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105-506: Nahuatl ( English: / ˈ n ɑː w ɑː t əl / NAH -wah-təl ; Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwat͡ɬ] ), Aztec , or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family . Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahuas , most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in

210-484: A pitch accent , such as Nahuatl of Oapan, Guerrero . Many modern dialects have also borrowed phonemes from Spanish, such as /β, d, ɡ, ɸ/ . In many Nahuatl dialects vowel length contrast is vague, and in others it has become lost entirely. The dialect spoken in Tetelcingo (nhg) developed the vowel length into a difference in quality: Most varieties have relatively simple patterns of allophony . In many dialects,

315-595: A statute in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, and made part of the common law in Peyote Way Church of God, Inc. v. Thornburgh , (5th Cir. 1991); it is also in administrative law at the 21 CFR 1307.31 which states for "Special Exempt Persons": Section 1307.31 Native American Church. The listing of peyote as a controlled substance in Schedule I does not apply to

420-477: A visionary sacrament that opens a pathway to the other deities. Peyote is considered sacramental and sacred in the Native American Church, also known as Peyotism. It is used in rituals for "a closer understanding of the spiritual world" and to commune with God and the spirits (including the deceased) in order to receive spiritual power, guidance, reproof, and healing. To many followers, peyote itself

525-453: A Native American patient with a history of alcohol abuse. Peyote is also known to cause potentially serious variations in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and pupillary dilation . Research into the Huichol natives of central-western Mexico, who have taken peyote regularly for an estimated 1,500 years or more, found no evidence of chromosome damage in either men or women. According to

630-518: A burial cave in west central Coahuila , Mexico have been similarly analyzed and dated to 810 to 1070 CE. From earliest recorded time, peyote has been used by indigenous peoples, such as the Huichol of northern Mexico and by various Native American tribes, native to or relocated to the Southern Plains states of present-day Oklahoma and Texas. Its usage was also recorded among various Southwestern Athabaskan-language tribal groups. The Tonkawa ,

735-501: A chronicle of the royal lineage of Tenochtitlan by Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc ; Cantares Mexicanos , a collection of songs in Nahuatl; a Nahuatl-Spanish/Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary compiled by Alonso de Molina ; and the Huei tlamahuiçoltica , a description in Nahuatl of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe . Grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages were composed throughout

840-467: A communion breakfast on Sunday morning. Mescaline is listed as a Schedule III controlled substance under the Canadian Controlled Drugs and Substances Act , but peyote is specifically exempt. Possession and use of peyote plants is legal. Non-drug uses of peyote in religious ceremonies by the Native American Church and its members is exempt from registration. This law has been codified as

945-407: A few hundred people, perhaps only a few dozen". According to the 2000 census by INEGI, Nahuatl is spoken by an estimated 1.45 million people, some 198,000 (14.9%) of whom are monolingual. There are many more female than male monolinguals, and women represent nearly two-thirds of the total number. The states of Guerrero and Hidalgo have the highest rates of monolingual Nahuatl speakers relative to

1050-449: A genetic relation between Corachol and Nahuan (e.g. Merrill (2013) ). Kaufman recognizes similarities between Corachol and Aztecan, but explains them by diffusion instead of genetic evolution. Most scholars view the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum. Below is a representation of the internal classification of the language family based on Shaul (2014) . The classification reflects

1155-493: A great deal of autonomy in the local administration of indigenous towns during this period, and in many Nahuatl-speaking towns the language was the de facto administrative language both in writing and speech. A large body of Nahuatl literature was composed during this period, including the Florentine Codex , a twelve-volume compendium of Aztec culture compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún ; Crónica Mexicayotl ,

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1260-422: A language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid: Numic , Takic , Pimic, Taracahitic , Corachol , and Aztecan . That leaves two ungrouped languages: Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed " isolates within the family"). Some recent studies have begun to question the unity of Taracahitic and Takic and computer-assisted statistical studies have begun to question some of

1365-525: A language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (Indigenous Languages Institute) recognizes 30 individual varieties within the "language group" labeled Nahuatl. The Ethnologue recognizes 28 varieties with separate ISO codes. Sometimes Nahuatl

1470-515: A large spectrum of phenethylamine alkaloids. The principal one is mescaline for which the content of Lophophora williamsii is about 0.4% fresh (undried) and 3–6% dried. French botanist Charles Antoine Lemaire described the species as Echinocactus williamsii in 1845. It was placed in the new genus Lophophora in 1894 by American botanist John Merle Coulter . L. williamsii is native to southern North America , mainly distributed in Mexico . In

1575-523: A northern branch including all the languages of the US and a southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one. Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted: Numic (including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni ) and the Californian languages (formerly known as

