CHAPTER II

MEXICO

I. MIDDLE AMERICA

From the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends the great land

bridge connecting North and South America, forming a region which

might properly be called Middle America. This region divides naturally

into several sections. To the north is the body of Mexico, its coastal

lands mounting abruptly on the western side, but rising more gradually

on the eastern littoral toward the broad central plateau, the shape

of which--roughly triangular, with its apex in the lofty mountains of

the south--conforms to that of the whole land north of the Isthmus

of Tehuantepec. Next to this is the low-lying peninsular region of

Yucatan, ascending into mountains toward the Pacific, and forming a

great broadening of the southward tapering land. A second bulge is

Central America, lying between the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito

Gulf, and terminating in the thin Isthmus forming an arc about the Bay

of Panama.

The physiography of the region is an index to its pre-Columbian

ethnography.[22] The northern portion, including Lower California and,

roughly, the mainlands in its latitudes, was a region of wild tribes,

the best of them much inferior in culture to the Pueblo Indians on the

Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and the lowest as destitute of arts as

any in America. Yuman and Waicurian tribes in Lower California; Seri on

the Island of Tiburon and the neighbouring mainland; Piman in the north

central and western mainlands; Apache in the desert-like lands south

of the Rio Grande; and Tamaulipecan on the east, coasting the Gulf of

Mexico--these are the principal groups of this region, peoples whose

ideas and myths differ little from those of their kindred groups of the

arid South-west of North America. The Piman group, however, possesses

a special interest in that it forms a possible connexion between the

Shoshonean to the north and the Nahuatlan nations of the Aztec world.

Such peoples as the Papago, Yaqui, Tarahumare, and Tepehuane are the

wilder cousins of the Nahua, while the Tepecano, Huichol, and Cora

tribes, just to the south, distinctly show Aztec acculturation. In

general, the Mexican tribes north of the Tropic of Cancer belong, in

habit and thought, with the groups of the South-West of the northern

continent; ethnically, Middle America falls south of the Tropic.

Below this line, extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is the

region dominated by the empire of the Aztec, marked by the civilization

which bears their name.[23] As a matter of fact, although at the time

of the culmination of their power this whole region was politically

subordinated to the Aztec (it was not completely conquered by them),

it contained several centres of culture, each in degree distinct. To

the north, about the Panuco, were the Huastec, a branch of the Maya

stock; while immediately south of them, and also on the Gulf Coast,

were the Totonac, possibly of Maya kinship. The central highlands,

immediately west of these peoples, were occupied by the Otomi,

primitive and warlike foes of the Aztec emperors. On their west, in

turn, the Otomi had a common frontier with Nahuatlan tribes--Huichol,

Cora, and others--forming a transitional group between the wild tribes

of the north and the civilized Nahua. Quite surrounded by Nahuatlan and

Otomian tribes was the Tarascan stock of Michoacan, a group of peoples

whose culture certainly ante-dates that of the Nahua, of whom, indeed,

they may have been the teachers. Still to the south--their territories

nearly conterminous with the state of Oaxaca--were the Zapotecan

peoples, chief among them the Zapotec and Mixtec, whose civilization

ranks with those of Nahua and Maya in individual quality, while in

native vitality it has proved stronger than either.

The Zoquean tribes (Mixe, Zoque, and others), back from the Gulf of

Tehuantepec, form a transition to the next great culture centre, that

of the Maya nations. The territories of this most remarkable of all

American civilizations included the whole of Yucatan, the greater

portions of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the lands bordering

on both sides of the Gulf of Honduras. Thus the Mayan regions dominate

the strategy of the Americas, since they not only control the juncture

of the continents, but, stretching out toward the Greater Antilles,

command the passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

It is easily conceivable that, had a free maritime commerce grown up,

the Maya might have become, not merely the Greeks, but the Romans, of

the New World.

Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic

stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the

influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan

stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua), but also of

the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the

Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua.

In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the

Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the

meeting-place of the continents.

The nodes of interest in the culture and history of Middle America are

the Aztec and Maya civilizations, which are justly regarded as marking

the highest attainment of native Americans.[24] Neither Aztec nor Maya

could vie with the Peruvian peoples in the engineering and political

skill which made the empire of the Incas such a marvel of organization;

but in the general level of the arts, in the intricacy of their

science, and above all in the possession of systems of hieroglyphic

writing and of monumental records the Middle Americans had touched a

level properly comparable with the earliest civilizations of the Old

World, nor can theirs have been vastly later than Old World culture in

origin.

In a number of particulars the civilizations of the Middle and South

American centres show curious parallels. In each case we are in the

presence of an aggressively imperial highland (Aztec, Inca) and of

a decadent lowland (Maya, Yunca) culture. In each case the lowland

culture is the more advanced aesthetically and apparently of longer

history. Both highland powers clearly depend upon remote highland

predecessors for their own culture (Aztec harks back to Toltec,

Inca to Tiahuanaco); and in both regions it is a pretty problem for

the archaeologist to determine whether this more remote highland

civilization is ancestrally akin to the lowland. Again, in both the

apogee of monument building and of the arts seems to have passed

when the Spaniards arrived; indeed, empire itself was weakening. The

Aztec and the Inca tribes (perhaps the most striking parallel of all)

emerged from obscurity about the same time to proceed on the road to

empire, for the traditional Aztec departure from Aztlan and the Inca

departure from Tampu Tocco alike occurred in the neighbourhood of 1200

A. D. Finally, it was Ahuitzotl, the predecessor of Montezuma II, who

brought Aztec power to its zenith, and it was Huayna Capac, the father

of Atahualpa, who gave Inca empire its greatest extent; while both

the Aztec empire under Montezuma, which fell to Cortez in 1519, and

the Inca empire under Atahualpa, conquered by Pizarro in 1524, were

internally weakening at the time. But the crowning misfortune common to

the two empires was the possession of gold, maddening the eyes of the

_conquistadores_.

II. CONQUISTADORES[25]

In 1517 Hernandez de Cordova, sailing from Cuba for the Bahamas, was

driven out of his course by adverse gales; Yucatan was discovered; and

a part of the coast of the Gulf of Campeche was explored. Battles were

fought, and hardships were endured by the discoverers, but the reports

of a higher civilization which they brought back to Cuba, coupled with

specimens of curious gold-work, induced the governor of the island to

equip a new expedition to continue the exploration. This venture, of

four vessels under the command of Juan de Grijalva, set out in May,

1518, and following the course of its predecessor, coasted as far as

the province of Panuco, visiting the Isla de los Sacrificios--near the

site of the future Vera Cruz--and doing profitable trading with some

of the vassals of the Aztec emperor. A caravel which he dispatched to

Cuba with some of his golden profit induced the governor to undertake

a larger military expedition to effect the conquest of the empire

discovered; for now men began to realize that a truly imperial realm

had been revealed. This third expedition was placed under the command

of Hernando Cortez; it sailed from Cuba in February, 1519, and landed

on the island of Cozumel, in Maya territory, where the Spaniards were

profoundly impressed at finding the Cross an object of veneration.

The course was resumed, and a battle was fought near the mouth of the

Rio de Tabasco; but Cortez was in search of richer lands and so moved

onward, beyond the lands of the Maya, until on Good Friday, April 21,

1519, he landed with all his forces on the site of Vera Cruz. The two

years of the Conquest followed--the tale of which, for fantastic and

romantic adventure, for egregious heroism and veritable gluttony of

bloodshed, has few competitors in human annals: its climacterics being

the seizure of Montezuma in November, 1519; _la noche triste_, July 1,

1520, when the invaders were driven from Tenochtitlan; and, finally,

the defeat and capture of Guatemotzin, August 13, 1521.

The reader of the tale cannot but be profoundly moved both by what the

Spaniards found and by what they did. He will be moved with regret at

the wanton destruction of so much that was in its way splendid in

Aztec civilization. He will be moved with revulsion and wonder that

such a civilization could support a religion which, though not without

elements of poetic exaltation, was drugged with obscene and bloody

rites; and he will feel only a shuddering thankfulness that this faith

is of the past. But when he turns to the agents of its destruction

and reads their chronicles, furious with carnage, he will surely say,

with Clavigero, that "the Spaniards cannot but appear to have been

the severest instruments fate ever made use of to further the ends of

Providence," and amid conflicting horrors he will be led again into

regretful sympathy for the final victims.

An apologist for human nature would say that neither _conquistador_

nor _papa_ (as the Spaniards named the Aztec priest) was quite

so despicable as his deeds, that both were moved by a faith that

had redeeming traits. Outwardly, aesthetically, the whole scene

is bizarre and devilish; inwardly, it is not without devotion and

heroism. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, adventurer not only with Cortez,

but with Cordova and Grijalva before him, one of the sturdiest of the

conquerors and destined to be their foremost chronicler, records for

us one unforgettable incident which presents the whole inwardness and

outwardness of the situation--gorgeous cruelty and simple humanity--in

a single image. It was four days after the army of Cortez had entered

the Mexican capital; and after having been shown the wonders of the

populous markets of Tenochtitlan, the visitors were escorted, at their

own request, to the platform top of the great teocalli overlooking

Tlatelolco, the mart of Mexico. From the platform Montezuma proudly

pointed to the quartered city below, and beyond that to the gleaming

lake and the glistening villages on its borders--all a local index of

his imperial domains. "We counted among us," says the chronicler,[26]

"soldiers who had traversed different parts of the world:

Constantinople, Italy, Rome; they said that they had seen nowhere a

place so well aligned, so vast, ordered with such art, and covered

with so many people." Cortez turned to Montezuma: "You are a great

lord," he said. "You have shown us your great cities; show us now your

gods."

[Illustration: PLATE V.]

