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Zelia Nuttall (2)

31st Jul 2024

Zelia Nuttall and the garden of Casa Alvarado, Mexico City

This is the second part of our feature on the life and work of the leading 19th century American archaeologist and anthropologist Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall, pictured here with a photo of the garden of her Mexican house Casa Alvarado in Mexico City in the background. (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Incidentally, ‘Zelia Nuttall was the first to point out the prominent role that women played in ancient Mexico, even though it was a warrior society. In several instances they appeared as military leaders…’ (Deuel 1966: 553). While in London documenting the history of Mixtec conqueror Lady Eight Deer, who features prominently in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, she identified a Lady Three Flint: the Codex depicts significant events in her life, including her progress through the priesthood to the high rank of Cihuacoatl (Woman Serpent) (pic 1). Later researchers have noted that ‘An interesting feature of the Nuttall is that it depicts ca. 180 representations of women, nearly all of them portrayed in responsible positions’ (University of California online - follow link below).

Zelia excelled not only as scientist and presenter but also as networker. In Ross Parmenter’s words ‘She was not merely a scientist; she was a socialite’ (in Adams 2010: 94). She was also a friend of Alfred P. Maudslay, the pioneering British archaeologist (his classic photographs of Maya ruins are in the British Museum) aka the ‘father of Maya archaeology’.
In 1892, as part of the commemorations in Seville of the fourth centenary of Columbus Maudslay offered to provide large prints (30”x24”) and commissioned ‘pigment prints’, ‘widely considered to be the most beautiful of all monochrome photographic prints, and with reasonable care they don’t deteriorate’. Maudslay had originally planned to give the prints to the British Museum after Seville, but Putnam persuaded him to have another set made, which were duly sent to the WCE in Chicago (Graham 2002: 195).

Alfred and his wife Annie went by train to Chicago to visit WCE in October 1893 (Richard Maudslay, personal communication 24/10/23).
Zelia paid tribute later to Maudslay’s photos, mentioning ‘a complete set of fine photographs’ showing the monuments in situ… ‘this striking exhibit’… ‘the majority of people visiting the Exposition being totally unaware of the existence of such imposing prehistoric monuments on the American continent’… ‘Mr. A. P. Maudslay’s truly magnificent set of [40] large-sized photographs of the same ruins, which he was the first to study thoroughly, formed a most valuable contribution’ (Nuttall, 1893: 324).

Sharing the stage at the International Congress of Anthropology at WCE were Stewart Culin - in charge of the division of Ancient Religions, Games, and Folklore (Putnam, 1897: 317) - and Frank Hamilton Cushing, who worked at the Bureau of Ethnology, in part helping to design the Smithsonian’s anthropology exhibits for the Chicago Expo (Cushing 2016: 153). Both presented papers on the collection of (world) games in the Anthropological Building. Culin, Cushing and Nuttall shared a common interest: (the evolution and history of) games. They were, in scientific terms, ludologists.

The uniqueness and breadth of the exhibition on games organised by Stewart Culin cannot be overstated: in Williams Holmes’s words ‘In completeness of arrangement and exhaustiveness of presentation it surpasses anything of the kind yet seen in any part of the world’ (Holmes, 1960: 127-8). Cushing too was full of praise for his colleague, writing that the games on display had been ‘gathered and arranged with extraordinary scientific skill, care and patience, by Mr. Stewart Culin of the University of Pennsylvania’ (Cushing, 2016: 224-5). Culin was, after all, a master at museum displays, and the WCE offered ‘the opportunity of the century in museum-making’ (Holmes, 1960: 130).