1680-876: A part of their efforts, missionaries belonging to several religious orders —principally Jesuits , as well as Franciscan and Dominican friars—introduced the Latin alphabet to the Nahuas. Within twenty years of the Spanish arrival, texts in Nahuatl were being written using the Latin script. Simultaneously, schools were founded, such as the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1536, which taught both indigenous and classical European languages to both Native Americans and priests. Missionaries authored of grammars for indigenous languages for use by priests. The first Nahuatl grammar, written by Andrés de Olmos ,

1785-507: A selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries on many of the individual languages.( = extinct ) In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, it is suspected that among dozens of now extinct, undocumented or poorly known languages of northern Mexico, many were Uto-Aztecan. A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages that became extinct before being documented. An "Aztec–Tanoan" macrofamily that unites

1890-472: A single language is highly political. In the past, the branch of Uto-Aztecan to which Nahuatl belongs has been called Aztecan . From the 1990s onward, the alternative designation Nahuan has been frequently used instead, especially in Spanish-language publications. The Nahuan (Aztecan) branch of Uto-Aztecan is widely accepted as having two divisions: General Aztec and Pochutec. General Aztec encompasses

1995-572: A spectrum of Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered areas stretching from the northern state of Durango to Tabasco in the southeast. Pipil, the southernmost Nahuan language, is spoken in El Salvador by a small number of speakers. According to IRIN-International, the Nawat Language Recovery Initiative project, there are no reliable figures for the contemporary numbers of speakers of Pipil. Numbers may range anywhere from "perhaps

2100-515: A statement made by Gertrude Bonnin in 1916 , a member of the Sioux tribe, the use of Peyote had been the direct cause of death among 25 Utes in last two years. The Wixarika religion consists of four principal deities : Corn, Kayumarie (Blue Deer), Hikuri (Peyote), and the Eagle, all descended from their Sun God. Schaefer has interpreted this to mean that peyote is the soul of their religious culture and

2205-603: A typical Nahuan language. In some dialects, the /t͡ɬ/ phoneme, which was common in Classical Nahuatl, has changed into either /t/ , as in Isthmus Nahuatl , Mexicanero and Pipil , or into /l/ , as in Michoacán Nahuatl . Many dialects no longer distinguish between short and long vowels . Some have introduced completely new vowel qualities to compensate, as is the case for Tetelcingo Nahuatl . Others have developed

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2310-469: A very long period of development alongside other indigenous Mesoamerican languages , they have absorbed many influences, coming to form part of the Mesoamerican language area . Many words from Nahuatl were absorbed into Spanish and, from there, were diffused into hundreds of other languages in the region. Most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico, which the Spanish heard mentioned for

2415-421: A vowel i to prevent consonant clusters and one without it. For example, the absolutive suffix has the variant forms -tli (used after consonants) and -tl (used after vowels). Some modern varieties, however, have formed complex clusters from vowel loss. Others have contracted syllable sequences, causing accents to shift or vowels to become long. Most Nahuatl dialects have stress on the penultimate syllable of

2520-453: A word. In Mexicanero from Durango, many unstressed syllables have disappeared from words, and the placement of syllable stress has become phonemic. The Nahuatl languages are polysynthetic and agglutinative , making extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. Various prefixes and suffixes can be added to a root to form very long words—individual Nahuatl words can constitute an entire sentence.. The following verb shows how

2625-457: Is Shoshoni , which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho , while the southernmost is the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua . Ethnologue gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. Speakers of Nahuatl languages account for over 85% of these. The internal classification of the family often divides it into two branches:

2730-525: Is a small, spineless cactus which contains psychoactive alkaloids , particularly mescaline (see also: cactus alkaloids ). Peyote is a Spanish word derived from the Nahuatl peyōtl ( [ˈpejoːt͡ɬ] ), meaning "caterpillar cocoon ", from a root peyōni , "to glisten". Peyote is native to Mexico and southwestern Texas . It is found primarily in the Sierra Madre Occidental ,

2835-448: Is also applied to the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Regardless of whether Nahuatl is considered to refer to a dialect continuum or a group of separate languages, the varieties form a single branch within the Uto-Aztecan family, descended from a single Proto-Nahuan language . Within Mexico, the question of whether to consider individual varieties to be languages or dialects of

2940-529: Is an important conservation tool for this particular species. Promoting San Pedro as a Peyote substitute may act as an intervention to reduce Peyote consumption. Psychedelic film When used for its psychoactive properties, common doses for pure mescaline range from roughly 200 to 400 mg. This translates to a dose of roughly 10 to 20 g of dried peyote buttons of average potency; however, potency varies considerably between samples, making it difficult to measure doses accurately without first extracting

3045-576: Is debated among linguists. Lyle Campbell (1997) classified Pipil as separate from the Nahuatl branch within general Aztecan, whereas dialectologists such as Una Canger , Karen Dakin, Yolanda Lastra , and Terrence Kaufman have preferred to include Pipil within the General Aztecan branch, citing close historical ties with the eastern peripheral dialects of General Aztec. Current subclassification of Nahuatl rests on research by Canger (1980) , Canger (1988) and Lastra de Suárez (1986) . Canger introduced

