History 325 Questions Drawn from the Expertise of Harvard's Du Bois Institue Book

Codex Chimalpopoca is composed of three parts unrelated to each other. The third part, called Leyenda de los Soles, 10 pages, 1558. The text appears on internal evidence to be the redaction of a specific performance event or, more likely, sequence of events by an unknown Mexica Aztec speaker and recorded by an unknown amanuensis, from a lost pictographic manuscript (or manuscripts) beginning on the date mentioned in the prologue, "today, the 22nd of May, 1558". The final lines of the text refer to the arrival of "the Marqués," who is Cortés, in Mexico "forty-two years ago" which would give a date of 1561 for this final entry. The bulk of the performance(s), however, must have been on or close to the first date. The Codex ChimalPopoca is a 17th century copy of the original redaction. This text a fundamental witness to indigenous Nahua-Mexica memories of their own cosmogony and earliest history as they recalled these things some twenty-five-pIus years into the colonial era The narrative frame of this retelling makes it clear that by 1558 these memories had become "fabIes," tales, fictions -a mythology-. this witness record gives itself the name: Tlarnachiliztlatolraranilli, "Wisdom-Discourse Fables."

The first part, is called Anales de Cuauhtitlan ca. 1570-73. The content is primarily historical. It nevertheless also contains a brief version of the Leyenda de los Soles.