Santa Catarina Ixtepeji is a town and

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...

in south-western

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. It is part of the

Ixtlán District Ixtlán District is located in the Sierra Norte region, in the northeastern area of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. The district includes 26 municipalities, bringing together a total of 161 settlements. At the 2000 census, they contained a total of ...

in the Sierra Norte region.

The Codex of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji

The Codex of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji (in Spanish, ''Códice de Santa Catarina Ixtepeji''), a late 17th-early 18th century

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

in the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

and

Zapotec languages The Zapotec languages are a group of around 50 closely related indigenous languages of Mesoamerica, indigenous Mesoamerican languages that constitute a main branch of the Oto-Manguean languages, Oto-Manguean language family and are spoken by th ...

, is a seven-foot-long

scroll A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyru ...

constituting a hand-painted history and

map A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...

recounting part of the history of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji. It was re-discovered and identified as part of the holdings of the American Geographical Society Library at the

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–Milwaukee, UWM, or Milwaukee) is a Public university, public Urban university, urban research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It is the largest university in the Milwaukee metropo ...

in early 2012. It is believed that it was created as part of a presentation to officials of the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy (political entity), Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered ...

in an effort to establish

land title In property law, title is an intangible construct representing a bundle of rights in a piece of property in which a party may own either a legal interest or equitable interest. The rights in the bundle may be separated and held by different part ...

s in the village. Hunt, Laura L. "Scholar network turns lost into found" ''UWM Today'' website July 9, 2012
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References

External links

* Photos of the map from th
American Geographical Society Library Flickr page
{{Ixtlán District, Oaxaca Municipalities of Oaxaca