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teyolmelahua.

Headword: 
teyolmelahua.
Principal English Translation: 

a ceremony that was performed by merchants in a way that supposedly made things right in their hearts (which Europeans linked to confession); and food was served, making this a feast; but part of the ceremony involved dressing up slaves, making them dance, and displaying them on petates in front of the house, before they were slain
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 9 -- The Merchants, No. 14, Part 10, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1959), 59–60.

Orthographic Variants: 
teyolmelaua
Alonso de Molina: 

teyolmelaua. el que confiessa.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 95r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.