THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES

LOUIS HERBERT GRAY, A.M., PH.D., Editor

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor

LATIN-AMERICAN

BY

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

VOLUME XI

BOSTON
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

M DCCCC XX

PLATE I.

Top face of the monolith known as the "Dragon" or the "Great Turtle" of Quirigua. This is one of the group of stelae and "altars" which mark the ceremonial courts of this vanished Maya city (see Plate [XXIII]); and is perhaps the master-work not only of Mayan, but of aboriginal American art. The top of the stone here figured shows a highly conventionalized daemon or dragon mask, surrounded by a complication of ornament. The north and south (here lower and upper) faces of the monument contain representations of divinities; on the south face is a mask of the "god with the ornamented nose" (possibly Ahpuch, the death god), and on the north, seated within the open mouth of the Dragon, the teeth of whose upper jaw appear on the top face of the monument, is carved a serene, Buddha-like divinity shown in Plate [XXV]. The Maya date corresponding, probably, to 525 a. d. appears in a glyphic inscription on the shoulder of the Dragon. The monument is fully described by W. H. Holmes, Art and Archaeology, Vol. IV, No. 6.

[TO]

ALICE CUNNINGHAM FLETCHER

IN APPRECIATION OF HER INTERPRETATIONS OF AMERICAN INDIAN LIFE AND LORE

[AUTHOR'S PREFACE]

In aim and plan the present volume is made to accord as nearly as may be with the earlier-written volume on the mythology of the North American Indians. Owing to divergence of the materials, some deviations of method have been necessary, but in their main lines the two books correspond in form as they are continuous in matter. In each case the author has aimed primarily at a descriptive treatment, following regional divisions, and directed to essential conceptions rather than to exhaustive classification; and in each case it has been, not the specialist in the field, but the scholar with kindred interests and the reader of broadly humane tastes whom the author has had before him.

The difficulties besetting the composition of both books have been analogous, growing chiefly from the vast diversities of the sources of material; but these difficulties are decidedly greater for the Latin-American field. The matter of spelling is one of the more immediate. In general, the author has endeavoured to adhere to such of the rules given in Note 1 of Mythology of All Races, Vol. X (pp. 267-68), as may be applicable, seeking the simplest plausible English forms and continuing literary usage wherever it is well established, both for native and for Spanish names (as Montezuma, Cortez). Consistency is pragmatically impossible in such a matter; but it is hoped that the foundational need, that of identification, is not evaded.

The problem of an appropriate bibliography has proven to be of the hardest. To the best of the author's belief, there exists, aside from that here given, no bibliography aiming at a systematic classification of the sources and discussions of the mythology of the Latin-American Indians, as a whole. There are, indeed, a considerable number of special bibliographies, regional in character, for which every student must be grateful; and it is hoped that not many of the more important of these have failed of inclusion in the bibliographical division devoted to "Guides"; but for the whole field, the appended bibliography is pioneer work, and subject to the weaknesses of all such attempts. The principles of inclusion are: (1) All works upon which the text of the volume directly rests. These will be found cited in the Notes, where are also a few references to works cited for points of an adventitious character, and therefore not included in the general bibliography. (2) A more liberal inclusion of English and Spanish than of works in other languages, the one for accessibility, the other for source importance. (3) An effort to select only such works as have material directly pertinent to the mythology, not such as deal with the general culture, of the peoples under consideration,—a line most difficult to draw. In respect to bibliography, it should be further stated that it is the intent to enter the names of Spanish authors in the forms approved by the rules of the Real Academia, while it has not seemed important to follow other than the English custom in either text or notes. It is certainly the author's hope that the labour devoted to the assembling of the bibliography will prove helpful to students generally, and it is his belief that those wishing an introduction to the more important sources for the various regions will find of immediate help the select bibliographies given in the Notes, for each region and chapter.

The illustrations should speak for themselves. Care has been taken to reproduce works which are characteristic of the art as well as of the mythic conceptions of the several peoples; and since, in the more civilized localities, architecture also is significantly associated with mythic elements, a certain number of pictures are of architectural subjects.

