CHAPTER III
THE GREAT GODS
METHOD OF TREATMENT
In the section descriptive of the gods, each divinity is dealt with separately. The need for system and orderly arrangement in the study of Mexican Mythology is clamant. In the hope that future students of the subject may be spared the Herculean task of separating the mythology of the Mexican people from their history, I have thought it best to arrange my material in as systematic a fashion as its complex character permits.
The plan employed is a simple one. I have prefaced the description of each god with a table containing the following information concerning him: Area of Worship, Name, Minor Names, Relationship, Calendar-place, Compass-direction, Symbol, Festivals. In some cases where, for example, a god has no festival or no minor names, the item relating to such information is, of course, absent.
The description proper of each deity begins with an account of his Aspect and Insignia, as observed in the several codices and paintings, manuscripts, vases, or statuary. [75] A section is devoted to festivals celebrated in his honour, another deals with the priesthood specially attendant on him, and a further paragraph with the temples in which he was worshipped. There follows a précis of all known myths relating to him. In certain instances, too, hymns and prayers offered up to him are quoted. The last section deals with his nature and status, so far as I have been able to elucidate these.
UITZILOPOCHTLI = “HUMMING-BIRD WIZARD”
Area of Worship: Mexico.
Minor Names: Tetzateotl—“Terrible God.” Tetzahuitl—“The Raging.” Ilhuicatl Xoxouhqui—“The Blue Heaven.” Mexitli—“Hare of the Maguey.”
Compass Directions: The South; upper region.
Festivals: Toxcatl, the fifth month; first of tlaxochimaco, the ninth month. Panquetzaliztli, the fifteenth month. Movable feast ce tecpatl.
Relationships: Son of Coatlicue. Brother of the Centzonuitznaua. Brother of Coyolxauhqui. One of the Tzitzimimê.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Face-paint.—Blue and yellow horizontal stripes, the yellow known as piloechinolli (“face-painting of children”) made of children’s excrement, in allusion, perhaps, to his character of a young or new-born god. He occasionally wears the stellar mask, [76] like Mixcoatl and Camaxtli.
Body-paint.—Blue.
Dress.—Usually the humming-bird mantle, pictographic of his name. His head is surmounted by a panache of feathers. On his breast is a white ring made from a mussel-shell, like those of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipocâ, and Paynal, which is called eteocuitlaanauauh (“his golden ring”) or eltezcatl (“his breast mirror”). Perhaps the best representation of him is in Codex Borbonicus (sheet 34).
Weapons.—Shield (teueuelli), made of reeds, with eagle’s down adhering to it in five places in the form of a quincunx. He carries spears tipped with tufts of down instead of stone points (tlauacomalli), the weapons of those doomed to a gladiatorial death, the fire-snake xiuhcoatl as an atlatl, or spear-thrower, and the bow, which he was supposed to have invented or introduced into Mexico. The flag held by him on some occasions represents the panquetzaliztli festival in Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticanus A.
Variations.—He is frequently to be observed wearing the insignia of the stellar gods of war and hunting (Mixcoatl, Camaxtli).
According to Seler (Commentary on the Codex Vaticanus B, p. 91), Uitzilopochtli figures in that MS. as showing “in a general way the devices and the dress-badges of the fire-god,” differing, however, in colour and painting. When found along with Tezcatlipocâ as Ruler of the Southern Heaven, in Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (sheet 25), he is seated on a jaguar-skin seat, enveloped in a long robe of a light blue colour, with balls of downy feathers. He wears the aztaxelli or forked heron-feather ornament on his head and has the yellow face-paint alluded to above. In the Sahagun MS. (Bib. del Palacio) he is represented as wearing on his back the “dragon’s head” alluded to in the text. In the Duran MS. (2 o, plate 2 a), drawn by a European hand, the humming-bird headdress forms a helmet-mask, and in the Codex Ramirez (Juan de Tobar), in which the figure is Europeanized almost out of recognition, the same is the case, but the shield-marking is incorrect, consisting as it does of seven tufts of down instead of five.
Clavigero (tom. ii, pp. 17–19) says of Uitzilopochtli’s insignia: “Upon his head he carried a beautiful crest, shaped like the beak of a bird, upon his neck a collar shaped like ten figures of the human heart. His statue was of an enormous size, in the posture of a man seated on a blue-coloured bench, from the four corners of which issued four snakes. His forehead was blue, but his face was covered with a golden mask, while another of the same kind covered the back of his head. In his hand he carried a large blue, twisted club, in his left a shield in which appeared five balls of feathers disposed in the form of a cross, and from the upper part of the shield rose a golden flag with four arrows, which the Mexicans believed to have been sent to them from heaven. His body was girt with a large golden snake, and adorned with lesser figures of animals made of gold and precious stones, which ornaments and insignia had each their peculiar meaning.”
Acosta says of his appearance: “The chiefest idoll of Mexico was, as I have sayde, Vitziliputzli. It was an image of wood like to a man, set upon a stoole of the coloure of azure, in a brankard or litter, in every corner was a piece of wood in forme of a serpent’s head. The stoole signified that he was set in heaven. This idol had all the forehead azure, and had a band of azure under the nose from one ear to another. Upon his head he had a rich plume of feathers like to the beak of a small bird, the which was covered on the top with gold burnished very brown. He had in his left hand a small target, with the figures of five pineapples made of white feathers set in a cross. And from above issued forth a crest of gold, and at his sides hee hadde foure dartes, which (the Mexicaines say) had been sent from heaven which shall be spoken of. In his right hand he had an azured staff cutte in the fashion of a waving snake. All those ornaments with the rest hee had, carried his sence as the Mexicaines doe shew.” [77]
Solis writes of his aspect as follows: “Opposite ... sat Huitzilopochtli, on a throne supported by a blue globe. From this, supposed to represent the heavens, projected four staves with serpents’ heads, by which the priests carried the god when he was brought before the public. The image bore upon its head a bird of wrought plumes, whose beak and crest were of burnished gold. The feathers expressed horrid cruelty, and were made still more ghastly by two strips of blue, one on the brow and the other on the nose. Its right hand leaned, as on a staff, upon a crooked serpent. Upon the left arm was a buckler bearing five white plums, arranged in the form of a cross, and the hand grasped four arrows, venerated as heaven-descended.” [78]
Herrera says that his idol was a gigantic image of stone, covered with a lawn called nacar, beset with pearls, precious stones, and pieces of gold. It had for a girdle great snakes of gold, and a counterfeit visor with eyes of glass. [79]
Torquemada writes: “In his right hand a dart or long blue pole, in the left a shield, his face barred with lines of blue. His forehead was decorated with a tuft of green feathers, his left leg was lean and feathered, and both thighs and arms were barred with blue.” [80]
The Sahagun MS. states that “he wears a panache of yellow parrot feathers stuck together, and having a bunch of quetzal-feathers at the tip. His espitzalli is over his forehead. The face or mask is striped in various colours, and the ear-plug is made of the feathers of the blue cotinga. On his back is the fire-snake dress and on his arm he has a quetzal-feather. At the back he is girded with a blue net cloth, and his leg is striped with blue. Bells and shells decorate his feet, and he is shod with sandals of the type usually worn by persons of high degree. His shield is the teueuelli with a bundle of arrows without points stuck in it, and in one hand he holds a serpent-staff.”
Sahagun (c. xxii, bk. iv) describes the insignia employed at the god’s festival of ce tecpatl. These were the quetzalquemitl, or mantle of green quetzal-feathers, the tozquemitl, the mantle made of the yellow feathers of the toztli, a bird of the parrot species, the Uitzitzilquemitl, or mantle of humming-bird’s feathers, “and others less rich.”
FESTIVALS
The first festival of Uitzilopochtli was the tlaxochimaco, of which Sahagun says: “The ninth month was styled tlaxochimaco. A festival was held on the first day of this month in honour of Huitzilopochtli, god of war, when he was offered the first flowers of the year. The night before this festival everybody killed chickens and dogs with which to make tamalli and other things good to eat. Very soon after the first glimmerings of dawn on the day of the festival, the attendants of the idols adorned the statue of Huitzilopochtli with flowers. The images of the other gods were decked with garlands and wreaths of flowers, and the same was done to all the other idols of the calpulli [81] and telpochcalli. [82] The calpixque, [83] the principal people, and the macehualli [84] covered the statues in their houses with flowers. These preparations being completed, the viands prepared during the previous night were partaken of, and shortly after this repast a dance was engaged in, in which the nobles mingled with the women, taking them by the hand, and even going the length of embracing them by placing their arms round their necks. The usual movements of the areyto [85] were not performed, the dancers moving step by step, to the strains of the musicians and singers, who stood, some distance away, at the foot of a round altar called momoztli. They sang thus until night, not only in the courts of the temples, but also in the houses of people of rank and of the macehualli, while the aged of both sexes indulged deeply in pulque; but young people were not permitted to touch it, and anyone allowing them to drink it was severely punished.”
Toxcatl.—For this festival see under Tezcatlipocâ, to whom it was also and more especially sacred.
Panquetzalitztli.—The following account of this festival is summarized from Sahagun’s pages: For twenty-four days prior to the incidence of the festival the priests did penitence. They hung branches upon the oratories and shrines of the gods of the mountains, and green reeds and leaves of the maguey-plant. At the end of the quecholli festival everyone took to dancing and singing, especially to the song or hymn of Uitzilopochtli. Nine days before the sacrifice those doomed to die bathed in the fountain called Uitzilotl (humming-bird water) in the village of Uitzilopochco. The old men went to seek nine bunches of the leaves of the tree called aueuetl (“old one of the waters”—the Cupressus distica). The faces of the doomed ones were painted in the colours of the god, yellow and blue in transverse bands, and adorned with his insignia.
After five days of penitential exercises mingled with dancing and singing, and on the day before the festival, the captives rose with dawn and betook themselves to the houses of those who had dedicated them to the slaughter, preceded by a man carrying a vessel full of black ink or red ochre or blue tincture. On arriving at the houses of those who had devoted them to death, they dipped their hands in the vessel and pressed them on the gates and the pillars of the dwelling, so that the imprint remained. [86] They then entered the kitchen of the house and walked several times round the furnace. Then they marched in procession to the temple, accompanied by porters bearing rich attire, which the captives donned. The hair was then taken from their heads to be kept “as a relic.” They were then given cylindrical cakes to eat, which must be held on the point of a maguey thorn and not between the fingers. With the dawn of day the god Paynal, the herald of Uitzilopochtli, descended from the temple of Uitzilopochtli. Four captives were then slain, two in honour of “the god Oappatzan.” Paynal, borne by four “necromancers,” then took the road to Tlatelolco, whence he passed to Nonoalco, the priest of the temple there receiving him with the representative of the god Quauitlicac, “his companion” (see “Myths”). The images were then carried to Tlaxotlan and Popotlan, where other captives were slain. Then the procession took its way to Chapultepec, passing the hill of that name and crossing the little river Izquitlan, at the temple of which other captives called Izquiteca (“who eat roasted maize”) were sacrificed. They then crossed to the right under Coyoacan, passing by way of Tepetocan to Acachinanco.
During the time they made this progress the slaves who were about to die engaged in a skirmish. They divided themselves into two parties, the Uitznauatl (“They of the Thorny Wizard”), the other unnamed. The former seem to have been professional soldiers armed with mock weapons; the others slaves, armed with maquahuitls, wooden swords set with obsidian flakes. On Paynal’s return those who watched them from the summit of the temple, seeing the banner of the god (epaniztli), cried out, “Mexicans, cease your strife, the lord Paynal has come.” The warriors in the patrol of Paynal then rushed to the summit of the temple, where they arrived in a breathless condition. They placed their idol beside the paste image of Uitzilopochtli. Their ears were pierced by the priest. They descended again, carrying an image of Uitzilopochtli made of paste, which they divided, each bearing his own portion to his own house, where he made festival with his parents and neighbours. A tour of the temple was then made, the captives walking in front.
A priest then descended from the summit of the temple bearing a sheaf of white papers in his hand, which he held up to the four cardinal points in turn, afterwards throwing them into a mortar called quauhxicalco [87] (“cup of the eagles”). He was followed by another holding a very long pine-torch called xiuhcoatl (“fire-snake”), shaped like fire. (This was the fire-snake weapon with which one of Uitzilopochtli’s followers had killed his rebellious sister Coyolxauhqui). This was cast burning into the vessel containing the papers, which were consumed. Paynal reappeared, and the slaves were sacrificed according to rank to the sound of conch-shells. All then returned home, where octli of special strength was drunk, festivities engaged in, and presents of wearing apparel distributed to friends and dependants (bk. ii, c. 34).
This festival took place at the period of the winter solstice, when the sun has removed farthest to the south. The burning of the papers by the xiuhcoatl, and the fact that the fire-festival of the new period of fifty-two years, the making of the new fire, was usually postponed to coincide with it, show it to be a fire-feast; for in his “avatar” of the sun Uitzilopochtli was a fire-god.
Torquemada states that the priest of Quetzalcoatl hurled a dart into the breast of the paste image of Uitzilopochtli, which fell. He then pulled the “heart” out of it, giving it to the king. The body was then divided among the men, no woman being allowed to eat of it. The ceremony was called teoqualo, i.e. “god is eaten.” [88]
MYTHS
Regarding Uitzilopochtli, Clavigero says: “Huitzilopochtli, or Mexitli, was the god of war; the deity the most honoured by the Mexicans, and their chief protector. Of this god some said he was a pure spirit, others that he was born of a woman, but without the assistance of a man, and described his birth in the following manner: There lived, said they, in Coatepec, a place near to the ancient city of Tula, a woman called Coatlicue, mother of the Centzonhuiznahuas, who was extremely devoted to the worship of the gods. One day, as she was employed, according to her usual custom, in walking in the temple, she beheld descending in the air a ball made of various feathers. She seized it and kept it in her bosom, intending afterwards to employ the feathers in decoration of the altar; but when she wanted it after her walk was at an end she could not find it, at which she was extremely surprised, and her wonder was very greatly increased when she began to perceive from that moment that she was pregnant. Her pregnancy advanced till it was discovered by her children, who, although they could not themselves suspect their mother’s virtue, yet fearing the disgrace she would suffer upon her delivery, determined to prevent it by putting her to death. They could not take their resolution so secretly as to conceal it from their mother, who, while she was in deep affliction at the thought of dying by the hands of her own children, heard an unexpected voice issue from her womb, saying, ‘Be not afraid, mother, I shall save you with the greatest honour to yourself and glory to me.’
“Her hard-hearted sons, guided and encouraged by their sister Cojolxauhqui, who had been the most keenly bent upon the deed, were now just upon the point of executing their purpose, when Huitzilopochtli was born, with a shield in his left hand, a spear in his right, and a crest of green feathers on his head; his left leg adorned with feathers, and his face, arms, and thighs streaked with blue lines. As soon as he came into the world he displayed a twisted pine, and commanded one of his soldiers, called Tochchancalqui, to fell with it Cojolxauhqui, as the one who had been the most guilty; and he himself attacked the rest with so much fury that, in spite of their efforts, their arms, or their entreaties, he killed them all, plundered their houses, and presented the spoils to his mother. Mankind were so terrified by this event, that from that time they called him Tetzahuitl (terror) and Tetzauhteotl (terrible god).
“This was the god who, as they said, becoming the protector of the Mexicans, conducted them for so many years in their pilgrimage, and at length settled them where they afterwards founded the great city of Mexico. They raised to him that superb temple, so much celebrated, even by the Spaniards, in which were annually holden three solemn festivals in the fifth, ninth, and fifteenth months; besides those kept every four years, every thirteen years, and at the beginning of every century. His statue was of gigantic size, in the posture of a man seated on a blue-coloured bench, from the four corners of which issued four huge snakes. His forehead was blue, but his face was covered with a golden mask, while another of the same kind covered the back of his head. Upon his head he carried a beautiful crest, shaped like the beak of a bird; upon his neck a collar consisting of ten figures of the human heart; in his right hand a large blue, twisted club; in his left a shield, on which appeared five balls of feathers disposed in the form of a cross, and from the upper part of the shield rose a golden flag with four arrows, which the Mexicans pretended to have been sent to them from heaven to perform those glorious actions which we have seen in their history. His body was girt with a large golden snake and adorned with lesser figures of animals made of gold and precious stones, which ornaments and insignia had each their peculiar meaning. They never deliberated upon making war without imploring the protection of this god, with prayers and sacrifices; and offered up a greater number of human victims to him than to any other of the gods.” [89]
Boturini says of this god: “While the Mexicans were pushing their conquests and their advance toward the country now occupied by them, they had a very renowned captain, or leader, called Huitziton. He it was that in these long and perilous journeys through unknown lands, sparing himself no fatigue, took care of the Mexicans. The fable says of him that, being full of years and wisdom, he was one night caught up in sight of his army and of all his people, and presented to the god Tezauhteotl, that is to say the Frightful God, who, being in the shape of a horrible dragon, commanded him to be seated at his right hand, saying: ‘Welcome, O valiant captain; very grateful am I for thy fidelity in my service and in governing my people. It is time that thou shouldest rest, since thou art already old, and since thy great deeds raise thee up to the fellowship of the immortal gods. Return then to thy sons and tell them not to be afflicted if in future they cannot see thee as a mortal man; for from the nine heavens thou shalt look down propitious upon them. And not only that, but also, when I strip the vestments of humanity from thee, I will leave to thine afflicted and orphan people thy bones and thy skull so that they may be comforted in their sorrow, and may consult thy relics as to the road they have to follow: and in due time the land shall be shown them that I have destined for them, a land in which they shall hold wide empire, being respected of the other nations.’
