Ancient civilizations-2

Postconquest ethnographic accounts written in Spanish and Náhuatl

These works are comparable in methodology and subject matter to the kinds of studies of native peoples conducted by present-day anthropologists. Probably the finest of them was written by Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún was a Franciscan priest who arrived in Mexico very early (1529), learned the Náhuatl tongue, and spent his life building a wonderful monument, a real encyclopaedia called the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (“General History of the Things of New Spain”). His work covers virtually all aspects of Aztec culture. It contains particularly detailed accounts of religion, ethnobotany, folk medicine, and economics, dictated to him in Náhuatl by Aztec noblemen and priests. As a source, it has the added value of being written in both Náhuatl and Spanish. One of the most complete versions of this work, written in Náhuatl, is called the Florentine Codex.

“Siguense veynte y seis addiciones desta postilla” (1560–79; “A Sequence of Twenty-six Additions to the Admonitions”) by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún. The 26 additional admonitions to the appendix of Sahagún's doctrinal writings exhort the Aztecs to pursue Christian virtues. The writings preserve a record of the Aztec culture and Nahuatl language.The Newberry Library, Gift of Edward E. Ayer, 1911 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)