Amber Brian; Bradley Benton; Peter B Villella sku-849139322

Amber Brian; Bradley Benton; Peter B Villella present History of the Chichimeca Nation, a hardcover in Latin American History Books (sku-849139322). Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578–1650), a descendant of Spanish settlers and Nahua rulers, collected indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts and wrote about Mexico before and during the conquest.

Composed in the first half of the seventeenth century, roughly a hundred years after the Spanish arrived, his chronicle draws on native accounts and memories while using a medieval chronicle style. It recounts adventure, romance, seduction, betrayal, war, heroism, misfortune and tragedy.

Written as colonization and depopulation devastated indigenous communities, its descriptions of Nahua culture, court politics and imperial life challenged European portrayals of native Mexico as savage or ignorant. Though unpublished for centuries, the work informed familiar accounts of the Nahuas and was consulted by scholars across several fields.

Its manuscript was lost in the 1820s and rediscovered in the 1980s. This is the first English translation and the first edition in any language based entirely on the original manuscript. An introduction and notes discuss the author's historiographical legacy.