“Huitziton did according to these instructions, and after a sorrowful interview with his people, disappeared, carried away by the gods. The weeping Mexicans remained with the skull and bones of their beloved captain, which they carried with them till they arrived in New Spain, and at the place where they built the great city of Tenochtitlan, or Mexico. All this time the devil spoke to them through this skull of Huitziton, often asking for the immolation of men and women, from which thing originated those bloody sacrifices, practised afterwards by this nation with so much cruelty on prisoners of war. This deity was called, in early as well as in later times, Huitzilopochtli—for the principal men believed that he was seated at the left hand of Tezcatlipocâ—a name derived from the original name Huitziton, and from the word mapoche, ‘left hand.’” [90]
Sahagun says of Uitzilopochtli that, being originally a man, he was a sort of Hercules, of great strength and warlike, a great destroyer of towns and slayer of men. In war he had been a living fire, very terrible to his adversaries; and the device he bore was a dragon’s head, frightful in the extreme, and casting fire out of its mouth. A great wizard he had been, and sorcerer, transforming himself into the shape of divers birds and beasts. While he lived, the Mexicans esteemed this man very highly for his strength and dexterity in war, and when he died they honoured him as a god, offering slaves, and sacrificing them in his presence. And they looked to it that those slaves were well fed and well decorated with such ornaments as were in use, with earrings and visors; all for the greater honour of the god. In Tlaxcala also they had a deity called Camaxtli, who was similar to this Huitzilopochtli. [91]
The myth of Uitzilopochtli, as given by Sahagun, may be condensed as follows:
Under the shadow of the mountain of Coatepec, near the Toltec city of Tollan, there dwelt a pious widow called Coatlicue, the mother of a tribe of Indians called Centzonuitznaua, who had a daughter called Coyolxauhqui, and who daily repaired to a small hill with the intention of offering up prayers to the gods in a penitent spirit of piety. Whilst occupied in her devotions one day she was surprised by a small ball of brilliantly coloured feathers falling upon her from on high. She was pleased by the bright variety of its hues and placed it in her bosom, intending to offer it up to the Sun-god. Some time afterwards she learnt that she was to become the mother of another child. Her sons, hearing of this, rained abuse upon her, being incited to humiliate her in every possible way by their sister Coyolxauhqui.
Coatlicue went about in fear and anxiety; but the spirit of her unborn infant came and spoke to her and gave her words of encouragement, soothing her troubled heart. Her sons, however, were resolved to wipe out what they considered an insult to their race by the death of their mother, and took counsel with one another to slay her. They attired themselves in their war-gear, and arranged their hair after the manner of warriors going to battle. But one of their number, Quauitlicac, relented and confessed the perfidy of his brothers to the still unborn Uitzilopochtli, who replied to him: “O uncle, [92] hearken attentively to what I have to say to you. I am fully informed of what is going to happen.” With the intention of slaying their mother, the Indians went in search of her. At their head marched their sister, Coyolxauhqui. They were armed to the teeth, and carried bundles of darts, with which they intended to kill the luckless Coatlicue.
Quauitlicac climbed the mountain to acquaint Uitzilopochtli with the news that his brothers were approaching to kill their mother.
“Mark well where they are at,” replied the infant god. “To what place have they advanced?”
“To Tzompantitlan,” responded Quauitlicac.
Later on Uitzilopochtli asked: “Where may they be now?”
“At Coaxalco,” was the reply.
Once more Uitzilopochtli asked to what point his enemies had advanced.
“They are now at Petlac,” Quauitlicac replied.
Quauitlicac later informed them that his brothers and sister had arrived at the middle of the mountain. At the moment they arrived Uitzilopochtli was born, attired in full war panoply. He ordered one named Tochâncalqui (inhabitant of our house) to attack his sister with the fire-snake xiuhcoatl, and with a blow he shattered Coyolxauhqui in pieces. Her head rested upon the mountain of Coatepec. The infant god then pursued his brethren four times round the mountain. Several fell into the lake and were drowned. Others he slew, only a few escaped, and these were banished to Uitzlampa in the south. [93]
Torquemada says of Uitzilopochtli: “Huitzilopochtli, the ancient god and guide of the Mexicans, is a name variously derived. Some say it is composed of two words: huitzilin, ‘a humming-bird,’ and tlahuipuchtli, ‘a sorcerer that spits fire.’ Others say that the second part of the name comes not from tlahuipuchtli, but from opuchtli, that is, ‘the left hand’; so that the whole name, Huitzilopochtli, would mean ‘the shining-feathered left hand.’ For this idol was decorated with rich and resplendent feathers on the left arm. And this god it was that led out the Mexicans from their own land and brought them into Anahuac.
“Some held him to be a purely spiritual being, others affirmed that he had been born of a woman, and related his history after the following fashion: Near the city of Tulla there is a mountain called Coatepec, that is to say the Mountain of the Snake, where a woman lived, named Coatlicue or Snake-petticoat. She was the mother of many sons called Centzunhuitznahua, and of a daughter whose name was Coyolxauhqui. Coatlicue was very devout and careful in the service of the gods, and she occupied herself ordinarily in sweeping and cleaning the sacred places of that mountain. It happened that one day, occupied with these duties, she saw a little ball of feathers floating down to her through the air, which she taking, as we have already related, found herself in a short time pregnant.
“Upon this all her children conspired against her to slay her, and came armed against her, the daughter Coyolxauhqui being the ringleader and most violent of all. Then, immediately, Huitzilopochtli was born, fully armed, having a shield called teuehueli in his left hand, in his right a dart, or long blue pole, and all his face barred over with lines of the same colour. His forehead was decorated with a great tuft of green feathers, his left leg was lean and feathered, and both thighs and the arms barred with blue. He then caused to appear a serpent made of torches, teas, called xiuhcoatl; and he ordered a soldier called Tochaucalqui to light this serpent, and taking it with him to embrace Coyolxauhqui. From this embrace the matricidal daughter immediately died, and Huitzilopochtli himself slew all her brethren and took their spoil, enriching his mother therewith. After this he was surnamed Tetzahuitl, that is to say Fright, or Amazement, and held as a god, born of a mother without a father—as the great god of battles, for in these his worshippers found him very favourable to them.” [94]
“Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas.” [95]—Collecting and summarizing the scattered notices regarding Uitzilopochtli in the above-named work, we find it stated that he was the fourth and youngest son of Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciuatl, his elder brothers being the Red Tezcatlipocâ, the Black Tezcatlipocâ, and Quetzalcoatl. Uitzilopochtli is here also called Omitecatl, “and for another name Magueycoatl (Snake of the Maguey). He was called Ochilobos (the Spanish rendering of Uitzilopochtli) because he was left-handed and was chief god to those of Mexico and their god of war. He was born without flesh but with bones, and thus he remained six hundred years, in which nothing was made, ‘neither the gods nor their father.’ Taking counsel with Quetzalcoatl, they fashioned the sun, then they made a man, Oxomoco, and a woman, Cipactonal, commanding him to till the earth and her to spin and weave, and created other things.”
HYMNS
In the Sahagun MS. the following hymns or songs relate to Uitzilopochtli:—
THE SONG OF UITZILOPOCHTLI
I
Uitzilopochtli the warrior, no one is my equal; Not in vain have I put on the vestment of yellow feathers, For through me the sun has risen (i.e. the time of sacrifice appears).
II
The man out of the cold land knew (through him) a baneful omen. He had taken a foot from the man out of the cold land.
III
In the place of Tlaxotlan, the feathers were distributed With which the war chieftains stuck themselves. My God is named Tepanquizqui (“He who overcomes the people”).
IV
He makes himself feared, the god of Tlaxotlan, Dust whirls upon the God of Tlaxotlan, Dust whirls upon him.
V
Our enemies, the people from Amantlan, assemble; meet me there. So will in their own house the enemy be. Meet me there.
VI
Our enemies the people of Pipitlan assemble; meet me there. So will in their own house the enemy be.
This song is probably a chant sung before sacrifice to the god. The line “He had taken a foot from the man out of the cold land” seems to allude to the maiming of one of the gods by Uitzilopochtli, or is symbolic of the punishment of a human enemy by rendering him unfit for war through the amputation of one of his feet. Tezcatlipocâ, one of whose names was Yaotzin, “the enemy,” is frequently represented as having but one foot, and the phrase “the man from the cold land,” i.e. the North, applies almost certainly to him. The rest of the song relates to the peoples with whom the Mexicans were frequently at war.
SONG OF THE SHIELD
I
In his shield of the young wife the great warrior chieftain was born. In his shield of the young wife (or maid) the great warrior chieftain was born.
II
He who gained his heroic title on the serpent mountain In his (warrior) face-painting, (and with the shield) teueuelli. No one in truth rises. The earth quakes As he put on his (warrior) face-painting (and his shield) teueuelli.
The first couplet is obscure to me, and seems to refer to a lost myth, which perhaps stated that the god was born of a virgin. The second strophe, of course, relates to the slaughter by Uitzilopochtli of his brothers the Centzonuitznaua.
PRIESTHOOD
The high priest of Uitzilopochtli was called Totec tlamacazque, who also bore the name of Quetzalcoatl (an honorary title, originating out of the belief that the god of that name was regarded as the prototype of all religious orders), and who, along with the Tlaloc tlamacazque, occupied the chief religious office in Mexico. He was selected for his piety and general fitness. [96]
TEMPLE
Acosta describes Uitzilopochtli’s great temple at Mexico as follows: “There was in Mexico this Cu, the famous Temple of Vitziliputzli, it had a very great circuite, and within a faire Court. It was built of great stones, in fashion of snakes tied one to another, and the circuite was called Coatepantli, which is, a circuite of snakes: vppon the toppe of every chamber and oratorie where the Idolls were, was a fine piller wrought with small stones, blacke as ieate, set in goodly order, the ground raised vp with white and red, which below gave a great light. Vpon the top of the pillar were battlements very artificially made, wrought like snailes (caracoles), supported by two Indians of stone, sitting, holding candlesticks in their hands, the which were like Croisants garnished and enriched at the ends, with yellow and greene feathers and long fringes of the same. Within the circuite of this court there were many chambers of religious men, and others that were appointed for the service of the Priests and Popes, for so they call the soveraigne Priests which serve the Idoll.
“There were foure gates or entries, at the east, west, north, and south; at every one of these gates beganne a fair cawsey of two or three leagues long. There was in the midst of the lake where the citie of Mexico is built, four large cawseies in crosse, which did much to beautify it; vpon every portall or entry was a God or Idoll having the visage turned to the causey, right against the Temple gate of Vitziliputzli. There were thirtie steppes of thirtie fadome long, and they divided from the circuit of the court by a streete that went betwixt them; vpon the toppe of these steppes there was a walke thirtie foote broad, all plaistered with chalke, in the midst of which walke was a Palisado artificially made of very high trees, planted in order a fadome one from another. These trees were very bigge, and all pierced with small holes from the foote to the top, and there were roddes did runne from one tree to another, to the which were chained or tied many dead mens heades. Vpon every rod were twentie sculles, and these ranckes of sculles continue from the foote to the toppe of the tree. This Palisado was full of dead mens sculls from one end to the other, the which was a wonderfull mournefull sight and full of horror. These were the heads of such as had beene sacrificed; for after they were dead and had eaten the flesh, the head was delivered to the Ministers of the Temple, which tied them in this sort vntil they fell off by morcells; and then had they a care to set others in their places. Vpon the toppe of the temple were two stones or chappells, and in them were the two Idolls which I have spoken of, Vitziliputzli, and his companion Tlaloc. These Chappells were carved and graven very artificially, and so high, that to ascend vp to it, there was a staire of stone of sixscore steppes. Before these Chambers or Chappells, there was a Court of fortie foot square, in the midst thereof, was a high stone of five hand breadth, poynted in fashion of a Pyramide, it was placed there for the sacrificing of men; for being laid on their backes, it made their bodies to bend, and so they did open them and pull out their hearts, as I shall shew heereafter.” [97]
NATURE AND STATUS
Prolonged deliberation upon the nature of Uitzilopochtli has led me to the conclusion that he was originally a personification of the maguey-plant (Agave americana). The grounds upon which I base this hypothesis are as follows: A certain variety of the maguey-plant, or metl, was known to the Aztecâ of Mexico-Tenochtitlan as Uitzitzilteutli, or “beak of the humming-bird,” probably because of the resemblance the long spiky thorns (uitztli) with which it is covered bear to the sharp beak of that bird (the uitzitzilin), which suspends its tiny, web-like nest from the leaves of the plant in question. The connection of Uitzilopochtli with the maguey-plant is also proved by at least two of his subsidiary titles. Thus in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas [98] he is alluded to as Magueycoatl, “Serpent of the Maguey,” and he was also known as Mexitli, or “Hare of the Maguey,” a title from which one of the quarters of Tenochtitlan, and later the entire city, took its name of Mexico. At the panquetzaliztli festival held in his honour, the warriors who skirmished on his side in mimicry of his combat with the Centzonuitznaua were said to take the part of Uitznauatl, [99] or “Thorn that speaks oracularly.” In certain of the place-names which are hieroglyphically figured in the codices, too, the element of his name is depicted as a maguey-plant. Sahagun further states that the proprietors of the maguey plantations and the publicans who sold octli or pulque cut their plants so that they might yield their juice during the sign ce tecpatl, the movable feast of Uitzilopochtli, in the belief that, were they tapped at this time, they would yield abundantly. [100]
Etymologically, there is good evidence that Uitzilopochtli originally represented the maguey. The word uitztli means “thorn,” and appears in such compounds as Uitzlampa, “Place of Thorns” (the South), and Uitznauatl, “The Thorn that speaks,” which, as we have seen, was another, and probably an older, title of the god. Uitzoctli, too, as Seler has indicated, [101] means “pricking pulque,” newly fermented octli. It would seem, then, that the name Uitzilopochtli, until now generally translated as “Humming-bird-to-the-left,” and rendered by Seler “Humming-bird of the South,” must possess another significance for us. Opochtli certainly means both “south” and “left,” but it also means “wizard,” as in the compound tlahuipuchtli, “wizard who spits fire,” instanced by Torquemada, [102] who states that some persons derived the god’s name from that word, combined with uitzilinin, “a humming-bird.” [103] It is easy to see how the god came to be associated with the humming-bird, which suspends its nest from the foliage of the maguey. It would appear to the Mexicans to emerge from the leaves of that plant, and would come to be regarded as the form which the maguey-spirit took. Indeed, the humming-bird dress or disguise is that in which Uitzilopochtli is almost invariably represented in the codices. It was in the shape of a humming-bird that the god was said to have led the Aztecâ from their ancient home to the Valley of Anahuac, and his flights would probably be considered ominous and suggestive to augurs, like those of the Latin Picus. But it is possible that a certain degree of confusion arose between the elements uitzilinin (humming-bird) and uitztli (thorn), that this assisted the belief that he took the shape of a humming-bird and that the explanatory myth of the hero-god Uitziton refers to this bird in an anthropomorphic shape.
These facts lead me to infer that the name implies “Humming-bird Wizard,” for Uitzilopochtli was, as Sahagun says, [104] “a necromancer and friend of disguises,” and wizards are universally conceived of as “sinister,” which English word means both “on the left hand” and “inauspicious,” and “malign,” as does the Latin word from which it is derived. The same holds good of the Mexican word. The sub-titles of the god, Uitznauatl and Magueycoatl, show—the first, that the ideas of sorcery and oracular speech were connected with him; and the second, that he was of a serpentine or venomous disposition, like the liquor distilled from the plant over which he presided, the intoxicating qualities of which were regarded as inducing prophetic inspiration.
