¹ Chavero 1892, iii. This is roughly 21 feet by 7 feet; the measurements given in 1779 were 5 varas 5 sesmas by 2.5 varas in size. A vara equals 83.59 cm or 32.90945 inches; a sesma (one-sixth of a vara) equals 13.93 cm or 5.49 inches.

² Other indigenous accounts of the conquest have been recently discussed in Restall 2003, 44-63, 100-130; Navarrete 2008; Matthew and Michel 2008.

³ Chavero 1892, 15.

⁴ Lockhart, Berdan, and Anderson 1986, 51.

⁵ Gibson 1952, 164-170.

⁶ Gibson 1952, 165-168.

⁷ Mazihcatzin [1787] 1927.

⁸ The story of the nineteenth-century fortunes of the Lienzo is told in Chavero 1892, iv-v.

⁹ “Quedó, pues, perdido el lienzo; pero por fortuna yo tengo copia exatísima, dibujada con
toda escrupulosidad, y para la cual se hicieron colores enteramente iguales á los del original. Como también tengo los calcos que del mismo original se sacaron, hoy puede hacerce una reproducción fidelísima del lienzo perdido.” Chavero 1892, v.

¹⁰ On the loss of the traced copy, see Glass 1964, 92.

¹¹ Travis Barton Kranz has written the fundamental work about the writing of history in sixteenth-century Tlaxcala; see Kranz 2001; Kranz 2007.

¹² The basic commentary on the images of the Lienzo remains that published by Alfredo Chavero in1892; the following paragraphs draw extensively on his commentaries.

¹³ Navarrete 2007.

¹⁴ Kranz 2001, 142.

¹⁵ Gibson 1952, 165.

¹⁶ Nader 1990, Baber 2005, 107-110.

¹⁷ Gibson 1952, 3-14; Lockhart 1992, 20-28; Baber 2005, 28-31.

¹⁸ Angiano and Chapa 1976; Reyes García 1993; Cosentino 2002, 174-185.

¹⁹ Tedlock 2003, 187-206.

²⁰ See also Kranz 2001, 141; Navarrete 2008, 67.

²¹ On undress and social inferiority, see Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006, 202-207.

²² Peterson 1994, Karttunen 1997.

²³ See also Asselbergs 2008, 73.

²⁴ Brotherston and Gallegos 1990, 122.

²⁵ The arguments in this section are based on a longer discussion in Hamann 2009.

²⁶ Magaloni (2003, 28-29), following Brotherston (1992, 92-93) points out that this scene is laid out like a quincunx-cosmogram of the universe, and presents the conquest of Tenochtitlán as a cosmic apocalypse out of which a new, Christian era of creation was born (see also Navarrete 2008, 67). Both authors deal with fragmented images, so the do not realized the physical centrality of this scene in the Lienzo as whole (which further supports their arguments). As we will see shortly, the Lienzo contains a second image of cosmic apocalypse and renewal, centered on Tlaxcala itself.

²⁷ Hamann 2002; Hamann 2008a, 122-138; Hamann 2008c, 803-808, 813.

²⁸ Gibson 1952, 158-162.

²⁹ See Bamberger 1974; Carrasco 1987, 132-136; Pohl 1999,183-184, Hamann 2004, 101-107.

³⁰ McCafferty and McCafferty 1988.

³¹ Kellogg 1995, 104-5

³² Cosentino 2002, 238-241.

³³ Navarrete 2007; Navarrete 2008, 62-64.

³⁴ On Mary and the saints as Christian abogados and abogadas, see Christian 1981, 55. These terms are still commonly used today in both Latin America and Spain.

³⁵ Peterson 1988, 287-288.

³⁶ Leibsohn 2007.

³⁷ Saville 1922; Taube 1992; Taube 2000.

³⁸ García-Zambrano 1994, 221; Monaghan and Hamann 1998; Hamann 2008b, 58-66.

³⁹ Of course, these same qualities would have made it an effective object in New Spain as well, whether before Europeans or Native Americans.