3150-475: Is personified as "Peyote Spirit", considered to be either God's equivalent for the Indians to Jesus for mainstream Christians, or Jesus himself. Peyote is consumed during an all-night healing ceremony inside a hogan , a traditional Navajo building, or a tipi . The ritual starts around 8 P.M Saturday, and includes prayer , singing , sacramental eating of peyote, water rites, and contemplation . It concludes with

3255-462: Is primarily in desert scrub, particularly thorn scrub in Tamaulipas. It is common on or near limestone hills. Peyote is extremely slow growing. Cultivated specimens grow considerably faster, sometimes taking less than three years to go from seedling to mature flowering adult. More rapid growth can be achieved by grafting peyote onto mature San Pedro root stock. The top of the above-ground part of

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3360-645: Is probably derived from the word nāhuatlahtōlli [naːwat͡ɬaʔˈtoːliˀ] ('clear language'). The language was formerly called Aztec because it was spoken by the Central Mexican peoples known as Aztecs ( Nahuatl pronunciation: [asˈteːkaḁ] ). During the period of the Aztec empire centered in Mexico- Tenochtitlan the language came to be identified with the politically dominant mēxihcah [meːˈʃiʔkaḁ] ethnic group, and consequently

3465-575: Is still debate about whether to accept the proposed basic split between "Northern Uto-Aztecan" and "Southern Uto-Aztecan" languages. Northern Uto-Aztecan corresponds to Powell's "Shoshonean", and the latter is all the rest: Powell's "Sonoran" plus Aztecan. Northern Uto-Aztecan was proposed as a genetic grouping by Jeffrey Heath in Heath (1978) based on morphological evidence, and Alexis Manaster Ramer in Manaster Ramer (1992) adduced phonological evidence in

3570-515: Is the most-spoken variety. All varieties have been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish. No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Under Mexico's General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples , promulgated in 2003, Nahuatl and

3675-575: Is the only living descendant of the variety of Nahuatl once spoken south of present-day Mexico. During the 7th century, Nahuan speakers rose to power in central Mexico. The people of the Toltec culture of Tula , which was active in central Mexico around the 10th century, are thought to have been Nahuatl speakers. By the 11th century, Nahuatl speakers were dominant in the Valley of Mexico and far beyond, with settlements including Azcapotzalco , Colhuacan and Cholula rising to prominence. Nahua migrations into

3780-768: The American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, United States federal law (and many state laws ) protects the harvest , possession , consumption and cultivation of peyote as part of " bona fide religious ceremonies" the federal statute is the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, codified at 42 U.S.C.   § 1996a , "Traditional Indian religious use of the peyote sacrament", exempting only use by Native American persons. US v. Boyll expanded permitted use to all persons engaged in traditional Indian religious use, regardless of race. All US states with

3885-512: The Chihuahuan Desert and in the states of Nayarit , Coahuila , Nuevo León , Tamaulipas , and San Luis Potosí among scrub. It flowers from March to May, and sometimes as late as September. The flowers are pink, with thigmotactic anthers (like Opuntia ). Known for its psychoactive properties when ingested, peyote has at least 5,500 years of entheogenic and medicinal use by indigenous North Americans . The various species of

3990-472: The Ghost Dance . Today the Native American Church is one among several religious organizations to use peyote as part of its religious practice. Some users claim the drug connects them to God. Traditional Navajo belief or ceremonial practice did not mention the use of peyote before its introduction by the neighboring Utes . The Navajo Nation now has the most members of the Native American Church. Since 1846,

4095-472: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec call their language mela'tajtol ('the straight language'). Some speech communities use Nahuatl as the name for their language, although it seems to be a recent innovation. Linguists commonly identify localized dialects of Nahuatl by adding as a qualifier the name of the village or area where that variety is spoken. On the issue of geographic origin, the consensus of linguists during

4200-577: The Mescalero , and Lipan Apache were the source or first practitioners of peyote religion in the regions north of present-day Mexico. They were also the principal group to introduce peyote to newly arrived migrants, such as the Comanche and Kiowa from the Northern Plains. The religious, ceremonial, and healing uses of peyote may date back over 2000 years. Under the auspices of what came to be known as

4305-597: The Mexican Plateau , pre-Nahuan groups probably spent a period of time in contact with the Uto-Aztecan Cora and Huichol of northwestern Mexico. The major political and cultural center of Mesoamerica in the Early Classic period was Teotihuacan . The identity of the language(s) spoken by Teotihuacan's founders has long been debated, with the relationship of Nahuatl to Teotihuacan being prominent in that enquiry. It

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4410-530: The Nahuan languages . The homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have been in the Southwestern United States or possibly Northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory has proposed the possibility that the language family originated in southern Mexico, within the Mesoamerican language area , but this has not been generally considered convincing. Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in

