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.

cuappachtototl.

Headword: 
cuappachtototl.
Principal English Translation: 

Squirrel Cuckoo, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
quappachtototl
Attestations from sources in English: 

CUAPPACH-TŌTŌ-TL, literally, “tawny bird,” Squirrel Cuckoo (Piaya cayana) [FC: 22 Quappachtototl] “It is tawny, completely tawny: smoky, even-colored, well textured. It is smoked; it is smoky, it turns smoky.” Martin del Campo identified this as the Squirrel Cuckoo, which is certainly the best choice.
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); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.