UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN The Relaciones Geográficas Map of Cholula Recognizing the Sacred Meaning of the Great Pyramid to the Map and the City Britiany Daugherty AHIS 898 Space, Time, and Transformation in Early Colonial Mexico April 28, 2014 Friar Motolinía described the city of Cholula, a major population center in the PueblaTlaxcala Valley central Mexico, at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519, as a ‘great sanctuary, like another Rome.’1 The Nahua regarded it as the ‘holy city’ of the Mexica due to the fact that it contained an innumerable amount of temples, at least three or four hundred (some described as many as days of the year), but the number varies depending on the source, and the definite number, it seems, never recorded.2 Cholula’s 1581 map, one of the seventy-one Relaciones Geográficas maps illustrated by indigenous and Spanish artists, accompanied the text written by the Spanish civil servant in Cholula, Gabriel Rojas (Fig. 1).3 The record, intended to detail the history and geography of the newly acquired territory, fulfilled a request in 1577 by King Philip II of Spain.4 On the surface, it appears as simple grid organized Spanish colonial map under the influence of the Christian God.5 However, within the details of the map the ancient inspirations of Cholula’s Great Pyramid or Tlachihualtepetl (“man-made water-mountain”) challenge the dominant Christian translation.6 In the Relaciones map, the artist illustrates the assimilation of the city’s pre-Hispanic history and the colonial Spanish influence, or what Barbara Mundy terms a ‘double 1 Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinía, History of the Indians of New Spain, translated by Francis Borgia Steck, (Washington: Acad. of American Franciscan History, 1951), 72. 2 Sarah Aston Butler, Historic Churches in Mexico: With some of their Legends, (New York, Cincinnati: Abingdon Press, 1915), 29. 3 Serge Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” In The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization, 137-141, (New York: Routledge, 2002), 137. 4 Diantha Steinhilper, “Mapping Identity: Defining Community in the Culhuacán Map of the Relaciones Ge gráf c .” P r 5 Barbara E. Mundy, 74 (2009): 11-32, 11. e g f e ge r gr e f e e c e Page 1 Ge gráf c , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 127. 6 Geoffrey McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico," Ancient Mesoamerica. 7, no. 1 (1996): 1-17. consciousness’ painting the map with the local audience in mind but also with the expectations of the colonizers.7 While not centrally located on the map, the artist displayed the Great Pyramid prominently as central to the history of the city within the details. Originally this research focused on the significance of the church supplanting the indigenous temple that should have been at the summit, however, the prominence of the Great Pyramid, allows it to stand alone, regarded as a temple of worship and pilgrimage, physical temple or not. Illustrations of the Great Pyramid in the Relaciones map, and others, do not include a temple or church at the summit, but instead depict iconography of the importance of the Tlachihualtepetl. The inclusion of several churches on the map illustrates colonial influences, but associates them with the indigenous history by inserting the rounded hill behind each. The San Gabriel Convento also links to the Great Pyramid, but through the sizeable arched portal de peregrinos. In this research, I argue that the pyramid alone was, and is, at the heart of pilgrimage and worship in the sacred city of Cholula, a fact that the Relaciones map’s creator recognized and sought to convey in the details of the illustration of Cholula in both indigenous and colonial details. The Relaciones Map in Detail Gabriel Rojas commissioned an unknown indigenous artist to paint the map of Cholula to accompany his written account of the city.8 The artist painted the map in a palette of earthy browns, greens, greys, and reds on a beige-colored, European watermarked paper.9 The general 7 It is noted that Mundy derives the term from the African American scholar W.E.B. Dubois, see os Rabasa, Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 153. 8 Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar and Clara Bargellini, Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521- Page 2 1821, (Denver: Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art, Denver Art Museum, 2004), 113. 9 Pierce, Gomar and Bargellini, Painting a New World, 1521-1821, 115. layout shows a well-planned colonial city in a grid-like structure, with organized squares of detail that represent an urban city. Wide, straight blank spaces separate the square blocks both horizontally and vertically, giving organization to the map. Residential buildings and church structures sit within the respective blocks. Thirteen equal-sized blocks of residential buildings, each made of squares in varying colors along the outside edge compose the bulk of the map. While the town appears as twenty-four small blocks, the blocks should be understood as “superblocks” that represent several blocks to accommodate the 40,000 homes of around 100,000 in population within eleven or twelve square kilometers.10 The large, imposing Franciscan San Gabriel Convento commands the center of the city, its courtyard facing a hexagonal fountain in an open center space. The map also depicts six churches, numbered