Codex Sierra: A Nahuatl-Mixtec Book of Accounts from Colonial Mexico
One of the earliest texts written in a Native American language, the Codex Sierra is a sixteenth-century book of accounts from Santa Catalina Texupan, a community in the Mixteca region of the modern state of Oaxaca. Kevin Terraciano’s transcription and translation, the first in more than a half century, combine with his deeply informed analysis to make this the most accurate, complete, and comprehensive English-language edition of this rare manuscript.
The first known record of an indigenous population’s integration into the transatlantic economy, and of the impact of the transpacific trade on a lucrative industry in the region, the Codex Sierra provides a unique window on the world of the Mixteca less than a generation after the conquest—a view rendered all the more precise, clear, and coherent by this new translation and commentary.
About the Author
Kevin Terraciano is Professor of History and Director of the Latin American Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries and coeditor of The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.
