⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

machoncotl.

Headword: 
machoncotl.
Principal English Translation: 

an upper-arm bracelet or bangle, made of feathers or shells (see Molina and attestations)

IPAspelling: 
mɑːtʃonkotɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

machoncotl. bracelete de pluma rica.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 50v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

machoncotl = a bracelet of feathers
James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 200.

machoncotl = arm bands with quetzal feathers
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 124.

machoncotl = the shell bracelet which the king wore on his upper arm
Mexican and Central American Antiquities, Calendar Systems, and History: Twenty-Four Papers, eds. Charles Pickering Bowditch, Eduard Seler (1904), 63.

machoncotl = upper-arm bangle
Codex Vaticanus No. 3773 (Codex Vaticanus B): An Old Mexican Pictorial Manuscript in the Vatican Library, eds. Eduard Seler and Joseph Florimond Loubat (1903), 116.

machoncotl = "the upper arms are decked with the rings extended like a shield on one side"
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: An Old Mexican Picture Manuscript in the Liverpool Free Public Museums, eds. and transl. Eduard Seler and Augustus Henry Keane (1902), 206.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

machoncotl etetl = tres sonajas (Tetepango, Hidalgo, 1586)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 264–265.

themes: 
Feathers
Jewelry, Adornment, Accouterments
Shells