counter-clockwise and individually varying in architecture, each in front of a large round hill. Text written in script below each provides specific identification as follows: 1) Sanct Miguel tecpan Cabezera, 2) Santiago Cabezera, 3) Sanct Joan Cabezera, 4) Sancta Maria Cabezera, 5) Sanct Pablo Cabezera, and 6) Sanct Andres Cabezera. Crosses set on top of each building confirm their identification as churches. A central block, two rows of super-blocks in size, interrupts the second and third row. This central block consists of a church structure, the San Gabriel Convento, surrounded by a brick wall that creates a courtyard space, and marked by the text “Ciudad S. Gabriel de Chollola.” On the right side of the San Gabriel Convento, the artist illustrated an arcade of several arches, the portal de peregrinos running perpendicular to the main church. 10 George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972). Page 3 D.E. Dumond, "Demographic Aspects of the Classic Period in Puebla-Tlaxcala," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 28, no. 2 (Summer, 1972): 101-130, 116, 121. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127. Scholarship by Barbara Mundy describes the Cholula map amongst the sixty-nine Relaciones Geográficas maps in her study The Mapping of New Spain. Mundy touches on the mixed styles of the map to display the indigenous ancestries of the city underneath the seemingly straightforward colonial settlement, grid-style map construction.11 Her scholarship of the map focuses on the ‘super-blocks,’ especially those that contain the churches and what those blocks meant to reproduce on the map. She posits that the six churches represent Cholula’s preHispanic calpolli system, the barrios in modern Cholula. Where Mundy does not discuss the importance of the hill glyph on the map, Serge Gruzinski’s Cholula: a Tale of Two Cities discusses the hill as distinguished from other hills as “a mountain so renowned and so famous.”12 As the largest man-made pyramid and “an impressive site of collective memory,” many scholars have emphasized that the importance of the Great Pyramid lays not only in the hill glyph at the top but also in the inclusion of a representation of the hill behind each of the six churches.13 While scholars have discussed the Great Pyramid in detail on the map, and the significance of the hills behind the churches that tie to the Tlachihualtepetl, one finds a lack of research into the relationship between the giant San Gabriel Convento in the center of the map and the Great Pyramid just a block away. Scholarship discusses the presence of Christian crosses and churches at the summit of the Great Pyramid, and yet the visual depiction on the Relaciones map of the Pyramid excludes any Christian insignia. The architecture of the San Gabriel Convento, built with an arcade at a right angle to the façade, and unlike any other Convento built in other cities, inserts another oddity into the Cholula map. This portal de Page 4 peregrinos or Pilgrim’s Arcade associates San Gabriel with the Great Pyramid’s importance in 11 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 126-29. 12 Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137. 13 Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137-138. the city in a significant way. Visual evidence presented here will illustrate the Great Pyramid as a site of worship for thousands of pilgrims, the reason for building San Gabriel’s extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade, as well as the massive size of the Convento. History of the Great Pyramid The Great Pyramid has remained essential to the city’s history and identity, from the time of its building through modern-times. The Relaciones map then shows not only the geography, but also the history, essential for the purpose of the creation of the maps and text in the first place. Originally, the Great Pyramid began in the Late Formative period, erected as a platform for the temple of the city’s primary god, Quetzalcoatl, and after four major construction stages the people abandoned the Pyramid in favor of another Quetzalcoatl temple built in the center of the city.14 Apparently meant to have a temple structure at the summit, the illustrations of the Pyramid in the Relaciones map do not contain any symbols of a religious center, symbols neither of the Feathered Serpent nor of crosses or churches. Instead, the illustration contains a hill glyph that depicts the Pyramid as an overgrown hill with reeds, often with a water source or stream flowing from the base, and a frog or trumpet (in the case of the Relaciones) atop the summit. This hill glyph represents the altapetl, or water-mountain, a ‘metaphoric term for kingdom,’ symbolically more significant to the identity of the city than a temple, cross or church.15 The indigenous artist’s decision to depict the Great Pyramid in this manner marks the city as a Tollan (“among the reeds”) and makes the Pyramid itself a symbol of worship. 14 Geoffrey McCafferty, "Mountain of Heaven, Mountain of Earth: The Great Pyramid of Cholula as Sacred Page 5 Landscape," In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor and Annabeth Headrick, (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2001), 283. 