Whilst Culin and Cushing shared a longstanding professional interest in games worldwide, Zelia’s interest, though incidental, was far from fleeting. The Codex Magliabechiano includes a well-known depiction of the ancient Mesoamerican board game patolli (pic 6): Zelia exhibited an illustration of it at the World Fair in Chicago in 1893 and Atlanta in 1895, calling it ‘Mexican Patoli, Aztec Pachisi’ (Chrisso Boulis, Registrar, Records, Penn Museum, personal communication, 22/6/2015). Clearly, she was already well familiar with the parallels being drawn at the time between ancient Mexican and Asian board games, and their basis in divination.
To Cushing this was a universal given: ‘All games derived from such [divinatory] use by natural step, were played with reference to the four quarters, and were thus invariably developed along identical lines as to rules, formulae, counts etc., leading up gradually to even such elaborate dice- and diagram-games as the hitherto, mysterious Patolli or backgammon-game of Mexico’ (2016: 225)

Several times Cushing records having discussions with colleagues in the Anthropology Building, for example: ‘I spent most of the day in Anthrop. Building, studying collections and talking – with Mrs. Nuttall, Miss Fletcher, Culin and Brinton particularly’ (2016: 194). And again ‘Had long talk with both Miss Fletcher and Mrs Nuttall on the correspondences of the calendar’ (ibid). Shortly after the end of the Chicago Fair, Cushing engaged ‘avidly’ in conversations with Zelia in Washington on Mexican calendars, and Culin’s correspondence includes a mention of Cushing referring to ‘the importance of the little extract quoted from Mrs. Nutall [sic], giving two gods of Gaming to the Aztecs…’ (Cushing letter to Culin, 16th October 1893, Harvard University Archives).

What’s more, in her post-Chicago writings, Zelia specifically discusses important ancient associations between calendars, games and divination: her references to how children’s fates were predicted at birth via day signs and soothsayer predictions… ‘help us to understand the origin not only of divination, propitiation and the belief in the influence of day-signs, but also of the native games which became popular after the Conquests, when their original use and meaning had become obsolete…’ (1901: 177).

She goes on to ‘draw attention to Mr. Stewart Culin’s important study of “American Indian Games”, which clearly establishes… that they were based… on the central idea and that of the four quarters of the world.’ (ibid: 178) Culin goes on to study some 61 American tribes ‘and to conceive that “in ancient Mexico we find traces of its highest development”’.
‘I place the utmost value upon Mr. Culin’s painstaking and conscientious researches and regard them as strongly corroborating my views exposed in the preceding pages. His identification of the pictured diagram in the Fejérváry Codex, as the counting circuit of the Four Quarters, with a presiding god in the middle, as in Zuñi, does credit to his perspicacity. I agree with him in considering that this chart could have been employed after the Conquest as a game or for divination…’ (ibid).

Interestingly, she goes on to suggest that the ancient Voladores ceremony falls into the same category: ‘The idea of rotation, associated with calendar signs and periods, finds its most striking and convincing exemplification in the… ancient Mexican game “of those who fly”… The game itself was a beautiful and well-conceived illustration of the flight of time…’ (ibid: 24-25; emphasis added). We should note that the four human ‘flyers’ in the Voladores represent – indeed dress as - birds, which spiral anti-clockwise down to earth 13 times, completing an ancient cycle of 52 (years).

In The Fundamental Principles… (p49/485) Zelia draws attention to - and includes her drawings of - carvings from stone graves from Tennessee previously drawn and noted by William H. Holmes in his ‘Art in Shell of the ancient Americans’ (1883) - pic 11. This is pl. LIX from Holmes’s work, at the foot of which is the note that drawing no. 5 in the centre (pic 13) – the only Mesoamerican example – is captioned ‘Design from Aztec Painting’. The Holmes article was published in the 2nd Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1883. It turns out this is from the Codex Vindobonensis.

She notes that the ‘shell-gorget exhibits the peculiarity, pointed out by Mr. Holmes, of a square with loops, resembling certain figures in Mexican Codices’ (emphasis added). After observing that ‘the cross in the centre occupies the centre of a star [which she suggests is Polaris] with eight rays and the four birds’ heads at the sides of the square illustrate rotation from right to left’, she concludes that ‘the prehistoric race which inhabited certain parts of the United States was under the dominion of the same ideas as were the Mexicans and the Mayas’ (1901: 50/486).

