The Tira of Don Martín

Abstract

This article follows the history of the Tira of don Martín, also known as the Codex Saville, from its creation to its preservation in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. A document concerning migration, altepetl (polity) foundation, and rulership, it provided a living record of Nahua chronology from 1402 to 1545, through the arrival of Europeans on horseback, the conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521, and the foundation of a local Christian church. Little studied since the 1920s when acquired by the Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation, it is a completely Nahua document with older pictographic text as well as Nahuatl written in Latin characters. The very form of the tira suggests continuity rather than rupture in the course of European colonization and evangelization. New approaches to Mesoamerican history and materiality at the conquest’s quincentenary mean the time is ripe for a new touchstone analysis of this document that emphasizes specificity, locality, and continuity rather than rupture driven by European invasion. This article integrates diagnostic imaging, scientific and ethnohistorical analyses, and provenance research with a renewed focus on the Nahuatl language and pictographic communication.