15 McCafferty, "Mountain of Heaven, Mountain of Earth,” 285. The artist depicts the Great Pyramid on the church-dominated map as representing the indigenous presence in the city, as well as the history and symbolism of the mountain. The large hill, covered in reeds and muted red brick, defies the grid structure. The base of the Pyramid, so far-reaching that a single grid block cannot contain it, spills out and concludes in the two blocks to the right and left. The script, “TollanCholula” directly underneath, combining tolin (“reed”) and –tlan (“among”), further distinguishes the glyph and firmly ties the city to the pyramid.16 The term “tlachihualtepetl” appears above the hill, separated by an elongated trumpet, the combination of tlachiualli (“artificial”) and tepetl (“mountain”).17 This not only includes the indigenous symbolism but also the expression of the name of the city in both indigenous and colonial terms; both a native or Spanish reader could identify the city. At the base, black spiral motifs flow past the hill and into the block to the right. The spiraling represents a traditional symbol of the flowing source, or water, symbolizing one of the components necessary to comprise the altepetl hill glyph. Even on this gridded map, the Great Pyramid stands alone, imposing a defiance of space that pushes houses and churches away, a realistic representation of the Pyramid’s sacred space that has not been disturbed (fig. 2). Scholars, like Eleanor Wake, admit that the sequence of events for converting a new territory begins with destroying the temples upon entering the town, replacing it with a wooden cross, and finally replacing that with a church.18 This approach attempted to combine the sanctity of the sacred indigenous site with a new Christian foundation.19 While looking at the 16 Rabasa, Without History, 151. 17 Rabasa, Without History,151. 18 Eleanor Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico, (Norman: University of Page 6 Oklahoma Press, 2010), 103. 19 Joseph Baird and Hugo Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 86. Cholula map I questioned when the date of the building of the church at the summit and why its exclusion on the map. While trying to research the church I found considerable confusion about the dates of erecting crosses and building churches. The church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, not erected not until at least 1594, explains its exclusion on the map. While the dates of the map and church explain its absence, it does not explain why the artist omitted a cross, since research suggests an erected cross at the summit before the painting of the map.20 The omitting of religious insignia by the artist likely confirms that the indigenous people already considered the Great Pyramid as sacred, and that likely Cholula was already a widely held pilgrimage site because of the worship of the Great Pyramid. Of the authors that have described Cholula at the time of the Conquest and the postConquest Christian conversion period, some dispute the presence of a temple and the date of the church on top. Study of the Relaciones maps did not begin until the late nineteenth century when scholars began considering the indigenous involvement in the Spanish conquest. Early historian of Mesoamerican sites Sarah Aston Butler (1915) states that a great temple dedicated to many gods that stood on the summit of the pyramid at the arrival of Cortéz, and that he either built or influenced the building of the church dedicated to the Virgin de los Remedios today.21 Difficult to infer from her description is whether this church represents the one that stands today or a smaller, earlier chapel built in the interim. Her very early scholarship concluding that Cortéz built a church at the summit is less plausible given further scholarship of Cholula. Archeologist Geoffrey McCafferty argues that at the time of the Spanish arrival the Page 7 pyramid had long been abandoned in favor of another religious complex in the center of the city 20 Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexio, 103. 21 Butler, Historic Churches in Mexico, 29. and overgrown, it appeared at first to the conquistadors as a natural hill, rather than a pyramid built of stone and earth, brick and clay.22 Fray Toribio de Benavente, better known as Motolinía, one of the twelve Franciscan friars to arrive in the newly conquered territory of Mexico in 1524, wrote his History of the Indians of New Spain to account their missionary efforts in the New World.23 Motolinía describes the enormity of Cholula’s Great Pyramid, indicating that it’s unfinished state, but that a ‘small old temple’ sat on the top when the friars arrived.24 Motolinía’s description suggests a small edifice atop the massive pyramid, likely in ruins, and nothing resembling an actual, functioning temple structure that existed now in the center of the city, unlike Bulter’s suggestion that a great temple stood atop the Pyramid. The texts that refer to the Great Pyramid misinterpret the presence of a temple at the time of conquest, the building of the church in place of that temple, and the involvement of Cortéz in both destroying the temple and building the church. More than likely the misunderstanding comes from the language used to describe the Pyramid and any remnants that may have existed on the summit. Motolinía and author Jose Rabasa refer to the Great Pyramid as a temple itself, using the word to describe the man-made mountain rather than a stone or wood structure, further suggesting the sacredness.25 Other sources indicate that the summit held not a temple, but simply a small shrine dedicated to a rain deity.26 Due to the abandonment of the Pyramid construction with the arrival of the Tolteca- 22 Geoffrey McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico," 3. 