Aztec goddess, probably Coatlicue, the mother of Huitzilopochtli, an

earth goddess (see page 74). The statue is one of two Aztec monuments

(the other being the "Calendar Stone," Plate XIV) discovered under

the pavement of the principal plaza of Mexico City in 1790, and is

possibly the very image which Bernal Diaz mistook for "Huichilobos"

(see pages 46-49, and Note 26). The goddess wears the serpent apron,

and carries a death's head at the girdle; her own head is formed of

two serpent heads, facing, rising from her shoulders. The importance

of Coatlicue in Aztec legend is evidenced by the story of the embassy

sent to her by Montezuma I (see page 116). After an engraving in

_AnMM_, first series, Vol. II.

"He invited us into a tower," continues the chronicler, "into a part

in form like a great hall where were two altars covered with rich

woodwork. Upon the altars were reared two massive forms, like giants

with ponderous bodies. The first, placed at the right, was, they say,

Huichilobos [Huitzilopochtli], their god of war. His countenance was

very large, the eyes huge and terrifying; all his body, including the

head, was covered with gems, with gold, with pearls large and small,

adherent by means of a glue made from farinaceous roots. The body was

cinctured with great serpents fabricked of gold and precious stones; in

one hand he held a bow, and in the other arrows. A second little idol,

standing beside the great divinity like a page, carried for him a short

spear and a buckler rich in gold and gems. From the neck of Huichilobos

hung masks of Indians and hearts in gold or in silver surmounted by

blue stones. Near by were to be seen burners with incense of copal;

three hearts of Indians sacrificed that very day burned there,

continuing with the incense the sacrifice that had just taken place.

The walls and floor of this sanctuary were so bathed with congealing

blood that they exhaled a horrid odour.

"Turning our gaze to the left, we saw there another great mass, of the

height of Huichilobos. Its face resembled the snout of a bear, and its

shining eyes were made of mirrors called _tezcatl_ in the language

of the country; its body was covered with rich gems, in like manner

with Huichilobos, for they are called brothers. They adore Tezcatepuca

[Tezcatlipoca] as god of the lower worlds, and attribute to him the

care of the souls of Mexicans. His body was bound about with little

devils having the tails of snakes. About him also upon the walls there

was such a crust of blood and the floor so soaked with it that not

the butcheries of Castile exhale such a stench. There was to be seen,

moreover, the offering of five hearts of victims sacrificed that

day. At the culminating point of the temple was a niche of woodwork,

richly carved; within it, a statue representing a being half man, half

crocodile, enriched with jewels and partly covered by a mantle. They

said that this idol was the god of sowings and of fruits; the half of

his body contained all the grains of the country. I do not recall the

name of this divinity; what I do know is that here also all was soiled

with blood, wall and altar, and that the stench was such that we did

not delay to go forth to take the air. There we found a drum of immense

size; when struck it gave forth a lugubrious sound, such as an infernal

instrument could not want. It could be heard for two leagues about, and

it was said to be stretched with the skins of gigantic serpents.

"Upon the terrace were to be seen an endless number of things

diabolical in appearance: speaking trumpets, horns, knives, many hearts

of Indians burned as incense to idols; and all covered with blood in

such quantity that I vowed it to malediction! As moreover, everywhere

arose the odours of a charnel, it moved us strongly to depart from

these exhalations and above all from so repulsive a sight.

"It was then that our general, by means of our interpreter, said to

Montezuma, smiling: 'Sire, I cannot understand how being so great a

prince and so wise as you are, that you have not perceived in your

reflections that your idols are not gods, but evilly named demons. That

Your Majesty may recognize this and all your priests be convinced,

grant me the grace of finding it good that I erect a Cross upon the

height of this tower, and that in the same part of the sanctuary where

are your Huichilobos and Tezcatepuca, we construct a shrine and elevate

the image of Our Lady; and you will see the fear which she will inspire

in these idols, of which you are the dupes.' Montezuma replied partly

in anger, while the priests made menacing gestures: 'Sir Malinche,

if I had thought that you could offer blasphemies, such as you have

just done, I had not shown you my deities. Our gods we hold to be

good; it is they who give us health, rains, good harvests, storms,

victories, and all that we desire. We ought to adore them and make them

sacrifices. What I beg of you is that you will say not a word more

that is not in their honour.' Our general, having heard and seeing

his emotion, thought best not to reply; so, affecting a gay air, he

said: 'It is already the hour that we and Your Majesty must part.' To

which Montezuma answered, true, but as for him, he must pray and make

sacrifice in expiation of the sin he had committed in giving us access

to his temple, which had had for consequence our presentation to his

gods and the want of respect through which we had rendered ourselves

culpable, blaspheming against them." So the Spaniards departed, leaving

Montezuma to his expiatory prayers and no doubt bloody sacrifices.

III. THE AZTEC PANTHEON[27]

Within the precincts of the temple-pyramid, and not far from it, was

a lesser building which Bernal Diaz describes, a house of idols,

diabolisms, serpents, tools for carving the bodies of sacrificed

victims, and pots and kettles to cook them for the cannibal repasts

of the priests, the entrance being formed by gaping jaws "such as one

pictures at the mouth of Inferno, showing great teeth for the devouring

of poor souls." The place was foul with blood and black with smoke,

"and for my part," says Diaz, "I was accustomed to call it 'Hell.'"

It is indeed doubtful whether the human imagination has ever elsewhere

conjured up such soul-satisfying devils as are the gods of the Aztec

pantheon. Beside them Old World demons seem prankishly amiable sprites:

the Mediaeval imagination at best (or worst) gives us but a somewhat

deranged barnyard, while even Chinese devils modulate into pleasantly

decorative motifs. But the Aztec gods, in their formal presentments,

and seldom less in their material characters, ugly, ghastly, foul,

afford unalloyed shudders which time cannot still nor custom stale.

To be sure, the ensemble frequently shows a vigour of design which

suggests decoration (though the decorative spirit is never sensitive,

as it often is in Maya art); but this suggestion is too illusory to

abide: it passes like a mist, and the imagination is gripped by the raw

horror of the Thing. Aztec religious art seems, in fact, to move in a

more primitively realistic atmosphere than that in which the religious

art of other peoples has come to similarly adept expression; it shows

little of that tendency--which Yucatan and Peru in America, as well as

the ancient and Oriental nations, had all attained--to subordinate the

idea to the expressional form, and to soften even the horrible with the

suavity of aesthetic charm. The Aztec gods were as grimly business-like

in form as the realities of their service were fearful.

In number these divinities were myriad and in relations chaotic.

There were clan and tribal, city and national gods, not only of

the victorious race, but of their confederates and subjects, for

the Aztec followed the custom of pagan conquerors, holding it

safest to honour the deities native to the land; and several of

their greatest divinities were assuredly inherited from vanquished

peoples--Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc among them--though an odd and somewhat

amusing fact is that a multitude of the godling idols of ravaged cities

were kept in a kind of prison-house in the Aztec capital, where, it was

assumed, they were incapable of assisting their former worshippers.

There were gods of commerce and industries, headed by Tacatecutli, god

of merchant-adventurers, whose "peaceful penetration" opened paths for

the imperial armies; gods of potters and weavers and mat-makers, of

workers in wood and stone and metal; gods of agriculture, of sowing and

ripening and reaping; gods of fishermen; gods of the elements--earth,

air, fire, and water; gods of mountains and volcanoes; creator-gods;

animal-gods; gods of medicine, of disease and death, and of the

underworld; deity patrons of drunkenness and of carnal vice, and deity

protectors of the flowers which these strange peoples loved. The whole

heterogeneous world was filled with divinities, reflecting the old

fears of primitive man and the old tumults of history, each god jealous

of his right and gluttonous of blood--a kind of horrid exteriorization

of human passion and desire.

However, this motley pantheon is not without certain principles of

order. The regulations of an elaborate social system, divided by

clan and caste and rank and guild, are reduplicated in it; for to

every phase of Mexican life religious rites and divine tutelage

were attached. Still more significant as a means of hierarchic

classification is the relation of the divine beings to the divisions of

time and space. A cult of the quarters of space and their tutelaries

and of the powers of sky-realms above and of earth-realms below is

almost universal among American Indian groups showing any advancement

in culture; the gods of the quarters, for example, are bringers of

wind and rain, upholders of heaven, animal chiefs; the gods above are

storm-deities and rulers of the orbs and dominions of light, on the

whole beneficent; the powers below, under the hegemony of the earth

goddess, are spirits of vegetation and lords of death and things

noxious. This is the most primitive stage in which the family of

Heaven and Earth begin to assume form as an hierarchic pantheon. But

the seasons, beginning with the diurnal alternation of the rule of

light and darkness, and proceeding thence to the changing phases of

the moon and the seasonal journeys of the sun, constantly shift the

domination of the world from deity to deity and from group to group.

Thus the lords of day are not the lords of night, nor are the fates of

the mounting morn those of descending eve: the Sun himself changes his

disposition with the hours. Similarly, the Moon's phases are tempers

rather than forms; and the year, divided among the gods, runs the cycle

of their influences.

