Red City on the Ocean

A Moment from the Past - Anacaona's School Years

When Anacaona turned fourteen, she, like all her peers in Aztlan, began to attend the telpochcalli, the school for the macehualtin, the commoners. The school consisted of a few simple houses with thatched roofs, similar to other houses in the outlying areas of Texcoco where Anacaona lived with her father. There were three times five students in each telpochcalli house. They usually sat on carpets or blankets as they listened to their teachers. There was nothing else in the house except jugs of water and sometimes dishes of fruit.

Teachers of the telpochcallin, who moved from town to town on the shore of a large lake, came to one school and then to another, and there they shared their knowledge with the children and teenagers. During the day, children moved from one schoolhouse where a subject was taught to another. Boys and girls studied separately, but sometimes their home classes were in the same place. When the teacher ended a story in one of the schoolhouses, the children moved to another house, to a new teacher. If a new teacher did not come on one of the days, the children went to any of the other teachers who were telling stories on that day.

However, parents always provided primary education to their own children. Before the children came to the telpochcalli, their parents, according to the law, were obliged to transfer basic knowledge and skills to them. Parents had to pay special attention to their children's behavior when preparing children for school. The students were expected to respectfully listen to the teacher, not make noise, and not interfere with other students. Telpochcalli teachers closely followed the development of their students and their character. Truly gifted children could be transferred from telpochcallin to the calmecacs, the school for children of the highest social stratum. Studying at the calmecac provided connections and acquaintances with children from noble and wealthy families, which meant that it was possible to achieve a higher social position in the future.

The rapidly growing state needed a large number of educated people – workers, merchants, and artisans. Therefore, studying in the telpochcallin was strongly encouraged. The school reforms initiated by Weyitlatoani Moctezuma were further established and increased by his grandson, Axayacatl, the new supreme ruler of the state.

Anacaona liked to visit the telpochcalli. However, after the military campaigns that she went on with her father, school seemed too childish for her, and studying was like a game although she still studied with great interest. Other teenagers from her community studied with her. There were children of pochteca, the merchants and artisans, macehualtin, the farmers, and tlacotin, the slaves. However, studying was not always easy for Anacaona. She didn't really like working with lines, dots, and drawings that looked like trees, or when she had to draw all sorts of circles, squares, and triangles, to do calculations. Fortunately for Anacaona, though, the telpochcalli for girls taught housework first of all, and only then these shapes. Anacaona grew up without a mother, so there was no one to teach her cooking and knitting, and the school helped her with this as well. Special attention was paid to these subjects in the women's telpochcalli. The boys were taught military affairs and construction skills.

There was one subject in which Anacaona had no equal among the other students. This was the structure of the human body and the treatment of ailments. By the age of fourteen, Anacaona still could not bake delicious bread or weave the simplest cloth, but she was already able to apply a variety of bandages, knew all the internal organs, and could restore broken bones, not to mention her knowledge of medicinal herbs. Even as a little girl, she surprised her father, the experienced ticitl, Chimalli, with the correct balance for mixing many medicinal herbs. He had never taught her that. She found exactly the plants that were needed to heal the disease, dried and ground them, or alternatively, took their juice, and mixed them in perfect proportion. Her medicines had always been strong and effective remedies. Besides that, Anacaona was a good student of her father and readily learned his skills. What else could she learn during military campaigns since she was with him more often than at home? Anacaona also mastered military discipline from childhood, and in her telpochcalli, it was highly appreciated.

Another science that Anacaona liked was taught at school by an old man. He had poor eyesight, and when he appeared in the telpochcalli, the children always helped him find the right house. Long ago, the old man came to Texcoco from distant lands inhabited by the Itza tribes. He talked about the stars and the calendar, the seasons, and the ways in which the sun and moon travel. The old man was always holding a pipe at the ready, in which a pinch of some greenish leaves was smoking. He would suck in the smoke, let it out from the corner of his mouth away from the children, and continue his story, slightly narrowing his cloudy white eyes.

He taught Anacaona how to find the right path and understand directions depicted on sheets of amatl. Anacaona herself then learned to represent the roads and streets of her own city in this way.

The old man showed them a round calendar; around the inside, there was a ring with twenty pictures that represented days. The days were illustrated in the form of animal heads or other objects. He said that these drawings not only named the days but also showed the directions of different paths. The Path of Huitzilopochtli was depicted at the top of the calendar, leading to where the sun rose in the mornings. The calendar should always be laid down or put on the ground and turned in that direction. The word "xotl," or foot, meant a path on land, and the word "atl," or water, meant a path on the water.

Each path should be chosen according to the name of the day and in accordance with the direction of the Path of Huitzilopochtli, that is the sunrise. For example, the Iztli Koyotl tribes, with whom Chimalli and Anacaona once went to war, are on the Path of Xotl Mikaztli from Texcoco. And the cities of the Itza tribes, where the old man came from, are on the Path of Xotl Ollin from Texcoco. He told them if they put a stick in the middle of the calendar, then by the shadow of the stick, which moved with the sun during the daytime, they could divide the duration of the day into parts and always accurately determine them.

The old man also said that the way by the stars was more accurate than by the Sun, and talked about Big Water that never ends. He said Lake Texcoco was just a small puddle compared to Big Water. Anacaona found it hard to believe, but she then dreamed of seeing Big Water.

She learned the stories about Moctezuma's prophetic dream and the history of the Mexihkah tribes. From those tales, Anacaona grew very proud of the history of her people. The old man also always reminded them of the strong friendship between the tribes of Mexihkah and Itza, and of the enmity between the tribes of Iztli Koyotl, Zapotec, and Totonac.

After the sun reached its highest point and began to descend, the girls' classes ended, and they headed home. Only boys stayed and continued to listen to the teachers' stories. Anacaona didn't have to run home to help her mother. She liked to stay with the boys and listen to what the teachers told them. She also liked the games of patolli and ollamalitzli that the boys enjoyed after school. Sometimes, they played patolli together with the teachers, a game played on the lined wooden floor in one of the houses at the school. Anacaona liked to throw the bean grains marked with a white dot on one side and see how many dots would fall upright out of the five thrown beans. Then she moved the round stones around the playing field and tried to collect them in her corner. Plain stones replaced the expensive, elaborately made figures that were used to play in the calmecacs. Anacaona played patolli with her teachers several times as well. It was very fun!

However, patolli did not fascinate her as much as ollamalitzli, a game played with a rubber ball. Anacaona would run around the small field with the boys until evening trying to get the ball through a ring on a tree. Anacaona didn't play as well as the boys, but she tried her best. Anacaona knew that in the calmecacs in Texcoco and Tenochtitlan there were special playing fields with stone walls and special beautiful rings for playing ollamalitzli. However, she had never played on one of these real playing fields.

Late in the evening, when the tired Anacaona returned home, Chimalli could not be proud enough of how much time Anacaona spent at the telpochcalli. However, this peaceful life was to quickly come to an end as Chimalli was expected to go on another military campaign soon. He had no one to leave Anacaona with, and the girl would have to go with him again. Therefore, Anacaona still could not finish her studies at the telpochcalli. This went on for several years. Chimalli was very worried about this. He really wanted Anacaona to complete her studies at the telpochcalli like all the other children. Soon she would marry some glorious warrior, and she wouldn't have finished her education.

When Chimalli found out that the brother of the tlatoani of Texcoco needed an experienced ticitl in the new small town of Tlaluacatli, far from Texcoco, where there had been no war for a long time, he decided to enter his service, away from the big city and eternal military campaigns. This was how Anacaona finally saw Big Water, the very one she was told about by the teacher from the land of the Itza tribes.