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.

sayal.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
sayal.
Principal English Translation: 

serge, a coarse type of cotton used for clothing; gray Franciscan habits were made from this; sometimes called sayal fransiscano
Josephine Paterek, Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 264.

Attestations from sources in English: 

chiquacen bara sayal ipatiuh cecen bara cecen peso = six varas of serge worth one peso per vara (Saltillo, 1627)
Leslie S. Offutt, "Levels of Acculturation in Northeastern New Spain; San Esteban Testaments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Estudios de cultura náhuatl 22 (1992), 409–443, see page 428–429.

Abiton çayal (Santa Bárbara Mixcoac, 1671)
Unpublished transcription and translation by Stephanie Wood of a Nahuatl testament found in AGN Hospital de Jesús leg. 326, exp. 13, f. 21r.

Abito del Carme Zayal = the habit of Carmen of serge
(San Juan Bautista, Toluca Valley, 1717)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 109.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

vallaque chichimeca çacateca IX tin nima[n] q'[ui]mo[n]tlapatilli Luis Pinello sayal in q[ui]ncohui nima[n] ye ic q[ui]ntlatlayahualochtia in tianq[ui]zco S[an] Laz[ar]o auh ynic huallaque tlatocayotl quitlanico = vinieron nueve chichimeca zacateca, Luis Pinello los cambió, les compró sayales, y luego los hizo desfilar en el mercado de San Lázaro. Vinieron para solicitar el señorío [tlatocayotl]. (ca. 1582, Mexico City)
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), 166–167.

themes: 
Religion (Christian)
Textiles, Clothing