The Aztec and other pantheons of the civilized Mexicans evince all of

these elements with complications. Both cosmography and calendar are

more complex than among the more northerly Americans, and there is a

veritable tangle of space-craft and time-craft, with astrological and

necromantic conceptions, bound up with every human desire and every

natural activity. Certainly the most curious feature of this lore

is the influence of certain numbers--especially four (and five) and

nine; and, again, six (and seven) and thirteen. These number-groups

are primarily related to space-divisions. Thus four is the number of

cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, to which a fifth point

is added if the _pou sto_, or point of the observer, is included;

by a process of reduplication, of which there are several instances

in North America, the number of earth's cardinal points became the

number of the sky-tiers above and of the earth-tiers below, so that

the cosmos becomes a nine-storeyed structure, with earth its middle

plane. Sometimes (this is characteristic of the Pueblo Indians)

orientation is with reference to six points--the four directions

and the Above and the Below (the _pou sto_, when added, becomes a

seventh--a grouping which recalls to us the seven forms of Platonic

locomotion--up, down, forward, backward, right, left, and axial). With

these directions colours, jewels, herbs, and animals are symbolically

associated, becoming emblems of the ruling powers of the quarters. The

number-groups thus cosmographically formed react upon time-conceptions,

especially where ritual is concerned. Thus the Pueblo Indians celebrate

lesser festivals of five days (a day of preparation and four of

ritual), and greater feasts of nine days (reduplicating the four) the

whole, in some cases at least, being comprised in a longer period of

twenty days. The rites of the year among the Zuñi and some others are

divided into two six-month groups, and each month is dedicated to or

associated with one of the six colour-symbols of the six directions;

while the Hopi--a fact of especial interest--make use of thirteen

points on the horizon for the determination of ceremonial dates.[28]

The cosmic and calendric orientation of the Mexicans is a complex,

with elaborations, of both these number-groups (i.e. four, five, nine,

and six, seven, thirteen). According to one conception there are nine

heavens above and nine hells beneath. Ometecutli ("Twofold Lord") and

Omeciuatl ("Twofold Lady") the male and female powers of generation,

dwell in Omeyocan ("the Place of the Twofold") at the culmination of

the universe; and it is from Omeyocan that the souls of babes, bringing

the lots "assigned to them from the commencement of the world,"[29]

descend to mortal birth; while in the opposite direction the souls of

the dead, after four years of wandering, having passed the nine-fold

stream of the underworld, go to find their rest in Chicunauhmictlan,

the ninth pit. Nine "Lords of the Night" preside over its nine hours,

and potently over the affairs of men. Mictlantecutli, the skeleton

god of death, is lord of the midnight hour; the owl is his bird; his

consort is Mictlanciuatl; and the place of their abode, windowless

and lightless, is "huge enough to receive the whole world." Over the

first hour of night and the first of morning (there are Lords of the

Day, too) presides Xiuhtecutli, the fire-god, for the hearth of the

universe, like the hearth of the house, is the world's centre.

But the ninefold conception of the universe is not without rival. A

second notion (of Toltec source, according to Sahagun) speaks of twelve

heavens; or of thirteen, reckoning earth as one. The Toltec, says

Sahagun, were the first to count the days of the year, the nights,

and the hours, and to calculate the movements of the heavens by the

movements of the stars; they affirmed that Ometecutli and Omeciuatl

rule over the twelve heavens and the earth, and are procreators of

all life below. There is some ground for believing that with this

there was associated a belief in twelve corresponding under-worlds,

for Seler[30] plausibly argues that the five-and-twenty divine pairs

of Codex Vaticanus B represent twelve pairs of rulers of hours of the

day, twelve of hours of the night, and one intermediate. However, the

arrangement which Seler finds predominating is that of thirteen Lords

of the Day and nine Lords of the Night--implying a commingling of the

two systems--and this scheme (the day-hour lords following the Aubin

Tonalamatl and the Codex Borbonicus, as Seler interprets them) he

reconstructs dial-fashion, as follows:

(_Noon_)

7. Xochipilli Cinteotl

(Flower-God as Maize-God)

6. Teoyaoimqui 8. Tlaloc

(Warrior's Death-God) (God of Rain)

5. Tlazolteotl 9. Quetzalcoatl

(Goddess of Dirt) (as Wind-God)

4. Tonatiuh 10. Tezcatlipoca

(the Sun-God) (the Great God)

3. Chalchiuhtlicue 11. Mictlantecutli

(Goddess of Water) (God of the Dead)

2. Tlaltecutli 12. Tlauizcalpantecutli

(the Earth as Gaping Jaws) (the Planet Venus)

1. Xiuhtecutli 13. Ilamatecutli

(God of Fire) (Mother-of the Gods)

(_Day_)

-----------------------------------------------------------

(_Night_)

IX. Tlaloc I. Xiuhtecutli

(God of Rain) (God of Fire)

VIII. Tepeyollotl II. Itztli

(Heart of the Mountain) (Stone-Knife God)

VII. Tlazolteotl III. Piltzintecutli-Tonatiuh

(Earth Goddess) (Lord of Princes, the Sun)

VI. Chalchiuhtlicue IV. Cinteotl

(Goddess of Flowing Water) (Maize-God)

V. Mictlantecutli

(God of the Underworld)

(_Midnight_)

But the gods are patrons not only of the celestial worlds and of

the underworlds, hours of the day and of the night; they are also

rulers and tutelaries of the quarters of earth and heaven, and of the

numerous divisions and periods of time involved in the complicated

Mexican calendar. The influences of the cosmos were conceived to vary

not merely with the seasonal or solar year of 365 days, but also with

the _Tonalamatl_ (a calendric period of 13 x 20, or 260, days);

again with a 584-day period of the phases of Venus; and finally with

the cycles formed by measuring these periods into one another. Here,

it is evident, we are in the presence not only of a scheme capable

of utilizing an extensive pantheon, but of one having divinatory

possibilities second to no astrology.

As such it was used by the Mexican priests, and various codices, or

_pinturas_, preserved from the general destruction of Aztec manuscripts

are nothing but calendric charts to calculate days for feasts and

days auspicious or inauspicious for enterprise. In one of these, the

Codex Ferjérváry-Mayer, the first sheet is devoted to a figure in the

general form of a cross _pattée_ combined with an X, or St. Andrew's

cross. This figure, as explained by Seler,[31] affords a graphic

illustration of Aztec ideas. It represents the five regions of the

world and their deities, the good and bad days of the _Tonalamatl_, the

nine Lords of the Night, and the four trees (in form like tau-crosses)

which rise into the quarters of heaven, perhaps as its support. In

the Middle Place, the _pou sto_, is the red image of Xiuhtecutli, the

Fire-Deity--"the Mother, the Father of the Gods, who dwells in the

navel of the Earth"--armed with spears and spear-thrower, while from

the divinity's body four streams of blood flow to the four cardinal

points, terminating in symbols appropriate to these points--East, a

yellow hand typifying the sun's ray; North, the stump of a leg, symbol

of Tezcatlipoca as Mictlantecutli, lord of the underworld; West, where

the sun dies, the vertebrae and ribs of a skeleton; South, Tezcatlipoca

as lord of the air, with featherdown in his head-gear. The arms of

the St. Andrew's cross terminate in birds--quetzal, macaw, eagle,

parrot--bearing shields upon which are depicted the four day-signs

after which the years are named (because, in sequence, they fall on

the first day of the year), each year being brought into relation

with a correspondingly symbolized world-quarter; within each arm of

the cross, below the day-sign, is a sign denoting plenty or famine.

But the main part of the design, about the centre, is occupied with

symbols of the quarters of the heavens. In each section is a T-shaped

tree, surmounted by a bird, with tutelary deities on either side of

the trunk. Above, framed in red, the tree rises from an image of the

sun, set on a temple, while a quetzal bird surmounts it; the gods

on either side are (left) Itztli, the Stone-Knife God, and (right)

Tonatiuh, the Sun; the whole symbolizes the tree which rises into the

eastern heavens. The trapezoid opposite this, coloured blue, symbol

of the west, contains a thorn-tree rising from the body of the dragon

of the eclipse (for the heavens descend to darkness in this region)

and surmounted by a humming-bird, which, according to Aztec belief,

dies with the dry and revives with the rainy season; the attendant

deities are Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of flowing water, and the earth

goddess Tlazolteotl, deity of dirt and of sin. To the right, framed

in yellow, a thorny tree rises from a dish containing emblems of

expiation, while an eagle surmounts it; the attendants are Tlaloc, the

rain-god, and Tepeyollotl, the Heart of the Mountains, Voice of the

Jaguar--all a token of the northern heavens. Opposite this is a green

trapezoid containing a parrot-surmounted tree rising from the jaws of

the Earth, and having, on one side, Cinteotl, the maize-god, and on

the other, Mictlantecutli, the divinity of death. The nine deities, he

of the centre and the four pairs, form the group of _los Señores de

la Noche_ ("the Lords of Night"); while the whole figure symbolizes

the orientation of the world-powers in space and time--years and

_Tonalamatls_, earth-realms and sky-realms.

[Illustration: PLATE VI.]

First page of the Codex Ferjérváry-Mayer, representing the

five regions of the world and their tutelary deities. Seler's

interpretation of this figure is given, in brief, on pages 55-56 of

this book.

The recurrence of cross-forms in this and similar pictures is striking:

the Greek cross, the tau-cross, St. Andrew's cross. The Codex

Vaticanus B contains a series of symbols of the trees of the quarters

approximating the Roman cross in form, suggesting the cross-figured

tablets of Palenque. In the analogous series of the Codex Borgia,

each tree issues from the recumbent body of an earth divinity or

underworld deity, each surmounted by a heaven-bird; and again

all are cruciform. There is also a tree of the Middle Place in the

series, rising from the body of the Earth Goddess, who is masked

with a death's head and lies upon the spines of a crocodile--"the

fish from which Earth was made"--surmounted by the quetzal bird

(_Pharomacrus mocinno_), whose green and flowing tail-plumage is the

symbol of fructifying moisture and responding fertility--"already has

it changed to quetzal feathers, already all has become green, already

the rainy time is here!" About the stem of the tree are the circles

of the world-encompassing sea, and on either side of it, springing

also from the body of the goddess, are two great ears of maize. The

attendant or tutelar deities in this image are Quetzalcoatl ("the

green Feather-Snake"), god of the winds, and Macuilxochitl ("the Five

Flowers"), the divinity of music and dancing. Another series of figures

in this same Codex represent the gods of the quarters as caryatid-like

upbearers of the skies--Quetzalcoatl of the east; Huitzilopochtli, the

Aztec war-god, of the south; Tlauizcalpantecutli, Venus as Evening

Star, of the west; Mictlantecutli, the death-god, of the north. All

these, however, are only a few of the many examples of the multifarious

cosmic and calendric arrangements of the gods of the Aztec pantheon.

