The Legacy of Mesoamerica History and Culture of a Native American Civilization, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 6 INDIGENOUS LITERATURE FROM COLONIAL MESOAMERICA 229

Figure 6.6 Codex Dresden.Venus rises in the east as

morning star. At bottom is the maize deity, sacrificial victim

of the vengeful star: Crop failure may be expected at this

time. Reprinted with permission from Codex Dresdensis.

Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt,

1975, folio 48.

THE COLONIAL CODICES

Native people continued to create pictorial manuscripts during the Colonial period,

especially through the sixteenth century. Four major changes occur in the tradition.

First, ritual and divinatory codices cease to be produced except when commissioned

by Europeans seeking ethnographic information on native religion, mainly for the

purpose of recognizing and eradicating “idolatry.” Such manuscripts resemble their

pre-Columbian models but functioned in entirely different contexts. Second, al-

phabetic writing invades the pictorial text, first complementing the pictures and

gradually replacing them. Third, the native artists adopt some conventions of Euro-

pean art, introducing perspective, landscape, and three-dimensionality into their

paintings while still maintaining a representational style easily distinguished from

that of European artists. Fourth, entire new genres of pictorial manuscript are cre-

ated under European sponsorship.

Although religious manuscripts were largely suppressed, or at least driven un-

derground along with the native rituals and priesthood, there continued to be a

need for other kinds of manuscripts that had long been in use. The Spanish colonial