vaca.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
vaca.
Principal English Translation: 

cow, cows (vacas, vacastin, huacax); ox, oxen
(a loanword from Spanish; a reanalyzed plural form of vaca, the word for "cow" in Spanish, huacax, can be seen to intend singular or plural)

Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 69.

Orthographic Variants: 
huacax, baca, bacas, bacastin, baqastin, vacastin
Attestations from sources in English: 

In many of the documents in the corpus, a cow is called a vaca (or baca, or vaquilla, etc.), whereas huacax, originally the same word, is often an ox. Thus possibly the reference is to an ox in this case. (Santa Ana, Toluca Valley, 1737) Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 119.

çe huacaz onicmacac yhuan çe escaRama = I gave him an ox with an escaramán; çe yonta hu[a]caxti = a yoke of oxen. Today an escaramán is a kind of large, heavy harrow pulled by oxen and used in preparing the soil for sowing. (San Miguel Aticpac, Toluca Valley, 1711) Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 72.

huacax (well attested in Toluca) Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 47.

Sentel baca = a cow (San Pablo Tepemaxalco, Toluca Valley, 1681) Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 149.

oc nome baCas = two other cows (Calimaya, Toluca Valley, 1762)Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 223.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

centzontli yhuan zenpoali onmactlactli tzontecomatl bacas toros becerros be[ce]rras gueguey yhuan tepitzitzin = cuatrocientas y treinta cabezas de ganado mayor, vacas, toros, becerras y becerros grande y chico (Tepexi de la Seda, 1621)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 110–111.

bacas, bacastin; quaquahueque baqastin (Cuernavaca, s. XVI)
Brígida von Mentz, “Cambio social y cambio lingüistico. El ‘náhuatl cotidiano’, el de ‘doctrina’ y el de ‘escribanía’ en Cuauhnáhuac entre 1540 y 1671,” in Visiones del encuentro de dos mundos en América: lengua, cultura, traducción y transculturación, eds. Karen Dakin, Mercedes Montes de Oca, Claudia Parodi (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009), 120, 122.

ce[n]mantinemi y vacastin = por todos lados andan las vacas (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), 158–159.

themes: 
Agriculture, Gardens, Stockraising
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.