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Café con Nawatl: A photograph of an actual Macuahuitl
While doing research for the makwawitl (macuahuitl, macana) episode of my youtube series, I came across a lot of really interesting information that I thought was worth examining further. One of the things that I came across was the catalog of the Royal Armory of Madrid, Spain. In particular, a page illustrated by an Italian artist depicting a makwawitl and another Mesoamerican weapon known as a tepoztopilli. The tepoztopilli is basically a lance or a spear, although it wasn’t really intended to be thrown. Next to these two pieces of weaponry are two shields. The shields are interesting, because neither one is Mesoamerican. In fact, both of them appear to be Turkish shields.
I mentioned this page because I also came across a French etching made from a fascinating photograph. This etching shows a set of Samurai armor, holding the same makwawitl from the catalog of Madrid, and one of the Turkish shields from that same page. It appears that somebody put together a display, and I guess they must have thought that these items looked exotic enough to go together. So we ended up with a display consisting of Japanese Samurai armor wielding a Turkish shield and holding a Mesoamerican makwawitl.
I made it my mission to find the actual photograph that the etching was based on. Luckily, I was able to do exactly that when I came across a book called Guerreros Aztecas by a man named Marco Antonio Obregon. On page 96 you can see two photographs, both featuring Samurai armor (which kind of looks jumbled together itself). One of them is holding the tepoztopilli from the armory catalog and one of the Turkish shields. The other set of armor is holding the makwawitl from the catalog along with the other Turkish shield. If you’ll notice, the makwawitl is really, really long. In fact it’s bigger than any makwawitl that I’ve ever seen. It extends far beyond the frame of the photograph.
