Principal English Translation:
local-level ward boss or the like (p. 154); "leader of the people" (p. 2)
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), eds. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 154.
Alonso de Molina:
teyacanqui. guiador, o gouernador.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 94r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
TĒYACĀNQUI leader, ruler, boss / guiador o gobernador (M) [(1)Cf.116v]. See YACĀN(A).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 239.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
leader; lower sociopolitical official. tē-, pret. agentive of yacāna, to lead.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 235.
Attestations from sources in English:
leader, guide (plural: teyacanque)
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), 44.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
yhua[n] machtilloque yn ixq'[ui]chtin toteyacanahua[n] q'[ui]nmolhuilli in p[adr]e ynic qualli cabildo yhuan ynic qualli tlapepenaliztli quichihuazque etc. = y se les predicó a todos nuestros guías [teyacanque], les dijo el padre que hagan un buen cabildo y una buena elección, etc. (ca. 1582, México)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 140–141.