Azteken / Arzneimittel.

In 1929, Charles Upson Clark (1875-1960), a history Professor at Columbia University carrying out bibliographic research on the early history of the Americas in the Vatican Library, came across a remarkable illustrated Latin manuscript entitled Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis (Little Book of Indian Medicinal Herbs) completed in 1552. The manuscript now known as the Codex Cruz-Badianus (CCB) contained 185 illustrations (phytomorphs) of plants with text that described their medicinal uses. This manuscript spread new light on botanical and medicinal knowledge of the indigenous peoples of Mexico known today as the Nahuas or Aztecs. It was to have major repercussions on our knowledge of Aztec culture and the history of New Spain in the 16th century. CCB was produced at the Colegio of Imperial de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco established in 1536 to train sons of the Aztec nobility for the clergy. The authors were two indigenous faculty members, Martin (Martinus in Latin) de la Cruz and Juan Badiano (Juannes Badianus in Latin) whose Spanish names were conferred upon their baptism. Martin de la Cruz was the Colegio’s indigenous doctor who gave instruction in medicine and Juan Badiano, a Latin teacher and former student translated the book into Latin. The herbal dedicated to the Viceroy Francisco de Mendoza was sent to Spain as a gift to King Carlos I soon after its completion in 1552. The original ended up in the Vatican Library until 1990 when John Paul II returned it to Mexico. In 1931, the Mayanist scholar, William Gates, and the biologist Emily Walcott Emmart became aware of the manuscript and independently translated it to English. In 2009, Martin Clayton, Luigi Guerrini, and Alejandro de Avila identified plants of the CCB based on Emmart’s book and a 17th century copy found in the Windsor library. Of the 185 phytomophs, Gates identified 85 on the generic level, Emmart 9, and Clayton et al. 126. However most of these identifications disagree. In the present work, 183 of 185 phytomorphs are systematically re-evaluated and identified on the generic, as well as specific level, along with their botanical descriptions, previous identifications, putative identification, distribution, names, and uses.

Trail of Footprints offers an intimate glimpse into the commission, circulation, and use of indigenous maps from colonial Mexico. A collection of one hundred, largely unpublished, maps from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries made in the southern region of Oaxaca, anchors an analysis of the way ethnically diverse societies produced knowledge in colonial settings. Mapmaking, proposes Hidalgo, formed part of an epistemological shift tied to the negotiation of land and natural resources between the region’s Spanish, Indian, and mixed-race communities. The craft of making maps drew from social memory, indigenous and European conceptions of space and ritual, and Spanish legal practices designed to adjust spatial boundaries in the New World. Indigenous mapmaking brought together a distinct coalition of social actors—Indian leaders, native towns, notaries, surveyors, judges, artisans, merchants, muleteers, collectors, and painters—who participated in the critical observation of the region’s geographic features. Demand for maps reconfigured technologies associated with the making of colorants, adhesives, and paper that drew from Indian botany and experimentation, trans-Atlantic commerce, and Iberian notarial culture. The maps in this study reflect a regional perspective associated with Oaxaca’s decentralized organization, its strategic position amidst a network of important trade routes that linked central Mexico to Central America, and the ruggedness and diversity of its physical landscape.