240 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
yellow corn, ground up by a female deity and mixed with water in which she has
rinsed her hands: The oil from her skin turns into the body fat of the four men who
are formed from the dough. These four men thank their creators with the following
prayer. The text is built with a variety of parallel constructions, with the same or sim-
ilar ideas expressed in two or more ways. For the K’iche’ and other Mesoamericans,
mastery of this poetic strategy signaled good literary style:Truly now,
double thanks, triple thanks
that we’ve been formed, we’ve been given
our mouths, our faces,
we speak, we listen,
we wonder, we move,
our knowledge is good, we’ve understood
what is far and near,
and we’ve seen what is great and small
under the sky, on the earth.
Thanks to you we’ve been formed,
we’ve come to be made and modeled,
our grandmother, our grandfather. (Tedlock 1996:147)These very articulate men of corn are actually superior to what the gods in-
tended, for they are able to see and know everything that is in the world. They are
too similar to the gods themselves, and a bit too familiar, addressing them as grand-
parents! The gods therefore dull the men’s vision, so that they are able to see only
things that are close to them. As compensation, the gods create four women to be
the men’s wives, and the men are happy once more.
These four couples become the ancestors of the K’iche’ people. The rest of the
Popol Wuj,approximately half of the total text, deals with the migrations, wars, set-
tlements, and ruling lineages of the K’iche’. Myth passes gradually into history, and
we come at the end to the middle of the sixteenth century.
Many other works were written down at the behest of Europeans, with the re-
sulting documents removed from native hands. Some such transactions occurred in
an atmosphere of cooperation, as in the case of Sahagún’s project: The friar was pop-
ular among the native people, and teams of native researchers and consultants
worked together on the texts. Even in contexts like this, however, the native consul-
tants knew that much of their traditional culture—especially in regard to religious
beliefs—was considered by the Spanish priests to be idolatrous or immoral.
Book Six of Sahagún’s Florentine Codexpreserves a collection of Nahuatl orations
pertaining to a genre of oral literature the Nahuas called huehuehtlahtolli,“ancient
words” or “speech of the elders.” These were formal speeches delivered on special
occasions. They are packed with moral philosophy, religious teachings, and poetic de-