23 Wake, Framing the Sacred, 3. 24 Motolinía, 25 Rabasa, Without History, 151. Page 8 Motolinía, 26 r r f f e e f e f e , 89. , 88. Susan Toby Evans and David L Webster, Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, (New York: Garland Pub., 2001), 141. Chichimeca around 1200 C.E., who, upon conquering the Olmeca-Xicallanca people, moved the religious center to a new Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl in the center of the city, a small shrine is more plausible than a great temple.27 Regarding Motolinía’s small old temple, he states that the Franciscan friars tore it down and erected a cross; however, after struck by lightning twice they excavated the top of the Pyramid and found idols and offerings. This indicates that they erected a cross originally, long after Cortéz visited Cholula. In 1535, Motolinía also states that they placed a blessed bell up there following the excavation to put the devil to rest.28 The building of the first chapel began in 1594, but it is not the golden church seen today, due to earthquake damage and rebuilding in the nineteenth century, the current church was rebuilt in 1864 (fig. 3).29 The Relaciones map does not indicate a cross or bell on the hill glyph at the summit even though the bell would have been present at the time of the map in 1581. Three illustrations within the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca also do not indicate religious insignia, even though painted in 1550, these early Colonial depictions show the Great Pyramid as a natural hill covered with grass. The Tollan-Cholula illustration depicts the hill with a frog perched on top and seven flower symbols, with the swirling water symbol to the left with reeds that denote a Tollan city (fig. 4). The structure below identifies not a temple, but a palace for the Olmeca-Xicallanca high priests.30 Another illustration that shows Tollan rulers has the same imagery, the frog and flowers with the priest’s palace shown to the left (fig. 5). A map of Cholula from this same text depicts the Great Pyramid hill glyph off to the side while the 27 Geoffrey McCafferty, "Ethic Conflict in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico." In Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, edited by Kathryn M. Brown and Travis W. Stanton, 219-244, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003) 231. f e f e Motolinía, 29 Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico, 103. 9 Page r 28 , 88. Baird and Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 86. 30 McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico,” 3. Quetzalcoatl temple sits central to the map (fig. 6). This Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca map includes the Pyramid with the water source below but does not indicate any indigenous religious insignia; the central Quetzalcoatl temple instead symbolizes the city. Compared to these 1550 Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca examples, the Relaciones map artist has altered the iconography of the hill glyph slightly in not including the frog and flower symbolism that identify the life that lives on the grassy hill. Instead, an elongated trumpet is depicted at the top of the hill. This alludes to the several conch shells found in the excavation of the summit and link the colonial Castilian trumpet to the indigenous past as the word trumpet literally translates to ‘copper conch.’31 In addition, the artist has placed significance on the indication of the man-made mountain in the bricked front of the hill rather than the natural grassy hill depicted in the traditional hill glyph of Tlachihualtepetl. This conveys the prominence of the pyramid’s construction as stone and earth, brick and clay and as a pre-Hispanic marvel, which supports its status as a temple of worship. The confusion, and history, of a church atop the Great Pyramid also informs the San Gabriel Convento’s association with the Pyramid. In the early years of the conversion period, the friars built San Gabriel in 1529, on the ruins of the existing Quetzalcoatl temple, while they erected only a cross on the Great Pyramid. Due to this, it seems that the friars focused on the construction of San Gabriel in the early years of monastic conversion rather than erecting a church on the Pyramid summit. I argue that the emphasis on San Gabriel indicates that the Pyramid symbolized a site of veneration without the physical structure at the summit, and Page 10 brought in pilgrims even if not the central religious center. Scholars have indicated San Gabriel’s construction on the site of the Quetzalcoatl temple in order to appropriate that religious 31 Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 138. site, however, the ultimate purpose may have been to welcome in those numerous pilgrims and convert them.32 The Hills and Churches and the Great Pyramid The Relaciones map also represents Cholula’s history, the Great Pyramid presented as a divider of ethnic lines as the center of the Olmeca-Xicallanca culture, while the site of San Gabriel represents the Tolteca-Chichimeca center, a factor of little discussion. The incoming of the Tolteca-Chichimeca ethnically divided the city at the edge of the Great Pyramid, the artist of the map also illustrated this division with a fine line that defies the grid structure and divides the map from top to bottom, between the