That the maguey-plant entered into Uitzilopochtli’s insignia seems probable from the circumstance that at his festival in the month toxcatl his dough image was surmounted by a flint knife half covered with blood. [105] In the codices the sacrificial stone knife is frequently depicted as growing in plant-like bundles out of the ground, this artistic and conventional form bearing a close resemblance to the maguey plant, with the spines of which the Mexican priests pierced their tongues and ears to procure a blood-offering.
His primary character notwithstanding, Uitzilopochtli in later times came to possess a very different significance for the Mexicans of Tenochtitlan—such a significance, in short, as the development of their religious conceptions demanded. Thus we find him at the period of the Spanish Conquest possessing solar characteristics and a place in the Mexican pantheon which, if not the most important, had essentially the greatest local significance in the city of Tenochtitlan, of which he was the tutelary god. His status in the days of the second Motecuhzoma is, perhaps, most clearly illustrated by the circumstances of his myth as given by Sahagun, which is obviously ætiological and exhibits the influences both of priestly contrivance and popular imagination. His mother, Coatlicue, has been elsewhere in this work identified with the earth, but in the myth is euhemerized as a pious widow. That she was originally one of those mountain goddesses, like Xochiquetzal, from whose sacred heights the rain descended to the parched fields of Mexico, seems plain from the name of her abode, Coatepetl (“Serpent Mountain”), the serpents of which her skirt is composed, being symbolical, perhaps, of the numerous streams flowing from the tarns or pools situated on its lower acclivities. That such a mountain actually existed in the vicinity of Tollan is proved by the statement of Sahagun. Uitzilopochtli is the sun which rises out of the mountain, [106] or is born from it, fully armed with the xiuhcoatl, or fire-snake (the red dawn), with which he slays his sister Coyolxauhqui, the moon, whose lunar attributes are clearly defined in her face-painting, which comprises half-moons and a shell-motif, a lunar symbol. Her nose-plate is also the half-moon symbol. The Centzonuitznaua, or “Four Hundred Southerners,” are the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. These the new-born god puts to flight with ease. [107] If further verification of what is obviously a most artificial and operose myth is required, it is only necessary to indicate that one of the subsidiary names of Uitzilopochtli, as recorded by Sahagun, was Ilhuicatl Xoxouhqui, “The Blue Heaven,” the expanse of the sky, showing that, like many another sun-god, he typified the blue vault of heaven. [108] Acosta, too, states that the azure colour of his throne signified “that he sat in the heavens.” [109] But the myth possesses an allegorical as well as an ætiological character. Thus Coatlicue, the earth, is fructified by the ball of humming-birds’ feathers, that is, by the humming-bird itself, which, in Mexico, is the means of fructifying the plants, its movements causing the transfer of the pollen from the stamens to the germ-cells.
How, then, may we reconcile the primitive fetish of the maguey-plant with the later solar deity? In my view the course of development of the concept of Uitzilopochtli is much the same as that of the Hellenic god Apollo, who, originally a spirit of the apple-tree, [110] came in like manner to be regarded as the god of the sun. But, to adhere to the Mexican concept, the sun was regarded by the peoples of Anahuac as the great eater of hearts and drinker of blood. These must be obtained for him by war, or he would perish, and all creation along with him. Uitzilopochtli, as the spirit of the maguey-plant, was the tribal fetish of the Aztecâ, and therefore their natural leader in battle. The connection is obvious and does not require to be laboured. Because of his tribal leadership in war, a governance of which Mexican myth and history bear eloquent testimony, he became confounded with the luminary which demanded blood and lived by human strife.
The solar connection of the octli liquor yielded by his plant is also most clear. Says Duran [111]: “The octli was a favourite offering to the gods, and especially to the god of fire. Sometimes it was placed before a fire in vases; sometimes it was scattered upon the flames with a brush (aspergillum?); at other times it was poured out around the fire-place.” Fire is, of course, a surrogate of the sun, and Seler has already identified Uitzilopochtli as a fire-god in virtue of his status as a sun-deity, [112] showing that the drilling of the solar fire before the beginning of the new cycle of fifty-two years was deferred until the panquetzalitztli, the great feast of Uitzilopochtli. Jacinto de la Serna, too, says that the octli ritual invoked the “shining Rose; light-giving Rose, to receive and rejoice my heart before the god.” The “rose,” of course, referring to the fire or sun. It would seem, however, that before he became confounded or identified with the sun, Uitzilopochtli may have possessed a lunar significance, and this may have obtained in the period while yet the calendar was reckoned upon a lunar basis and its solar connection still remained undefined. The name Mexitli, which has already been remarked upon, and which means “Hare of the Maguey” appears to place Uitzilopochtli upon a level with the other gods of octli, if not to class him as one of these. It bears a suspicious resemblance, too, to the name of the Moon-god, Metztli. The hare or rabbit in Mexico was invariably associated both with the moon and the octli-gods, whose chief characteristic, perhaps, is the lunar nose-plate. But among many of the native tribes of North America the hare or rabbit is the representative of the sun or the dawn, under the names of Michabo, Manibozho, Wabos, and so forth, being described in myth as a warrior, hero-god and culture-bringer. Perhaps the Nahua, while still in a more northern region where the agave was unknown to them, worshipped the rabbit of the sun or moon, and on establishing themselves in a region where the maguey was one of the salient features in the landscape, fused his myth with that of a newly-acquired fetish, discarding later the more ancient belief, or retaining but a confused memory of it. But this train of reasoning lacks evidence to support it. Nor need the consideration of Uitzilopochtli’s serpent-form detain us long. I think I see in the myth which recounts how the Aztecâ, on settling in Tenochtitlan, beheld an eagle perched on a cactus with a serpent in its talons, some relation to Uitzilopochtli, but what it precisely portends is still obscure to me. In any case the symbol of the eagle enters into his insignia, as does that of the serpent. We will recall that he was known as Magueycoatl, [113] “Serpent of the Maguey.” Again the solar character of the serpent in America, as elsewhere, readily accounts for his later connection with it, and for the prevalence of serpentine forms in his insignia and temple. But I confess that these two points of contact with the serpent do not altogether satisfy me as regards the god’s connection with it, nor does the fact of the serpentine character of his mother commend itself to me as altogether explanatory of this, and I think we must look to Uitzilopochtli’s nature as a wizard or sorcerer to enlighten us upon this point. Jacinto de la Serna [114] states that in his time some of the Mexican conjurers used a wand around which was fastened a living serpent, in much the same way as the priests of the Pueblo Indians do at the present day; and as the great invisible medicine man of the tribe, Uitzilopochtli may have been thought of as doing the same. “Who is a manito?” asks the Meda chant of the Algonquins. “He,” is the reply, “who walketh with a serpent, he is a manito.” For the connection of the Indian magicians with the serpent the reader is referred to the pages of Brinton. [115]
In many lands the serpent is the symbol of reproductive power and has a phallic significance. In Mexico he casts his winter skin near the time of Uitzilopochtli’s first festival, about the beginning of the rainy season. Moreover, this reptile is connected with soothsaying, and in this respect resembles the god.
His myths, as well as his status in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, of which he was the tutelary deity, make it plain that Uitzilopochtli was a tribal god of the Aztecâ, their national god par excellence. The brave Quauhtemoc, the last native defender of the city, imagined himself invincible when armed with the bow and arrows of Uitzilopochtli, and we know that the advice of the oracle of that deity was sought by the Mexicans when hard pressed by the Conquistadores.
Nor is there any dubiety regarding his character as a god of war. This may have arisen from the circumstance that he presided over the liquor which was given to the troops when about to engage in battle, or, as has been said, may have followed his promotion to the rank of sun-god, the deity of human sacrifice, the god who demanded human hearts and blood. A larger number of captives were devoted to him than to any other divinity, and as the waging of war was the only means by which so many victims might be procured, the sun would naturally become the great patron of strife.
As the sun is the great central cause of all agricultural success, so Uitzilopochtli came to be looked upon as one of the promoters of plant growth, as is witnessed by his festivals, which synchronize with the first rainfall of the year, the growth of plant life, and the end of the fruitful season, when, in the form of a paste image, the god was slain. He is thus the sun of the season of plenty, as his “brother” Tezcatlipocâ represents that of sereness and drought. He is the “young warrior” of the South, who drives away the evil spirits of the dry season and causes the land to rejoice.
TEZCATLIPOCÂ = “FIERY MIRROR”
Area of Worship: Nahua territory generally, with extension into Central America (as Hurakan).
Minor Names: Titlacahuan—“He whose slaves we are.” Yaotl—“Enemy.” Yaomauitl—“Dreaded Enemy.” Chico Yaotl—“Enemy on one side.” Necoc Yaotl—“Enemy on both sides.” Moyocoyotzin—“Capricious Lord.” Uitznahuac Yaotl—“Warrior in the Southern House or Temple.” Tlacochcalco Yaotl—“Warrior in the (Northern) Spear House.” Telpochtli—“The Youth.” Neçaualpilli—“Fasting Lord.” Itztli—“Obsidian.”
Festivals: Toxcatl, teotleco, and the movable feasts ce miquiztli, ce malinalli, and ome coatl.
Compass Directions: North and south in different aspects. Guardian of the fifth quarter, “the below and above.”
Calendar Place: Ruler of the 18th day, tecpatl; ruler of the second tonalamatl quarter, the region of the north; as Itztli, second of the nine lords of the night; ruler of the 13th day-count acatl.
Symbol: The smoking or fiery mirror; the obsidian knife.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—By far the best representation of Tezcatlipocâ in any of the manuscripts is that to be found on page 17 of Codex Borgia, where he is seen in connection with the insignia of the twenty calendric days. The picture on the lower right portion of page 21 is without these symbols, but is almost identical with the former figure. The god wears the black body-paint of a priest, and his face-painting is similar to that of Uitzilopochtli, that is, it consists of black horizontal stripes upon a yellow ground, the latter having the same origin as in the case of Uitzilopochtli. From his back rises a very large and elaborate bunch of feather plumes, which arches itself over his head. His hair, dressed in a manner which resembles the “night-hair” of Mictlantecutli, is ornamented with feather-balls as indicating his sacrificial character, and in the picture on page 21 several of these depend from his side-locks. He wears the white ring (anauatl) on his breast, and a short tunic, seemingly covered with stellar devices. His right foot ends in the smoking mirror symbolic of his name and in which he was supposed to observe the actions of humanity, and on page 21 he carries the jaguar-skin purse in which the priests placed copal for incense. In his left hand he holds a shield, the field of which is a tawny yellow in colour, traversed by two white stripes, and a paper banner. On page 3 the god is shown in a springing attitude. He wears the face and body-paint characteristic of him, and the warrior’s headdress, with hair tousled on one side, and the blue nasal rod, with square plaque, falling over the mouth. At the side of the head is the fiery mirror which gives him his name. On page 14 he is seen wearing on his breast, and fastened to two strong red leather straps, the white ring teocuitlaanauatl, an ornament resembling a large, round eye. On his back is a feather device known as the “quetzal feather-pot.” The right foot, as in other pictures of him, is replaced by a small fiery mirror and his left by an obsidian knife.
Codex Borbonicus.—In this manuscript Tezcatlipocâ is depicted with the yellow-and-black face-painting, but in his form as a black god. At his forehead is the smoking mirror, on his back the large quetzal-feather ornament with a banner, on his breast the anauatl, and round his loins the hip-cloth, with a bordering of red eyes. On his feet he wears sandals showing the motif of the obsidian snake, and his headdress is painted with the stellar symbol, the round white spots on a black ground, which typifies the night sky. Here also we see two bamboo staves attached to his neck—undoubtedly the collar worn by captives or slaves which rendered flight impossible, and which Tezcatlipocâ wears to symbolize his enslavement of the Mexican people and in allusion to his name Titlacauan, which means “He whose slaves we are.” The spear and the net-pouch in this place recall the insignia of Mixcoatl, and seem to indicate that Tezcatlipocâ was a god of the Chichimec or hunting folk of the North Steppes, or perhaps it may merely symbolize the proneness of all stellar, lunar and solar deities in Mexico to the chase.
Tonalamatl of the Aubin Collection.—In this manuscript Tezcatlipocâ appears as the representative of the Moon-god and sits opposite the Sun-god. He is shown with his usual attributes and face-painting, the smoking mirror in the region of the ear, the white ring on his breast, and on his back the quetzalcomitl, the large quetzal-feather ornament in which a banner is stuck. In his right hand he holds several of the agave-spikes which the priests employed for piercing the tongue. In this manuscript the Death-god is also depicted as Tezcatlipocâ, and wears his body-and-face painting and his general insignia, as well as the rosette at the nape of the neck. In this place, however, the snail-shaped shield rises above the forehead, which is also decorated with a row of feather balls and a single arara plume.
Codex Magliabecchiano.—A good illustration of Tezcatlipocâ will be found on page 89 of this codex. The figure of the god is surrounded by footprints, symbolic, probably, of the circumstance that as the youngest and swiftest of the gods he arrived first at the teotleco festival (coming of the gods) and impressed his footprint on the heap of maize arranged by the priests for its reception in order that they might know of his coming. He wears a large panache of green feathers, consisting of two parts; that immediately above the face being inserted in a tumbler-shaped ornament painted blue, with a red rim, and having six white disks upon its field. To the lower part of this is joined a rainbow-like device in various colours, from which springs the main part of the feather panache. The upper fore-part of the face is painted yellow, the rear portion purple or grey, and the region about the mouth is bright red. He is bearded. The tunic is white, with a white shoulder-knot, and a bunch of maize springs from the right shoulder. On the breast is the god’s mirror, and at the waist an ornament or symbol resembling the Maya Kin (sun) sign, painted blue. The rest of the body-colour is purple-grey. In the left hand he carries an atlatl, or spear-thrower, with a serpent’s head having a brown mane, and bearing a resemblance to some horse-like ornamental motifs found in Guatemala. In the right hand he bears a shield, the field of which is divided into two parts, the right painted blue and bearing what would seem to be the nose-ornament of the pulque-gods, whilst the left resembles the design found on the skirt of the Earth-goddess. The shield is crossed behind by four darts and is surmounted by a befeathered banner. In this place Tezcatlipocâ is undoubtedly represented in his variant of “the young warrior,” as his equipment shows.
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The god’s feather crown is set with obsidian knives. His face is barred with horizontal lines of black, and on his back he carries a basket filled with quetzal-feathers. His arm-ring is set with obsidian knives, and one-half of his leg is painted black. On his legs and feet he wears shells and sandals, the latter the so-called “obsidian sandals,” painted with a picture of the obsidian snake. His arms are covered with paper fans. His shield is inlaid with feather balls, and in one of his hands he holds the “seeing” or scrying implement tlachialoni.
Acosta, describing Tezcatlipocâ, says [116]: “They called this idol Tezcallipuca, he was made of black, shining stone like to Jayel, being attired with some Gentile devises after their manner. It had ear-rings of gold and silver, and through the nether lip a small canon of christall, in length half a foote, in the which they sometimes put a greene feather, and sometimes an azure, which made it resemble sometimes an emerald and sometimes a turquois. It had the haire broided and bound up with a haire-lace of gold burnished, at the end whereof did hang an eare of gold, with two fire-brands of smoke painted therein which did signify the praires of the afflicted and sinners that he heard, when they recommended themselves to him. Betwixt the two eares hanged a number of small herons. He had a jewell hanging at his neck so great that it covered all his stomake. Upon his armes bracelets of gold, upon his navill a rich, green stone, and in his left hand a fanne of precious feathers, of greene, azure and yellow, which came forth of a looking-glasse of gold, shining and well-burnished, and that signified, that within this looking-glasse he saw whatever was done in the world. They called this glasse or chaston of gold irlacheaya, [117] which signifies his glass for to look in. In his right hand he held foure darts which signified the chastisement he gave to the wicked for their sins.... They held this idoll Tescatlipuca for the god of drought, of famine, barrenness and pestilence. And therefore they painted him in another form, being set in great majesty upon a stoole, compassed in with a red curtin, painted and wrought with the heads and bones of dead men. In the left hand it had a target with five pines, like unto pine apples of cotton, and in the right a little dart with a threatening countenance, and the arm stretched out as if he would cast it and from the target came foure darts. It had the countenance of an angry man and in choller, the body all painted blacke and the head full of quailes feathers.”
Bernal Diaz says of him (bk. vi. c. 91): “Then we saw on the other side on the left hand there stood the other great image the same height as Huichilobos, and it had a face like a bear [118] and eyes that shone, made of their mirrors which they call Tezcat, and the body plastered with precious stones like that of Huichilobos, for they say that the two are brothers; and this Tezcatepuca was the god of Hell and had charge of the souls of the Mexicans, and his body was girt with figures like little devils with snakes’ tails.”
