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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1998-03 > 0890608029


From: <>
Subject: Re: American Royalty
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 17:07:09 -0600


Further to this:

In article <>,
(Kennwalrus) wrote:
>
> I believe that the ancestry of Montezuma (or Moctezuma), last Aztec "emperor,"
> is known for about a half-dozen generations. There was an interesting article,
> some years back, in Neil Thompson's "The Genealogist," which *may* have made
> reference to this -- the main thrust of the article was to note that Montezuma
> has living descendants among the Spanish aristocracy.

The works of Nigel Davies on the Aztecs has some good information on the
traditional Aztec genealogy, also for the other Valley kingdoms, notably
Texcoco. His book on the Toltecs includes alot of information about the
Aztec oral tradition on Toltec and Chichimec dynasties, though whether its
poissible to extract reliable data out of this is another matter.

<snip>
>
> I'm not sure about Atahualpa, last "Inca" of the Incan empire. (Have I spelled
> his name aright?) I think, though, that some statement of at least a few
> generations of *his* ancestry survives, and that I've seen it, somewhere.
>

It does, you can find it in many histories of the Incas. It seems pretty
solid back to Pachacamac, who really founded Inca power, about a century
before the conquest. John Hemming, in his book "The Conquest of the Incas",
has alot of information about the descendants of the Incas, particularly of
Atahuallpa's younger brother Manco Capac. At one point they intermarried
with a branch of the Spanish Borgias, who are themselves illegitimately
descended from Ferdinand of Aragon, and also they were closely related to
Ignatius de Loyola -- quite an ancestry! The family died out in the early
18th century.

Incidentally, this book is by far the best history of thePeruvian conquest I
have read, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in
this period.

Also, the later Incas apparently married women from the ruling famlies of the
conquered peoples. The ony one I know is the connection to the Chimus. No
doubt if I plunged into the pages of Garcilaso I would learn more.

> As for the Maya, quite a lot of pedigree 'materiel' survives in the Yucatan,
> and more is located and 'translated' all the time. Prof. David H. Kelley,
> whose name should be well recognized in this forum for his avocation as a
> collector and analyst of ancient, classical, and dark-age pedigrees, is by
> profession a Mesoamerican scholar, and has done a lot with Mayan pedigrees,
> which in some cases can be reconstructed for 10 generations. (Actual
> pronunciations, as far as I can see, are unknown, and names are expressed by
> English descriptions of their component pictograms: "Princess Jaguar-moon,"
> "King Thunderbolt." [Not actual examples, but you get the idea.]) These
> pedigrees should date, I think, from before A.D. 1000 in all cases, and as far
> as I know make no contact with any known later genealogy. There are 'Mayan'
> books on the racks right now which should give you some examples.

A good start is Linda Schiele & David Friedel "A Forest of Kings". The style
of names seens to depend on the excavator, and how linguistically adventurous
they are. Some are given in a Mayan form -- not necessarily the correct one
-- some are translated (as above) some are just A, B, C etc. Mayan studies
seems to be advancing very rapidly right now, I'm sure that a perusal of the
academic literature would show much more is now known than Schiele could
publish only 7 years ago.

It is interesting to speculate on whether a descent could ever be traced,
even in outline, from the Classic Maya. It appears that the post-Classic
states in Yucatan were not monarchies but some sort of oligarchy, probably
ruled by councels of brothers.We have traditions of the Xiu and the Itza in
the Books of Chilam Bilam -- how reliable? who knows? -- which families
could perhaps be tied one day to a classic dynasty. The Itza lasted till
1697. Whether there were traceable intermarriages between the conquistadors
and Maya of these famliies I have no idea.

>
<snip>

Cheers,
Chris

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