4515-553: The Native American Church , in the 19th century, American Indians in more widespread regions to the north began to use peyote in religious practices, as part of a revival of native spirituality. Its members refer to peyote as "the sacred medicine", and use it to combat spiritual, physical, and other social ills. Concerned about the drug's psychoactive effects, between the 1880s and 1930s, U.S. authorities attempted to ban Native American religious rituals involving peyote, including

4620-750: The Takic group, including Cahuilla and Luiseño ) account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the Tepiman languages (including O'odham and Tepehuán ), the Tarahumaran languages (including Raramuri and Guarijio ), the Cahitan languages (including Yaqui and Mayo ), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol ), and

4725-638: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation and indigenous social movements) led to legislative reforms and the creation of decentralized government agencies like the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) and the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI) with responsibilities for the promotion and protection of indigenous communities and languages. In particular,

4830-651: The alkaloid , hordenine (also called peyocactin). In 2005, researchers used radiocarbon dating and alkaloid analysis to study two specimens of peyote buttons found in archaeological digs from a site called Shumla Cave No. 5 on the Rio Grande in Texas . The results dated the specimens to between 3780 and 3660 BCE . Alkaloid extraction yielded approximately 2% of the alkaloids including mescaline in both samples. This indicates that native North Americans were likely to have used peyote since at least 5500 years ago. Specimens from

4935-511: The 20th century was that the Uto-Aztecan language family originated in the southwestern United States. Evidence from archaeology and ethnohistory supports the thesis of a southward diffusion across the North American continent, specifically that speakers of early Nahuan languages migrated from Aridoamerica into central Mexico in several waves. But recently, the traditional assessment has been challenged by Jane H. Hill , who proposes instead that

5040-497: The 20th century, Mexican educational policy focused on the Hispanicization of indigenous communities, teaching only Spanish and discouraging the use of indigenous languages. As a result, one scholar estimated in 1983 that there was no group of Nahuatl speakers who had attained general literacy (that is, the ability to read the classical language) in Nahuatl, and Nahuatl speakers' literacy rate in Spanish also remained much lower than

5145-562: The Central group, while Lastra de Suárez (1986) places them in the Eastern Periphery, which was followed by Kaufman (2001) . The terminology used to describe varieties of spoken Nahuatl is inconsistently applied. Many terms are used with multiple denotations, or a single dialect grouping goes under several names. Sometimes, older terms are substituted with newer ones or with the speakers' own name for their specific variety. The word Nahuatl

5250-512: The Maya Kʼicheʼ people . As Tenochtitlan grew to become the largest urban center in Central America and one of the largest in the world at the time, it attracted speakers of Nahuatl from diverse areas giving birth to an urban form of Nahuatl with traits from many dialects. This urbanized variety of Tenochtitlan is what came to be known as Classical Nahuatl as documented in colonial times. With

5355-445: The Nahuatl and Pipil languages. Pochutec is a scantily attested language, which became extinct in the 20th century, and which Campbell and Langacker classify as being outside general Aztec. Other researchers have argued that Pochutec should be considered a divergent variant of the western periphery. Nahuatl denotes at least Classical Nahuatl, together with related modern languages spoken in Mexico. The inclusion of Pipil in this group

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5460-428: The Nahuatl language was often described as mēxihcacopa [meːʃiʔkaˈkopaˀ] (literally 'in the manner of Mexicas') or mēxihcatlahtolli 'Mexica language'. Now, the term Aztec is rarely used for modern Nahuan languages, but linguists' traditional name of Aztecan for the branch of Uto-Aztecan that comprises Nahuatl, Pipil, and Pochutec is still in use (although some linguists prefer Nahuan ). Since 1978,

5565-494: The New Philology, such that there is a 2001 English translation of Carochi's 1645 grammar by James Lockhart . Through contact with Spanish the Nahuatl language adopted many loan words, and as bilingualism intensified, changes in the grammatical structure of Nahuatl followed. In 1570, King Philip II of Spain decreed that Nahuatl should become the official language of the colonies of New Spain to facilitate communication between

5670-509: The North American mountain ranges and adjacent lowlands of the western United States in the states of Oregon , Idaho , Montana , Utah , California , Nevada , and Arizona . In Mexico , they are spoken in the states of Sonora , Sinaloa , Chihuahua , Nayarit , Durango , Zacatecas , Jalisco , Michoacán , Guerrero , San Luis Potosí , Hidalgo , Puebla , Veracruz , Morelos , Estado de México , and in Mexico City . Classical Nahuatl ,

5775-461: The Spanish and natives of the colonies. This led to Spanish missionaries teaching Nahuatl to Amerindians living as far south as Honduras and El Salvador. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Classical Nahuatl was used as a literary language; a large corpus dating to the period remains extant. They include histories, chronicles, poetry, theatrical works, Christian canonical works, ethnographic descriptions, and administrative documents. The Spanish permitted