Face-mask.—When Cortéz landed at Vera Cruz, the messengers of Motecuhzoma tendered him, along with other presents, “the ornaments or finery with which Tezcatlipocâ was decorated.” The mask belonging to this costume is still in existence, and is to be seen in the room devoted to American antiquities in the British Museum. It consists of a human skull encrusted with mosaic in alternate bands of black and green, the nasal cavity being set with a red stone and the eyes with pyrites ringed with white.
Statuette.—A statuette of Tezcatlipocâ from the Valley of Mexico, and now in the Uhde collection, shows the god as nude, with the exception of a loin-cloth and a flat headdress, rising in the middle.
Tezcatlipocâ in His Black and Red Forms.—Tezcatlipocâ was regarded by the Mexican people as possessing two definite forms, the Black and the Red. In this paragraph we will deal only with the insignia of these and not with their mythological significance, which we will attempt to explain in its proper place. Perhaps the best and most classical examples of these forms we possess are to be observed on sheet 21 of Codex Borgia, on both halves of which we see the two forms represented as parallel figures, closely resembling one another in nearly every detail. It should at once be stated that the Red Tezcatlipocâ is merely a variant of Xipe, and indeed in one place in Codex Vaticanus B we observe that his loin-cloth forks in the swallow-tail fashion noticeable in the loin-cloth of that god, and, generally speaking, the red colours he wears are those of the roseate spoon-bill, the feathers of which are typical of Xipe’s dress. These pictures in the Codex Borgia are supplemented by two on sheets 85 and 86 of Vaticanus B, where the swallow-tail ends of the loin-cloth and the nasal rod show distinctly that the Red Tezcatlipocâ is only a form of Xipe. The Black Tezcatlipocâ opposite him is, however, represented with the striped body-paint of Tlauizcalpantecutli, the arms being entirely black. In the Borgia paintings the Black Tezcatlipocâ wears the black body-paint of the priest, his face-paint is alternately black and yellow, he has the warrior’s tousled hair, the nasal rod with the square plaque falling over the mouth, the forked heron-feather adornment in his hair, and on his temple the smoking mirror. The foot, too, is torn off and replaced by a smoking mirror—all symbolical of the “standard” character of the god’s sable form. The Red Tezcatlipocâ represented in the upper portion of Borgia (sheet 21) has a yellow face-painting striped with horizontal bands of red and his body-paint is red. On the red bands crossing the face is seen the stellar eye. A brown fillet encircles a red headdress, and the torn-off foot is also replaced by the smoking mirror. On his back is seen the bundle of the merchant, surmounted by the arara bird, two symbols which indicate his southern character. The representation of the Red Tezcatlipocâ in the lower portion of sheet 21 is practically similar to this, save that he wears feather balls and heron plumes in his headdress, is without the merchant’s pack, and holds in one hand the jaguar-skin copal-bag of the priests and the smoking rubber ball used as incense.
These forms of the god have been laid down in myth as distinctly separate deities, especially in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas. [119]
FESTIVALS
Toxcatl.—This, one of the most important of all the Mexican festivals, is described by Sahagun substantially as follows: The fifth month called toxcatl and sometimes tepopochuiliztli, was begun by the most solemn and famous feast of the year, in honour of the principal Mexican god, a god known by a multitude of names and epithets, among which were Tezcatlipocâ, Titlacaoan, Yautl, Telpuchtli, and Tlamatzincatl. A year before this feast one of the most distinguished of the captives reserved for sacrifice was chosen for his superior grace and personal appearance from among all his fellows, and given in charge to the priestly functionaries called calpixques. These instructed him with great diligence in all the arts pertaining to good breeding, such as playing on the flute, deportment, conversation, saluting those he happened to meet, the use of straight cane tobacco-pipes and of flowers. He was attended upon by eight pages, who were clad in the livery of the palace, and had perfect liberty to go where he pleased night and day; while his food was so rich that, to guard against his growing too fat, it was at times necessary to vary the diet by a purge of salt and water. Everywhere honoured and adored as the living image and accredited representative of Tezcatlipocâ, he went about playing on a small shrill clay flute or fife, and adorned with rich and curious raiment furnished by the king, while all he met did him reverence, kissing the earth. All his body and face was painted black, his long hair flowed to the waist; his head was covered with white hens’ feathers stuck on with resin, and covered with a garland of the flowers called izquixochitl, [120] while two strings of the same flowers crossed his body in the fashion of cross-belts. Earrings of gold, a necklace of precious stones, with a great dependent gem hanging to the breast, a lip-ornament (barbote) of sea-shell, bracelets of gold above the elbow on each arm, and strings of gems called macuextlu winding from wrist almost to elbow, were part of his ornaments. He was covered with a rich, beautifully fringed mantle of netting, and bore on his shoulders something like a purse made of white cloth of a span square, ornamented with tassels and a fringe. A white maxtle of a span broad went about his loins, the two ends, curiously wrought, falling in front almost to the knee. Little bells of gold hung upon his feet, which were shod with painted sandals called ocelunacace.
All this was the attire he wore from the beginning of his year of preparation; but twenty days before the coming of the festival they changed his vestments, washed away the paint or dye from his skin, and cut down his long hair to the length, and arranged it after the fashion, of the hair of the captains, tying it up on the crown of the head with feathers and fringe and two gold-buttoned tassels. At the same time they married to him four damsels, who had been pampered and educated for this purpose, and who were surnamed respectively after the four goddesses, Xochiquetzal, Xilonen, Atlantonan, and Uixtociuatl. Five days before the great day of the feast, the day of the feast being counted one, all the people, high and low, the king it would appear being alone excepted, went out to celebrate with the man-god a solemn banquet and dance, in the ward called Tecanman; the fourth day before the feast the same was done in the ward in which was guarded the statue of Tezcatlipocâ. The little hill or island called Tepetzinco, rising out of the waters of the Lake of Mexico, was the scene of the next day’s solemnities; which were renewed for the last time on the next day, or that immediately preceding the great day, on another like island called Tepelpulco, or Tepepulco. There, with the four women who had been given to him for his consolation, the honoured victim was put into a covered canoe usually reserved for the sole use of the king, and he was carried across the lake to a place called Tlapitzaoayan, near the road that goes from Yztapalapan to Chalco, at a place where was a little hill called Acaccuilpan, or Cabaltepec. Here left him the four beautiful girls whose society for twenty days he had enjoyed, they returning to the capital with all the people. There accompanied him only those eight attendants who had been with him all the year. Almost alone, done with the joys of beauty, banquet, and dance, bearing a bundle of his flutes, he walked to a little cu, some distance from the road mentioned above, and about a league removed from the city. He marched up the temple steps; and as he ascended he dashed down and broke on every step one of the flutes that he had been accustomed to play on in the days of his prosperity. He reached the top, where he was sacrificed. From the sacrificial stone his body was not hurled down the steps, but was carried by four men down to the tzompantli, to the place of the spitting of heads.
In this feast of toxcatl, in the cu called Uitznahuac, where the image of Uitzilopochtli was always kept, the priests made a bust of this god out of tzoalli dough, with pieces of mizquitl [121]-wood inserted by way of bones. They decorated it with his ornaments; putting on a jacket wrought over with human bones, a mantle of very thin nequen, and another mantle called the Tlaquaquallo, covered with rich feathers, fitting the head below and widening out above; in the middle of this stood up a little rod, also decorated with feathers, and sticking into the top of the rod was a flint knife half covered with blood. The image was set on a platform made of pieces of wood resembling snakes, and so arranged that heads and tails alternated all the way round; the whole borne by many captains and men of war. Before this image and platform a number of strong youths carried an enormous sheet of paper resembling pasteboard, twenty fathoms long, one fathom broad, and a little less than an inch thick; it was supported by spear-shafts arranged in pairs of one shaft above and one below the paper, while persons on either side of the paper held one of these pairs in one hand. When the procession, with dancing and singing, reached the cu to be ascended, the platform was carefully and cautiously hoisted up by cords attached to its four corners, the image was set on a seat, and those who carried the paper rolled it up and set down the roll before the bust of the god. It was sunset when the image was so set up; and the following morning everyone offered food in his own house before the image of Uitzilopochtli, incensing also such images of the other gods as he had, and then went to offer quails’ blood before the image set up on the cu. The king began, wringing off the heads of four quails; the priests offered next, then all the people; the whole multitude carrying clay fire-pans and burning copal incense of every kind, after which everyone threw his live coals on a great hearth in the temple yard. The virgins painted their faces, put on their heads garlands of parched maize, with strings of the same across their breasts, decorated their arms and legs with red feathers, and carried black paper flags stuck into split canes. The flags of the daughters of the nobles were not of paper, but of a thin cloth called canauac, painted with vertical black stripes. These girls, joining hands, danced round the great hearth, upon or over which, on an elevated place of some kind, there danced, giving the time and step, two men, having each a kind of pine cage covered with paper flags on his shoulders, the strap supporting which passed, not across the forehead—the usual way for men to carry a burden—but across the chest, as was the fashion with women. They bore shields of paper, crumpled up like great flowers, their heads were adorned with white feathers, their lips and part of the face were smeared with sugar-cane juice, which produced a peculiar effect over the black with which their faces were always painted. They carried in their hands pieces of paper called amasmaxtli [122] and sceptres of palm-wood tipped with a black flower and having in the lower part a ball of black feathers. In dancing they used this sceptre like a staff, and the part by which they grasped it was wrapped round with a paper painted with black lines. The music for the dancers was supplied by a party of unseen musicians, who occupied one of the temple buildings, where they sat, he that played the drum in the centre, and the performers on the other instruments about him. The men and women danced on till night, but the strictest order and decency were preserved, and any lewd word or look brought down swift punishment from the appointed overseers.
This feast was closed by the death of a youth who had been during the past year dedicated to and taken care of for Uitzilopochtli, resembling in this the victim of Tezcatlipocâ, whose companion he had indeed been, but without receiving such high honours. This Uitzilopochtli youth was entitled Ixteocalli, [123] or Tlacauepan, or Teicauhtzin, [124] and was held to be the image and representative of the god. When the day of his death came the priests decorated him with papers painted over with black circles, and put a mitre of eagles’ feathers on his head, in the midst of whose plumes was stuck a flint knife, stained half-way up with blood and adorned with red feathers. Tied to his shoulders by strings passing across the breast was a piece of very thin cloth, about a span square, and over it hung a little bag. Over one of his arms was thrown a wild beast’s skin, arranged somewhat like a maniple; bells of gold jingled at his legs as he walked or danced. There were two peculiar things connected with the death of this youth: first, he had absolute liberty of choice regarding the hour in which he was to die; and, second, he was not extended upon any block or altar, but when he wished he threw himself into the arms of the priests, and had his heart so cut out. His head was then hacked off and spitted alongside that of the Tezcatlipocâ youth, of whom we have spoken already. In this same day the priests made little marks on children, cutting them, with thin stone knives, in the breast, stomach, wrists, and fleshy parts of the arms; marks, as the Spanish priests considered, by which the devil should know his own sheep.
Teotleco.—The movable feasts sacred to Tezcatlipocâ and alluded to in the list of his festivals are only briefly mentioned by Sahagun, and do not appear to have been of any particular importance. As regards the Teotleco Sahagun says: “The twelfth month was called Teotleco, which signifies the arrival of the gods. A festival was celebrated in honour of all the gods who were said to have gone to some country, I know not where. On the last day of the month a greater one was held, because the gods had returned.
“On the fifteenth day of this month the young boys and the servitors decked all the altars or oratories of the gods with boughs, as well those which were in the houses as the images which were set up by the wayside and at the cross-roads. This work was paid for in maize. Some received a basketful, and others only a few ears.
“On the eighteenth day the ever-youthful god Tlamatzincatl, or Titlacauan, arrived. It was said that he marched better and arrived the first because he was young and strong. Food was offered him in his temple on that night. Everyone drank, ate, and made merry; the old people especially celebrated the arrival of the god by drinking wine, and it was alleged that his feet were washed by these rejoicings. The last day of the month was marked by a great festival, on account of the belief that the whole of the gods arrived at that time. On the preceding night a quantity of flour was kneaded on a carpet into the shape of a cheese, it being supposed that the gods would leave a footprint thereon as a sign of their return. The chief attendant watched all night, going to and fro to see if the impression appeared. When he at last saw it he called out, ‘The master has arrived,’ and at once the priests of the temple began to sound the horns, trumpets, and other musical instruments used by them. Upon hearing this noise everyone ran forthwith to offer food in all the temples or oratories, and gave themselves up to renewed rejoicings, to wash the feet of the gods, as we have already described.
“The next day the aged gods were said to come last, because they walked more slowly on account of their age. On that day several captives were doomed to be burnt alive. A great brazier was prepared; young men disguised as monsters danced round about it, and while dancing, hurled the unhappy victims into the fire, in the manner already explained. Other ceremonies took place which will be described in the account of this festival.”
MYTHS
Sahagun says of Tezcatlipocâ that he was invisible and was able to penetrate into all places, heaven, earth, and hell. The Mexicans, he says, believed that he wandered over the earth stirring up strife and war, and setting men against one another. He also remarks that he was the true giver of prosperity, and extremely capricious. [125]
Acosta calls him the god of drought, famine, barrenness, and pestilence. [126]
Clavigero alludes to him as the chief of the gods worshipped in Mexico, the god of providence, the soul of the world, the creator of heaven and earth and master of all things. “They represented him as young, to denote that no length of years ever diminished his power. They believed that he rewarded with various benefits the just, and punished the wicked with diseases and other afflictions.” [127]
The interpreter of Codex Telleriano-Remensis states that “Tezcatlipocâ is he who appeared to the nation on the mountain of the mirror, as they say, and is he who tempted Quetzalcoatl the penitent.” Elsewhere he says: “They do not here paint Tezcatlipocâ with a foot formed of a serpent, since they say that this festival [panquetzaliztli] relates to a time previous to his sinning while still in heaven, and that hence happened the war in heaven, from whence wars sprung below.”
The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A. says of him: “Tezcatlipocâ, here represented, was one of their most potent gods. They say that he appeared in that country on the top of a mountain called Tezcatepu, which signifies the mountain of mirrors.” Later on he remarks that the god was sometimes painted with the feet of a man and of a cock, “as they say his name bears allusion to this circumstance. He is clothed with a fowl, which seems to cry in laughing accents, and when it crows, Oa, Oa, Oa, they say that it deceived the “first woman, who committed sin, and accordingly they place him near the goddess of pollution.”
A report on the Huaxtec territory, dated 1579, states that: “They relate another fable, that they had two other effigies as gods, one called Ometochtli, who is the god of wine, the other Tezcatlipocâ, which is the name of the most exalted idol worshipped by them, and with these they had painted the figure of a woman named Hueytonantzin, that is ‘our great mother,’ because they said that she was the mother of all these gods or demons. And those four above-mentioned male demons, they related, had killed this great mother, founding with her the institution of human sacrifice, and taking her heart out of her breast, and presenting it to the sun. Similarly, they related that the idol Tezcatlipocâ had killed the god of wine with his consent and concurrence, giving out that in this way he gave eternal life, and that if he did not die, all persons drinking wine must die; but that the death of this Ometochtli was only the sleep of one drunk, that he afterwards recovered, and again became fresh and well.”
Tezcatlipocâ, it will be remembered, is alluded to in the cosmogonic myths of Mendieta and Sahagun, already related in the chapter on Cosmogony. The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas refers to him as the creator, says that “he made the sun to shine,” and states that he was the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, which “sank in the water.” He also made the Tazcaquavlt, or “tree of the mirror,” fashioned four hundred men and a hundred women as food for the sun, and, along with Quetzalcoatl, constructed “the road in the heavens, the Milky Way.”
Sahagun states [128] that after Tezcatlipocâ had succeeded in driving Quetzalcoatl from the country, “he proceeded further guilefully to kill many Toltecs and to ally himself by marriage with Vemac or Uemac, who was the temporal lord of the Toltecs, even as Quetzalcoatl was the spiritual ruler of that people. To accomplish these things Tezcatlipocâ took the appearance of a poor foreigner and presented himself naked, as was the custom of such people, in the market-place of Tulla, selling green chilli pepper. Now the palace of Vemac, the great king, overlooked the market-place, and he had an only daughter, and the girl, looking by chance among the buyers and sellers, saw the disguised god. She was smitten through with love of him, and she began to sicken. Vemac heard of her sickness, and he inquired of the women who guarded her as to what ailed his daughter. They told him as best they could, how for the love of a peddler of pepper, named Toveyo, the princess had lain down to die. The king immediately sent a crier upon the mountain Tzatzitepec to make this proclamation: ‘O Toltecs, seek me out Toveyo that goes about selling green pepper, let him be brought before me.’ So the people sought everywhere for the pepper vendor, but he was nowhere to be found. Then after they could not find him, he appeared of his own accord one day, at his old place and trade in the market. He was brought before the king, who said to him: ‘Where dost thou belong to?’ and Toveyo answered, ‘I am a foreigner, come here to sell my green pepper.’ ‘Why dost thou delay to cover thyself with breeches and a blanket?’ said Vemac. Toveyo answered that in his country such things were not in the fashion. Vemac continued: ‘My daughter longs after thee, not willing to be comforted by any Toltec. She is sick of love and thou must heal her.’ But Toveyo replied: ‘This thing can in no wise be; kill me first; I desire to die, not being worthy to hear these words, who get my living by selling green pepper.’ ‘I tell thee,’ said the king, ‘that thou must heal my daughter of this her sickness; fear not.’ Then they took the cunning god and washed him, and cut his hair, and dyed all his body and put breeches on him and a blanket; and the king Vemac said, ‘Get thee in and see my daughter, there, where they guard her.’ Then the young man went in and he remained with the princess and she became sound and well; thus Toveyo became the son-in-law of the king of Tulla.
