Totonac

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Totonac
Totonacs of Papantla, Veracruz performing the "voladores" ritual
Regions with significant populations
 Mexico (Veracruz,Puebla)411,266
Languages
Totonac languages, Spanish
Religion
Indigenous Religion, Christianity
PeopleTotonac
LanguageTotonac
CountryTotonacapan

The Totonac are an

Teotihuacán (a city which they claim to have built). Until the mid-19th century they were the world's main producers of vanilla.[1]

Etymology

The term "totonac" refers to the people living in Totonacapan. There is no agreement as to the origin of the term. Some authors have translated the term "totonac" as a Nahuatl word meaning "People of Hot Land". The translation for this word in the Totonac Language, according to sources, is "toto-nacu" meaning "three hearts" signifying their three cities or cultural centers:

Tajin and Teayo. Evidence, however, is inconclusive.[2]

Geography and traditional lifestyle

Aztec Triple Alliance
or Ēxcān Tlahtolōyān.
A ceramic Totonac statuette

In the 15th century, the Aztecs labeled the region of the Totonac "

slaves
to the Totonac in exchange for subsistence maize.

Food culture

Totonacs in the twentieth century led the peoples growing the highest quality vanilla, and most Mexican vanilla was produced by Totonacs. Their association with agriculture of vanilla pre-dates the arrival of Columbus in the New World. While vanilla was long significant to Totonac culture, its importance as an export good did not emerge until the early-eighteenth century, when they traded with other Totonacs and with people in northern Oaxaca. The first regulation of the harvesting of Mexican vanilla appears in 1743, when the mayor of Papantla attempted to use a law for personal profit on the vanilla harvest. A second law regulating was promulgated in 1767, after Totonac vanilla growers in Colipa complained about thieves stealing immature vanilla pods. During Humboldt's travels in Mexico, most European imports of vanilla conveyed through the port of Veracruz, and Totonacs in the Misantla region harvested about 700,000 vanilla beans per year.[3]

There is a total absence of

plantains
and avocados. Men hunted and fished shark, turtle, deer, armadillo, opossums, and frogs. Women raised turkeys and dogs. Peasants as well as nobles ate corn porridge in the morning. Lunch was the main meal of the day and consisted of manioc, bean stew or even a rich meat sauce for the nobles. Fish and seafood as well as game was eaten by both nobles and farmers. The agave provided liquor.

Clothing

Totonac women were expert weavers and embroiderers; they dressed grandly and braided their hair with

quetzal
feathers. Hair was kept long with a thick tuft of hair on the top tied up with a ribbon.

Housing

Houses were generally thatched and had an overhang. They were rectangular in shape.

History

The region of Totonacapan was subject to Aztec military incursions from the mid-15th century until the Spanish arrival. Despite the establishment of Aztec fortifications throughout the region, rebellion was endemic. Major Totonac centers were

Tenochtitlán.[4]: 107–110  The Totonacs of Cempoala joined forces with Cortés,[4]: 113  and along with the Tlaxcalan people, contributed significantly to the Spanish conquest. Totonacapan became incorporated into the Spanish regime with comparatively little violence, but the region was ravaged by epidemic diseases during the 16th century. Today, approximately 90,000 Totonac
speakers reside in the region.

Language

The Totonac people traditionally speak

Tepehua, form a small language family. This means that Totonacan languages are not related to other Native Mesoamerican languages such as those in the Mayan, Oto-Manguean or Uto-Aztecan families. There are several local varieties of Totonac that are not mutually intelligible. The first grammatical and lexical descriptions of Totonac accessible to Europeans (now lost) were by Fray Andrés de Olmos, who also wrote the first such descriptions of Nahuatl and Huastec
(Teenek).

The main varieties of Totonac are:

Religion

Most present-day Totonacs are

Roman Catholic. However, their Christian practice is often mixed with vestiges of their traditional religion, a notable instance being la Costumbre, a survival of an old rite of sacrifice in which various seeds are mixed with earth and the blood of fowls and dispersed over the planting fields.[5]

The traditional religion was described in the early 1960s by the French ethnographer, Alain Ichon.[6] No other major essay on Totonac religion has been found. Mother goddesses played a very important role in Totonac belief, since each person's soul is made by them.[7] If a newly born child dies, its soul "does not go to the west, the place of the dead, but to the east with the Mothers".[8] Ichon has also preserved for posterity an important myth regarding a maize deity, a culture hero with counterparts among most other cultures of the Gulf Coast and possibly also represented by the Classic Maya maize god. As to traditional curers, it is believed that they "are born during a storm, under the protection of thunder. They think that a lightning bolt strikes the house of a new-born baby ..., and makes it ... under its possession".[9]

Other known deities include Chichiní (the sun[10]) and Aktzin.

See also

Notes

  1. .
  2. ^ Sandstrom, Alan R., and E. Hugo García Valencia (Eds.). Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press (2005). p. 192
  3. ^ Bruman, Henry (1948). "The Culture History of Mexican Vanilla". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 28 (3): 360–376. Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  4. ^
  5. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14794a.htm
  6. ^ Ichon 1973
  7. ^ Alfredo López Austin (transl. by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 161, citing Inchon, p. 46
  8. ^ Alfredo López Austin (transl. by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 162, citing Ichon, p. 209
  9. ^ Alfredo López Austin (transl. by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 169, citing Ichon, p. 287
  10. ^ "Totonac Religion | Encyclopedia.com".

References

External links