IV. THE GREAT GODS[32]

On the cosmic and astral side the regnant powers of the Aztec pantheon

are the Gaping Jaws of Earth; the Sea as a circumambient Great Serpent;

and the Death's-Head God of the Underworld; while above are the Sun

wearing a collar of life-giving rays; the Moon represented as marked

by a rabbit (for in Mexican myth the Moon shone as brightly as the Sun

till the latter darkened his rival by casting a rabbit upon his face);

and finally the Great Star, "Lord in the House of Dawn," the planet

Venus, characteristically shown with a body streaked red and white,

now Morning Star, now Evening Star. The Sun and Venus are far more

important than the Moon, for the reason that their periods (365 and 584

days respectively), along with the _Tonalamatl_ (260 days), form the

foundation for calendric computations. The regents of the quarters of

space and of the divisions of time are ranged in numerous and complex

groups under these deities of the cosmos.

But the divinities who are thus important cosmically are not in

like measure important politically, nor indeed mythologically,

since the great gods of the Aztec, like those of other consciously

political peoples, were those that presided over the activities of

statecraft--war and agriculture and political destiny. In the Aztec

capital the central teocalli was the shrine of Huitzilopochtli, the

war-god and national deity of the ruling tribe. The teocalli above the

market-place, which Bernal Diaz describes, was devoted to Coatlicue,

the mother of the war-god, to Tezcatlipoca, the omnipotent divinity of

all the Nahua tribes, and, in a second shrine, to Tlaloc, the rain-god,

whose cult, according to tradition, was older than the coming of the

first Nahua. In a third temple, built in circular rather than pyramidal

form, was the shrine of what was perhaps the most ancient deity of

all, Quetzalcoatl ("the Feather-Snake"), lord of wind and weather.

These--Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Tlaloc--are the

gods that are supreme in picturesque emphasis in the Aztec pantheon.

1. HUITZILOPOCHTLI[33]

The great teocalli of Huitzilopochtli stood in the centre of

Tenochtitlan and was dedicated in the year 1486 by Ahuitzotl, the

emperor preceding the last Montezuma, with the sacrifice of huge

numbers of captive warriors--sixty to eighty thousand, if we are

to believe the chroniclers. On the platform top of the pyramidal

structure, bearing the fane of the war-god and also (as in the case

of the temple in the market place) a shrine of Tlaloc, was space,

tradition says, for a thousand warriors, and it was here, in 1520,

that Cortez and his companions waged their most picturesque battle,

fighting their way up the temple stairs, clearing the summit of some

four hundred Aztec warriors, burning the fanes, and hurling the images

of the gods to the pavements below. After the Conquest the temple was

razed, and the Cathedral which still adorns the City of Mexico was

erected on or near a site which had probably seen more human blood shed

for superstition than has any other in the world.

The name of the war-god, Huitzilopochtli (or Uitzilopochtli), is

curiously innocent in suggestion--"Humming-Bird of the South"

(literally, "Humming-Bird-Left-Side," for in naming the directions the

Nahua called the south the "left" of the sun). Humming-bird feathers

on his left leg formed part of the insignia of the divinity; the

fire-snake, Xiuhcoatl, was another attribute, and the spear-thrower

which he carried was serpentine in form; among his weapons were

arrows tipped with balls of featherdown; and it was to his glory that

gladiatorial sacrifices were held in which captive warriors, chained to

the sacrificial rock, were armed with down-tipped weapons and forced

to fight to the death with Aztec champions. One of the most romantic

of native tales recounts the capture, by wile, of the Tlascalan

chieftain, Tlahuicol. Such was his renown that Montezuma offered him

citizenship, rather than the usual death by sacrifice, and even sent

him at the head of a military expedition in which the Tlascalan won

notable victories. But the chieftain refused all proffers of grace,

claiming the right to die a warrior's death on the sacrificial stone,

and at last, after three years of captivity, Montezuma conceded to him

the privilege sought--the gladiatorial sacrifice. The Tlascalan is said

to have slain eight Aztec warriors and to have wounded twenty before

he finally succumbed. It may be remarked in passing that the Tlascalan

deity, Camaxtli, the Tarascan Curicaveri, the Chichimec Mixcoatl, and

the tribal god of the Tepanec and Otomi, Otontecutli or Xocotl, were

similar to, if not identical with, Huitzilopochtli.

The myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli, which Sahagun relates,

throws light upon the character of the divinity. His mother, Coatlicue

("She of the Serpent-Woven Skirt"), dwelling on Coatepec ("Serpent

Mountain"), had a family consisting of a daughter, Coyolxauhqui

("She whose Face is Painted with Bells"), and of many sons, known

collectively as the Centzonuitznaua ("the Four Hundred Southerners").

One day, while doing penance upon the mountain, a ball of feathers fell

upon her, and having placed this in her bosom, it was observed, shortly

afterward, that she was pregnant. Her sons, the Centzonuitznaua, urged

by Coyolxauhqui, planned to slay their mother to wipe out the disgrace

which they conceived to have befallen them; but though Coatlicue was

frightened, the unborn child commanded her to have no fear. One of

the Four Hundred, turning traitor, communicated to the still unborn

Huitzilopochtli the approach of the hostile brothers, and at the moment

of their arrival the god was born in full panoply, carrying a blue

shield and dart, his limbs painted blue, his head adorned with plumes,

and his left leg decked with humming-bird feathers. Commanding his

servant to light a torch, in shape a serpent, with this Xiuhcoatl he

slew Coyolxauhqui, and destroying her body, he placed her head upon the

summit of Coatepec. Then taking up his arms, he pursued and slew the

Centzonuitznaua, a very few of whom succeeded in escaping to Uitztlampa

("the Place of Thorns"), the South.

[Illustration: PLATE VII.]

1. Colossal stone head representing Coyolxauhqui, the Moon goddess,

sister of Huitzilopochtli (see page 60). The head is not a fragment,

but bears figures upon its base, and doubtless represents Coyolxauhqui

as slain by the Fire Snake, Xiuhcoatl, hurled by Huitzilopochtli, and

afterwards beheaded by him. The original is in the Museo Nacional,

Mexico.

2. Statue of the god of feasting, Xochipilli, "Lord of Flowers" (see

page 77). The crest is missing. The original is in the British Museum.

3. The Fire Snake, Xiuhcoatl, as represented in stone. The Fire Snake

is associated with Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, and the fire god,

Xiuhtecutli; and stands, perhaps, in a kind of opposition to the

"Green Feather Snake," Quetzalcoatl, the latter signifying rain and

vegetation, the former drought and want (cf. the hymn to Xipe Totec,

page 77). The original is in the British Museum.

The myth seemingly identifies Huitzilopochtli as a god of the southern

sun. The hostile sister is the moon; the brothers are the stars driven

from the heavens by the rising sun, whose blue shield is surely the

blue buckler of the daylit sky; and probably the balls of featherdown

tipping his arrows are cloud-symbols. Sahagun describes a sacramental

rite in which an image of the god's body, made of grain, was eaten

by a group of youths who were for a year the servitors of the deity,

with duties so onerous that the young men sometimes fled the country,

preferring death at the hands of their enemies--a statement which leads

to the suspicion that here was some ordeal connected with chivalric

advancement. Certainly Huitzilopochtli was a god of warriors, and it is

probable that those devoted to him sought the warrior's death, which

meant ascent into the skies rather than that descent into murky Mictlan

which was the lot of the ordinary. In this connexion the name of the

divinity and the humming-bird feather insignia acquire significance;

for again it is Sahagun who relates that the souls of ascending

warriors, after four years, are "metamorphosed into various kinds of

birds of rich plumage and brilliant colour which go about drawing the

sweet from the flowers of the sky, as do the humming-birds upon earth."

2. TEZCATLIPOCA[34]

Tezcatlipoca, or "Smoking Mirror," was so called because of his most

conspicuous emblem, a mirror from which a spiral of smoke is sometimes

represented as ascending, and in which the god was supposed to see

all that takes place on earth, in heaven, and in hell. Frequently the

mirror is shown as replacing one of his feet (loss or abnormality of

one foot is common in the Mexican pantheon), explained mythically

as severed when the doors of the underworld closed prematurely upon

it--for Tezcatlipoca in one of his many functions is deity of the

setting sun. In other aspects he is a moon-god, the moon of the

evening skies; again, a divinity of the night; or sometimes, with

blindfold eyes, a god of the underworld and of the dead; and in the

calendric charts he is represented as regent of the northern heavens,

although sometimes (perhaps identified with Huitzilopochtli) he is

ruler of the south. Probably he is at bottom the incarnation of the

changing heavens, symbolized by his mirror, now fiery, now murky,

reflecting the encompassed universe. He is the red Tezcatlipoca and the

black--the heaven of day and the heaven of night. He is the Warrior

of the North and the Warrior of the South, symbolizing the course of

the yearly sun, which, in the latitude of Mexico, culminates with the

alternating seasons to the north and to the south of the zenith. His

emblems include the Fire-Snake, symbol of heavenly fires; and again

he is Iztli-Tezcatlipoca, the Stone-Knife God of the underworld, of

blood-letting penance, and of human sacrifice. Sahagun says of him that

he raised wars, enmities, and discords wherever he went; nevertheless,

he was the ruler of the world, and from him proceeded all prosperities

and enrichments. Frequently he is represented as a jaguar, which to

the Mexicans was the dragon of the eclipse, a were-beast, and the

patron of magicians; cross-roads were marked by seats for Tezcatlipoca,

the god who traversed all ways; and he was called the Wizard and the

Transformer. In himself he was invisible and impalpable, penetrating

all things; or, if he appeared to men, it was as a flitting shadow;

yet he could assume multifarious monstrous forms to tempt and try men,

striking them with disease and death. As Yoalli Ehecatl, the Night

Wind, he wandered about in search of evil-doers, and sinners summoned

him in their confessions. On the other hand, he was "the Youth"

(Telpochtli), and as Omacatl ("Two-Reed") he was lord of banquets and

festivities.