In Holmes’s original text we find:-
‘The significance of the looped figure which forms so prominent a feature in the designs in question has not been determined… It may be well to point out the fact that a similar looped rectangle occurs several times in the ancient Mexican manuscripts. One example, from the Vienna Codex, is presented in Fig 5, Plate LIX’. The footnote source he gives is ‘Kingsborough: vol II, Plate 20’ (1883: 285).

To summarise at this point, by 1893 Zelia was already well familiar with/had met:-
• Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico
• Codex Magliabechiano
• Codex Fejérváry-Mayer
• Codex Vienna/Vindobonensis
• Patolli
• William Holmes’s work on Art in Shell…
• The Aztec ‘Sunstone’
• Putnam, Boas, Holmes, Smith, Fletcher, Stevenson, Brinton, Boas, and almost certainly many more eminent scholars such as Powell, Thomas, Mason…
‘Throughout her life, Zelia was excited by puzzles. They gave her the energy to focus…’ (Grindle 2023: 303). In short, she was the ideal, charismatic, expert to talk to for anyone – professional scholar or lay person - seeking creative inspiration in ancient games, calendars and divinatory circuits…

References/sources:-
• Adams, Amanda (2010) Ladies of the Field: Early Women Archaeologists and their Search for Adventure, Greystone Books, Canada
• Cushing, Frank H. (2016) ‘Monthly Report, September 1893 (inclusive of July and August), Document F’ in Hinsley, Curtis M. & Wilcox, David R., eds., Coming of Age in Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology, University of Nebraska Press
• Deuel, Leo (1966) Testaments of Time: The Search for Lost Manuscripts & Records, Alfred A. Knopf, New York
• ‘Document C’, ‘Man and His Works: Ethnological Exhibit at the Fair’, Chicago Herald, 18th March 1893, in Coming of Age, op cit
• Graham, Ian (2002) Alfred Maudslay and the Maya: A Biography, University of Oklahoma Press
• Grindle, Merilee (2023) In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall & the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Civilizations, Harvard University Press
• Hallowell, A. Irving (1960) ‘The Development of Anthropology’ in Laguna, Frederica de, ed., Selected Papers from the American Anthropologist 1888-1920, American Anthropological Association, Washington
• Hill Boone, Elizabeth (1983) The Codex Magliabechiano, University of California Press
• Holmes, William H. (1883) ‘Art in shell of the ancient Americans’, in Second annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81 by J. W. Powell, Director
• -------- (1960) ‘The World’s Fair Congress of Anthropology’ in Laguna, ed., op cit
• Lurie, Nancy Oestreich (1966) ‘Women in Early American Anthropology’, in Helm, June, ed. Pioneers of American Anthropology: the Uses of Biography, University of Washington Press
• McNeill, Leila (2018) ‘The Archaeologist Who Helped Mexico Find Glory in Its Indigenous Past’, Smithsonian Magazine online November 5, 2018
• Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology Wake, C. S., ed., The Schulte Publishing Company, Chicago, 1894 (Preface)
• Nuttall, Zelia, Judge (1893) ‘Archaeological Exhibits of Central America and Mexico’, in Report of Committee of Awards, World’s Columbian Exposition 1893
• -------- (1894) Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System, ULAN Press (reprint)
• ------- (1901) The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations, Peabody Museum, Harvard University (page numbers quoted are from the Elibron Classics series reprint, 2006)
• Parmenter, Ross (1966) ‘Glimpses of a Friendship: Zelia Nuttall and Franz Boas’ in Helm, June, ed., op cit
• Putnam, Frederick W. (1897) ‘Department of Ethnology’ in Johnson, Rossiter, ed. A History of the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 vol. II Departments, D. Appleton & Co., New York
• Tozzer, Alfred M. (1933) ‘Zelia Nuttall’, American Anthropologist, July-September 1933, 475-482
• Wilcox, David R. (2016) ‘Appendix. Analysis of Registered Members of the International Congress of Anthropology, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893’ in Coming of Age... op cit.