“Then, behold, all the Toltecs, being filled with jealousy and offended, spake injurious and insulting words against King Vemac, saying among themselves, ‘Of all the Toltecs can there not be found a man, that this Vemac marries his daughter to a peddler?’ Now when the king heard all the injurious and insulting words that the people spake against him he was moved, and he spoke to the people saying, ‘Come hither, behold I have heard all these things that ye say against me in the matter of my son-in-law Toveyo; dissimulate then; take him deceitfully with you to the war of Cacatepec and Coatepec, and let the enemy kill him there.’ Having heard these words, the Toltecs armed themselves, and collected a multitude and went to the war, bringing Toveyo along. Arrived where the fighting was to take place, they hid him with the lame and the dwarfs, charging them, as the custom was in such cases, to watch for the enemy, while the soldiers went on to the attack. The battle began. The Toltecs at once gave way, treacherously and guilefully deserting Toveyo and the cripples. Leaving them to be slaughtered at their post, they returned to Tulla and told the king how they had left Toveyo and his companions alone in the hands of the enemy. When the king heard the treason he was glad, thinking Toveyo dead, for he was ashamed of having him for a son-in-law. Affairs had gone otherwise, however, with Toveyo from what the plotters supposed. On the approach of the hostile army he consoled his deformed companions, saying: ‘Fear nothing; the enemy come against us, but I know that I shall kill them all.’ Then he rose up and went forward against them, against the men of Coatepec and Cacatepec. He put them to flight and slew of them without number. When this came to the ears of Vemac it weighed upon and terrified him exceedingly. He said to his Toltecs, ‘Let us now go and receive my son-in-law.’ So they all went out with King Vemac to receive Toveyo, bearing the arms and devices called quetzalapanecayutl, and the shields called xiuhchimali. [129] They gave these things to Toveyo, and he and his comrades received them with dancing and the music of flutes, with triumph and rejoicing. Furthermore, on reaching the palace of the king, plumes were put upon the heads of the conquerors, and all the body of each of them was stained yellow, and all the face red. This was the customary reward of those that came back victorious from war. And King Vemac said to his son-in-law: ‘I am now satisfied with what thou hast done, and the Toltecs are satisfied; thou hast dealt very well with our enemies, rest and take thine ease.’ But Toveyo held his peace.
“And after this, Toveyo adorned all his body with the rich feathers called tocivitl, and commanded the Toltecs to gather together for a festival, and sent a crier up to the top of the mountain Tzatzitepec, to call in the strangers and the people afar off to dance and to feast. A numberless multitude gathered to Tulla. When they were all gathered, Toveyo led them out, young men and girls, to a place called Texcalapa, where he himself began and led the dancing, playing on a drum. He sang too, singing each verse to the dancers, who sang it after him, though they knew not the song beforehand. Then was to be seen a marvellous and terrible thing. A panic seized the Toltecs. There was a gorge or ravine there, with a river rushing through it called the Texcaltlauhco. A stone bridge led over the river. Toveyo broke down this bridge as the people fled. He saw them tread and crush each other down, under-foot, and over into the abyss. They that fell were turned into rocks and stones; as for those that escaped, they did not see nor think that it was Toveyo and his sorceries had wrought this great destruction; they were blinded by the witchcraft of the god, and out of their senses like drunken men.
“Tezcatlipocâ then proceeded to hatch further evil against the Toltecs. He took the appearance of a certain valiant man called Teguioa, and commanded a crier to summon all the inhabitants of Tulla and its neighbourhood to come and help at a certain piece of work in a certain flower-garden (said to have been a garden belonging to Quetzalcoatl). All the people gathered to the work, whereupon the disguised god fell upon them, knocking them on the head with a hoe. Those that escaped the hoe were trodden down and killed by their fellows in attempting to escape. A countless number was slain. Every man that had come to the work was left lying dead among the trodden flowers.
“And after this Tezcatlipocâ wrought another witchcraft against the Toltecs. He called himself Tlacavepan, or Acexcoch, and came and sat down in the midst of the market-place of Tulla having a little manikin (said to have been Uitzilopochtli) dancing upon his hand. There was an instant uproar of all the buyers and sellers and a rush to see the miracle. The people crushed and trod each other down, so that many were killed there; and all this happened many times. At last the god-sorcerer cried out on one such occasion: ‘What is this? Do you not see that you are befooled by us? Stone and kill us.’ So the people took up stones and killed the said sorcerer and his little dancing manikin. But when the body of the sorcerer had lain in the market-place for some time it began to stink and to taint the air, and the wind of it poisoned many. Then the dead sorcerer spake again, saying: ‘Cast this body outside the town, for many Toltecs die because of it.’ So they prepared to cast out the body, and fastened ropes thereto and pulled. But the ill-smelling corpse was so heavy that they could not move it. Then a crier made a proclamation, saying: ‘Come, all ye Toltecs, and bring ropes with you, that we may drag out and get rid of this pestilential carcass.’ All came accordingly, bringing ropes, and the ropes were fastened to the body and all pulled. It was utterly in vain. Rope after rope broke with a sudden snap, and those that dragged on a rope fell and were killed when it broke. Then the dead wizard looked up and said; ‘O Toltecs, a verse of song is needed.’ And he himself gave them a verse. They repeated the verse after him, and, singing it, pulled all together, so that with shouts they hauled the body out of the city, though still not without many ropes breaking and many persons being killed as before. All this being over, those Toltecs that remained unhurt returned every man to his place, not remembering anything of what had happened, for they were all as drunken.
“Other signs and wonders were wrought by Tezcatlipocâ in his rôle of sorcerer. A white bird called Iztac cuixtli was clearly seen flying over Tulla, transfixed with a dart. At night also, the sierra called Zacatepec burned, and the flames were seen from afar. All the people were stirred up and affrighted, saying one to another, ‘O Toltecs, it is all over with us now; the time of the end of Tulla is come; alas for us, whither shall we go?’
“Then Tezcatlipocâ wrought another evil upon the Toltecs; he rained down stones upon them. There fell also, at the same time, a great stone from heaven called Techcatl; and when it fell the god-sorcerer took the appearance of an old woman, and went about selling little banners in a place called Chapultepec Cuitlapilco, otherwise named Uetzinco. Many then became mad and bought of these banners and went to the place where was the stone Techcatl, and there got themselves killed; and no one was found to say so much as, ‘What is this that happens to us?’ They were all mad.
“Another woe Tezcatlipocâ brought upon the Toltecs. All their victuals suddenly became sour, and no one was able to eat of them. The old woman, above mentioned, took up then her abode in a place called Xochitla, and began to roast maize: and the odour of the roasted maize reached all the cities round about. The starving people set out immediately, and with one accord, to go where the old woman was. They reached her instantly, for here it may be again said, that the Toltecs were exceedingly light of foot, and arrived always immediately whithersoever they wished to go. As for the Toltecs that gathered to the mock sorceress, not one of them escaped. She killed them every one.”
These feats of Tezcatlipocâ against the Toltecs seem to have reference to the various species of charm wielded by the enchanter; the love-charm, the charm by music, by disease, by destruction of victuals. The rain of stone signified barrenness, drought, which was implied by the nature of the god, the deity of obsidian and of tempests.
For other myths regarding Tezcatlipocâ see the chapter on Cosmogony.
NATURE AND STATUS
In my opinion the early significance of Tezcatlipocâ arises out of his connection with obsidian. This stone had an especial sanctity for the Mexicans, as it provided the sacrificial knives employed by the priests, and we possess good evidence that stone in its fetish form was worshipped even so late as the eighteenth century by the Nahuatl-speaking Chotas, who comprised it in a trinity with the Dawn and the Serpent. [130] From a passage in Acosta [131] we are justified in assuming that Tezcatlipocâ’s idol was of obsidian, and, like the Quiche god Tohil, mentioned in the Popol Vuh, he wore sandals of obsidian, as is witnessed by one of his representations in Codex Borbonicus, where his footgear is painted with the zigzag line of the obsidian snake.
Tezcatlipocâ was unquestionably the god of the itztli (obsidian) stone, and Seler [132] has identified him with Iztli, the stone-knife god, the second of the lords of the night. In certain codices, too, he is represented as having such a knife in place of a foot, and we know that it was a fairly common practice of the Mexican artists to indicate the name or race of an individual by drawing one of his feet in a hieroglyphical manner. [133] I believe, too, that the net-like garment worn at times by the god above his other attire is an adaptation of the mesh-bag in which Mexican hunters carried flints for use as spear- and arrow-heads.
This, as well as the fact that he was the god of the sharp-cutting obsidian from which such weapons were made, caused him to be regarded as patron deity of the wild hunting Chichimecs of the northern steppes, a connection which is eloquent of his erstwhile primitive character. It is clear, too, that Chalchiuhtotolin, the jewelled fowl, which is ruler of the eighteenth day-sign, tecpatl (obsidian knife), is merely a variant of Tezcatlipocâ. [134]
But another important link connects Tezcatlipocâ with obsidian. Bernal Diaz states that they called this “Tezcat.” From it mirrors were manufactured as divinatory media by the wizard. Sahagun says [135] that it was known as aitztli (water obsidian), probably because of the high polish of which it was capable. Another such stone he mentions was called tepochtli, which I would translate “wizard stone,” and from which I think, by a process of etymological confusion, Tezcatlipocâ received one of his minor names, Telpochtli, “the youth.” The name of the god means “Smoking Mirror,” and Acosta [136] says that the Mexicans called Tezcatlipocâ’s mirror irlacheaya (an obvious error for tlachialoni) “his glass to look in,” otherwise the mirror or scrying-stone in which he was able to witness the doings of mankind. It is possible that the “smoke” which was said to rise from this mirror symbolized the haziness which is supposed to cloud the surface of a divinatory glass prior to the phenomenon of vision therein.
Thus from the shape beheld in the seer’s mirror, Tezcatlipocâ came to be regarded as the seer. That into which the wizard gazed became so closely identified with sorcery as to be thought of as wizard-like itself; for Tezcatlipocâ is, of all Mexican deities, the one most nearly connected with the wizard’s art. He is par excellence the nocturnal god who haunts the crossways and appears in a myriad phantom guises to the night-bound wayfarer. “These,” says Sahagun, “were masks that Tezcatlipocâ assumed to frighten the people.”
He wears the symbol of night upon his forehead; he is the moon, ruler of the night, the wizard who veils himself behind the clouds; he bears the severed arm of a woman who has died in childbed, as a magical instrument, as did the naualli of old Mexico. From him all ominous and uncanny sounds proceed: the howl of the jaguar (in which we perceive Tezcatlipocâ as the wizard metamorphosed into the wer-animal), and the foreboding cry of the uactli bird, the voc, the bird of Hurakan in the Popol Vuh.
Tezcatlipocâ was undoubtedly connected with the wind, and this leads me to suspect that in the course of his evolution he came to be thought of as among that class of magical stones which in some mysterious manner is considered capable of raising a tempest under the spell of the sorcerer. [137] Of such a belief world-wide examples exist. In the Irish island of Fladdahuan such a stone was anointed when the fisher desired a wind [138] and was kept in wool wrappings. A piece of pumice-stone drifted to Puka-Puka, says Lang, [139] and was regarded as a god of winds and waves, to which offerings were made during hurricanes. Tezcatlipocâ is none other than the original “hurricane,” for he has been identified with the Hurakan of the Quiches of Guatemala alluded to in the Popol Vuh, from whose name the meteorological expression has been borrowed.
Whether or not he came to be looked upon as the wind of night which ravined through the empty streets and deserted countryside by virtue of the train of thought suggested above, many aspects of Tezcatlipocâ are eloquent of his boreal attributes. Thus, he is invisible and capricious, the object of mistrust among the people, who discerned in tempestuous weather a manifestation of his freakish bad temper. The myth in which he was described as pursuing Quetzalcoatl in tiger-form will, in the section which deals with that god, be indicated as an allegory of the clashing of the hurricane with the rain-bringing trade-wind. Lastly, as patron of war, of the warrior’s club and dance-house, he is, as the boisterous storm, emblematic of strife and discord. Seats of stone over-arched with green branches were provided for him throughout the city so that he might rest from his wanderings if he thought good.
In the Aztec mind stone was symbolic of sin. Thus Tezcatlipocâ in his variant, Itzlacoliuhqui, is the just avenger, who punishes evil swiftly and terribly, for obsidian as the sacrificial knife was the instrument of justice. [140] The coldness of stone, its hardness and dryness, seem also to have given rise to the conception of him as god of the Toxcatl festival in the fifth month of the year, the dry season, when the sun stood at the zenith above Tenochtitlan. Thus, as the prayers to him eloquently affirm, he was the god of drought, of sereness, and barrenness.
In common with the majority of the greater Mexican deities, Tezcatlipocâ had a stellar connection. He was one of the Tzitzimimê who had fallen from heaven, and the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas remarks of him, “the constellation of the Great Bear descends to the water because it is Tezcatlipocâ, who has his seat there,” thus also indicating that he ruled the northern quarter, out of which, it was considered, no good thing might come. His Tzitzimimê shape appears to have been the spider. In American-Indian myth the stars are frequently regarded as having spider form, and especially so in Mexican myth. In several of the codices, notably in Codex Borbonicus, the Tzitzimimê or star-demons are represented in insect shape. Thus, Tezcatlipocâ, when he descended from heaven to harass Quetzalcoatl, did so by means of a spider’s web, so that we are justified in regarding the spider as his stellar form.
The origin of his conception as the sun of the north and as the setting sun seems reasonably clear and is secondary in character. As the sun sinks in the west its brilliant gold turns to a glassy red, reminiscent of the dull reflex of light in a surface of polished obsidian. The mirror held by Tezcatlipocâ, with its fringe of feathers, obviously represents the sun of evening. But he is also to be thought of as the torrid and blazing orb of the dry season, scorching and merciless.
I regard his several coloured forms as symbolic of various kinds of weather. Thus, in his black form he appears to represent the rainy season; in his red, the torrid and dry period of the year; in his white, cold and frost; and in his striped painting, the embodiment of fair weather. Thus Tezcatlipocâ is the atmospheric god par excellence, ruler of all meteorological conditions. In the prayers offered up to him it is frequently stated that he may, if he so chooses, send rain and plenty, and this aspect of him seems to account for his variously coloured disguises. That these were, indeed, regarded as practically separate divine forms is clear from the first chapter of the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, which alludes to the Black and Red Tezcatlipocâ as two entirely different gods.
Tezcatlipocâ, at the period of the Conquest, had developed attributes of a more lofty kind than any of those already described. Like Quetzalcoatl, and because he was a god of the wind or atmosphere, he came to be regarded as the personification of the breath of life. In the mind of savage man the wind is usually the giver of breath, the great store-house of respiration, the source of immediate life. In many mythologies the name of the principal deity is synonymous with that for wind, and in others the words “soul” and “breath” have a common origin. It has been suggested that the Hebrew Jahveh (the archaic form of Jehovah) is connected with the Arabic hawah, to blow or breathe, and that Jahveh was originally a wind or tempest god.
