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Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!
Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.
a three-pronged harpoon, like a trident; often used in fishing (see attestations)
mjnacachalli [minacachalli] = the three-pronged harpoon (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
The minacachalli is pictured in the Florentine Codex in Book 11, folio 29v.
Opochtli was the patron deity of the Atlaca, those specializing in fishing and other aquatic subsistence activities, and was credited with the invention of the fishing net, the atlatl (spear-thrower), the minacachalli, the three-pronged fishing harpoon, the pole for propelling canoes, and the snare for catching aquatic birds. (Sahagún 1970: 37).
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 103.