5880-685: The Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl . It is among the most studied and best-documented Indigenous languages of the Americas . Today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. A smaller number of speakers exists in immigrant communities in the United States. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are not mutually intelligible . Huasteca Nahuatl , with over one million speakers,

5985-676: The United States . Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE. It was the language of the Mexica , who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history . During the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire , the Aztecs had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico. Their influence caused

6090-477: The United States has resulted in the establishment of small Nahuatl speaking communities in the United States , particularly in California, New York, Texas , New Mexico and Arizona . Nahuan languages are defined as a subgroup of Uto-Aztecan by having undergone a number of shared changes from the Uto-Aztecan protolanguage (PUA). The table below shows the phonemic inventory of Classical Nahuatl as an example of

6195-538: The United States, it grows in Southern Texas . In Mexico, it grows in the states of Chihuahua , Coahuila , Nuevo León , and Tamaulipas in the north to San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas . It is primarily found at elevations of 100 to 1,500 m (330 to 4,920 ft) and exceptionally up to 1,900 m (6,200 ft) in the Chihuahuan desert , but is also present in the milder climate of Tamaulipas. Its habitat

6300-479: The United States, some linguists are warning of impending language death . At present Nahuatl is mostly spoken in rural areas by an impoverished class of indigenous subsistence agriculturists. According to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 51% of Nahuatl speakers are involved in the farming sector and 6 in 10 receive no wages or less than the minimum wage. For most of

6405-482: The Uto-Aztecan language family originated in central Mexico and spread northwards at a very early date. This hypothesis and the analyses of data that it rests upon have received serious criticism. The proposed migration of speakers of the Proto-Nahuan language into the Mesoamerican region has been placed at sometime around AD 500, towards the end of the Early Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology . Before reaching

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6510-887: The Uto-Aztecan languages with the Tanoan languages of the southwestern United States was first proposed by Edward Sapir in the early 20th century, and later supported with potential lexical evidence by other scholars. This proposal has received much criticism about the validity of the proposed cognate sets and has been largely abandoned since the end of the last century as unproven. Peyote Echinocactus williamsii Lemaire ex Salm-Dyck Lophophora lewinii (K. Schumann) Rusby Lophophora echinata Croizat Lophophora fricii Habermann L. williamsii var. fricii (Habermann) Grym L. diffusa subsp. fricii (Habermann) Halda Lophophora jourdaniana Haberman The peyote ( / p eɪ ˈ oʊ t i / ; Lophophora williamsii / l ə ˈ f ɒ f ə r ə w ɪ l i ˈ æ m z i aɪ / )

6615-644: The arrival of the Spanish in 1519, Nahuatl was displaced as the dominant regional language, but remained important in Nahua communities under Spanish rule. Nahuatl was documented extensively during the colonial period in Tlaxcala , Cuernavaca, Culhuacan, Coyoacan, Toluca and other locations in the Valley of Mexico and beyond. In the 1970s, scholars of Mesoamerican ethnohistory have analyzed local-level texts in Nahuatl and other indigenous languages to gain insight into cultural change in

6720-478: The cactus, the crown, consists of disc-shaped buttons. These are cut above the roots and sometimes dried. When done properly, the top of the root forms a callus and the root does not rot. When poor harvesting techniques are used, however, the entire plant dies. Currently in South Texas, peyote grows naturally but has been over-harvested, to the point that the state has listed it as an endangered species . Cultivation

6825-568: The colonial era via linguistic changes, known at present as the New Philology . Several of these texts have been translated and published either in part or in their entirety. The types of documentation include censuses, especially one early set from the Cuernavaca region, town council records from Tlaxcala, as well as the testimony of Nahua individuals. As the Spanish had made alliances with Nahuatl-speaking peoples—initially from Tlaxcala , and later

6930-446: The colonial period, but their quality was highest in the initial period. The friars found that learning all the indigenous languages was impossible in practice, so they concentrated on Nahuatl. For a time, the linguistic situation in Mesoamerica remained relatively stable, but in 1696, Charles II of Spain issued a decree banning the use of any language other than Spanish throughout the Spanish Empire . In 1770, another decree, calling for

7035-436: The conquered Mexica of Tenochtitlan—Nahuatl continued spreading throughout Mesoamerica in the decades after the conquest. Spanish expeditions with thousands of Nahua soldiers marched north and south to conquer new territories. Jesuit missions in what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States often included a barrio of Tlaxcaltec soldiers who remained to guard the mission. For example, some fourteen years after

