152 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
in the central register, ten other groups identified by place-
name (including one named with tollin) have produced 116
long petates and the facing page says that they have been
paid 7 pesos, 5 tomines, that is, .52 tomines per mat, receiving
slightly more for each of these larger mats than the mat
makers of the top register. The bottom register of the page
is occupied by the goods for which communities have not
been paid. On the left, Santa María Cuepopan is shown
to have delivered 600 petates; the petates on the left are
of slightly rougher quality, and the facing page gives their
value as 35 pesos, 4 tomines (at .47 tomines a mat). At bot-
tom right is the count for San Pablo Teopan, which has an
unpaid balance for 200 mats, their value registered on the
facing page at 12 pesos, 4 tomines, that is, exactly .5 tomines
per mat.
Notable are the different kinds of writing that appear
on the pages; in addition to phonetic writing of Spanish,
different iconic scripts are at work. For instance, the par-
cialidad of San Pablo Teopan is represented by a sword
(the conventional symbol of Saint Paul, who was thus exe-
cuted), and Santa María Cuepopan, by a crown (the sym-
bol of Mary, Queen of Heaven), these signs being derived
from attributes of the patron saints rather than having any
relation to spoken language, be it Nahuatl or Spanish. On
the page, they are colored with a uniform yellow pigment,
as if to represent gold. In contrast, the often smaller and
more visually complicated glyphs for the Nahuatl names of
tributary groups, perhaps tlaxilacalli, are colored with three
pigments: red (likely derived from cochineal), blue-green
(which may have been derived from Maya blue), as well as
the yellow. The same red pigment is used as color fill for
the symbols (pesos and tomines) that show the government’s
payment of debts; the blue is used to fill in the year counts
at the tops of the pages. Alphabetic writing is added in the
spaces between the pictographs, and it gives voice to two
parties: the native governmental officials, who contest the
demand for payment, saying that the raw goods are theirsfiguRe 7.7. Unknown creator, tribute from the parcialidad of Santa
María Cuepopan, Genaro García 30, fols. 4v–7r, ca. 1553–1554. Nettie
Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries,
University of Texas at Austin.