third and fourth column, or between the San Gabriel Convento column and the TollanCholula column. Author Setha Low’s study suggests that hierarchy and social status often centered nearby the plaza or ceremonial site, making it likely that the Olmeca-Xicallanca houses of importance centered nearby the Pyramid, possibly those depicted as separated by the stream in the center block of the Relaciones map.33 By moving the Quetzalcoatl temple to another location, that became the center of the city for the ToltecaChichimeca and represents the city’s layout in the Relaciones map. Even though not centrally located, the Great Pyramid is more influential to the map than it may seem at first glance. The Tolteca-Chichimeca drove the remaining Olmeca-Xicallanca people to the edge of the city with their Pyramid, a memory and social division that the map artist depicted with a simple line that disregards the colonial grid system. This ethnic division exists in the modern-day city by the 32 Geoffrey McCafferty, "Ethic Conflict in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico," In Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, edited Page 11 by Kathryn M. Brown and Travis W. Stanton, 219-244, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003). 33 Setha M. Low, "Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish-American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean," American Anthropologist: Journal of the American Anthropological Association 97, (1995): 748-762, 752. division of the municipios of San Pedro, Cholula (with the Great Pyramid) and San Andrés, Cholula (with the San Gabriel Convento). The 1581 map artist oriented the map with East at the top of the page, a consideration that has been taking into account when orienting the modern day map to show the municipio divisions of the city (fig. 7).34 Of the twenty-four superblocks, six represent churches set against the background of a rounded hill, these also relate to the Great Pyramid, and to the history of Cholula. These represent not churches but instead cabezeras (the Spanish term “town heads”), or the local administrative seat that divide the city-state. The text in Spanish labels these, but they actually represent the pre-Hispanic capolli system, and represent parishes of the city today.35 The two elaborate churches, larger in size and with towers, on the left and right of the Great Pyramid represent the two neighborhoods, San Miguel and San Andres. The other four churches, more modest than these, indicate the two of more significance because the pre-Hispanic nobility lived in San Miguel (those houses in-between the church and the Pyramid), and that the San Andres neighborhood became so populated that the Franciscans built a second monastery in 1557.36 A further inclusion of the Great Pyramid in the map is evident in the geography of Cholula that indicates the other hills on the map as related to the Pyramid. While Mundy and Eleanor Wake state that the churches still stand in the same modern-day parishes, Cholula’s geography is physically more flat than hilly, confirmed by the Relaciones text that accompanied the map, that mentioned only two other moderate mounds in the landscape.37 Knowing that the Page 12 hills do not geographically represent the space indicates that instead they are symbolic of the 34 Pierce, Gomar and Bargellini, Painting a New World, 114. 35 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127. 36 Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 140. 37 Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137. place sign tepetl, associated with the Tlachihualtepetl that the artist has marked in text at the top of the map.38 However, small houses terraced on the side of each of the six hills differentiate them from the Great Pyramid. Therefore, they do not represent the actual Pyramid because it does not have houses built up, obvious in the illustration of houses on the map clearly separate from the space around the Pyramid. Also obvious by looking at modern-day Cholula where extensive space surrounding the Pyramid shows no houses encroaching on the sacred site (fig 2). San Gabriel Convento and the Great Pyramid Within the existing literature regarding the Relaciones map scholars have discussed the meaning of the churches to the pre-Hispanic city plan, and the Pyramid’s significance as depicted behind each church, however a lack of emphasis exists in the association of the San Gabriel Convento with the Pyramid. Dana Leibsohn’s argument, that the Spanish built their architectural structures as a representation of ‘colonial control and oppression’ on top of ceremonial plazas, supports the building of San Gabriel in the center of the city, on the ruins of the Tolteca-Chichimeca Quetzalcoatl temple that would have been central at the time of conquest.39 Even when the Franciscan friars realized that the Great Pyramid was not a mountain but a sacred pyramid, they only erected a wood cross at the summit in the beginning while they built the enormous Convento in the early years of the colonial period (1529) on top of the Postclassic ceremonial site. Motolinía’s account, that the attempt to erect the cross still in 1534, and the first church not until 1594, keeps with Leibsohn’s study that they first replace the main religious center. The importance of the Great Pyramid as a pilgrimage site at the time of Page 13 38 Wake, Framing the Sacred, 260. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127. 