Our word “spiritual” is derived from the Latin spirare, to blow; the Latin animus, “spirit,” is the same word as the Greek anemos, “wind,” and psukhe has a similar origin. All are directly evolved from verbal roots expressing the motion of the wind or the breath. The Hebrew word ruah is equivalent to both “wind” and “spirit,” as is the Egyptian kneph. If we turn to the American mythologies, nija in the language of the Dakota means “breath,” or “life”; in Netela piuts is “life,” “breath,” and “soul”; the Yakuna language of Oregon has wkrisha, “wind,” wkrishmit, “life.” The Creeks applied to their supreme deity the name Esaugetuh Emissee, Master of Breath, [141] and the original name for God in Choctaw was Hustoli, the Storm Wind. “In the identity of wind with breath, of breath with life, of life with soul, of soul with God, lies the far deeper and truer reason,” says Brinton, “of the prominence given to wind-gods in many mythologies.” [142]
But although Tezcatlipocâ was the Giver of Life, he was also regarded as a deity with power to take it away. In fact at times he appeared as an inexorable death-dealer, and in this guise he was named Nezahualpilli (“The Hungry Chief”) and Yaotzin (“The Enemy”). But he was also known as Telpochtli (“The Youthful Warrior”), from the fact that his reserve of strength, his vital force, never grew less and was boisterously apparent, as in the tempest. As the wind at night rushes through the roads with more seeming violence than it does by day, so was Tezcatlipocâ pictured in the Aztec consciousness as rioting along the highways in search of slaughter. Indeed, seats or benches of stone, shaped like those used by the chiefs of the Mexican towns, were placed at intervals on the roads for his use, and here he was supposed to lurk, concealed by the green boughs which surrounded them, in wait for his victims. Should anyone grapple with and overcome him, he might crave whatsoever boon he desired, with the surety of its being granted. The worship of Tezcatlipocâ previous to the Conquest had so advanced, and so powerful had his cult become, that it would appear as if the movement would ultimately have led to a monotheism or worship of one god equivalent to that of the cult of Jahveh, the God of the Old Testament among the ancient Hebrews. To his priestly caste is credited the invention of many of the usages of civilized life, and it succeeded in making his worship universal. The Nahua people regarded the other gods as objects of special devotion, but the worship of Tezcatlipocâ was general.
QUETZALCOATL = “FEATHERED SERPENT”
Area of Worship: The Plateau of Anahuac.
Minor Names: Chicunaui eecatl—“Nine Wind.” Ce acatl—“One Reed.”
Relationship: Son of Iztacmixcoatl and Chimalman or Xochiquetzal; one of the Tzitzimimê.
Calendar Place: Ruler of the second day-count, eecatl. Ruler of the second week, ce ocelotl. Ninth of the thirteen day-lords.
Festivals: Ce acatl (movable feast). Atlacahualco.
Compass Direction: East.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
General.—The insignia of Quetzalcoatl is fairly constant in its appearance. He usually wears the Huaxtec cone-shaped hat painted in the design of the jaguar-skin, which is occasionally divided vertically into a black or blue and a red field, having an eye in the middle. The hair is bound by a leather strap set with jewels, which has a conventional bird’s head on the front, and in Codex Borgia consistently shows a black, stepped pattern on a white ground. Elsewhere a bow with rounded ends takes the place of this strap, but in Borgia (sheet 62) the hair is bound up with two intertwined snakes. At the back of the neck a fan-shaped nape-ornament is usually seen, consisting of black feathers, from which rise the red plumes of the quetzal bird, and it seems, from the account of the costume sent to Cortéz by Motecuhzoma, that this nape-appendage was made from grouse-feathers, although the Spanish account states that they belonged to the crow. The god usually wears white ear-pendants of hook-like shape, which, Sahagun states, were made of gold. The necklace is of spirally voluted snail-shells, and on the breast is worn a large ornament, also sliced from a shell. The ends of the loin-cloth are rounded off and are generally painted in two colours—brown, the colour of the jaguar-skin, and white or red. The god’s atlatl, or spear-thrower, is painted with the stellar design of white circles on a black ground, and in his headdress is stuck the agave-leaf spike and the bone dagger, the implements of penance and mortification. The body-paint is frequently black, like that of the priests. Most of these insignia are of Huaxtec origin and show that Quetzalcoatl was usually associated with this coastal people. The snail-shell ornament on the breast, the hook-shaped ear-pendant, the fan-shaped nape-ornament, and the cone-shaped cap, were undoubtedly of Huaxtec origin, and such objects have been taken from Huaxtec graves and are found represented on vases and jugs from the State of Hidalgo. In many representations of him the god is seen wearing a long-snouted mask, usually painted a bright red, through which he was supposed to expel the wind in his guise of Eecatl, the Wind-god. This mask is frequently fringed with a beard.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 75: Quetzalcoatl’s body-paint is a dark colour, and in his hair he wears unspun cotton, as does Tlazoltcotl. Sheet 76: Here his face is painted black and he wears the fillet with the step-pattern and the two-coloured cap, and in his hair are stuck the instruments of mortification. He holds in his hand a snake, which is to be regarded as the agricultural implement with which he tills the ground.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 73: In this place he is set back to back with the Death-god and is surrounded by the twenty day-signs. The body-paint is light blue, and the anterior part of the face has the stellar painting of white circles on a black ground. His conical cap has the parti-coloured painting and the cross, the symbol of the four winds, in the middle. On his breast he wears the snail-shell and in his hand a blue staff. His wind-mask is entirely covered with stellar and lunar emblems. His rattle-staff is light blue, in contradistinction to that of the Death-god, which is sprinkled with blood. Sheet 56: Here he is equipped with the hoe and wears the body-paint of a priest, a necklace of jaguar-skin and teeth, the conical bi-coloured cap, the stepped fillet with conventional bird’s head in front, and the bearded face-mask. Stellar symbols and feather-balls dot his dress and headdress. He stands back to back with the Death-god, and it is clear that here he is intended to represent the heavenly Quetzalcoatl, the giver of breath and life. On sheet 72 we see him as a priest surrounded by day-signs and implements of mortification. Sheet 19: As represented in this sheet he stands opposite the Death-god. He wears a dark-coloured garment, and what can be seen of his face is painted black, with a spiral pattern. His mantle bears the cross-hatchings indicative of rain or water and is ornamented with feather balls. The red wind-mask protrudes beneath a parti-coloured cap with stellar eyes, and a fillet with step-pattern and conventional bird’s head, and he wears the snail-shell breast ornament and carries the implements of mortification. Sheet 16: On the lower right-hand corner of this sheet he is depicted in a precisely similar manner.
Quetzalcoatl’s Dress sent to Cortéz.—When Cortéz landed at Vera Cruz, Motecuhzoma, believing him to be the god Quetzalcoatl returned, sent him “the dress that was appropriate to him.” [143] This consisted of four costumes, that of Quetzalcoatl proper, and those of Tezcatlipocâ, Tlaloc, and Xiuhtecutli, the Fire-god, who were regarded as the four deities dominant in the four quarters of the heavens, and had in the higher theology become fused in the conception of Quetzalcoatl, or were regarded as variants of him. The Quetzalcoatl dress proper is said by Sahagun to have consisted of the turquoise snake-mask, now to be seen in the British Museum, and which can be easily identified by the folds of the snake’s body forming the eyebrows, the quetzal-feather adornment, and the turquoise throwing-stick, shaped in the form of a snake. It seems probable, however, that this dress, although it is described as that of Quetzalcoatl, was that associated with the Fire-god.
Codex Magliabecchiano.—Sheet 89: Quetzalcoatl is here represented in a dancing attitude. He wears the Huaxtec hat made of jaguar-skin, the shield with the snail-shell ornament, which is also reproduced on his breast, and the yellow and red face-painting. The bone “reed” for piercing the tongue is stuck in his headgear, and from it depend balls of cotton. He carries an atlatl, or spear-thrower, symbolic of rain or wind, and similar in motif to the nose-ornament of the Maya God B. His mantle is cross-hatched to symbolize rain or water and is decorated with red bows. He wears anklets of jaguar-skin, and a panache of green and yellow feathers.
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—In the illustration which accompanies his description in this MS. he wears a pointed cap of jaguar-skin, surmounted by quetzal-plumes. The face and body are painted black with soot, and a curved band falls from beneath the hat to the neck. He wears the golden “water-snake” collar, and on his back the wing of the red guacamayo. Over the hips is slung a cloth with a red border. He wears white sandals, and pieces of jaguar-skin are fastened over the foot. On his shield he has the shell which is typical of him, and in his hand a staff with a motif like that of the nose of the Maya God B. Sahagun says of him: “His image was always in a recumbent position and covered with blankets. The face of it was very ugly, the head large and furnished with a long beard.” [144]
Torquemada states that Quetzalcoatl was a white man, large-bodied, broad-browed, great-eyed, with long black hair and a beard heavy and rounded. [145]
Acosta says of Quetzalcoatl’s image at Cholula: “They called it Quetzallcoalt. This idoll was in a great place in a temple very high. It had about it gold, silver, jewels, very rich feathers, and habits of divers colours. It had the forme of a man, but the visage of a little bird with a red bill, and above a combe full of warts, having ranks of teeth and the tongue hanging out. It carried upon the head a pointed myter of painted paper, a sithe in the hand, and many toyes of gold on the legs, with a thousand other foolish inventions, whereof all had their significations.” [146]
Elsewhere Acosta says: “The greatest idoll of all their gods was called Quezcalcovately.... He never ware but one garment of cotton, which was white, narrow and long, and upon that a mantle beset with certain red crosses. They have certain green stones which were his, and those they keep for relickes. One of them is like an ape’s head.”
Anales de Quauhtitlan.—In this work Quetzalcoatl is described as wearing the turquoise snake-mask and the quetzal-feather ornament—that is, the decorations of the Fire-god: “Lastly in the year one reed they say, when he had arrived on the shore of the sea, then he began to weep and put off the garb with which he was arrayed, his quetzal-feather ornament, his turquoise mask.”
STATUARY
A statuette of the god from the Valley of Mexico exhibits him in a high cap, ornamented round the lower portion with a serpentine motif, and wearing the sliced snail-shell dress-ornament. A caryatid found in the Calle de las Escalerillas, Mexico City, on the 16th of October 1900, represents him with a long, pointed beard, which might, however, be interpreted as the mouth-mask of the Wind-god lowered down to show the upper part of the face more clearly, and it would seem from this statue that the beard with which Quetzalcoatl is represented in some places in Mexican art is nothing more or less than the mouth-mask pushed down over the chin and neck, although it must be admitted that his mask is frequently depicted with what is undoubtedly a beard. A relief excavated at the Castillo de Teayo shows Quetzalcoatl wearing the feathered-serpent helmet-mask, which in this representation is most elaborate, and the sliced snail-shell dress-ornament. Two figures of Quetzalcoatl found near Texcuco exhibit considerable differentiation from other forms. In both he is seated on the top of a teocalli or temple, and behind him is seen the solar emblem, represented as a large, flaming disc. He wears a high cap which reminds one of the crown of Upper Egypt, as seen in Egyptian representations, except that it is flanked on either side by two large studs or knobs and is surrounded at the base by the serpent-motif, as in the specimen from the Valley of Mexico. He also wears his usual breast-ornament. In a round sculpture found at Puebla we perhaps see Quetzalcoatl as a butterfly, and can only identify this figure as the god because of the wind-mask it wears.
WALL-PAINTINGS
In several of the wall-paintings at Mitla, and especially in those on the north side of Palace I, Quetzalcoatl is depicted as wearing the insignia usually connected with him in Mexico. In one of these he wears the Huaxtec cap with jaguar-skin markings, having the sacrificial implements stuck in it, and the wind-mouth mask, with beard. The snail-shell ornament adorns his shield. In another the facial insignia is less easily seen, but the large nape-fan with which he is frequently adorned is well depicted. Immediately behind this is a figure, which, though partially destroyed, is still interesting because of its high degree of conventionality. We have here the cap and panache of Quetzalcoatl, together with the strip running from brow to eye and from eye to jaw, which is part of the face-painting of the Moon-god. Moreover, in the corner we have the symbol of the moon, a pot-shaped bone, so that here, I think, we have a symbol of Quetzalcoatl as the Moon-god. In the preceding figure, too, we have also the lunar emblem, in this place in shape like the nose-plug of the octli-gods, but containing the stellar eye, and flanked by balls of feather-down. It would thus seem that the symbol has some reference to Quetzalcoatl in his variant of the planet Venus. Moreover the eye appears as gouged out. This eye-gouging is seen in the Maya Books of Chilan Balam, in the case of the god Itzamná. These two latter paintings, Seler thinks, are symbolic of the Uiyatao, or the high-priests of Mitla, who were regarded as incarnations of Quetzalcoatl. [147]
MYTHS
The myths concerning Quetzalcoatl are numerous and conflicting. In the first place I shall provide a careful précis of the more important, their prolixity rendering full quotation impossible.
