A Look From the Household: Historiographical Notes on the Indigenous People of Mexico.

This essay is a reflection on the historiography in English based on documents in Nahuatl, Mayan, and Mixtec, three of the most prominent Indigenous languages of colonial Mexico. Since the first scholarly works appeared roughly forty years ago, the field has proven to be one of the most innovative and prolific in early Latin American history. The focus is on a particular type of sources, testaments, and a specific aspect of Indigenous society, the household, conceived both as physical space and as a group of people and their possessions. The household stands as the most intimate place where colonization and conversion are negotiated. With a focus on the long eighteenth century, the article highlights how the attention to Indigenous households and languages can illuminate the ways in which we study colonial encounters, and the spaces Indigenous individuals carved out for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]