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Notes introduction A note on transcriptions and translations of colonial documents: Our transcriptions attempt to preserve the orthography and punctuation of the original documents , while at the same time making them comprehensible to twenty-first century readers. Thus, we spell out most abbreviations and generally (but not always) convert the letter “u” to “v” and the “f” to “s,” but we do not convert “y” to “i” or add the letter “h” where it is missing. We do not include accent marks in our transcriptions , as they were not used in the colonial period; for this reason, names like “Popayán” will appear with an accent mark in the text, but without an accent in documentary citations. We do not attempt to translate punctuation into our modern system; for example, we retain the equal sign (=) for distinguishing members of a list. We do not reconcile divergent spellings of a word or a proper name, which might be spelled in different ways, even in the same document; this is particularly true for toponyms and anthroponyms in native languages, which Spanish scribes struggled to grasp using Castillian phonological conventions, although they were not proficient in the language in question. Our English translations sometimes omit the constant use of legal terms such as dicho and dicha (“said” or “aforementioned”) in an effort to make the quotations more readable. Colonial documentary writing frequently has run-on sentences. In the interests of making quotations in translation more readable, we have opted for dividing some run-on sentences into more coherent phrases; the Spanish originals contained in the notes preserve the runon quality of these quotes. In the citations to the Archivo General de Indias (agi), l. stands for legajo (file, docket), n. for número (number), and r. for ramo (section, division, department). 1. He is called “Don Diego de la Torre” in documents, but since most publications refer to him as Don Diego de Torres (Gálvez Piñal 1974; Rojas 1965) and he is remembered with this name in popular memory in Colombia, we will also call 264 • • • noteS to introduction him thus in the following pages. In the early colonial period Muisca cacicazgos passed through the female line, that is, from a maternal uncle to his nephew. 2. For example, Torres cites Charles V’s New Laws, proclaimed in 1542, in his 1586 report, or relación, “De como son mui mal tradados los pueblos” (About how the pueblos are very mistreated):“Your Majesty also orders through the New Law and royal ordinance that the pueblo or pueblos de indios must be better treated and conserved” (Tambien manda Vuestra Magestad por ley nueva y hordenan ça real que el pueblo o pueblos de yndios . . . sean major tratados y conservados ) (agi/S 1586b, 229r). The report is twenty-two chapters long. 3. Don Diego de Torres’s life is chronicled in minute detail, including transcriptions of his immense corpus of petitions and accusations held at the Archivo General de Indias, by Ulíses Rojas (1965). Esperanza Gálvez Piñal (1974) focuses on the role of Don Diego in motivating the Crown to order a visita, or royal inspection , to investigate abuses committed against the indigenous population of Santafé and Tunja in the second half of the sixteenth century. Hoyos García (2002, part III) analyzes in detail a number of documents relating to the mestizo cacique, with an eye to comprehending his relationship with legal writing. The New Kingdom of Granada (Nuevo Reino de Granada) was the name given the jurisdiction of the Audiencia based in Santafé; in the eighteenth century, after becoming a viceroyalty, its name was changed to New Granada (Nueva Granada). 4. For letters and petitions to the Crown, written in Spanish and Latin by Mexican nobility, see Emma Pérez-Rocha and Rafael Tena (2000, 95–404). 5. Although the two volumes of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega are not illustrated, his understanding of the value of pictorial images is expressed at the end of his work, where he describes himself in Spain during March of 1604, having received a set a of documents composed by the descendants of the Inca ruling families to be presented at the court. Along with the written documents and “for clearer proof and demonstration, they [the Inca descendants] included a genealogical tree showing the royal line from Manco Capac to Huyana Capac painted on a Vara [unit of measurement of cloth] and a half of white China Silk. The Incas were depicted...

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