Sahagun’s account of Quetzalcoatl may be summarized as follows: The arts had their inception with Quetzalcoatl. His houses were made of chalchiuites, silver, white, and red shells, and rich feathers. His folk were nimble and swift in passage from one place to another, and were called tlanquacemilhiyme. [148] He gave his commands to the people for a hundred leagues round by means of a crier stationed on the mountain Tzotzitepetl. [149] He had wealth in abundance, provision in plenty, and in his time maize was so large in the head that a man might not carry more than one stalk in his clasped arms. Pumpkins were in circumference as great as a man is high, and the stalks of the wild amaranth grew like trees. Cotton grew in all colours—red, scarlet, yellow, violet, white, green, blue, black, grey, orange, and tawny. In the city of Tollan, where Quetzalcoatl dwelt, were many birds of rich plumage and sweet song. The servants of Quetzalcoatl were wealthy and had abundance of all things, and food was plentiful with them. Their master did penance by pricking his legs and drawing blood with the spines of the maguey and by washing at midnight in a fountain. But sorcerers came against Quetzalcoatl and his people, the Toltecs, and these, we are told, were the gods Tezcatlipocâ, Uitzilopochtli, and Tlacuepan. Tezcatlipocâ visited the house of Quetzalcoatl in the guise of an old man, but was told that he was sick, and was at first refused entrance. Later, however, he was admitted, Quetzalcoatl observing that he had waited for him for many days. Tezcatlipocâ then produced a draught of medicine which, he assured the sick king, would intoxicate him, ease his heart, and carry his thoughts away from the trials and fatigues of death and departure. [150] This latter phrase roused Quetzalcoatl to ask where he must go, for that he had a premonition of departure seems clear. “To Tollantlapallan,” replied Tezcatlipocâ, “where another old man awaits thee. He and you shall speak together, and on thy return thou shalt be as a youth, yea as a boy.” With little goodwill Quetzalcoatl quaffed the medicine, and having once tasted of it he drank more deeply, so that at last he became intoxicated and maudlin. That which he had drunk was the wine made from the maguey-plant, called teoncetl (“drink of the gods”). And so great a longing to depart came upon him that at length he arose and went from Tollan. [151] Ere departing, Quetzalcoatl burned his houses of shells and silver and buried many precious things in the mountains and ravines. He turned the cocoa-trees into mezquites and dispatched all the birds of brilliant plumage in Anahuac, three hundred miles away. On his journey to the coast he came to the hill Quauhtitlan, where he found a great tree, under which he rested. Gazing into a mirror, as he reclined under its shade, he said, “I am very old,” named the place Ueuequauhtitlan after his saying, [152] and stoned the tree. The stones he cast at it sank into its trunk, and were to be seen remaining there for long afterwards. Preceded by flute-players, he recommenced his journey, but once more became weary, and rested on a stone by the wayside. Looking towards Tollan, he wept, and his tears pitted the stone on which he sat, and the imprints of his hands and thighs also remained thereon. That place he called Temacpalco. Reaching a great river, he halted until a stone bridge was built over it, and having crossed, he called the place Tepanaoya. Certain sorcerers now met him, and asked him whither he was bound, why he had left his city of Tollan, and who would now do penance there. Quetzalcoatl replied that he must go, that he was called to Tlapallan by the Sun. The sorcerers requested him to leave behind his knowledge of the mechanical arts, the smelting of silver, the working of precious stones, and masonry, painting, and feather-work. These he left with them perforce. But his treasure of jewels he cast into the fountain of Cozcaapan hard by. Another magician whom he met insisted upon his drinking a draught which he could give “to none of the living.” Intoxicated, he slept, and when he awoke, tore his hair. That place was called Cachtoca. Pursuing his journey, he passed between a mountain of snow and a volcano, where his hump-backed and dwarfish servants perished from the excessive cold. Bitterly he bewailed their death in song. Passing on, leaving signs of his progress on every hand, and sliding down the mountains, he tarried here and there, building a tlachtli court at one place, the markings of which were visible in deep gashes on the hills. Once he transfixed a tree with a dart or with another tree, so that it resembled a cross. In other localities he constructed subterranean houses (mictlancalco), and elsewhere balanced a great rolling-stone, and on all these spots he conferred names. At length he came to the sea-shore, where he commanded that a raft of snakes (coatapochtli) should be constructed for him. In this he seated himself as in a canoe, put out to sea, and set out for Tlapallan. [153]
Torquemada’s account of the Quetzalcoatl myth somewhat resembles that of Sahagun, due, no doubt, to the circumstance that he had access to the unpublished MS. of that author, from which he borrowed in a wholesale manner. The points of difference are these: Quetzalcoatl was high-priest of Tollan, whence he migrated to Cholula. The ruler of Tollan was one Huemac, but Quetzalcoatl was its chief in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters. In drinking the magic potion of Tezcatlipocâ, Quetzalcoatl desired to render himself immortal. He left the impress of his body on a stone situated on a mountain near the city of Tlalnepantla (or Temacpalco), two leagues from Mexico, as the natives declared to Torquemada himself. Met by the sorcerers Tezcatlipocâ and the others who tried to hinder his going, he refused to stay his progress, and said that he must pass on to the sun-land. Father Sahagun, remarks Torquemada, when at Xochimilco, was asked by the natives, who were keenly desirous of knowledge on the point, where Tlapallan was, and replied that he did not know, as he had then not been long among them. The fountain in which Quetzalcoatl cast his jewels was now called Coaapan, “in the snake-water.” He then passed on to Cholula, where he was adored as a god. When he had resided there for twenty years, he was expelled by Tezcatlipocâ. Setting out once more for Tlapallan, accompanied by four virtuous youths, he embarked at Coatzacoalco. Bidding farewell to his disciples, he assured them that at a future time there would come by way of the sea, where the sun rises, certain white men with white beards, like him, and that these would be his brothers and would rule the land. These disciples became the rulers of the four provinces of Cholula. Quetzalcoatl was god of the air, and during his life on earth was devoted to the careful observance of the older forms of worship, but instituted many new rites, ceremonies, and festivals and made the calendar. Barren women prayed to him. He swept the road, so that the Tlaloque might rain. For a month or so before the rainy season stormy winds blew throughout New Spain. The Cholulans preserved as relics green stones that had belonged to him, on one of which was carved a monkey’s head. A great temple to him was founded at Cholula. [154]
Elsewhere Torquemada descants on the Quetzalcoatl myth as follows: A body of men came from the north by way of Panuco, dressed in long robes of black linen, cut low at the neck, with short sleeves. They came to Tollan, but finding the country there too thickly peopled, passed on to Cholula, where they were well received. Their chief was Quetzalcoatl, a man with ruddy complexion and long beard. These people multiplied and sent colonists to the Mixtec and Zapotec countries, raising the great buildings at Mitla. They were cunning handicraftsmen, not so good at masonry as at jewellers’ work, sculpture, and agriculture. Tezcatlipocâ and Huemac conceived an enmity to Quetzalcoatl, and as he did not wish to go to war with them, he and his folk removed to Onohualco (Yucatan, Tabasco, and Campeche). [155]
Motolinia says of Quetzalcoatl that when Iztacmixcoatl, the Mexican Adam, married his second wife Chimalmat, she bore him Quetzalcoatl, who grew up chaste and temperate. He instituted fasting and mortification, and never married. He founded the custom of drawing blood from the ears and tongue in penitence. A certain Chichemecatl fastened a leather strap to his arm, near the shoulder, and from that time this Chichemecatl was known as Acolhuatl, and became the ancestor of the Colhua. Quetzalcoatl was god of the air and many temples were raised to him. [156]
Mendieta has much to say of Quetzalcoatl, but in a synopsis of his account we retain only such circumstances as have not been already alluded to: Many different traditions regarding Quetzalcoatl existed, some saying that he was the son of Camacotli (Camaxtli), god of hunting and fishing, and of his wife Chimialuna; others that Chimialuna, when sweeping one day, found a chalchihuitl stone, by virtue of which she became miraculously pregnant and gave birth to Quetzalcoatl, who came either from Tollan or Yucatan. The people came to love him, not only because he taught them handicrafts, and desired no offerings but those of bread, flowers, and perfumes. He forbade all war and disturbance. Pilgrims came to his shrine at Cholula from all parts of Mexico, even the enemies of Cholula, and the lords of distant lands built them chapels and idols there. Among all the gods only Quetzalcoatl was called Lord, and men swore by him. The gods thought it well that the people should have some means of writing by which they might direct themselves, and two of their number, Oxomoco and Cipactonal, who dwelt in a cave in Cuernavaca, especially considered the matter. Cipactonal thought that her descendant Quetzalcoatl should be consulted, and she called him into counsel. He, too, thought the idea of a calendar good, and the two addressed themselves to the task of making the tonalamatl. To Cipactonal was given the privilege of choosing and writing the first sign. She painted the cipactli animal, and called the sign ce cipactli (“one cipactli”). Oxmoco then wrote ome acatl (“two cane”), and Quetzalcoatl “three house,” and so on, until the thirteen signs were completed. [157]
Another form of the Quetzalcoatl myth given by Mendieta is in substance as follows: Tezcatlipocâ let himself down from the upper regions by means of a spider’s web, and coming to Tollan engaged in a game of tlachtli (the native ball game) with Quetzalcoatl, in the midst of which he transformed himself into a tiger. Those who watched the game were panic-stricken, and cast themselves pell-mell into a ravine, and were drowned in a river which flowed therein. Tezcatlipocâ then harassed Quetzalcoatl from city to city, until he drove him to Cholula, and latterly to Tlapallan, where he died, and where his followers burnt his body, thus inaugurating the custom of burning the dead. [158]
The interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis says regarding Quetzalcoatl:
“Quetcalcoatl they say was he who created the world; and they bestowed upon him the appellation of Lord of the Wind, because they said that Tonacatecotli when it appeared good to him breathed and begat Quecalcoatle. They erected round temples to him without any corners. They said that it was he (who was also lord of these thirteen signs which are here represented) who formed the first man. They celebrated a festival on the sign of four earthquakes, to the destroyer with reference to the fate which again waited the world; for they said that it had undergone four destructions and would again be destroyed. He alone had a human body like that of men; the other gods were of an incorporeal nature.
“After the deluge the custom of sacrificing commenced. Topilcin Quetcalcoatle was born on the day of seven canes; and they celebrated on this same day of seven canes a great festival in Cholula, to which they came from all parts of the country and the cities and brought great presents to the lords and papas of the temple; and they did the same on the day on which he disappeared or died, which was the day of One Cane. These festivals happened at the expiration of every period of fifty-two years.
“They here fasted the last four days to Quecalcoatl of Tula, who is he who was named after the first Calcoatle; and now they name him One Cane, which is the star Venus, of which they tell the fable accredited amongst them.
“Tlavizcalpantecutli is the star Venus the first created light (Civahteltona) before the deluge. They say that it was a fire or a star: it was created before the sun. This star (Venus) is Quecalcoatle. They say this is the star which we call Lucifer from its light; and they accordingly paint it with the sign of one Cane, which was the day dedicated to it. He took this name on the occasion of his departure or disappearance. Tlavizcalpantecutli is the God of Morning when it begins to dawn: he is also the Lord of Twilight on the approach of Night: he presided over these thirteen days during the four last of which they fasted. It properly was the first light which appeared in the world; it here signifies the light which diffuses itself over things, or the surface of the earth.”
The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says:
“They invented dreams, the result of their own blindness, relating that a god of the name of Citallatonac, which is the sign seen in heaven called St. James’s or the Milky Way, sent an ambassador from heaven on an embassy to a virgin of Tulan called Chimalman (a shield) who had two sisters, the one named Tzochitlique and the other Couatlique; and that the three being alone in the house, two of them, observing the ambassador of heaven, died of fright, Chimalman alone remaining alive, to whom the ambassador announced that it was the will of this god that she should conceive a son; and having delivered to her the message, he rose and left the house, and as soon as he had left it she conceived a son without connection with man, who they called Quetzalcoatle, who they say is the god of air, and his temples are round in the manner of churches, although till that time such was not the fashion of their temples. He was the inventor of temples of this form as we shall show. He it was, as they say, who caused hurricanes and in my opinion was the god who was called Citaladuali and it was he who destroyed the world by winds. This painting is here wanting, together with another which represented that as soon as the son of this virgin was born he possessed the use of reason. The son of the virgin, Topilcin Quetzalcoatle, knowing that the vices of men were necessarily the cause of the troubles of the world, determined on asking the goddess Chalchiutlicue (this was the heavenly designation of the virgin Chimalman) who is she who remained after the deluge with the man in the tree, and is the mother of the god Tlaloque, whom they have made goddess of water, that they might obtain rain when they stood in need of and accordingly Quetzalcoatle commenced offering sacrifices to obtain rain, as a period of four years had elapsed since it had rained.
“Quetzalcoatltopilzin does penance and makes offerings of prayers, sacrifice, gold gems, incense, etc., to appease divine wrath against the people; draws his own blood with thorns. After the expiration of a long period during which he continued his penance a lizard appeared scratching the ground giving him to understand that the scourge of heaven was past and that the earth would with joy produce its fruits, which quickly came to pass; and accordingly they relate that on a sudden such abundance followed that the earth, which had remained so many years barren, bore many kinds of fruit and from that even they took four signs.
“Quetzalcoatl’s example teaches men to do penance, make offerings. He founded four temples—the first for the nobles; second, for the people; third, House of Fear or Serpent; fourth, Temple of Shame.
“Of Quetzalcoatle they relate that, proceeding on his journey, he arrived at the Red Sea, which is here painted, and which they named Tlapallan; and that entering into it, they saw no more of him, nor knew what became of him, except that they say that he desired them at the time of his departure to restrain their grief and to expect his return, which would take place at the appointed time; and accordingly they expect him even to the present time: and when the Spaniards came to this country they believed that it was he, and when at a later period of 1550 when the Çapotecas revolted, they alleged, as the cause of their insurrection, the report that their god who had to redeem them had already come. Quetzalcoatle was born on the sign One Cane; and the year of the Spaniards’ arrival commenced on the sign One Cane, according to their ancient Computation: whence the occasion arose of their believing that the Spaniards were their gods; because they say that he had foretold that a bearded nation would arrive in those countries who would subject them. They adored him as a god, as will be seen: for they believed it certain that he had ascended into heaven and was that star which was visible at the north of the sun before the break of day, which is the planet Venus; and they represented him accordingly as has already been shown.
“Quetzalcoatle was the first inventor of sacrifices of human blood, amongst the various other things which they offered to the gods; and this was the manner in which they pierced their tongues, that the blood might flow ... and their ears and penis; till at last, as we shall presently mention, the custom of human sacrifices was introduced, when they tore out the hearts of the victims to present them to the face of the idol which they considered the image of their wretched god.
“They declare that their supreme deity Tonacatecotle, whom we have just mentioned, who by another name was called Citinatonali, when it appeared good to him, breathed and begot Quetzalcoatle, not by connection with woman, but by his breath alone, as we have observed above, when he sent his ambassador, as they say, to the virgin of Tula. They believed him to be the god of the air and he was the first to whom they built temples and churches, which they formed perfectly round without any angles. They say that it was he who effected the reformation of the world by penance, since as, according to his account, his father had created the world and men had given themselves up to vice, on which account it had been frequently destroyed, Citinatonali sent his son into the world to reform it.... They assigned to him the dominion over the other thirteen signs, which are here represented, in the same manner in which they assigned the preceding thirteen to his father. They celebrated a great festival on this sign, as we shall see on the sign of four earthquakes, which is the fourth in order here, because they feared that the world would be destroyed in that sign, as he had foretold to them when he disappeared in the Red Sea, which event occurred on the same sign. As they considered him their advocate, they celebrated a solemn festival and fasted during four signs.”
The Anales de Quauhtitlan or Codex Chimalpopocâ states that Quetzalcoatl was born in no natural manner, but was a nine years’ child. He created the four classes of men: the men of the four “suns” or periods of the world were made by him on the day chicome ehecatl, or “seven wind.” The record proceeds to relate the circumstances of his rule at Tollan, the manner in which he discovered the value of precious stones, gold and silver, red and white shells, quetzal feathers, the cotinga and red sparrowbill feathers, the various species of cocoa and cotton. When he had drunk the octli offered him by Tezcatlipocâ, he forgot his chastity in the intoxication and indulged in intercourse with Quetzalpetlatl, for which sin he was forced to quit Mexico. When he was driven from Tollan in the year one reed, he arrived on the sea-shore, wept, and divested himself of his garb and turquoise snake-mask. Then he immolated himself by burning, his ashes became dust and changed into birds and his heart was converted into the morning star. Lastly, it is said of him that when he died he was not visible for four days, during which period he tarried in the Underworld. For a subsequent four days “he was bones.” “After eight days appeared the great star which they called Quetzalcoatl. They said that he thus mounted the throne as a god.”
In its second or historical portion the codex states that Quetzalcoatl discovered maize which was concealed in the mountain Tonacatepetl. Many of the gods searched for it, but Quetzalcoatl, taking the form of a black ant, was guided to the spot by a red ant. As he was unable to lift the mountain, it was split open by the magical prowess of Xolotl in his manifestation of Nanahuatl, and the maize became the spoil of Quetzalcoatl. But it was stolen from him by Tlaloc, the rain-god proper, perhaps an allegorical manner of alluding to the more direct influence of that deity upon growth.
Other myths relating to Quetzalcoatl, chiefly as a creative agency, will be found in the précis of the opening chapters of the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, in the chapter on Cosmogony.
In Codex Borgia we find a passage (sheets 35–46) which appears to refer to the progress of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipocâ through the infernal regions, and which might be described as the Mexican “Harrying of Hell.” On this passage Seler has briefly commented (see his Commentary on Codex Vaticanus B, p. 119).
CENTRAL AMERICAN MYTHS RELATING TO QUETZALCOATL
Quetzalcoatl is, perhaps, singular among the deities of Mexico in that a number of well-authenticated Central American myths cluster around his name in its forms of Kukulcan, Gucumatz, and Votan. Certain of these must be considered here, for purposes of comparison and analogy.
Nuñez de la Vega: A book in the Quiche tongue, said to have been written by Votan, a local name for Quetzalcoatl, was at one time in the possession of Nuñez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas, who included portions of it in his Constituciones Diocesianos de Chiapas, but nevertheless destroyed it in his holocaust of MSS. at Heuheutlan in 1691. Ordoñez de Aguilar had, however, made a copy of it before its destruction, and incorporated it in his Historia de Cielo MS. In this work Votan declared himself “a snake,” a descendant of Imos, of the line of Chan [159] of the race of Chivim. Taking Aguilar’s account along with that of Nuñez de la Vega, as both rely upon the same authority, we find that Votan proceeded to America by divine command, his mission being to lay the foundation of civilization. With this object in view he departed from Valum Chivim, [160] passing the dwelling of the thirteen snakes, and arrived in Valum Votan, whence, with some members of his family, he set out to form a settlement, ascending the Usumacinta River and ultimately founding Palenque. By reason of their peculiar dress the Tzendal Indians called them Tzequitles, or “men with shirts,” but consented to amalgamate with them. Ordoñez states that when Votan had established himself at Palenque he made several visits to his original home. On one of these he came to a tower which had been intended to reach the heavens, a project which had been brought to naught by the linguistic confusion of those who conceived it. Finally he was permitted to reach “the rock of heaven” by a subterranean passage. Returning to Palenque, he found that others of his race had arrived there, and with them he made a friendly pact. He built a temple by the Heuheutan River, known, from its subterranean chambers, as “the House of Darkness,” and here he deposited the national records under the charge of certain old men called tlapianes, or guardians, and an order of priestesses. Here also were kept a number of tapirs. A quotation of the passage dealing with this temple may be made from Nuñez de la Vega:
“Votan is the third heathen in the calendar (that is the deity who is ascribed to the third division of the calendar), and in the little history written in the Indian language all the provinces and cities in which he tarried were mentioned; and to this day there is always a clan in the city of Teopisa that they call the Votans. It is also said that he is the lord of the hollow wooden instrument which they call tepanaguaste (that is, the Mexican teponaztli); that he saw the great wall, namely, the tower of Babel, which was built from earth to heaven at the bidding of his grandfather, Noah; and that he was the first man whom God sent to divide and apportion this country of India, and that there, where he saw the great wall, he gave to every nation its special language. It is related that he tarried in Huehueta (which is a city in Soconusco), and that there he placed a tapir and a great treasure in a slippery (damp, dark, subterranean) house, which he built by the breath of his nostrils, and he appointed a woman as chieftain, with tapianes (that is, Mexican tlapiani, “keepers”) to guard her. This treasure consisted of jars, which were closed with covers of the same clay, and of a room in which the picture of the ancient heathens who are in the calendar were engraved in stone, together with chalchiuites (which are small, heavy, green stones) and other superstitious images; and the chieftainess herself and the tapianes, her guardians, surrendered all these things, which were publicly burned in the market place of Huehueta when we inspected the aforesaid province in 1691. All the Indians greatly revere this Votan, and in a certain province they call him ‘heart of the cities’ (Corazon de los pueblos).”