It is evident that Tezcatlipoca is the Great Transformer, identified

with the heavens and all its breaths, twofold in all things: day,

night; life, death; good, evil. Certainly he seems to have been held

in more awe than any other Mexican god and well merits the supremacy

(not political, but religious) which tradition assigns to him. The

most notable of the prayers which Sahagun transcribes are filled with

poetic veneration for this deity, and had we only these invocations

as record--not also tales of the fearful human sacrifices--we should

assuredly assign to their Aztec composers a pure and noble religious

sentiment. Perhaps theirs was so, for men's actions everywhere seem

worse than the creeds which impel them. Thus, in time of plague the

priests prayed:

"O mighty Lord, under whose wings we seek protection, defence, and

shelter! Thou art invisible, impalpable, as the air and as the night.

I come in humility and in littleness, daring to appear before Thy

Majesty. I come uttering my words like one choking and stammering;

my speech is wandering, like as the way of one who strayeth from the

path and stumbleth. I am possessed of the fear of exciting thy wrath

against me rather than the hope of meriting thy grace. But, Lord, do

with my body as it pleaseth thee, for thou hast indeed abandoned us

according to thy counsels taken in heaven and in hell. Oh, sorrow!

thine anger and thine indignation are descended upon us in all our

days....

"O Lord, very kindly! Thou knowest that we mortals are like unto

children which, when punished, weep and sigh, repenting their faults.

It is thus that these men, ruined by thy chastisements, reproach

themselves grievously. They confess in thy presence; they atone for

their evil deeds, imposing penance upon themselves. Lord, very good,

very compassionate, very noble, very precious! let the chastisement

which thou hast inflicted suffice, and let the ills which thou hast

sent in castigation find their end!"

Throughout the prayers there are characterizations of the god, not a

few of them echoing a kind of world-weary melancholy that seems so

typical of Aztec supplications. When the new king is crowned, the

priest prays: "Perchance, deeming himself worthy of his high employ, he

will think to perpetuate himself long therein. Will not this be for him

a dream of sorrow? Will he find in this dignity received at thy hands

an occasion of pride and presumption, till it hap that he despise the

world, assuming to himself a sumptuous show? Thy Majesty knoweth well

whereto he must come within a few brief days--for we men are but thy

spectacle, thy theatre, serving for thy laughter and diversion." And

when the king is dead: "Thou hast given him to taste in this world a

few of thy sweets and suavities, making them to pass before his eyes

like the will-o'-the-wisp, which vanisheth in an instant; such is the

dignity of the post wherein thou didst place him, and in which he had

a few days in thy service, prostrate, in tears, breathing his devoted

prayers unto thy Majesty." Again: "Thou art invisible and impalpable,

and we believe that thy gaze doth penetrate the stones and into the

hearts of the trees, seeing clearly all that is concealed therein. So

dost thou see and comprehend what is in our hearts and in our thoughts;

before thee our souls are as a waft of smoke or as a vapour that riseth

from the earth."

Perhaps the most striking rite in the Aztec year was the springtime

sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca--near Easter, Sahagun says. In the previous

year a youth had been selected from a group of captives trained for

the purpose, physically without blemish and having all accomplishments

possible. He was trained to sing and to play the flute, to carry

flowers and to smoke with elegance; he was dressed in rich apparel and

was constantly accompanied by eight pages. The king himself provided

for his habiliment, since "he held him already to be a god." For nearly

a year this youth was entertained and feasted, honoured by the nobility

and venerated by the populace as the living embodiment of Tezcatlipoca.

Twenty days before the festival his livery was changed, and his long

hair was dressed like that of an Aztec chieftain. Four maidens,

delicately reared, were assigned to him as wives, called by the names

of four goddesses--Xochiquetzal ("Flowering Quetzal-Plume"), Xilonen

("Young Maize"), Atlatonan (a goddess of the coast), and Uixtociuatl

(goddess of the salt water). Five days previous to the sacrifice a

series of feasts and dances was begun, continued during each of the

following four days in separate quarters of the city. Then came the

final day; the youth was taken beyond the city; his goddess-wives

abandoned him; and he was brought to a little road-side temple for

the consummation of the rite. He ascended its four stages, breaking a

flute at each stage, till at the top he was seized, and the priest

opening his breast with a single blow, presented his heart to the sun.

Immediately another youth was chosen for the following year, for the

Tezcatlipoca must never die. It was said, remarks Sahagun, that this

youth's fate signified that those who possess wealth and march amid

pleasures during life will end their career in grief and poverty; while

Torquemada more grimly comments that "the soul of the victim went down

to the company of his false gods, in hell." For the student of to-day,

however, the rite is but another significant symbol of the god who dies

and is born again.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII.]

Figure from the _Codex Borgia_ representing the red and the black

Tezcatlipoca facing one another across a _tlachtli_ court upon

which is shown a sacrificial victim painted with the red and white

stripes of the Morning and Evening Star (Venus). The red Tezcatlipoca

symbolizes day, the black Tezcatlipoca, night; the ball court is

a symbol of the universe; the Morning and Evening Star might very

naturally be looked upon as a sacrifice to the heaven god.

In myth Tezcatlipoca plays the leading _rôle_ as adversary of

Quetzalcoatl, the ruler and god of the Toltec city of Tollan. In

Sahagun's version of the story, three magicians, Huitzilopochtli,

Titlacauan ("We are his Slaves," an epithet of Tezcatlipoca), and

Tlacauepan, the younger brother of the others, undertook by magic

and wile to drive Quetzalcoatl from the country and to overthrow the

Toltec power. The three deities are obviously tribal gods of Nahuatlan

nations, and Tezcatlipoca, who plays the chief part in the legends, is

clearly the god of first importance at this early period, possibly the

principal deity of all the Nahua; he was also the foremost divinity

of Tezcuco, which, almost to the eve of the Conquest, was the leading

partner in the Aztec confederacy. As the tale goes, Quetzalcoatl was

ailing; Tezcatlipoca appeared in the guise of an old man, a physician,

and administered to the ailing god, not medicine, but a liquor which

intoxicated him. Texcatlipoca then assumed the form of a nude Indian

of a strange tribe, a seller of green peppers, and walked before the

palace of Uemac, temporal chief of the Toltec. Here he was seen by

the chief's daughter, who fell ill of love for him. Uemac ordered the

stranger brought before him and demanded of Toueyo (as the stranger

called himself) why he was not clothed as other men. "It is not the

custom of my country," Toueyo answered. "You have inspired my daughter

with caprice; you must cure her," said Uemac. "That is impossible;

kill me; I would die, for I do not deserve such words, seeking as I am

only to earn an honest living." "Nevertheless, you shall cure her,"

replied the chief, "it is necessary; have no fear." So he caused the

marriage of his daughter with the stranger, who thus became a chieftain

among the Toltec. Winning a victory for his new countrymen, he

announced a feast in Tollan; and when the multitudes were assembled, he

caused them to dance to his singing until they were as men intoxicated

or demented; they danced into a ravine and were changed into rocks,

they fell from a bridge and became stones in the waters below. Again,

in company with Tlacauepan, he appeared in the market-place of Tollan

and caused the infant Huitzilopochtli to dance upon his hand. The

people, crowding near, crushed several of their number dead; enraged,

they slew the performers and, on the advice of Tlacauepan, fastened

ropes to their bodies to drag them out; but all who touched the cords

fell dead. By this and other magical devices great numbers of the

Toltec were slain, and their dominion was brought to an end.

3. QUETZALCOATL[35]

The most famous and picturesque of New World mythic figures is that

of Quetzalcoatl, although primarily his renown is due less to the

undoubted importance of his cult than to his association with the

coming and the beliefs of the white men. According to native tradition,

Quetzalcoatl had been the wise and good ruler of Tollan in the Golden

Age of Anahuac, lawgiver, teacher of the arts, and founder of a

purified religion. Driven from his kingdom by the machinations of evil

magicians, he departed over the eastern sea for Tlapallan, the land

of plenty, promising to return and reinstitute his kindly creed on

some future anniversary of the day of his departure. He was described

as an old man, bearded, and white, clad in a long robe; as with other

celestial gods, crosses were associated with his representations and

shrines. When Cortez landed, the Mexicans were expecting the return of

Quetzalcoatl; and, according to Sahagun, the very outlooks who first

beheld the ships of the Spaniards had been posted to watch for the

coming god. The white men (perhaps the image was aided by their shining

armour, their robed priests, their crosses) were inevitably assumed

to be the deity, and among the gifts sent to them by Montezuma were

the turquoise mask, feather mantle, and other apparel appropriate to

the god. It is certain that the belief materially aided the Spaniards

in the early stages of their advance, and it is small wonder that the

myth which was so helpful to their ambitions should have appealed to

their imaginations. The missionary priests, gaining some idea of native

traditions and finding among them ideas, emblems, and rites analogous

to those of Christendom (the deluge, the cross, baptism, sacraments,

confession), not unnaturally saw in the figure of the robed and bearded

reformer of religion a Christian teacher, and they were not slow to

identify him with St. Thomas, the Apostle. When an almost identical

story was found throughout Central America, the Andean region, and,

indeed, wide-spread in South America, the same explanation was adopted,

and the wanderings of the Saint became vast beyond the dreams of Marco

Polo or any other vaunted traveller, while memorials of his miracles

are still displayed in regions as remote from Mexico as the basin of

La Plata. Naturally, too, the interest of the subject has not waned

with time, for whether we view the Quetzalcoatl myth in relation to

its association with European ideas or with respect to its aboriginal

analogues in the two Americas, it presents a variety of interest

scarcely equalled by any other tale of the New World.

The name of the god is formed of _quetzal_, designating the long,

green tail-plumes of _Pharomacrus mocinno_, and _coatl_ ("serpent");

it means, therefore, "the Green-Feather Snake," and immediately puts

Quetzalcoatl into the group of celestial powers of which the plumed

serpent is a symbol, among the Hopi and Zuñi to the north as well as

among Andean peoples far to the south. Sahagun says that Quetzalcoatl

is a wind-god, who "sweeps the roads for the rain-gods, that they may

rain." Quetzal-plumes were a symbol of greening vegetation, and it

is altogether probable that the Plumed Serpent-God was originally a

deity of rain-clouds, the sky-serpent embodiment of the rainbow or the

lightning. The turquoise snake-mask or bird-mask, characteristic of

the god, is surely an emblem of the skies, and like other sky-gods he

carries a serpent-shaped spear-thrower. The beard (which other Mexican

deities sometimes wear) is perhaps a symbol of descending rain, perhaps

(as on some Navaho figures) of pollen, or fertilization. Curiously

enough, Quetzalcoatl is not commonly shown as the white god which the

tradition would lead us to expect, but typically with a dark-hued body;

it may be that the dark hue and the robe of legend are both emblems of

rain-clouds.

