El título primordial tarasco de Tócuaro, Michoacán

Primordial titles form an important category in the extensive corpus of native documents from 17th and 18th century New Spain. Generally made by local scribes (carariecha) or regional specialists who combined information from older documents and oral tradition, they emphasize the foundation of the villages and the boundaries of their lands. These local histories were —and often still are— used whenever the territorial integrity of the community was threatened by their neighbors. The present article includes the transcription, translation and analysis of a primordial title written in the Tarascan or P’urhépecha language. The document, now kept in the National Library of Anthropology and History (BNAH) in Mexico City, originally comes from Tócuaro, a small village on the southern shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán.