The Tira de Tepechpan documents some of the major epidemic outbreaks that affected Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century. It illustrates 1520 with symbols of figures covered in pustules and the death of rulers and nobles. The years 1545 (left) and 1576 (right) are marked with images of Indigenous men naked and facing down, their eyes closed and copious blood flowing from their noses and mouths. These were symbols of the harrowing cocoliztli outbreaks that brought the Indigenous population to near extinction. In 1545, the blurred text reads, “epidemic or hemorrhage illness.” In 1576, the text reads, “with hemorrhagic illness came great mortality”; above 1576 and 1577 are two skulls (above right), symbols of widespread death. Below 1578, a Spanish figure dressed in blue and wearing a hat (below right) indicates the arrival of Felipe de Valdés, a bureaucrat sent by the colonial regime to assess the extent of the mortality of the 1576 outbreak. According to Relación de Tepechpan, by 1580 Tepechpan only had 950 tribute-paying residents, a dismal fraction of the once-populous and thriving town.
Image Source
- Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Mexicain 13–14 (Tira de Tepechpan), ca. 1596, fols. 17r and 19r. Courtesy of gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.
Further Reading
- Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. New Approaches to the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Noguez, Xavier. Tira de Tepechpan: Códice colonial procedente del Valle de México. Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México 64–65. Mexico City: Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México, 1978.
More Exhibit Items