7140-804: The cusp areoles arises a tuft of soft, yellowish or whitish woolly hairs. Spines are absent. Flowers are pink or white to slightly yellowish, sometimes reddish. They open during the day, are from 1 to 2.4 cm (0.39 to 0.94 in) long, and reach a diameter from 1 to 2.2 cm (0.39 to 0.87 in). The cactus produces flowers sporadically; these are followed by small edible pink fruit. The club-shaped to elongated, fleshy fruits are bare and more or less rosy colored. At maturity, they are brownish-white and dry. The fruits do not burst open on their own and they are between 1.5 to 2 cm (0.59 to 0.79 in) long. They contain black, pear-shaped seeds that are 1 to 1.5 mm long and 1 mm wide. The seeds require hot and humid conditions to germinate. Peyote contains

7245-415: The decision to split up the previous Taracahitic and Takic groups, that are no longer considered to be valid genetic units. Whether the division between Northern and Southern languages is best understood as geographical or phylogenetic is under discussion. The table contains demographic information about number of speakers and their locations based on data from The Ethnologue . The table also contains links to

7350-441: The early 1900s Alfred L. Kroeber filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while Edward Sapir proved the unity among Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean". Sapir's applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages are regarded as groundbreaking. Voegelin, Voegelin & Hale (1962) argued for a three-way division of Shoshonean, Sonoran and Aztecan, following Powell. As of about 2011, there

7455-415: The elimination of the indigenous languages, did away with Classical Nahuatl as a literary language. Until the end of the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, the Spanish courts admitted Nahuatl testimony and documentation as evidence in lawsuits, with court translators rendering it in Spanish. Throughout the modern period the situation of indigenous languages has grown increasingly precarious in Mexico, and

7560-592: The exception of Idaho, Utah, and Texas allow usage by non-native, non-enrolled persons in the context of ceremonies of the Native American Church . Some states such as Arizona additionally exempt any general bona fide religious activity or spiritual intent. US jurisdictions enacted these specific statutory exemptions in reaction to the US Supreme Court 's decision in Employment Division v. Smith , 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which held that laws prohibiting

7665-626: The federal Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas ['General Law on the Language Rights of the Indigenous Peoples', promulgated 13 March 2003] recognizes all the country's indigenous languages, including Nahuatl, as national languages and gives indigenous people the right to use them in all spheres of public and private life. In Article 11, it grants access to compulsory intercultural bilingual education . Nonetheless, progress towards institutionalizing Nahuatl and securing linguistic rights for its speakers has been slow. Today,

7770-413: The first time by their Nahuatl names. English has also absorbed words of Nahuatl origin , including avocado , chayote , chili , chipotle , chocolate , atlatl , coyote , peyote , axolotl and tomato . These words have since been adopted into dozens of languages around the world. The names of several countries, Mexico, Guatemala and possibly Nicaragua , derive from Nahuatl. As

7875-460: The form of a sound law. Terrence Kaufman in Kaufman (1981) accepted the basic division into Northern and Southern branches as valid. Other scholars have rejected the genealogical unity of either both nodes or the Northern node alone. Wick R. Miller 's argument was statistical, arguing that Northern Uto-Aztecan languages displayed too few cognates to be considered a unit. On the other hands he found

7980-442: The genus Lophophora grow low to the ground and they often form groups with numerous, crowded shoots. The blue-green, yellow-green or sometimes reddish-green shoots are mostly flattened spheres with sunken shoot tips. They can reach heights of 2 to 7 centimeters (0.79 to 2.76 in) and diameters of 4 to 12 cm (1.6 to 4.7 in). There are often significant, vertical ribs consisting of low and rounded or hump-like bumps. From

8085-549: The language of the Aztecs , and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Pipil language , an offshoot of Nahuatl , spread to Central America by a wave of migration from Mexico, and formerly had many speakers there. Now it has gone extinct in Guatemala , Honduras , and Nicaragua , and it is nearly extinct in western El Salvador , all areas dominated by use of Spanish. Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as

8190-466: The long-held assumptions and consensuses. As to higher-level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently scholars also disagree as to where to draw language boundaries within the dialect continua . The similarities among the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J. C. E. Buschmann , but he failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and

8295-505: The mescaline. The concentration of mescaline is typically highest at the sides of the peyote button. The effects last about 10 to 12 hours. Peyote is reported to trigger rich visual or auditory effects (see synesthesia ) and spiritual or philosophical insights. In addition to psychoactive use, some Native American tribes use the plant in folk medicine . They employ peyote for varied ailments. Although uncommon, use of peyote and mescaline has been associated with poisoning. Peyote contains

8400-547: The national average. Nahuatl is spoken by over 1 million people, with approximately 10% of speakers being monolingual . As a whole, Nahuatl is not considered to be an endangered language; however, during the late 20th century several Nahuatl dialects became extinct. The 1990s saw radical changes in Mexican policy concerning indigenous and linguistic rights. Developments of accords in the international rights arena combined with domestic pressures (such as social and political agitation by