Picture sources:-
PART 1
• Main: photo downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zelia_Maria_Magdalena_Nuttall.jpg
• Pix 1 & 2: images courtesy of and thanks to Jason Porath/www.RejectedPrincesses.com
• Pic 3: F.W. Putnam in Peabody Museum office. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM 2004.24.1789, downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F.W._Putnam_in_Peabody_Museum_office.jpg
• Pic 4: image downloaded from https://peabody.yale.edu/about/our-history
• Pic 5: Photograph provided by Jane Gay. (Courtesy Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives [MS4558].), downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Fletcher2.jpg
• Pic 6: image from In Memoriam Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith, downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erminnie_A._Smith.jpg
• Pic 7: image from Wikipedia (Alice Fletcher)
• Pix 8 & 9 (top): images downloaded from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-libraries-and-archives/2021/10/26/tracing-anthropologist-zelia-nuttall-through-smithsonian-collections/
• Pic 9 (bottom): image downloaded from https://library.si.edu/donate/adopt-a-book/codex-nuttall
• Pic 10: image downloaded from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1893_Birds_Eye_view_of_Chicago_Worlds_Columbian_Exposition.jpg
• Pic 11: image downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_World%27s_Columbian_exposition,_Chicago,_1893_(1893)_(14757663896).jpg
• Pic 12: images downloaded from https://archive.org/details/ancientmexicanfe00nutt/page/n1/mode/2up
• Pic 13: Museum Collection. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM 2004.1.720.2.1.4
• Pic 14: we’re still trying to find the source of this!
• Pic 15: Museum Collection. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM 47-41-10/99955.1.82
• Pic 16: image courtesy, Field Museum. GN90799d_CG_216w
• Pic 17: illustration by and © Daniel Parada/Mexicolore
• Pic 18: images scanned from Nuttall (1901) op cit
• Pic 19: Gift of Frederic Ward Putnam, 1893. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM93-1-10/100266.1.2
• Pic 20: image downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman%27s_Building_at_the_1893_World%27s_Columbian_Exposition_in_Chicago.jpg.

PART 2
• Main: photo of garden from Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Gardens, downloaded from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-libraries-and-archives/2021/10/26/tracing-anthropologist-zelia-nuttall-through-smithsonian-collections/; inset photo from University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, downloaded from the same webpage
• Pic 1: image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, Graz, Austria, 1987
• Pic 2: image downloaded from https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/rare-alfred-maudslay-1890-photogravure-maya-stela-101-c-b94453db8b
• Pic 3: Museum Collection. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 47-41-10/99955.1.73
• Pic 4: photos from Wikipedia (Stewart Culing/Frank Cushing)
• Pic 5: Museum Collection. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 47-41-10/99955.1.83
• Pic 6: Image from the Codex Magliabechiano scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA 1970 facsimile edition, Graz, Austria
• Pic 7: (L) image scanned from Social Processes in Maya Prehistory ed. Norman Hammond, Academic Press, London, 1977; (R) image courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, ref. 19447
• Pic 8: image scanned from Culin, Stewart ‘Chess and Playing-Cards’ pp 680-681 in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution 1896, Washington 1898
• Pic 9: ditto, plate 17, opposite p. 803
• Pic 10: image from X/Twitter
• Pic 11: image downloaded from https://archive.org/details/fundamentalprinc02nutt/page/48/mode/2up
• Pic 12: image from Reading Room 2020 / Alamy Stock Photo, Image ID 2CJ21KN
• Pic 13: original image (arrows added) downloaded from https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/88469#page/9/mode/1up
• Pic 14: image downloaded from https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-226; © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Aztec Limerick no. 65 (ode to Zelia Nuttall) -
She was ‘Queen of Mexican Archaeology’,
Anthropology, Astrology, Ludology...
Yes, that makes four -
If you think she crowned more
Let us know and we’ll post an apology!

‘Realms of the Sacred in Daily Life: Early Written Records of Mesoamerica (University of California)

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Zelia Nuttall and the garden of Casa Alvarado, Mexico City

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Zelia Nuttall (2)

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