When the Handbook of Middle American Indians was first published, ethnohistory was primarily represented in a Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, vols. XII-XV. Pre-Hispanic culture and social institutions were incorporated into the archeology volumes. The colonial transformation of Indian society was not treated separately, although it received some attention as background to the modern ethnography covered in the ethnology and social anthropology volumes. This volume of the supplement is devoted almost entirely to colonial ethnohistory.
An introduction by Ronald Spores gives a brief summary of each chapter. Only the paper by James Fox and John Justeson (“Classic Maya Dynastic Alliance and Succession”) refers exclusively to the pre–Hispanic period. Working with inscriptions from the Classic Maya period, they present the hypothesis that in Piedras Negras the sequence of rulers was based on a single royal matriline that entered into systematic marriage alliances. The riders were husbands of the women in the matriline; a ruler’s son-in-law was his successor, and his fraternal nephew was heir at a politically affiliated site.
Two papers on Central Mexico deal with pre–Hispanic institutions and their continuation in early colonial times. Frederic Hicks’s “Prehispanic Background of Colonial Political and Economic Organization in Central Mexico” puts together all the recent literature dealing with noble houses, tlahtoqueh titles, commoners, land tenure, and the relation between tribute and market. Susan Kellogg’s “Kinship and Social Organization in Early Colonial Tenochtitlán” emphasizes kinship terminology and household organization.
All the other chapters treat Indian society during the colonial period, three of them as broad regional surveys. Robert Carmack (“Ethnohistory of the Guatemalan Colonial Indian”) defines certain issues derived from general studies: the character of the conquest, demography, indirect rule, periodization, the “spurious’’ nature of native culture, class stratification, mercantile capitalism, and Indian rebellions. He then examines these issues in the light of several case studies. Nancy Farriss’s “Indians in Colonial Northern Yucatán” deals with the colonial regime and colonial Maya society within it, centering on population movements and the fate of the nobility. She emphasizes the differences with Central Mexico and the peripheral characteristics of Yucatán. John Chance’s “Colonial Ethnohistory of Oaxaca” summarizes the work done on the Mixteca, the Central Valleys, the Rincon, and the urban Indians in Oaxaca City, with emphasis on population, the economy, social stratification, and local government.
Two other regional articles are of more limited scope. Grant Jones, in his “The Southern Maya Lowlands during Spanish Colonial Times,” deals with an area for which the available literature does not allow the type of summary given in the three articles mentioned above. He shows clearly the complexity of the situation resulting from the delayed Spanish conquest and the changing conditions in the different areas. Thomas Charlton’s “Socioeconomic Dimensions of Urban-Rural Relations in the Colonial Period Basin of Mexico” concentrates on the overall socioeconomic system and settlement patterns, using archeological as well as written documentation. Specific topics are covered in two other chapters. Ross Hassig’s “One Hundred Years of Servitude: Tlamemes in Early New Spain” discusses the use of human carriers. H. R. Harvey’s “Techialoyán Codices: Seventeenth-Century Indian Land Titles in Central Mexico” gives a new assessment of these documents, sometimes dismissed as forgeries.
Ethnohistory has experienced considerable development since the original Handbook was published. The present collection does not cover all religions or subjects that have been studied. Material culture and religion are almost entirely absent, and specialists might differ on certain points. Nevertheless, the quality of all articles is consistently high, and the volume will be indispensable for students of Middle American ethnohistory.
