David Charles Wright
College of Michoacán, Mexico
Objectives
I applied for a visiting fellowship at the Princeton University Library
to gather data for two intertwined projects: a contribution on colonial Mexican
Otomi manuscripts (pictorial, alphabetic, and mixed) for a forthcoming supplement
to the Guide to ethnohistorical sources,
Handbook of Middle American Indians, and a Ph.D. dissertation presently
in preparation, entitled Los otomíes: lengua, cultura y comunicación gráfica,
to be presented in the Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales, El Colegio de Michoacán.
The following
excerpt, taken from my initial proposal outlines my research goals at Princeton:
I chose the Princeton University Library as one of the collections that
I would like to visit because it owns an important Otomí pictographic catechism,
painted in a style often called "Testerian," in which the Catholic doctrine
was written with signs apparently developed just for that purpose. I was unable
to find this manuscript in Princeton University Library's database (MASC), but
I have a xerographic copy of a published facsimile: Gillett G. Griffin,
An Otomí Catechism at Princeton, Princeton
University Library, 1968. What most interests me about this manuscript is Griffin's
claim that "The Princeton catechism [...] seems primarily to be a rebus containing
[...] what might be some Otomí syllabic substitutes." I am currently developing
a database of Otomí pictorial graphemes, and phoneticism is one of the aspects
I'm most interested in. Griffin reports that in 1837 a Catholic priest and professor
of Otomí language in the 19th century, Francisco Pérez, "made a translation
of our manuscript into Spanish, line-for-line." It is not clear from this reference
whether or not the Pérez translation is also owned by the Princeton University
Library; this is something I would look into during my proposed visit.
While at Princeton University I would like to look at the materials in
the William Gates / Robert Garrett collection (acquired by Princeton in 1949)
for other possible Otomí manuscripts and cartographic documents in the native
tradition. I would also like to take advantage of the opportunity to copy articles
relevant to my project from my "Lacunae"
list, including sources that I have been unable to locate in the Mexican libraries
that I habitually use for my research.
The Friends
of Princeton University awarded me a grant of $2,500 to travel from my home
in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico to Princeton to work on these projects.
In addition to a fifteen-day stay at Princeton (October 1-15, 2002), this grant
facilitated my work at the Newberry Library in Chicago, which awarded me $1,200
for a stay of one month (September 3-30). Since the more modest Newberry grant
did not cover airfare, I combined both Fellowships into a six-week research
trip. The two grants combined covered all of my expenses for this period, including
air-fare and other transportation, room, board, and reproductions (several reels
of microfilm, a few color slides, thousands of xerox copies, and a several publications).
In the
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, I found that the Garrett Collection
was being reorganized, and that no formal catalog was available. However, due
to Alfred Bush having ordered the manuscripts in this collection by language,
I was able to quickly locate the Otomi manuscripts. There are only three: the
pictorial Testerian codex published by Griffin, cited above (Garrett Collection
[WC036], provisional no. 290); a related manuscript by a catholic priest, Francisco
Pérez, with an interpretation of the latter manuscript in Spanish, followed
by copies of two additional Testerian pictorials, also with interpretations
in Spanish (Garrett Collection [WC036], provisional no. 291); and a lengthy
manuscript (over 331 folios) in tiny, close-spaced calligraphy with an abundance
of phonetic diacritics, in Otomi, consisting mostly of sermons (Garrett Collection
[WC036], provisional no. 289).
The first
two manuscripts (nos. 290 and 291), while interesting and important, were somewhat
disappointing, since they contained no alphabetic texts in Otomi. It was useful
to examine them, however, since they will be included in the Handbook of Middle American Indians supplement,
mentioned above. While at Princeton I purchased the facsimile edition of the
pictorial manuscript, surprisingly still in existence after publication in 1968,
and made a complete transcription of the Pérez manuscript, copying the pictorial
signs and alphabetic glosses onto 8 x 5" file cards.
The last
manuscript (no. 289), practically unknown to contemporary Otomi specialists,
was a surprise, and together with a related manuscript at the Newberry Library,
permitted me to identify and define a school of writers in the Otomi language
that has only been hinted at in the published literature. Marginal notes in
Spanish give a tantalizing peek at the wealth of ethnohistorical material that
a full translation will reveal, especially in one of the sermons toward the
end of the manuscript. I transcribed all of the headings and marginal notes,
as well as the index and a few sample texts, and ordered a microfilm copy, which
should reach me sometime this year.
Other
activities in the Rare Books and Special Collections reading room included reviewing
hard-to-find sources relating to these and other Otomi manuscripts, such as
old sales catalogs of the Gates Collection (the source of much of the Garrett
collection) and nineteenth-century guides to the Aubin Collection now at the
Bibliothèque Nationale (Aubin probably owned the Testerian pictorial and Pérez
manuscripts now at Princeton). I was able to finish my work in this Department
during the first half of my fellowship, so I spent the remaining days in the
general stacks of the Firestone Library, making xerox copies of sources from
my lacunae list, most of which
I was able to locate. The open-shelf policy enabled me to find additional resources
related to my research projects. I also visited three other libraries at Princeton
University to obtain copies of material housed in collections outside of the
Firestone Library.
To sum
up, I was able to accomplish all of the goals established in my initial proposal,
as well as locating and processing additional materials, which will contribute
greatly to both of my interrelated research projects. I also gathered sufficient
material, at both the Princeton University and Newberry libraries, to write
an article on the Otomi manuscripts in these collections, including general
descriptions, comments on their significance, notes on their provenance, and
comments on the collectors that owned them over the centuries, including colorful
anecdotes gleaned from unpublished manuscripts by both William Gates and Edward
Ayer (collectors that formed the greater part of the indigenous language materials
at the Princeton University and Newberry libraries). This article will be finished
soon and I will send a copy to the staff at the Department of Rare Books and
Special Collections when it is published.
libraryf@princeton.edu
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