children to convert them.
In 1523, only three years after the conquest of Tenochtitlan, three Franciscans arrived and began the enterprise of evangelization-colonization, followed a year later by another 12. The Franciscan Pedro de Gante founded the first school of New Spain, San José de los Naturales. This school proved the natives’ ability to learn, in subjects ranging from manual labor and crafts to grammar and basic Latin. Although the Franciscans were the first order to arrive in New Spain, optimistic projects to evangelize through education were also designed by the Dominicans upon their arrival in 1526, and by the Augustinians when they later came on the scene in 1533. By the 1530s perhaps 600 natives had already begun to learn to write as a result of the friars’ education projects (Gruzinski 1993, 47). Learning in those first centers went both ways. The friars evangelized and alphabetized the natives but they also acquired linguistic proficiency in native languages, facilitating inquiry into Indigenous polities. For the friars, the more linguistic and cultural knowledge they gained from the vencidos, the more effective would be the enterprise of conversion. This knowledge would also be beneficial to Spanish officials in designing economic and political policies for the new colony.
After the Primera Audiencia (1528–1530) (a court of law and administrative body) had failed to establish effective colonial government, research on types of tribute, political organization, and social institutions was encouraged by the president of the Segunda Audiencia (1530–1535), Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, to aid the governmental logistics of the new colony. To exploit these enquiries, Fuenleal petitioned the Franciscans Andrés de Olmos and Martín de Valencia to produce a book on the antiquities of the natives, with special regard to the major centers of Mexico, Texcoco, and Tlaxcala. European education, for the Indigenous people, especially of noble status, would serve several purposes. On the one hand, well-educated Indigenous people would aid research into native languages and polities; on the other, they could serve as intermediaries in religious and secular matters. Outnumbered by the natives, Spaniards believed they would benefit from trusted native participation in developing the logistics for a better colonization. The moral and intellectual benefits of a higher education were also needed to prepare future caciques (lords) to lead Christian communities. Thus, higher education for the native elite was considered achievable as well as advantageous. The Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza and the Franciscan Bishop Juan de Zumárraga granted the privilege, to the Franciscan order, to open an institution of higher education to natives.
The Colegio’s Students and Textual Productions
The Colegio Imperial de Tlatelolco opened on January 6, 1536, with 80 students from various geographical regions in central Mexico. Despite conflicts and controversies that would arise later against higher education for natives, the Colegio became a crucial center for research on Indigenous languages and cultures. Following a curriculum modeled on European elite higher education, the students studied the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), which the friars adjusted according to the students’ needs. The gramáticos 2 are recognized in several of the friars’ writings for their translation of works from Latin, Nahuatl, and Spanish and for their help in the elaboration of dictionaries and grammars on Indigenous languages. One of the most famous gramáticos was Don Antonio Valeriano of Atzcapozalco, who later served 20 years as the governor of Tenochtitlan, beginning in 1573. He helped with etymology and semantics in the development of the Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana of Friar Alonso de Molina, a dictionary designed to help friars in learning Nahuatl. He also helped Friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), one of the most active researchers on native history and culture, with the Coloquios y Doctrina Christiana, a reconstruction of a debate that took place in 1524 between the 12 Franciscans, who had just arrived in New Spain, and a gathering of secular and religious native leaders. Valeriano also served as Sahagún’s interpreter in the compilation of his Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, and wrote glosses to the Sermonario of Friar Juan Bautista.
Also well versed in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl was Pedro of San Buenaventura of Cuauhtitlan, who collaborated with Sahagún, writing the section on pre-conquest medicine and the animals of New Spain for the Hymns of the Gods. He also illustrated Sahagún’s Mexican calendar. Hernando de Ribas from Texcoco translated the Diálogos de paz y tranquilidad del alma of Juan de Gaona and helped Friar Alonso de Molina with his Vocabulario in Nahuatl and Friar Juan Bautista with his Vocabulario Eclesiástico. Francisco Bautista de Contreras from Cuernavaca, before becoming governor of Xochimilco in 1605, worked with Friar Juan Bautista in the translation to Nahuatl of the Imitación de Cristo, known as the Contemptus mundi, and collaborated with Hernando de Ribas in the translation of Vanidad del mundo. Juan Badiano of Xochimilco collaborated in the translation from Nahua into Latin of the Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, known as the Códice Badiano, attributed to the Xochimilcan Martín de la Cruz. This codex contains information about plants and medicines used in pre-conquest times. Esteban Bravo from Tezcoco helped in the writing of a lost Sermonario of Friar Alonso de Trujillo. Pedro de Gante, named after the Franciscan friar who inaugurated San José de los Naturales, assisted Friar Juan Bautista in the Colegio and wrote about lives of saints. Although none of Gante’s texts have been discovered, Friar Bautista relates that he always consulted his abilities and talents (Garibay 1954, 2: 225). Agustin de la Fuente from Tlatelolco served as copyist and editor for Sahagún and Bautista.
In the Florentine Codex Sahagún also recognizes the help of the ancient titicih or Indigenous physicians (León-Portilla 1990, 54). Diego Adriano of Tlatelolco and Agustín the la Fuente collaborated in painting the Codex. Martín Jacobita of Tlatelolco, who from 1561 to 1565 was rector of the Colegio, Antonio Vegeriano of Cuauhtitlán, and Andrés Leonardo of Tlatelolco helped Sahagún in the rewriting of the Coloquios and Códices Matritenses (León-Portilla 1990, 48). The Franciscans documented the names of the most brilliant students to show evidence of the Colegio’s success, emphasizing the students’ abilities and their willingness to cooperate in the enterprise of evangelization. However, the gramáticos’ textual production would later play an important role in the development of a native historiography.
For the Colegio’s translations and transcriptions, the friars and gramáticos standardized regional differences in Nahuatl into a prescriptive refined model known today as Classical Nahuatl, contrasting with the “Colonial Nahuatl” used by notaries for mundane purposes (Karttunen 1982, 400–401). Friars looked for synonyms and parallel concepts between Spanish and Nahuatl to develop a Nahuatl rhetoric based upon Christian models (Burkhart 1989, 10–11). For some scholars the prescription of Classical Nahuatl was another form of colonization. It was a means to aid the process of acculturation by educating the Indigenous elite; to replace the authority of native priests; and, among other aims, to assist the imposition of a unifying canon that would delegitimate local Nahuatl dialects (Klor de Alva 1989).
The introduction of the alphabetic system altered Nahua methods of recording history, which had been previously achieved by oral performance and pictographic or ideographic representations. Historical Indigenous systems of recalling the past were based on unique coordinates of time and space. The use of colors and other elements gave coherence to the natives’ way of life, a coherence which they began to explain to the friars by adopting European pictorial techniques. By the end of the sixteenth century, pictorial representation remained in use primarily in practical and mundane documents – legal accounts, land records, tributes, and histories and genealogies (Hill-Boone 1998, 164).3
Even if Sahagún and like-minded friars believed in the equality of human souls and had a thirst for legitimate cultural and linguistic knowledge of the Indigenous cultures, Christian intolerance also justified the study of pagan things for purposes of facilitating their eradication (Buckhart 1989, 3). Sahagún, in his prologue to his Historia, compares the friars’ enterprise of conversion to that of the physician who needs knowledge to cure the sick. So, for Sahagún, knowledge about native culture provided the
