach Mexica culture with ready-made categories of Kellogg demonstrates how colonial civil and ecclesiastical poli;-
"public" and "private" merely distorts the reciprocal images cast by cies had, nevertheless, the long-term effect of separating native cul~,1
these mirrored constructions of gender. To judge women's status by ture into public and private domains. Constant emphasis on the ini;.
their "public" importance is to miss an essential point: the "public" dividual, the conjugal pair, and the male-headed nuclear family
hardly existed except as a series of replications and inversions of the eventually weakened the consanguineal family and its network of
"private," and vice versa. Concepts of home and home life existed,
but these constr~cts were seen as integrated with the rest of societyj
7 kin and neighbors.110 At the same time, the distinction between "sin"
and "crime," enshrined in the structure of Spanish authority, forced
and cosmos, sub1ect to the same laws and the same disruptions. a division between a private, moral domain and a public domain of
For the friars, the Mexica woman, as both female and native, was civil life and the law. By the seventeenth century, Kellogg notes, na-
doubly Other. In their minds not only were women, the weaker sex, tive women were bequeathing property to a narrow range of mostly
more prone than men to demonic temptations, but native people in nuclear-family kin; those who went to court did so as legal minors
gen~ral, weak_-willed and new to the faith, were easily duped by the under male protection rather than as independent plaintiffs. (Also
Devil-especially when far removed from the friars' sight. In their see chap. 5.) The friars' illusion had, to a significant extent, become
war against Satan, the Mexica residence became a home front of a reality.
different sort. Instead of being in alignment with external space, as a The friars' other image, the woman as closet Satanist, was also
model for the temple or an inverted complement of the battlefield, to an inaccurate one. There is no evidence that the average Mexica
t~e friars the ~_c~-rn~_was a private counterspace opposed to the pub- woman was more resistant to Christianity than the average Mexica
IJc_ space of churcfiyard and town hall, and thus a potential locus of man, however well she, or he, understood its precepts. Women par-
~_Qygrs,Icm and_r~s!~tance. In this way did the friars justify their col- ticipated enthusiastically in what limited roles the Church did make
lusion in the invasive colonial policy of congregaci6n, the forced re- available to them-as neighborhood officials in charge of bringing
settlement of native people into large towns and cities. girls and women to church, as the friars' cooks and tailors, as alms-
54 Louise M. Burkhart

givers, as sponsors of masses for dead rel~~ives, as membe~s and

sometimes leaders of religious confratermhes, even as clmstered
companions to Spanish and creole nuns. 111 For the colonial Mexica,
there is no convincing evidence of a "household" religion intenti~n­
ally subverting or opposing Christianity-any more than the ~a.hve 2
version of Christianity that was practiced openly. 112 A susp1c1ous
priest might see the Devil dance in the sweepings of a woman's
broom, but he knew far more about the Devil than about her. Aztec Wives

Arthur J. 0. Anderson

[Utilizing a n'ch sampling of Nahua colonial accounts to contextualize

women in their prescribed roles as upstanding wives and citizens, Arthur
J. 0. Anderson focuses on the institution of marriage as it was understood
in the preconquest era and as it was reformulated by Spanish friars by
means of Nahuatl-language Christian treatises. Based on three sources in
particular for purposes of comparison, a Nahuatl sermon, a huehuetlatolli
(discourse by Nahua elders), and a Nahua ethnography, overall Anderson
finds little change in most indigenous women's lives, however idealized,
over the course of the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, his conclusions are yet
another reminder of the perils of gender stereotyping, whatever the culture
or era. Arthur Anderson died on June 3, 1996.-Eos.]

In fray Bernardino de Sahagun's Primeros memoriales, 1 a rather long

passage describes how, every 260 days, on the day Four Reed, four
high judges sat in judgment to admonish and castigate all the as-
sembled lords, noblemen, and holders of high and responsible of-
fice and, with them, all the women of comparable rank. 2 All feared
that they would be accused and found guilty of failing to discharge
their duties and that consequently they would be exiled, reduced in