In his ninth Pastoral Letter Nuñez says of Quetzalcoatl:
“In most of the Calendars, the seventh sign is the figure of a man and a snake, which they call Cuchulchan. The masters have explained it as a snake with feathers which moves in the water. This sign corresponds with Mexzichaut (Mixcoatl), which means Cloudy Serpent, or, of the clouds. The people also consult them in order to work injury on their enemies, taking the lives of many through such devilish artifices, and committing unspeakable atrocities.”
The Popol Vuh.—The myths relating to Quetzalcoatl under his name of Gucumatz in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche of Guatemala, are difficult to summarize. In the first chapter he is alluded to as “the serpent covered with feathers, the heart of the lakes, the heart of the sea, master of the sky, master of the blue expanse,” and is connected with the creative gods. Along with Hurakan (Tezcatlipocâ) he creates the world by uttering the word “earth.” The creation of man having been considered, the wherewithal for his sustenance is debated. Gucumatz, who is sometimes alluded to in the plural, like the Hebrew Elohim, succeeds in discovering maize in Paxil by the aid of the fox, jackal, parrot, and crow, and obtains the seeds of other alimentary plants (pt. iii, c. i.) Gucumatz then created man by a “miracle” (c. ii). In c. v, pt. iii, Quetzalcoatl is alluded to as Tohil, a parallel for which we have justification in ver. 19 of c. x, where in the song called Kamucu (“We see”) the first men sing: “Truly Tohil is the name of the god of the Zaqui nation, which was called Yolcuat-quetzalcuat when we separated in the place Tolan in Zuiva.” But the myths relating to this deity are obviously tribal and local, and I am of opinion that they refer to some tribal deity who possessed some of the characteristics of Quetzalcoatl and who was identified with him by the Quiches in rather an arbitrary fashion. [161]
FESTIVALS
Atlacahualco.—The festival of Atlacahualco or Quaitl Eloa was, says Sahagun, sacred to Quetzalcoatl, as well as to the Tlaloque. For an account of it see the section which deals with Tlaloc.
Ce Acatl.—Says Sahagun: “On the first day of the sign ce acatl the great folk made a feast to Quetzalcoatl, the god of winds. This was celebrated in the calmecac, and here they offered rich gifts to his idol, perfumes and things to eat. They said it was the sign of Quetzalcoatl.”
PRIESTHOOD
The order of priests devoted to the service of Quetzalcoatl [162] was called Tlamacazcayotl, and its members Tlamacazque. Of these Clavigero, who was well informed regarding the Mexican priesthood, says: “Amongst the different orders or congregation, both of men and women, who dedicated themselves to the worship of some particular gods, that of Quetzalcoatl is worthy to be mentioned. The life led in the colleges or monasteries of either sex, which were devoted to this imaginary god, was uncommonly rigid and austere. The dress of the order was extremely decent; they bathed regularly at midnight, and watched until about two hours before day, singing hymns to their god, and observing many rules of an austere life. They were at liberty to go to the mountains at any hour of the day or night, to spill their blood; this was permitted them from a respect to the virtue which they were all thought to possess. The superiors of the monasteries bore also the name of Quetzalcoatl, and were persons of such high authority, that they visited but the king when it was necessary. The members of this religious order were destined to it from their infancy. The parents of the child invited the superior to an entertainment, who usually deputed one of his subjects. The deputy brought the child to him, upon which he took the boy in his arms and offered him with a prayer to Quetzalcoatl, and put a collar about his neck, which was to be worn until he was seven years old. When the boy completed his second year, the superior made a small incision in his breast, which, like the collar, was another mark of his destination. As soon as the boy attained his seventh year he entered into the monastery, having first heard a long discourse from his parents, in which they advertised him of the vow which they had made to Quetzalcoatl, and exhorted him to fulfil it, to behave well, to submit himself to his prelate, and to pray to the gods for his parents and the whole nation.”
The high-priest of Quetzalcoatl was stationed at Cholula and was, perhaps, the most venerated ecclesiastic in Mexico.
TEMPLES
The principal temple of the cult of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico was the well-known teocalli at Cholula. He had also a shrine in the great temple court at Mexico, built in circular form, and thus typical of the Wind-god.
NATURE AND STATUS
The latest of the myths concerning Quetzalcoatl are obviously those which regard him as a culture-hero who enters the country as an alien, and, his beneficent work performed, withdraws to the place whence he came, under pressure of malignant opposition. Had the basic outline of his myth been more carefully examined, fewer unsatisfactory hypotheses concerning Quetzalcoatl’s nature might have been ventured upon. The Mexicans themselves recognized Quetzalcoatl as a wind-god, but Dr. Seler has not seen fit to accept their assurance upon this point in toto, and at various times has advanced the hypotheses that Quetzalcoatl represents the wind, the planet Venus, or the moon, latterly confining his personality almost entirely to the lamp of night. [163]
In my view the physical phenomena which occur in connection with the courses of the winds typical of the Mexican plateau provide by far the most simple and natural explanation of the nature of the god Quetzalcoatl. From April or May to the beginning of October the trade-wind blows from the east coast over the Plateau of Anahuac, bringing with it abundance of rain, and accelerating vegetable growth, thus actually “sweeping the ways for the rain-gods.” Its advance is comparatively slow, the rains beginning three or four weeks earlier in Vera Cruz than in Puebla and Mexico. At the beginning of October, however, it is invariably modified by the local monsoon, which interrupts it over wide areas, or in certain districts invades it in violent cyclonic storms, dissipating its energies and altering its course. Quetzalcoatl represents the gentle trade-wind, which ushers in the growth-making rains. His reign of peace, plenty, and fertility over, he comes into opposition with Tezcatlipocâ, who represents the monsoon and who chases his rival “from city to city,” ravening at him like a tiger, says Mendieta, and at last hustling him out of the country. That Tezcatlipocâ is also a god of wind is certain, as is proved by one of his names, Yoalli Ehecatl, “Wind of Night,” and that he is the monsoon or hurricane is proved beyond all doubt by the circumstance that he is said to have rushed along the highways at night at extraordinary speed, and that Hurakan, his Quiche name, is still employed for the very wind he represented, and has become a generic name for a tempestuous wind in practically all European languages, which have without question adopted it from the American word. [164]
If this simple elucidation of the original myth be accepted, it will be seen how naturally its later modifications arise out of it or adapt themselves to it. But before we examine the manner in which they crystallized around it, it becomes necessary to disentangle from the whole mass that portion of it which alludes to the advent of a civilizing agency upon the Mexican plateau.
This speaks of the advance of a body of men from the neighbourhood of Vera Cruz to the Mexican plateau, and precisely in the direction whence the trade-wind comes—that is, from the east, the direction of the land of the Huaxtecs, a people of proto-Maya stock.
Quetzalcoatl is dressed in Huaxtec garb, and wears the truncated sugar-loaf hat and shell-ornaments of this people. This may signify nothing more than that he was so attired because he represented a wind which blew from the direction of the land of the Huaxtecs. Yet, it is certain that several of the deities adopted by the Mexicans had undoubtedly a Huaxtec origin, and this is markedly the case with Tlazoltcotl. There seems to be some ground, then, for the hypothesis that Quetzalcoatl was a god of Huaxtec origin. But the acceptance of such a theory will entail the acknowledgment of certain hypotheses which are among the most controverted questions in Mexican archæology. In the first place, it makes Quetzalcoatl the deity of a people of Maya stock, and secondly it would seem to imply a Huaxtec or Maya origin for the much-debated Toltec culture.
A discussion of these points must begin with the question, “Has the myth of Quetzalcoatl’s civilizing mission to the Mexican plateau any historical justification?” Regarding the reality of the civilization known as Toltec there is now no question, although I fully admit that it took me a long time to realize this, thanks principally to my acceptance of Brinton’s well-known theory on the subject, to which I attached far too much weight. But admitting Toltec reality, what proof do we possess that such a civilizing agency as that of Quetzalcoatl gave an impetus to the “prehistoric” culture of Tollan? But little—that is if we are to regard Quetzalcoatl as a man. But in his guise as the gentle trade-wind that ushers in the rains, we have every reason to see in him the founder of the Toltec civilization. Such a culture as the Toltec must undoubtedly have had its origin in agricultural efficiency. Only through agricultural efficiency can the corvée system arise and extensive building become possible. The god whose bountiful patronage of growth assisted the arts in this manner seems in time to have been ‘humanized.’ [165] Legends of his civilizing prowess clustered around his supposititious memory, he was thought to have been a culture-hero who actually moved and had his being among the people. Kings or rulers were called by his name—a lucky name of happy associations—and the illusion that he actually existed was thereby heightened. These rulers seem to have flourished in Mexico ere yet the offices of king and priest had become separate, so that it is not surprising that Quetzalcoatl was regarded as having been the priest of his own cult, or that the Mexican pontiffs of historical times bore his name. From this point of view, then, Quetzalcoatl was certainly the “founder” of the Toltec civilization. If this theory be accepted, I do not see how the myth of Quetzalcoatl can be regarded as having any basis in actual fact, unless one can find in the rather vague statements of certain early writers on Mexico a further basis for discussion as to his reality. To me the meaning of the myth seems very plain. It may be that Huaxtec influence was brought to bear upon Toltec civilization, but my hypothesis does not seem to me to require assistance from such an admission.
CRITICISM OF THE LATER ELEMENTS OF QUETZALCOATL’S MYTH
In short, the myth of Quetzalcoatl as recorded by Sahagun is obviously developed from a much older one which referred to a season of plenteous rain—the period of the rule of the gentle and beneficent god representing the trade-wind. As it was connected with prosperous conditions in agriculture, it was naturally brought into connection with the Toltec time, the “good old times of long ago,” when conditions were greatly better, and no mouth knew want. Such a concept was obviously of later origin. The revised myth took on a cultural complexion. In terms of allegory, it tells how the powers of the rain-making priest-god fail him; he becomes sick, and is beguiled and defeated by Tezcatlipocâ, the rival wind-god, who tells him that “another old man” awaits him in Tlapallan. And here we seem to find interpolated a reference to the guardian genius of the fountain of perpetual youth, the reservoir of rain and all refreshment, which Quetzalcoatl must visit if he would be cured of the ills of old age, and he is counselled to speak with its keeper if he would return to Mexico “as a boy.” The destruction of his treasure by the banished god seems to point to a reminiscence of the downfall of the Toltec state, and the concealment of his gold and gems by burial to analogous Toltec practice on the defeat or decline of that civilized folk. With his departure the reign of plenty ceases, the trees wither, the birds migrate, the season of the trade-wind rains has come to an end. History and myth are perhaps combined in this story of the latter days of the Toltec régime and those of the revivifying rains. The priest-god withdraws eastwards to the “flute-playing” of the retreating trade-winds. Nahua sorcerers detain him in order to learn the Toltec arts, perhaps a mythical manner of showing how the Nahua barbarians forced captive Toltecs to teach them the mysteries of stone- and metal-craft. He is given the draught of the dead, “that none of the living can drink,” a mythical episode common in all parts of the world. His dwarfish followers (the rain-gods, the Tlaloque, with whom Sahagun associates him elsewhere) are frozen to death in the cold of the mountains, otherwise the rain is congealed into snow.
Torquemada’s version of Quetzalcoatl’s myth is eloquent of the pre-eminence of his cult at Cholula. The priest-god’s prophecy of his return bears an extraordinary resemblance to that given in the Books of Chilan Balam, a Guatemalan native production, regarding the coming of white men to Central America. [166]
Motolinia’s story of the fixing of the strap on Quetzalcoatl’s arm is merely a grotesque explanation of the name Acolhua, which in reality signifies “the folk of the great shoulder,” “the pushers,” “the hustling invaders.”
Mendieta, in dwelling upon Quetzalcoatl’s dislike of war, merely retains for us a characteristic of the effeminate people of Cholula. The appearance of Tezcatlipocâ as a spider is typical of the god of the dry season, or of the dry-rot prevalent in that period of the year. As a tiger he symbolizes the fierceness of the hurricane, and the tlachtli game which he and Quetzalcoatl engage in is undoubtedly symbolic of the seasonal strife between the wind-gods.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF QUETZALCOATL
Summarizing the myths relating to Quetzalcoatl we find:
(1) That all of them have their origin in or refer back to an original nature-myth, in which Quetzalcoatl, the trade-wind, is, at the end of the rainy season, regarded as driven from the Mexican Plateau by Tezcatlipocâ (Hurakan) in his guise of the monsoon, or hurricane.
(2) That this myth in the first place became confounded with traditions of the Toltec civilization, naturally enough, as that civilization was the direct outcome of the agricultural wealth stimulated by the god representing the trade-wind.
(3) That it seems to have been associated with a myth relating to the fountain of youth, that is, the fountain in which the refreshing and revivifying rains were stored, to which Quetzalcoatl must return for rejuvenation and a fresh rain-supply.
(4) That the conception of the god Quetzalcoatl became humanized in the light of the agricultural and other manifestations of Toltec culture, thus bringing about the idea of his existence as a priest-king, and culminating in the establishment of a line of priestly rulers bearing his name, which endured as long as Mexican civilization.
(5) Out of these conceptions there naturally arose other related ideas, as those of:
(a) Quetzalcoatl as inventor of the tonalamatl, the instrument by which the festal days of the rain-cult were originally noted, but which on the adoption of the solar calendar as time-count degenerated into what may be regarded as an astrological table.
(b) The lunar basis upon which the tonalamatl was founded connected Quetzalcoatl with the moon. [167]
(c) Regarded as inventor of the tonalamatl, he gained a reputation as the possessor of profound hieratic wisdom, and came to be looked upon as the magician or sage par excellence, the patron of education, the rain-maker who knew precisely when the blood shed in penance should be spent in order that it might return to the soil of Anahuac in an abundant rainfall.
(d) Quetzalcoatl as the god of wind was also regarded as the breath of life, a phenomenon encountered in many mythologies, and therefore came to be conceived as the agency by which souls were originally placed in human bodies. From this, too, we may argue his appearance as a creator, or cosmic deity, although it may have been in his character as fertilizer that he came to be regarded in this light.
(e) Quetzalcoatl is the great penitent, the supreme protagonist of the penitential system, because without the blood spent in penitential exercise no rain might fall. The secondary character of this conception is probable.
(f) Quetzalcoatl seems at a later date to have been regarded as the god of the four quarters of the compass, a conception of him indubitably evolved from his status as a wind-god. I think I also perceive signs that from this latter idea was further evolved a conception of him as god of the four elements—fire, air, earth, and water. He is the fire and the flint, because of the lightning which in Mexico accompanies the fall of the trade-wind rain. He is the air in his rôle of Wind-god, and as such is symbolized by the bird, the natural inhabitant of the air, the beak of which he uses as a funnel from which to expel the wind. He is earth, and, his myth says, a builder of subterranean houses, and sometimes bears the earth-staff of agriculture. [168] He is water, or rain, in which guise he is typified by the feathered snake.
This conception of him, evidently strongly sophisticated by priestly theological science, is illustrated in the Codex Magliabecchiano, where he is represented on one sheet along with Tezcatlipocâ, Tlaloc, and Uitzilopochtli. This group, in my opinion, represents the four elements: Fire (Uitzilopochtli), as possessor of the tlachinalli symbol, a hieroglyph for water and fire, and as sun-god; Air (Quetzalcoatl); Earth (Tezcatlipocâ), who as Tepeyollotl was an earth-deity; and Water (Tlaloc). The picture may also be descriptive of the four points of the compass over which he rules. But above and beyond this, as Seler has shown, it implies that these deities were later embodied in the idea of Quetzalcoatl. When Cortéz, coming from the East, landed at Vera Cruz, the Mexicans naturally believed that Quetzalcoatl had returned, and Motecuhzoma sent him as an offering “the dress appropriate to him,” four kinds of attire, the ceremonial costumes of Uitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipocâ, Tlaloc, and Quetzalcoatl.
ETYMOLOGY
There but remains the etymology of Quetzalcoatl’s name. It is compounded of the element quetzalli and coatl. The first denotes the bright green tail-feathers of the quetzal bird, and coatl = “snake,” so that the whole implies “feathered snake.” The generally accepted belief is that this name applies to the rain-bearing clouds which accompany the trade-wind, although others have seen in it a description of the rain itself, and still others the ripples made by wind on water. But quetzal in a secondary sense means “precious,” and coatl is capable of being translated “twin.” The Mexicans themselves, however, frequently drew and sculptured the god as a feathered serpent, although this may easily have possessed a merely pictographic significance. In any case, after prolonged consideration on the etymology of the name, I do not, so far, see any reason to quarrel with the currently accepted rendering of it.