8505-485: The nondrug use of peyote in bona fide religious ceremonies of the Native American Church, and members of the Native American Church so using peyote are exempt from registration. Any person who manufactures peyote for or distributes peyote to the Native American Church, however, is required to obtain registration annually and to comply with all other requirements of law. U.S. v. Boyll , 774 F.Supp. 1333 (D.N.M. 1991) addresses this racial issue specifically and concludes: For

8610-440: The northeastern city of Saltillo was founded in 1577, a Tlaxcaltec community was resettled in a separate nearby village, San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala , to cultivate the land and aid colonization efforts that had stalled in the face of local hostility to the Spanish settlement. Pedro de Alvarado conquered Guatemala with the help of tens of thousands of Tlaxcaltec allies, who then settled outside of modern Antigua Guatemala . As

8715-425: The number of cognates among Southern Uto-Aztecan languages to suggest a genetic relation. This position was supported by subsequent lexicostatistic analyses by Cortina-Borja & Valiñas-Coalla (1989) and Cortina-Borja, Stuart-Smith & Valiñas-Coalla (2002) . Reviewing the debate, Haugen (2008) considers the evidence in favor of the genetic unity of Northern Uto-Aztecan to be convincing, but remains agnostic on

8820-429: The numbers of speakers of virtually all indigenous languages have dwindled. While the total number of Nahuatl speakers increased over the 20th century, indigenous populations have become increasingly marginalized in Mexican society. In 1895, Nahuatl was spoken by over 5% of the population. By 2000, this figure had fallen to 1.49%. Given the process of marginalization combined with the trend of migration to urban areas and to

8925-611: The official Mexican Pharmacopoeia recommended the use of peyote extract in “microdose” as a tonic for the heart. John Raleigh Briggs (1851–1907) was the first to draw scientific attention of the Western scientific world to peyote. Louis Lewin described Anhalonium lewinii in 1888. British sexologist Havelock Ellis self experimented with it on Good Friday 1896, publishing details in 1898. Arthur Heffter conducted self experiments on its effects in 1897. Similarly, Norwegian ethnographer Carl Sofus Lumholtz studied and wrote about

9030-556: The other 63 indigenous languages of Mexico are recognized as lenguas nacionales ('national languages') in the regions where they are spoken. They are given the same status as Spanish within their respective regions. Nahuan languages exhibit a complex morphology , or system of word formation, characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination . This means that morphemes – words or fragments of words that each contain their own separate meaning – are often strung together to make longer complex words. Through

9135-451: The place of articulation of a following consonant. The voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ] is assimilated after /l/ and pronounced [l] . Classical Nahuatl and most of the modern varieties have fairly simple phonological systems. They allow only syllables with maximally one initial and one final consonant. Consonant clusters occur only word-medially and over syllable boundaries. Some morphemes have two alternating forms: one with

9240-563: The possibility that other Mesoamerican languages were borrowing vocabulary from Proto-Nahuan much earlier than previously thought. In Mesoamerica the Mayan , Oto-Manguean and Mixe–Zoque languages had coexisted for millennia. This had given rise to the Mesoamerican language area . After the Nahuas migrated into the Mesoamerican cultural zone, their language likely adopted various areal traits, which included relational nouns and calques added to

9345-460: The reasons set out in this Memorandum Opinion and Order, the Court holds that, pursuant to 21 C.F.R. § 1307.31 (1990), the classification of peyote as a Schedule I controlled substance, see 21 U.S.C. § 812(c), Schedule I(c)(12), does not apply to the importation, possession or use of peyote for 'bona fide' ceremonial use by members of the Native American Church, regardless of race. Following the passage of

9450-613: The region from the north continued into the Postclassic period . The Mexica were among the latest groups to arrive in the Valley of Mexico; they settled on an island in the Lake Texcoco , subjugated the surrounding tribes, and ultimately an empire named Tenochtitlan . Mexica political and linguistic influence ultimately extended into Central America, and Nahuatl became a lingua franca among merchants and elites in Mesoamerica, such as with

9555-496: The rest. He ascribed the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Daniel Garrison Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell , however, rejected the claim in his own classification of North American indigenous languages (also published in 1891). Powell recognized two language families: "Shoshonean" (encompassing Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (encompassing Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol). In

9660-607: The scheme of a Central grouping and two Peripheral groups, and Lastra confirmed this notion, differing in some details. Canger & Dakin (1985) demonstrated a basic split between Eastern and Western branches of Nahuan, considered to reflect the oldest division of the proto-Nahuan speech community. Canger originally considered the central dialect area to be an innovative subarea within the Western branch, but in 2011, she suggested that it arose as an urban koiné language with features from both Western and Eastern dialect areas. Canger (1988) tentatively included dialects of La Huasteca in

9765-653: The states of Puebla , Veracruz , Hidalgo , San Luis Potosí , and Guerrero . Significant populations are also found in the State of Mexico , Morelos , and the Federal District , with smaller communities in Michoacán and Durango . Nahuatl became extinct in the states of Jalisco and Colima during the 20th century. As a result of internal migration within the country, Nahuatl speaking communities exist in all states in Mexico. The modern influx of Mexican workers and families into

