Question

Unlike traditional European cartography, which emerged from the Renaissance with a strict prioritization of abstract, mathematically scaled geometrical space, sixteenth-century Mesoamerican *lienzos*—large, painted cloth documents created by indigenous communities—merged topographical representation with genealogical history and mythic narrative. Following the Spanish conquest, indigenous elites, or *caciques*, actively utilized these highly syncretic documents within the Spanish colonial judicial system to defend ancestral land claims, assert hereditary privileges, and resolve disputes over tribute rights with competing communities. The Spanish colonial courts, operating under the decentralized administrative framework of the early Viceroyalty of New Spain, surprisingly admitted these pictographic and ideographic documents as legally binding evidence. However, because Spanish magistrates lacked the cultural literacy to independently decode the iconography, court procedures routinely mandated that the *lienzos* be accompanied by oral testimony from indigenous elders or formally glossed with alphabetic Nahuatl or Spanish text by bilingual scribes.

A defining structural feature of the *lienzo* is its repudiation of linear temporality and uniform spatial scale. The physical boundaries of a community, or *altepetl*, were typically depicted along the periphery of the cloth, featuring specific topographical markers such as stylized mountains or rivers. The center, conversely, was usually reserved for depicting the community's founding ancestor or the migration narrative that established the original settlement. Within this spatial framework, winding paths of footprints indicated movement across both physical terrain and chronological time. Crucially, while a modern cartographer categorically distinguishes between the geographical limits of a physical territory and the chronological descent of its rulers, the *lienzo* conceptualizes these elements as mutually constitutive. In the indigenous legal framework, the right to occupy a specific geographical space was inextricably bound to the unbroken, documented lineage of the leaders who oversaw that space.

Early twentieth-century ethnohistorians frequently fundamentally misinterpreted the *lienzos*. Influenced by Western geographic paradigms, these scholars attempted to seamlessly project the indigenous documents onto standard topographic maps, systematically treating the prominent genealogical figures and footprint motifs merely as decorative marginalia or legendary embellishments irrelevant to the document's primary geographic function. Contemporary scholarship, however, has conclusively demonstrated that for the *caciques* presenting these documents in colonial courts, the genealogical sequences constituted the primary legal argument. The spatial boundaries depicted on the periphery were legally contingent upon the historical legitimacy of the central lineage. Consequently, Spanish magistrates, despite their own distinctly Euclidean geographic sensibilities, were frequently compelled to adjudicate complex land disputes on the basis of ancestral continuity and dynastic legitimacy rather than mere physical occupation or precise territorial measurement.

According to the passage, early twentieth-century ethnohistorians evaluating the *lienzos* typically did which one of the following?