In 1985, I studied Mayan hieroglyphic writing with Professor Linda Schele at her annual spring break Maya Hieroglyphic Workshops at the University of Texas at Austin. I taught introductory classes for her in 1987 and 1988 at that workshop. In 1989, Professor Schele asked me to found a Mixtec Pictogram Writing Workshop as an adjunct to the larger seminar because she wanted to increase the scope of the workshop to include as many Mesoamerican cultures as possible.
I subsequently taught two master classes on the Mixtec codices under Professor Schele’s aegis at the University of Texas. Then followed a series of articles in 1991 about the first side of Codex Zouche-Nuttall for the periodical Texas Notes on Pre-Columbian Art, Writing, and Culture as well as an article in 1993 for the same journal, coauthored with Timothy Albright and Rex Koontz, titled “Eight Deer Plays Ball Again: Notes on a New Codiacal Cognate.” These are in the University of Texas Department of Fine Arts online files (CHAAAC). Mr. Albright and I also presented the five-hundredyear genealogy of Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints at the 1993 SAA meeting in Anaheim, California. We demonstrated Lord Eight Wind’s descendants as recorded in several of the Mixtec codex genealogies from AD 935 until the Spanish Colonial era.
I taught the first Mixtec Seminar on Codex Selden in 1992 at the UT Maya Meetings Long Workshops, but on the proviso that an established scholar had to be engaged to direct subsequent annual sessions. Dr. John M. D. Pohl was that scholar, and in the next twelve years we established and codirected the curricula and taught the seminar. Professor Pohl’s leadership enabled me to evolve my thinking regarding the largely unexplicated sections of Codex Zouche-Nuttall obverse, which had been the subject of my previous articles. My master’s thesis at Texas State University–San Marcos, which due to space limitations concerned only the first eight pages of Codex Zouche- Nuttall obverse, was the direct result of my many years of study, research, and original thought about the topic. This book is an expansion of that thesis and a collection of essays on various topics in Mixtec codices.
In January of 2007, I taught an anthropology course at Texas State University titled Mixtec Codices: The Prehispanic Historical Literature of Oaxaca. The syllabus included codex material as history (the War from Heaven, the Siege of Hua Chino), biography (Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw of Tilantongo, Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec–Hua Chino, and Lord Two Rain of Tilantongo), and genealogy (the first and second dynasties of Tilantongo and the second dynasty of Jaltepec). The final exam was led by the graduate students (three from Texas State University–San Marcos, two from the University of Texas at Austin). Under their leadership, the undergraduates presented sections from the codices consisting of Power Point presentations demonstrating the chronological biography of Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw read from Codex Zouche-Nuttall reverse, Codex Alfonso Caso, and Codex Bodley.
I conducted the final 2007 Mixtec Codex Seminar at UT over spring break and essentially retaught in synopsis the Texas State–San Marcos course—but in three days. Participants, including those from Guatemala, received course outlines and Power Point presentations of essential class material regarding my work and research in Mixtec codices.
The reader can see that I began this study late in life, never intending to create a long academic career based on it. Although I researched everything available to me, my approach to the Mixtec documents evolved into something unique: the ancient Mixtecs and their heroes of old Oaxaca survived for me in their manuscripts as stories, songs, sagas, dances, playlists, and dynastic propaganda/histories. The word “history” always carries the sense of “retrospective,” yet the individuals and events in the Mixtec codices are delightfully current and contemporary, transferring all the excitement and drama of an archaeological culture into the modern world. The manuscript scribes still speak, but their words are only available to those who can hear with their eyes, as when reading music. The Mixtec narratives are not only history but also fascinating introductions and extended stories of a vital, dynamic people who found their own unique way of transcending time and space. Let us now undertake a journey—sometimes difficult, perhaps controversial, but always fascinating—and meet these powerful men and women of ancient Oaxaca.