The tradition of his whiteness may come from his stellar associations,

for though he is sometimes shown with emblems of moon or sun, he is

more particularly identified with the morning star. According to

the _Annals of Quauhtitlan_, Quetzalcoatl, when driven from Tollan,

immolated himself on the shores of the eastern sea, and from his ashes

rose birds with shining feathers (symbols of warrior souls mounting

to the sun), while his heart became the Morning Star, wandering

for eight days in the underworld before it ascended in splendour.

In numerous legends Quetzalcoatl is associated with Tezcatlipoca,

commonly as an antagonist; and if we may believe one tale, recounted

by Mendieta, Tezcatlipoca, defeating Quetzalcoatl in ball-play (a game

directly symbolic of the movements of the heavenly orbs), cast him

out of the land into the east, where he encountered the sun and was

burned. This story (clearly a variant of the tale of the banishment

of Quetzalcoatl told in the _Annals of Quauhtitlan_ and by Sahagun)

is interpreted by Seler as a myth of the morning moon, driven back

by night (the dark Tezcatlipoca) to be consumed by the rising sun. A

reverse story represents Tezcatlipoca, the sun, as stricken down by

the club of Quetzalcoatl, transformed into a jaguar, the man-devouring

demon of night, while Quetzalcoatl becomes sun in his place. Normally

Quetzalcoatl is a god of the eastern heavens, and sometimes he is

pictured as the caryatid or upbearer of the sky of that quarter.

Perhaps it is in this character that he was conceived as a lord of

life, a meaning naturally intensified by his association with the

rejuvenating rains and with the wind, which is the breath of life.

A woman who had become pregnant was praised by the relatives of her

husband for her faithfulness in religious devotions. "It is for

these," they said, "that our lord Quetzalcoatl, author and creator,

has vouchsafed this grace--even as it was decreed in the sky by that

one who is man and woman under the names Ometecutli and Omeciuatl."

Moreover the new-born was addressed: "Little son and lord, person of

high value, of great price and esteem! O precious stone, emerald,

topaz, rare plume, fruit of lofty generation! be welcome among us! Thou

hast been formed in the highest places, above the ninth heaven, where

the two supreme gods dwell. The Divine Majesty hath cast thee in his

mould, as one casts a golden bead; thou hast been pierced, like a rich

stone artistically wrought, by thy father and mother, the great god

and the great goddess, assisted by their son, Quetzalcoatl." The deity

also figures as a world creator, as in the Sahagun manuscript in the

Academia de la Historia, from which Seler translates:

"And thus said our fathers, our grandfathers,

They said that he made, created, and formed us

Whose creatures we are, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl;

And he made the heavens, the sun, the earth."

It is in another character, however, that Quetzalcoatl is romantically

of most interest. His cult was less sanguinary than that of most

Aztec divinities, though assuredly not antagonistic to human

sacrifice, as some traditions say. He was a penance-inflicting god,

perhaps particularly a deity of priests and their lore; yet he was

also associated with education and the rearing of the young. He is

named as the patron of the arts, the teacher of metallurgy and of

letters, and in tradition he is the god of the cultured people of

yore from whom the Aztec derived their civilization. A part of the

story, as narrated by Sahagun, has been told: how Quetzalcoatl was the

aged and wise priest-king of Tollan, driven thence by the magic and

guile of Tezcatlipoca and his companions. The tale goes on to tell

how Quetzalcoatl, chagrined and ailing, resolved to depart from his

kingdom for his ancient home, Tlapallan. He burned his houses built

of shell and silver, buried his treasure, changed the cacao-trees

into mesquite, and set forth, preceded by servants in the form of

birds of rich plumage. Coming to Quauhtitlan, he demanded a mirror

and gazing into it, he said, "I am old," wherefore he named the city

"the old Quauhtitlan." Seating himself at another place and gazing

back upon Tollan, as he wept, his tears pierced the rock, which also

bore thenceforth the marks where his hands had rested. He encountered

certain magicians, who demanded of him, before they would let him pass,

the arts of refining silver, of working in wood, stone, and feathers,

and of painting; and as he crossed the sierra, all his companions, who

were dwarfs and hump-backs, died of the cold. Many other localities

received memorials of his passage: at one place he played a game of

ball, at another shot arrows into a tree so that they formed a cross,

at another caused underworld houses to be built--all clearly cosmic

symbols--and finally coming to the sea, he departed for Tlapallan

on his serpent-raft. In Ixtlilxochitl's history, Quetzalcoatl first

appeared in the third period of the world, taught the arts, instituted

the worship of the cross--"tree of nourishment and of life"--and ended

the period with his departure. Tradition names the last king of the

Toltec "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl," and it may be assumed as not

improbable that stories of the disasters attending the fall of Tollan,

under a king bearing the name of the ancient divinity, represent an

historical element, confused with nature elements, in the myths of

Quetzalcoatl,--such an assumption accounting for the heroic glamour

surrounding the god, who, like King Arthur, is half kingly mortal, half

divinity. In Cholula, whither many of the Toltec were said to have fled

with the fall of their empire, was the loftiest pyramid in Mexico,

dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and even in the eyes of Aztec conquerors a

seat of venerable sanctities--the emblem of the culture whose conquest

had conquered them.

[Illustration: PLATE IX.]

Figures from the _Codex Borgia_, representing cosmic tutelaries.

The upper figure represents the tree of the Middle Place rising from

the body of the Earth Goddess, recumbent upon the spines of the

crocodile from which Earth was made. The tree is encircled by the

world sea and is surmounted by the Quetzal, whose plumage typifies

vegetation; two ears of maize spring up at its roots. The attendant

deities are Quetzalcoatl and Macuilxochitl, both symbols of fertility.

In the figure they are apparently nourishing themselves on the

up-flowing blood, or vital saps, of the body of Earth. The figure

should be compared with the Palenque Cross and Foliate Cross tablets

(Plate XVIII _a, b_). See, also, pages 57, 68, 77.

The lower figure represents one of the four caryatid-like supporters

of the heavens, Huitzilopochtli, as the Atlas of the southern quarter.

See page 57.

4. TLALOC AND CHALCHIUHTLICUE[36]

The rain-god, Tlaloc, was less important in myth than in cult. He was

a deity of great antiquity, and a mountain, east of Tezcuco, bearing

his name, was said to have had from remote times a statue of the god,

carved in white lava. His especial abode, Tlalocan, supposed to be upon

the crests of hills, was rich in all foods and was the home of the

maize-goddesses; and there, with his dwarf (or child) servants, Tlaloc

possesses four jars from which he pours water down upon the earth. One

water is good and causes maize and other fruits to flourish; a second

brings cobwebs and blight; a third congeals into frost; a fourth is

followed by dearth of fruit. These are the waters of the four quarters,

and only that of the east is good. When the dwarfs smash their jars,

there is thunder; and pieces cast below are thunderbolts. The number of

the Tlaloque was regarded as great, so that, indeed, every mountain had

its Tlaloc.

Like Quetzalcoatl, the god was shown with a serpent-mask, except that

Tlaloc's was formed, not of one, but of two serpents; and from the

conventionalization of the serpentine coils of this mask came the

customary representation of the god's eyes as surrounded by wide,

blue circles, and of his lip as formed by a convoluted band from which

are fanglike dependencies. The double-headed serpent--a symbol no less

wide-spread than the plumed serpent--is frequently his attribute.

His association with mountains brought him also into connexion with

volcanoes and fire, and it was he who was said to have presided over

the Rain-Sun, one of the cosmogonic epochs, during which there rained,

not water, but fire and red-hot stones.

The worship of Tlaloc was among the most ghastly in Mexico. Perhaps

for the purpose of keeping up the number of his rain-dwarfs, children

were constantly sacrificed to him. If we may believe Sahagun, at the

feast of the Tlaloque "they sought out a great number of babes at the

breast, which they purchased of their mothers. They chose by preference

those who had two crowns in their hair and who had been born under

a good sign. They pretended that these would form a more agreeable

sacrifice to the gods, to the end that they might obtain rain at the

opportune time.... They killed a great number of babes each year; and

after they had put them to death, they cooked and ate them.... If the

children wept and shed tears abundantly, those who beheld it rejoiced

and said that this was a sign of rain very near." No wonder the

brave friar turns from his narrative to cry out against such horror.

Yet, he says, "the cause of this cruel blindness, of which the poor

children were victims, should not be directly imputed to the natural

inspirations of their parents, who, indeed, shed abundant tears and

delivered themselves to the practice with dolour of soul; one should

rather see therein the hateful and barbarous hand of Satan, our eternal

enemy, employing all his malign ruses to urge on to this fatal act."

Unfortunately, it is to be suspected that the rite was very far-spread,

for in the myths of many of the wild Mexican tribes and even in those

of the Pueblo tribes north of Mexico the story of the sacrifice of

children to the water-gods constantly recurs--though, perhaps, this

was but the far-cast rumour of the terrible superstition of the south.

The goddess of flowing waters, of springs and rivulets,

Chalchiuhtlicue, was regarded as sister of the Tlaloque and was

frequently honoured in rites in connexion with them. Like Tlaloc,

she played no minor _rôle_ in the calendric division of powers, and

she also ruled over one of the "Suns" of the cosmogonic period.

Serpents and maize were associated with her, and like the similar

deities she had both her beneficent and malevolent moods, being not

merely a cleanser, but also a cause of shipwreck and watery deaths.

