History of Nahuatl

Proto-Nahua, therefore, arose in the region between Chihuahua and Durango where, occupying a greater extension of territory, it quickly formed two variants, one that continued to spread south with innovative changes (Neonahua) while the other (Paleonahua), with conservative features of the Yutonahua, moved to the east.

Kaufman accepts, like several modern authors,[10] the probability that a Nahua variant was spoken in the city, but from his point of view, the Coyotlatelco culture,[11] which is associated with the Teotihuacan sunset, is the first whose bearers must undoubtedly have been speakers of Nahuatl in Mesoamerica, as it was particularly spread by it.

In the Central Altiplano, on the other hand, there was a large number of Neonahua peoples in expansion, such as the Teochichimecs (later known as Tlaxcaltecs, who expelled the Olmeca-Xicalancas), the Xochimilcas, the Tepanecs (with their capital in Azcapotzalco, who originally spoke a variant of Otomi)[21] and the Acolhuas of Texcoco (who adopted it in the 14th century),[22] among others.

[29] Throughout the 15th century this trend grew, mainly due to prominent authors such as Tecayehuatzin of Huexotzinco, Temilotzin of Tlatelolco, Macuilxochitzin, Tlaltecatzin of Cuauhchinanco, Cuacuauhtzin of Tepechpan, Nezahualcoyotl and Nezahualpilli of Texcoco.

In the indigenous schools (telpochkalli, kalmekak and kwikakalli)[31] much emphasis was placed on the acquisition of public speaking skills, long moral and historical speeches, plays and songs were learned by heart.

To transmit the preaching of the gospel and instruct the indigenous people in the Catholic faith, the Franciscans with Pedro de Gante (a Belgian missionary, a relative of Emperor Charles V)[39] began to learn in the year 1523, thanks to the Nahua elites, educated variants of the Aztec language, mainly those spoken in the cities of Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco and Tlaxcala.

For evangelization in New Spain, Testerian catechisms are documents of historical relevance since they explain the precepts of Catholic doctrine through images based on indigenous conventions prior to the Conquest and sometimes incorporate Western writing in Spanish and other languages.

It is in that same year that King Charles I of Spain orders that schools be established to teach "Christianity, good customs, police and the Spanish language" to the children of the indigenous nobility.

[48] Unlike the Florentine Codex and its account of the conquest of Mexico, the Annals of Tlatelolco remained in indigenous hands, providing an authentic insight into the thoughts and perspectives of the newly conquered Nahuas.

In the year 1558, Viceroy Luís de Velasco wrote to King Philip II to support the initiative of the Franciscans to teach Nahuatl in Nueva Galicia as a general language.

[52][53] The Nahua nobleman and scholar Antonio Valeriano, ruler of Tenochtitlan and Azcapotzalco, is credited with authorship of one of the most outstanding and important works of Nahuatl literature, the Nican Mopohua,[54] which dates back to 1556.

Novohispanic music in Nahuatl also appears in this century, giving rise to compositions such as the motets In ilhuicac cihuapillé and Dios itlaçònantziné attributable to Hernando Franco and taken from the Codex Valdés.

The Memorias en lengua náhuatl enviadas a Felipe II por indígenas del valle de Guatemala hacia 1572 are the most extensive attested examples of Central American Nahuatl.

In 1579, Father Pedro Morales wrote the Carta annua, in which he describes and explains in detail the festivities held by the Jesuits when Pope Gregory XIII donated relics to New Spain.

These are some of the verses:Tocniane touian ti quin to namiquiliti in Dios vel ytlaçouan matiquinto tlapaluiti.In the year 1580, Juan Suárez de Peralta, nephew of Hernán Cortés, wrote from Spain about the knowledge of Nahuatl by the criollos.

"[62] Around 1598, Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, grandson of the tlahtoani Moctezuma II,[68] wrote the Crónica Mexicayotl, with some insertions by Alonso Franco and Domingo Francisco Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin.

[75] In the year 1603, King Philip III of Spain, having received reports that the friars were not sufficiently prepared in the linguistic field, ordered that the clerics must know the indigenous language of those they indoctrinated.

Huei tlamahuiçoltica is the abbreviated name of the literary work in Nahuatl, published in 1649 by the criollo priest Luis Lasso de la Vega, where the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the indigenous Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin in 1531 are recounted.

[87] Juana Inés de la Cruz, also known as the tenth muse, contributed to Nahuatl literature the tocotines of her Christmas carols,[88] her best known being Tonantzin, although she also wrote other bilingual poems in Spanish and Mexicano.

[96][97] In the Tlaxcaltec cities in Coahuila and Nuevo León, because Neo-Tlaxcaltec Nahuatl was the language in common use,[98][99] the members of the local government appointed a Nahuatlato, who was in charge of translating the agreements into minutes, copying laws and keeping books in the coffers.

The philosopher Francisco Javier Clavijero, a Jesuit priest from New Spain, known mainly for his work Historia antigua de México,[108] studied and analyzed the language of Nahuatl poetry, describing it as "pure, entertaining, brilliant, figurative and full of comparisons with the most pleasant objects of the nature.

"[14] Among the causes of the beginning of the decadence, there are also the expulsion of the Jesuits two years earlier,[65] which led to the exile of a large number of scholars of the Aztec language, such as Clavijero himself, and the absolutist policy of the Bourbons with King Charles III of Spain, since power in the Spanish Empire was centralized trying to avoid bilingualism.

[14] In the 1830s, due to the need to want to build a united and modernized nation, the liberals José María Luis Mora and Valentín Gómez Farías were in favor of integrating the indigenous peoples and merging them with the masses in general and therefore proposed in the government acts that there was no distinction between "Indians" and "non-Indians", only having to resort to the words poor and rich.

This process accelerated changes in the asymmetric relationship between indigenous languages and Spanish, thus Nahuatl was increasingly influenced and modified; As a first consequence, an area of rapid loss of speech and customs is observable, close to the big cities.

[121] Several years after the fall of the Second Empire, the government of President Porfirio Díaz and the Porfirian policies tended to eliminate the native languages, seeking the development and progress of the country under Mexican nationalism.

The latter, who was a Mexican historian, professor of Nahuatl and director of the National Museum of Archaeology, History and Ethnology, rediscovered, published and made known a large number of documents and works written in the language such as the Legend of the Suns.

[128] In 1919, Manuel Gamio, the father of modern anthropology in Mexico, carried out an enormous investigation, recovering testimonies from the oral literature of the Teotihuacán Valley, among other things, together with the linguist Pablo González Casanova.

[73] In 1926, José Manuel Puig Casauranc started a project called Casa del estudiante indígena, with the aim of encouraging the preservation of the spoken language while learning Spanish.

[136] In the early 1950s, R. H. Barlow and Miguel Barrios Espinosa, a Nahua educator,[137] created the Mexihkatl Itonalama, a Mexicano-language newspaper that circulated in several towns in the states of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos.

[132] A year later, Alonso López Mar, Hermenegildo Martínez, and Delfino Hernández, all Nahua teachers from La Huasteca, wrote four-volume grammars of Mexicano whose title is Nahuatlahtolmelahualiztli ("The correct form of the Nahuatl language").