9870-684: The term General Aztec has been adopted by linguists to refer to the languages of the Aztecan branch excluding the Pochutec language . Speakers of Nahuatl generally refer to their language as either Mexicano or with a cognate derived from mācēhualli , the Nahuatl word for 'commoner'. One example of the latter is the Nahuatl spoken in Tetelcingo , Morelos, whose speakers call their language mösiehuali . The Pipil people of El Salvador refer to their language as Nāwat . The Nahuas of Durango call their language Mexicanero . Speakers of Nahuatl of

9975-462: The total Nahuatl speaking population, at 24.2% and 22.6%, respectively. For most other states the percentage of monolinguals among the speakers is less than 5%. This means that in most states more than 95% of the Nahuatl speaking population are bilingual in Spanish. According to one study, how often Nahuatl is used is linked to community well-being, partly because it is tied to positive emotions. The largest concentrations of Nahuatl speakers are found in

10080-651: The use of peyote among the Indians of Mexico. Lumholtz also reported that, lacking other intoxicants, Texas Rangers captured by Union forces during the American Civil War soaked peyote buttons in water and became "intoxicated with the liquid". A study published in 2007 found no evidence of long-term cognitive problems related to peyote use in Native American Church ceremonies, but researchers stressed their results may not apply to those who use peyote in other contexts. A four-year large-scale study of Navajo who regularly ingested peyote found only one case where peyote

10185-699: The use of peyote that do not specifically exempt religious use nevertheless do not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment . Though use in Native American Church ceremonies or traditional Indian religious use, regardless of race, is legal under US federal law and additional uses are legal under some state laws, peyote is listed by the United States DEA as a Schedule I controlled substance. The US military prohibits inductees from enlistment for prior drug usage, however past usage of peyote

10290-562: The validity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a genetic grouping. Hill (2011) also considered the North/South split to be valid based on phonological evidence, confirming both groupings. Merrill (2013) adduced further evidence for the unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a valid grouping. Hill (2011) also rejected the validity of the Takic grouping decomposing it into a Californian areal grouping together with Tubatulabal. Some classifications have posited

10395-432: The variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Mesoamerica. Following the Spanish conquest, Spanish colonists and missionaries introduced the Latin script , and Nahuatl became a literary language . Many chronicles , grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices were written in it during the 16th and 17th centuries. This early literary language based on

10500-412: The verb is marked for subject , patient , object , and indirect object: ni- I- mits- you- teː- someone- tla- something- makiː give Uto-Aztecan language family The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language

10605-514: The vocabulary, and a distinctly Mesoamerican grammatical construction for indicating possession. A language which was the ancestor of Pochutec split from Proto-Nahuan (or Proto-Aztecan) possibly as early as AD 400, arriving in Mesoamerica a few centuries earlier than the bulk of Nahuan speakers. Some Nahuan groups migrated south along the Central American isthmus, reaching as far as Nicaragua. The critically endangered Pipil language of El Salvador

10710-515: The voiced consonants are devoiced in word-final position and in consonant clusters: /j/ devoices to a palato-alveolar sibilant /ʃ/ , /w/ devoices to a glottal fricative [h] or to a labialized velar approximant [ʍ] , and /l/ devoices to a fricative [ɬ] . In some dialects, the first consonant in almost any consonant cluster becomes [h] . Some dialects have productive lenition of voiceless consonants into their voiced counterparts between vowels. The nasals are normally assimilated to

10815-744: Was associated with a psychotic break in an otherwise healthy person; other psychotic episodes were attributed to peyote use in conjunction with pre-existing substance abuse or mental health problems. Later research found that those with pre-existing mental health issues are more likely to have adverse reactions to peyote. Peyote use does not appear to be associated with hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (a.k.a. "flashbacks") after religious use. Peyote also does not seem to be associated with physical dependence , but some users may experience psychological dependence . Peyote can have strong emetic effects, and one death has been attributed to esophageal bleeding caused by vomiting after peyote ingestion in

10920-451: Was presumed by scholars during the 19th and early 20th centuries that Teotihuacan had been founded by Nahuatl-speakers of, but later linguistic and archaeological research tended to disconfirm this view. Instead, the timing of the Nahuatl influx was seen to coincide more closely with Teotihuacan's fall than its rise, and other candidates such as Totonacan identified as more likely. In the late 20th century, epigraphical evidence has suggested

11025-536: Was published in 1547—3 years before the first grammar in French, and 39 years before the first one in English. By 1645, four more had been published, authored respectively by Alonso de Molina (1571), Antonio del Rincón (1595), Diego de Galdo Guzmán (1642), and Horacio Carochi (1645). Carochi's is today considered the most important colonial-era grammar of Nahuatl. Carochi has been particularly important for scholars working in

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