At the bathing of the new-born she was addressed: "Merciful Lady

Chalchiuhtlicue, thy servant here present is come into this world,

sent by our father and mother, Ometecutli and Omeciuatl, who reside

at the ninth heaven. We know not what gifts he bringeth; we know not

what hath been assigned to him from before the beginning of the world,

nor with what lot he cometh enveloped. We know not if this lot be good

or bad, or to what end he will be followed by ill fortune. We know

not what faults or defects he may inherit from his father and mother.

Behold him between thy hands! Wash him and deliver him from impurities

as thou knowest should be, for he is confided to thy power. Cleanse

him of the contaminations he hath received from his parents; let the

water take away the soil and the stain, and let him be freed from all

taint. May it please thee, O goddess, that his heart and his life be

purified, that he may dwell in this world in peace and wisdom. May this

water take away all ills, for which this babe is put into thy hands,

thou who art mother and sister of the gods, and who alone art worthy to

possess it and to give it, to wash from him the evils which he beareth

from before the beginning of the world. Deign to do this that we ask,

now that the child is in thy presence." It is not difficult to see how

this rite should have suggested to the first missionaries their own

Christian sacrament of baptism.

V. THE POWERS OF LIFE[37]

Universally Earth is the mythic Mother of Gods and Men, and Giver of

Life; nor does the Mexican pantheon offer an exception to the rule,

although its embodiments of the Earth Mother possess associations which

give a character of their own. Like similar goddesses, the Mexican

Earth Mothers are prophetic and divinatory, and in various forms they

appear in the calendric omen-books. They are goddesses of medicine,

too, probably owing this function primarily to their association with

the sweat-bath, which, in its primitive form of earth-lodge and heated

stones, is the fundamental instrument of American Indian therapeutics.

It is here, possibly, that these goddesses get their connexion with

the fire-gods, of whom they are not infrequently consorts, and with

whom they share the butterfly insignia--a symbol of fertility, for the

fire-god, at earth's centre, was believed to generate the warmth of

life. Serpents also are signs of the earth goddesses, not the plumed

serpents of the skies, but underworld powers, likewise associated

with generation in Aztec symbolism. A third animal connected with

generation, and hence with these deities, is the deer--the white, dead

Deer of the East denoted plenty; the stricken, brown Deer of the North

was a symbol of drought, and related to the fire-gods. The eagle,

also, is sometimes found associated with the goddesses by a process of

indirection, for the eagle is primarily the heavenly warrior, Tonatiuh,

the Sun. Frequently, however, the earth goddess is a war-goddess;

Coatlicue, mother of the war-god Huitzilopochtli, is an earth deity,

wearing the serpent skirt; and it was a wide-spread belief among the

Mexicans that the Earth was the first victim offered on the sacrificial

stone to the Sun--the first, therefore, to die a warrior's death. When

a victim was dedicated for sacrifice, therefore, his captor adorned

himself in eagle's down in honour, at once, of the Sun and of the

goddess who had been the primal offering.

Among the earth goddesses the most famous was Ciuacoatl ("Snake

Woman"), whose voice, roaring through the night, betokened war. She

was also called Tonantzin ("Our Mother") and, Sahagun says, "these

two circumstances give her a resemblance to our mother Eve who

was duped by the Serpent." Other names for the same divinity were

Ilamatecutli ("the Old Goddess"), sometimes represented as the Earth

Toad, Tlatecutli, swallowing a stone knife; Itzpapalotl ("Obsidian

Butterfly"), occasionally shown as a deer; Temazcalteci ("Grandmother

of the Sweat-Bath"); and Teteoinnan, the Mother of the Gods, who, like

several other of the earth goddesses, was also a lunar deity. In her

honour a harvest-home was celebrated in which her Huastec priests (for

she probably hailed from the eastern coast) bore phallic emblems.

Closely connected with the earth goddesses are their children, the

vegetation-deities. Of these the maize-spirits are the most important,

maize being the great cereal of the highland region, and, indeed, so

much the "corn" of primitive America that the latter word has come to

mean maize in the English-speaking parts of the New World. Cinteotl

was the maize-god, and Chicomecoatl ("Seven Snakes"), also known as

Xilonen, was his female counterpart, their symbol being the young

maize-ear. Because of the use of maize as the staff of life, a crown

filled with this grain was the symbol of Tonacatecutli ("Lord of our

Flesh"), creator-god and food-giver. Pedro de Rios says[38] of him that

he was "the first Lord that the world was said to have had, and who,

as it pleased him, blew and divided the waters from the heaven and

from the earth, which before him were all intermingled; and he it is

who disposed them as they now are, and so they called him 'Lord of our

Bodies' and 'Lord of the Overflow'; and he gave them all things, and

therefore he alone was pictured with the royal crown. He was further

called 'Seven Flowers' [Chicomexochitl], because they said that he

divided the principalities of the world. He had no temple of any kind,

nor were offerings brought to him, because they say he desired them

not, as it were to a greater Majesty." This god was also identified

with the Milky Way.

Of all Mexican vegetation-deities, however, at once the most important

and the most horrible was Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed"),

represented as clad in a human skin, stripped from the body of a

sacrificed captive. He was the god of the renewal of vegetation--the

fresh skin which Earth receives with the recurrent green--and his great

festival, the Feast of the Man-Flaying, was held in the spring when the

fresh verdure was appearing. At this time, men, women, and children

captives were sacrificed, their bodies eaten, and the skins flayed

from them to be worn by personators of the god. That there was a kind

of sacrament in this rite is evident from Sahagun's statement that

the captor did not partake of the flesh of his own captive, regarding

it as part of his own body. Again, youths clad in skins flayed from

sacrificed warriors were called by the god's own name, and they waged

mimic warfare with bands pitted against them; if a captive was made,

a mock sacrifice was enacted. The famous _sacrificio gladiatorio_ was

also celebrated in the god's honour, the victim, with weak weapons,

being pitted against strong warriors until he succumbed. The magic

properties of the skins torn from victims' bodies is shown by the fact

that persons suffering from diseases of the skin and eye wore these

trophies for their healing, the period being twenty days. Xipe Totec

was clad in a green garment, but yellow was his predominant colour;

his ornaments were golden, and he was the patron of gold-workers--a

symbolism probably related to the ripening grain, for with all that is

horrible about him Xipe Totec is at bottom a simple agricultural deity.

At his festival were stately _areitos_, and songs were chanted, one of

which is preserved:[39]

"Thou night-time drinker, why dost thou delay?

Put on thy disguise--thy golden garment, put it on!

"My Lord, let thine emerald waters come descending!

Now is the old tree changed to green plumage--

The Fire-Snake is transformed into the Quetzal!

"It may be that I am to die, I, the young maize-plant;

Like an emerald is my heart; gold would I see it be;

I shall be happy when first it is ripe--the war-chief born!

"My Lord, when there is abundance in the maize-fields,

I shall look to thy mountains, verily thy worshipper;

I shall be happy when first it is ripe--the war-chief born!"

[Illustration: PLATE X.]

Stone mask of Xipe Totec. The face is represented as covered by the

skin of a sacrificed victim, flaying being a rite with which this god

was honored. The reverse of the mask bears an image of the god in

relief. The original is in the British Museum.

Less unattractive is the group of deities of flowers and dancing,

games and feasting--Xochipilli ("Flower Lord"), Macuilxochitl ("Five

Blossoms"), and Ixtlilton ("Little Black-Face"). Xochipilli is in

part a divinity of the young maize, probably as pollinating, and

is sometimes viewed as a son of Cinteotl. As is natural, he and

his brothers are occasionally associated with the pulque-gods, the

Centzontotochtin, of whom there were a great number--among them

Patecatl, lord and discoverer of the _ocpatli_ (the peyote) from which

liquor is made, Texcatzoncatl ("Straw Mirror"), Colhuatzincatl ("the

Winged"), and Ometochtli ("Two Rabbit")--deities who were supposed to

possess their worshippers and to be the real agents of the drunken

man's mischief. The more especial associate of the flower-gods,

however, is Xochiquetzal ("Flower Feather"), who is said to have been

originally the spouse of Tlaloc, but to have been carried away by

Tezcatlipoca and to have been established by him as the goddess of

love. Her throne is described as being above the ninth heaven, and

there is reason to think that in this _rôle_ she is identical with

Tonacaciuatl, the consort of the creator-god, Tonacatecutli.[40] Her

home was in Xochitlicacan ("Place of Flowers") in Itzeecayan ("Place of

Cool Winds"), or in Tamoanchan, the Paradise of the West--the region

whence came the Ciuateteo, the ghostly women who at certain seasons

swooped down in eagles' form, striking children with epilepsy and

inspiring men with lust. Xochiquetzal was, indeed, the patroness of

the unmarried women who lived with the young bachelor warriors and

marched to war with them, and who sometimes, at the goddess's festival,

immolated themselves upon her altars. In a more pleasing aspect she

was the deity of weaving and spinning and of making all beautiful and

artistic fabrics, and she is portrayed in bright and many-coloured

raiment, not forgetting the butterfly at her lips, emblem of life and

of the seeker after sweets. In a hymn[41] she is named along with her

lover, Piltzintecutli ("Lord of Princes"), who is presumed to be the

same as Xochipilli:

"Out of the land of water and mist, I come, Xochiquetzal--

Out of the land where the Sun enters his house, out of Tamoanchan.

"Weepeth the pious Piltzintecutli;

He seeketh Xochiquetzal.

Dark it is whither I must go."

Seler suggests that this lamentation is perchance the expression of a

Proserpina myth--of the carrying off into the underworld of the bright

goddess of flowers and of the quest for her by her disconsolate lover.

