zacuan.

Headword: 
zacuan.
Principal English Translation: 

Montezuma Oropendola, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
çaquan, çacuan, zaquan
Attestations from sources in English: 

ZACUAN, Montezuma Oropendola (Psarocolius montezumae) [FC: 20-21 Çaquan] “Troupial. It is pointed of bill; the feathers over the nose are chili-red. Everywhere [over the body] its feathers are tawny. And for this reason it is called çaquan (zaquan, zacuan); its tail is yellow, very yellow, intense yellow... but there are black [feathers] which cover it, which also underlie it. When its spreads its tail, then the yellow shows through. The black ones show splendor, radiate like a flame; like embers, like gold the show through.” “Troupial” is misleading, as that name now applies to a South American oriole. This is the Montezuma Oropendola, a distant relative of the Troupial.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, 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, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

zacuan - a troupial (a type of bird), whose feathers were used to decorate banners (late sixteenth century, Tetzcoco?)
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 35.

zacuampanitl = a flag with the feathers of the zacuán or troupial bird

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

zacuampanitl o 'banderas de pluma de zacuán o trupial' (F. 73v, véase figura 3a). Estos dos tipos de banderas aparecen también mencionados como insignias de guerreros capturados por los pochteca (Códice Florentino, 1979, lib. IX: 3, 5).

See also: