ĪXMĀTLA-TŌTŌ-TL, literally, “brave/gallant bird,” Great Tinamou (Tinamus major) [FC: 26 Ixmatlatototl] “Its home is in the forest. It lives there in Anahuac. It is called ixmatlatototl because [its song] is almost like our own speech. When it sings, it says campauee, as if it imitated those who live there…. Its bill is silvery. Its head, its breast, its back, [and] its tail are completely ashen; its feet are ashen.” The habitat, range, vocalizations and the fact that it is hunted for food suggest the Great Tinamou. If we knew the native languages of these provinces, we might better appreciate the onomatopoesia.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.
The Florentine Codex has an image of this bird in Book 11, folio 25v.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 25v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/25v/images/1e933e35-0... Accessed 16 October 2025.