Of far darker hue is the goddess whom Sahagun[42] calls "another

Venus," Tlazolteotl ("Goddess of Uncleanliness"), the deity in

particular of lust and sexual sin. To her priests confession was made

of carnal sins and drunkenness, and by them penance was inflicted,

including as a feature piercing the tongue with a maguey thorn and the

insertion therein of straws and osier twigs. Sahagun remarks that the

Indians awaited old age before confessing carnal sins, "a thing easy

to comprehend, since, although they had committed their faults during

youth, they would not confess before an advanced age in order not to

find themselves obliged to cease from disorderly conduct before age

came upon them; this, because of their belief that one who fell into

a sin already once confessed could receive no absolution. From all of

which," he continues, "it is natural to reach the conclusion that the

Indians of New Spain believed themselves obliged to confess once in

their lifetime, and that _in lumine naturali_, with no knowledge of the

things of the faith." One of the titles of Tlazolteotl is "Heart of the

Earth," and since she is represented in the same attire as the great

mother of the gods, it is presumed that she is a special form of the

Earth Mother, Teteoinnan, with emphasis upon her character as deity of

fertility. Sometimes she is spoken of as Ixcuiname ("the Four-faced")

and is regarded plurally as a group of four sisters who, according

to Sahagun, represent four ages of woman's maturity. In the _Annals

of Quauhtitlan_ it is related that the Ixcuiname came to Tollan from

Huasteca. "And in the place called Where-the-Huaxtec-weep they summoned

their captives, whom they had taken in Huaxteca, and explained to them

what the business was, telling them that, 'We go now to Tollan, we

want to couple the Earth with you, we want to hold a feast with you:

for till now no battle offerings have been made with men. We want to

make a beginning of it, and shoot you to death with arrows.'" In Aztec

paintings of the arrow sacrifice the victim is shown suspended from a

ladder-like scaffold, whence the blood from the arrow wounds drips to

earth. This blood was the emblem of the fertilizing seed, dropped into

the womb of the goddess; and it is at least worthy of remark that the

form of the Skidi Pawnee fertility sacrifice, in honour of the Morning

Star, was identical, scaffold and all, with that in vogue in Mexico.

VI. THE POWERS OF DEATH

Earth, the Great Mother, is a giver of life, but Earth, the cavernous,

is Lord of Death. The Mexicans are second to no people in the grimness

of their representations of this power. As Tepeyollotl ("Heart of the

Mountain"), earth's cavern, it is the spotted jaguar monster which

leaps up out of the west to seize the declining sun, and its roars may

be heard in the echoing hills. As Tlaltecutli ("Lord of the Earth") it

is the hideous Toad with Gaping Jaws, which must be nourished with the

blood of sacrificed men, precisely as the Sun above must be nurtured;

for the Mexican idea of warfare seems to have been that it must be

waged to keep perpetual the ascending vapours and the descending flow

from the hearts of sacrificed victims, that Tonatiuh and Tlaltecutli

might gain sustenance in heaven and in earth.[43]

But the grimmest figure is that of Hades himself, Mictlantecutli, the

skeleton God of the Dead--also called, says Sahagun, Tzontemoc ("He of

the Falling Hair"). Sahagun describes the journey to the abode of this

divinity. When a mortal--man, woman, child, lord, or thrall--died of

disease, his soul descended to Mictlan, and beside the corpse the last

words were spoken:[44] "Our son, thou art finished with the sufferings

and fatigues of this life. It hath pleased Our Lord to take thee hence,

for thou hast not eternal life in this world: our existence is as a

ray of the sun. He hath given thee the grace of knowing us and of

associating in our common life. Now the god Mictlantecutli, otherwise

called Acolnauacatl or Tzontemoc, as also the goddess Mictecaciuatl,

hath made thee to share his abode. We shall all follow thee, for it is

our destiny, and the abode is broad enough to receive the whole world.

Thou wilt be heard of no longer among us. Behold, thou art gone to the

domain of darkness, where there is neither light nor window. Never

shalt thou come hither again, nor needst thou concern thyself for thy

return, for thine absence is eternal. Thou dost leave thy children poor

and orphaned, not knowing what will be their end nor how they will

support the fatigues of this life. As for us, we shall not delay to go

to join thee there where thou wilt be." Similar words were spoken to

the relatives: "Hath this death come because some being wisheth us ill

or mocketh us? Nay, it is because Our Lord hath willed that such be his

end." Then the body was wrapped, mummy-form, and a few drops of

water were poured upon the head: "Lo, the water of which thou hast made

use in this life"; and a vessel of water was presented: "This for thy

journey." Next, certain papers were laid before the body in due order:

"Lo, with this thou shalt pass the two clashing mountains." "With this

thou shalt pass the road where the serpent awaiteth thee." "With this

thou shalt pass the place of the green lizard." "Lo, wherewithal thou

shalt cross the eight deserts." "And the eight hills." "And behold with

what thou canst traverse the place of the winds that bear obsidian

knives." Thus the perils of the underworld were to be passed and the

soul, arrived before Mictlantecutli, was, after four years, to fare

on until he should arrive at Chiconauapan, the "Nine-Fold Stream" of

the underworld. Across this he would be borne by the red dog which,

sacrificed at his grave, had been his faithful companion; and thence

master and hound would enter into the eternal house of the dead,

Chiconamictlan, the "Ninth Hell."

[Illustration: PLATE XI.]

Green stone image of Mictlantecutli, the skeleton god of death and of

the underworld. The original is in the Stuttgart Museum.

Yet not all who died pursued this journey. To the terrestrial

paradise, Tlalocan, the abode of Tlaloc, rich with every kind of

fruit and abundant with joys, departed those slain by lightning, the

drowned, victims of skin-diseases, and persons who died of dropsical

affections--a heterogeneous lot whose company is to be ascribed to

the various attributes of the rain-gods. With them should be included

victims sacrificed to these deities, who perhaps themselves became

rain-makers and servants of the Lords of the Rain. More fortunate still

were they who ascended to the mansions of the Sun--those who fell in

war, those who perished on the sacrificial altar or were sacrificed

by burning, and women who died in child-birth. Those warriors, it was

said, whose shields had been pierced could behold the Sun through the

holes; to the others Tonatiuh was invisible; but all entered into the

sky gardens, whose trees were other than those of this world; and

there, after four years, they were transformed into birds of bright

plumage, drawing the honey from the celestial blossoms.

It was in the eastern heavens that the souls of warriors found their

paradise. Here they met the Sun as he rose in the morning, striking

their bucklers with joyous cries and accompanying him on his journey

to the meridian, where they were encountered by the War Women of the

western heavens, the Ciuateteo, or Ciuapipiltin, souls of women who

had gone to war or had died in childbed. These escorted the Sun down

the western sky, bearing him on a gorgeous palanquin, into Tamoanchan

("the House of the Descent").[45] At the portals of the underworld they

were met by the Lords of Hell, who conducted the Sun into their abode;

for when it ceases to be day here, the day begins in the realm below.

Possibly it was from this association with the underworld powers that

the Ciuateteo acquired their sinister traits, for they were sometimes

identified with the descending stars, the Tzitzimime, which follow the

Sun's descent and become embodied as Demons of the Dark.

But the Sun has yet another comrade on his journey. As the soul of

the dead Aztec is accompanied and guided into the nether world by his

faithful dog, so the Sun has for companion the dog Xolotl. Xolotl is a

god who presides over the game of _tlachtli_, the Mexican ball-game,

analogous to tennis, in which a rubber ball was bounced back and

forth in a court, not hurled or struck by hand, but by shoulder or

thigh. As with other Indian ball-games, this was regarded as symbolic

of the sun's course, and Xolotl was said to play the game on a magic

court, which could be nothing else than the heavens. He was, moreover,

deity of twins and other monstrous forms (for twins were regarded as

monstrous), and it was humpbacks and dwarfs that were sacrificed to the

Sun on the occasion of an eclipse, when it was deemed that the solar

divinity had need of them. A myth narrated by Sahagun possibly explains

or reflects this belief. In the beginning of things there was no sun

and no moon; but two of the gods immolated themselves, and from their

ashes rose the orbs of night and day, although neither sun nor moon

as yet had motion. Then all the gods resolved to sacrifice themselves

in order to give life and motion to the heavenly bodies. Xolotl alone

refused: "Gods, I will not die," he said; and when the priest of the

sacrifice came, he fled, transforming himself into a twin-stalked maize

plant, such as is called _xolotl_; discovered, he escaped again and

assumed the form of a maguey called _mexolotl_; and evading capture a

third time, he entered the water and became a larva, _axolotl_--only

to be found and offered up. A second version of the legend, recorded

by Mendieta, makes Xolotl the sacrificial celebrant who gave death to

the other gods and then to himself that the sun might have life. In

still another tale, recorded also by Mendieta, it is the dog Xolotl

who is sent to the Underworld for bones of the forefathers, that the

first human pair might be created; but being pursued by Mictlantecutli,

Xolotl stumbled, and the bone that he carried was dropped and broken

into fragments, from which the various kinds of people sprang. Tales

such as these are strongly reminiscent of the coyote stories of the

northern continent, and it is possible that Xolotl himself is only a

special form of Coyote, the trickster and transformer, especially as

Ueuecoyotl ("Old Coyote"), borrowed from the more primitive Otomi,

was a recognized member of the Aztec pantheon, as a god of feasts and

dances, and perhaps of trickery as well.

Of all the recorded beliefs connected with the dead the most affecting

is the brief account of the limbo of child-souls reported by the

clerical expositor of Codex Vaticanus A. There was, he says,[46] "a

third place for souls which passed from this life, to which went only

the souls of children who died before attaining the use of reason. They

feigned the existence of a tree from which milk distilled, where all

children who died at such an age were carried; since the Devil, who

is so inimical to the honour of God, even in this instance wished to

show his rivalry: for in the same way as our holy doctors teach the

existence of limbo for children who die without baptism, or without the

circumcision of the old law, or without the sacrifice of the natural

man, so he has caused these poor people to believe that there was such

a place for their children; and he has superadded another error--the

persuading them that these children have to return thence to repeople

the world after the third destruction which they suppose that it

must undergo, for they believe that the world has already been twice

destroyed." The belief in an infant paradise, with its Tree of Life

whence the souls of babes draw nourishment, biding the day of their

rebirth, is a pleasant relief from the nightmarelike quality of most

Aztec notions--not less familiarly human than are the pious reflections

of the good friar who records it.