Two veneras, one purple and the other yellow, each one respectively with greenstones in the center and other blue ones around it, set in gold.
Another white venera, set in gold, having some blue and red eyes, the one inserted in the other.
A monster of gold with some greenstone mosaic-work in the belly, weighing altogether eleven pesos.
A poniard (or jewel broncha) of white shell set in gold, weighing altogether thirty-seven pesos, five tomins.
A butterfly of shell, of fancy work, set in gold, weighing altogether eleven pesos, six tomins.[22]
TRIBUTE OF MOSAIC PAID TO
THE AZTEC RULERS
Mosaic objects, and especially the raw material for their manufacture, formed a part of the annual tribute paid by some of the coast provinces of ancient Mexico to the Aztec kings of Tenochtitlan. We have the pictorial representation of some of the objects of such tribute in an important native book or codex, painted in colors on maguey fiber paper, known as the Tribute Roll of Montezuma. This original codex was at one time in the famous Boturini collection, and is now one of the treasured possessions of the Museo Nacional in the City of Mexico. It lacks, however, several leaves which were abstracted about a century ago, and which came into possession of Joel R. Poinsett, who had been American Minister to Mexico, and who presented them to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1830, where they now are. On the pages have been written explanations of the pictures and figures in both Nahuatl and Spanish. “The Nahuatl words look as if made by a pencil, style, or short brush similar to that used in delineating the figures, and with a sepia-like preparation; while the Spanish ones have evidently been made with an ink containing iron, and an instrument which disturbed the gloss of the paper, as is shown by its penetration to fibres adjacent, giving the lines a sort of hazy margin occasionally.”[23]
Some time between the years 1534 and 1550, Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of Mexico, during this period, had the Indians prepare for the Emperor Charles V, a book on European paper, containing a pictorial account, in colors, of some things relating to the history and life of the natives of the Mexican plateau. It was painted in three sections, the first being a chronological record of the Aztec kings and their conquests, the third relating to the habits and customs of the natives and especially of the education of Mexican youth.
PL. II