39 Leibsohn, Dana. "Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity." Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. conquest, and how the Pyramid has influenced the building of San Gabriel, and thus how the map artist has depicted the Convento has not been accounted among scholarship thus far. The size and architectural features of San Gabriel point to the popularity and population of the sacred city. The friars came to New Spain instructed to convert the population by any means necessary. Taking this into account, and the fact that pilgrims would have already been visiting the Great Pyramid as a sacred site, they used the popularity of the site to convert those incoming indigenous to Christianity. Visual clues in San Gabriel planning and architecture indicate its association to the Great Pyramid, both physically and representationally on the Relaciones map. One visual clue on the map lies in the crosses atop the towers of the chapel on the left side of the façade, where the crosses defy the gridded block. The two crosses are so tall that they project out of the central block in the same way that the Great Pyramid’s base does to the right and left. The odd architectural features of San Gabriel indicate an influence in the building of the Convento to accommodate the pilgrims of the Pyramid. When compared to San Gabriel today, it appears that the Relaciones map artist has captured near perfectly the architecture of the Convento building, including the east running portal de peregrinos, on the right side, depicted by a long arcade of arches (fig. 8). John McAndrew states that the portería or portal de peregrinos, stood on the façade with the monastery behind in sixteenth century Mexican architecture, and may be three arches wide, up to six in grander establishments.40 The oddity of a seventeenarched portería, with three on the façade and then fourteen at a right angle to the building, Page 14 indicates that the architects understood a large population of pilgrims would be taking rest there. The construction of San Gabriel, with the portal adjacent to the façade represents a different 40 McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, 164. construction than most every other Convento built in the sixteenth century, which generally followed a prototypical plan for building Conventos in this century (fig. 9).41 In relation to the sixteenth century architecture, McAndrew states that only a few other monastery churches have a portico at a right angle to the façade like at San Gabriel (Cuilapan, Tochimilco, and San Francisco at Puebla).42 A further oddity in the architecture, which also relates to the portal, is in the standard placement of the four posas at the corners of the atrium. In addition to the extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade to the right of the façade, San Gabriel’s architectural plan shows the absence of one of the four prototypical posas, or smaller chapels at which priests paused during an outdoor procession, in order to accommodate the portal (fig. 10).43 The prototypical sixteenth century convent plan had a posa in each corner of the atrio, or open atrium, allowing for a counterclockwise procession (fig. 11).44 San Gabriel, however, only has three posas with a small altar for devout individuals, the southeastern posa having been removed for the placement of the extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade, signifying its importance. The sizeable atrium also has two large entradas, indicated in the architecture on the map and in the physical architecture, showing that the number of pilgrims to the convent necessitated two entrances to allow for a dense flow of people. In conclusion, the influence of the Great Pyramid to the Cholula Relaciones Geográficas map appears illustrated in almost aspect of the Colonial style grid. Scholars have already 41 Baird and Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 49. 42 John McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Chapels, and Other Page 15 Studies, Cambridge, (Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 616. 43 44 McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, 281. Samuel Edgerton and orge P rez de Lara, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 41. discussed several aspects of Cholula’s Relaciones map, including the importance of the blocks, the churches and the TollanCholula hill glyph. However, the influence of the Tlachihualtepetl as integrated into almost every aspect of the map, and its great influence to the history presented in the map is lacking. Visually, the map shows the history of Cholula in the black line that separates the map at the Great Pyramid and the San Gabriel Convento. This symbolizes the Tolteca-Chichimec’s conquering of the Olmeca-Xicallanca people, the moving of the Quetzalcoatl temple and the municipio division of San Pedro, Cholula and San Andrés, Cholula still present today. The map also illustrates the importance of the Great Pyramid to the San Gabriel Convento in the form of the extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade, an oddity amongst sixteenth century Mesoamerican Conventos, built at a right angle to the façade. The size of the Convento itself and the Pilgrim’s Arcade indicate that the Franciscan friars assumed the importance of the Pyramid as a site of worship and built the Convento in such a size to accommodate the vast number of pilgrims. In the process of accommodation, they also used the ancient site of veneration as a means to convert the indigenous to Christianity, ultimately their goal in New Spain. The absence of depiction of any religious insignia on top of the Tlachihualtepetl in the Relaciones map indicates that Pyramid itself as a site of worship and the map artist sought to Page 16 convey the history of the Pyramid to the sacred city of Cholula. Bibliography Acu a, Ren . e c e ge gráf c e g . ol. 5. M xico: niversidad acional Aut noma de M xico, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropol gicas, 1 82. Baird, Joseph and Hugo Rudinger. The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Butler, Sarah Aston. Historic Churches in Mexico: With some of their Legends. New York, Cincinnati: Abingdon Press, 1915. Dumond, D. E. "Demographic Aspects of the Classic Period in Puebla-Tlaxcala." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 28, no. 2 (Summer, 1972): 101-130. Edgerton, Samuel . and orge P rez de Lara. Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Evans, Susan and David L. Webster. Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Pub., 2001. Gruzinski, Serge. “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities.” In The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization, 137-141. New York: Routledge, 2002. Humphrey, Chris. Mexico City. Emeryville, Calif.; [Enfield: Avalon Travel; Hi Marketing, distributor], 2005. Kubler, George. Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972. Leibsohn, Dana. "Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity." Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. Low, Setha M. "Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish-American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean." American Anthropologist: Journal of the American Anthropological Association 97, (1995): 748-762. McAndrew, John. The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Page 17 Chapels, and Other Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. McCafferty, Geoffrey. "Altepetl: Cholula’s Great Pyramid as Water Mountain." In Flowing through Time: Exploring Archaeology through Humans and their Aquatic Environment: Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary, edited by Steinbrenner, Larry, Beau Cripps, Metaxia Georgopoulos, and Jim Carr, 20-25: Archaeological Association, University of Calgary Press, 2008. McCafferty, Geoffrey. "Ethic Conflict in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico." In Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, edited by Brown, M. Kathryn and Travis W. Stanton, 219-244. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003. ———. "Mountain of Heaven, Mountain of Earth: The Great Pyramid of Cholula as Sacred Landscape." In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Koontz, Rex, Reese-Taylor, Kathryn, Headrick, Annabeth. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2001. ———. "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico." Ancient Mesoamerica. 7, no. 1 (1996): 1-17. r Motolinía, Fray Toribio de Benavente. f e f e . Translated by Borgia Steck, Francis. Washington: Acad. of American Franciscan History, 1951. Mundy, Barbara E. The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Ge gráf c . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pierce, Donna, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar and Clara Bargellini. Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821. Denver: Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art, Denver Art Museum, 2004. Rabasa, os . Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Simons, Bente. "The Codex of Cholula a Preliminary Study." 1962. Steinhilper, Diantha. “Mapping Identity: Defining Community in the Culhuacán Map of the Relaciones Geográfic .” P r 74 (2009): 11-32. Wake, Eleanor. Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico. Norman: Page 18 University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. 19 Page Figure 1. Cholula, Tlaxcala, 1581, 31x44 cm, from Relaciones Geográficas, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin). 20 Page Figure 2. Modern-day Cholula, showing the Great Pyramid and the space around it that is sacred and has not been imposed on. 21 Page Figure 3. Drawing showing colonial church capping pyramid, 1834, from ARTstor. Page 22 Figure 4. Tollan-Cholula, 1550, from Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin). Figure 5. Tollan-Cholula and Olmeca-Xicalanca Rulers, 1550, from Historia ToltecaChichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin). 23 Page Figure 6. Map of Tollan-Cholula and Tolteca-Chichimeca rulers, 1550, from Historia ToltecaChichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin). 24 Page Figure 7. Modern-day Cholula map, showing the division of San Andrés and San Pedro compared to the Relaciones map division. 25 Page Figure 8. Modern-day San Gabriel Monastery compared to the Convento de San Gabriel Relaciones map architecture and portal de peregrinos. Page 26 Figure 9. Façade elevation of a sixteenth century monastic church from Baird, The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810, 1962. Figure 10. Plan for the Franciscan San Gabriel Convento, with key elements indicated that correspond to the prototypical convento plan: g. portería, l. posas, o. entrada. Figure 11. Diagram of a prototypical 16th century Mexican convento, with key elements indicated: g. portería l. posas, Page 27 o. entrada, From Edgerton and P rez de Lara, Theaters of Conversion, 2001.