It remains to express the numerous forms of indebtedness which pertain to a work of the present character. Where they are a matter of authority, it is believed that the references to the Notes will be found fully to cover them; and where illustrations are the subject, the derivation is indicated on the tissues. In the way of courtesies extended, the author owes recognition to staff-members of the libraries of Harvard and Northwestern Universities, to the Peabody Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of the University of Nebraska. His personal obligations are due to Professor Frank S. Philbrick, of the Northwestern University Law School, and to the Assistant Curator of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, Dr. Herbert I. Priestley, for valuable suggestions anent the bibliography, and to Dr. Hiram Bingham, of the Yale Peruvian Expedition, for his courtesy in furnishing for reproduction the photographs represented by Plates XXX and XXXVIII. His obligations to the editor of the series are, it is trusted, understood.

The manuscript of the present volume was prepared for the printer by November of 1916. The ensuing outbreak of war delayed publication until the present hour. In the intervening period a number of works of some importance appeared, and the author has endeavoured to incorporate as much as was essential of this later criticism into the body of his work, a matter difficult to make sure. The war also has been responsible for the editor's absence in Europe during the period in which the book has been put through the press, and the duty of oversight has fallen upon the author who is, therefore, responsible for such editorial delinquencies as may be found.

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER.

Lincoln, Nebraska,

November 17, 1919.

[CONTENTS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

[INTRODUCTION]

There is an element of obvious incongruity in the use of the term "Latin American" to designate the native Indian myths of Mexico and of Central and South America. Unfortunately, we have no convenient geographical term which embraces all those portions of America which fell to Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, and in default of this, the term designating their culture, Latin in character, has come into use—aptly enough when its application is to transplanted Iberian institutions and peoples, but in no logical mode relating to the aborigines of these regions. More than this, there are no aboriginal unities of native culture and ideas which follow the divisions made by the several Caucasian conquests of the Americas. It is primarily as consequence of their conquest by Spaniards that Mexico and Central America fall with the southern continent in our thought; from the point of view of their primitive ethnology there is little evidence (at least for recent times)[1] of southern influence until Yucatan and Guatemala are passed. There are, to be sure, striking resemblances between the Mexican and Andean aboriginal civilizations; and there are, again, broad similarities between the ideas and customs of the less advanced tribes of the two continents, such that we may correctly infer a certain racial character as typical of all American Indians; but amid these similarities there are grouped differences which, as between the continents, are scarcely less distinctive than are their fauna and flora,—say, calumet and eagle's plume as against blowgun and parrot's feather,—and these hold level for level: the Amazonian and the Inca are as distinctively South American as the Mississippian and the Aztec are distinctively North American.

Were the divisions in a treatment of American Indian myth to follow the rationale of pre-Columbian ethnography,[2] the key-group would be found in the series of civilized or semi-civilized peoples of the mainly mountainous and plateau regions of the western continental ridge, roughly from Cancer to Capricorn, or with outlying spurs from about 35º North (Zuñi and Hopi) to near 35º South (Calchaqui-Diaguité). Within this region native American agriculture originated; and along with agriculture were developed the arts of civilization in the forms characteristic of America; while from the several centres of the key-group agriculture and attendant arts passed on into the plains and forests regions and the great alluvial valleys of the two continents and into the archipelago which lies between them. In each continent there is a region—the Boreal and the Austral—beyond the boundaries of the native agriculture, and untouched by the arts of the central civilizations, yet showing an unmistakable community of ideas, of which (primitive and vague as they are) recurrent instances are to be found among the intervening groups. Thus the plat and configuration of autochthonous America divides into cultural zones that are almost those of the hemispherical projection, and into altitudes that are curiously parallel to the continental altitudes: the higher civilizations of the plateaux, the more or less barbarous cultures of the unstable tribes of the great river basins, and the primitive development of the wandering hordes of the frigid coasts. The primitive stage may be assumed to be the foundational one throughout both continents, and it is virtually repeated in the least advanced groups of all regions; the intermediate stage (except in such enigmatical groups as that of the North-West Coast Indians of North America) appears to owe much to definite acculturation as a consequence of the spread of the arts and industries developed by the most advanced peoples. Moreover, the outer unities of mode of life are reflected by inner communities of thought; for there are unmistakable kinships of idea, not only throughout the civilized group, but also in the whole range of the regions affected by its arts; while underlying these and outcropping at the poles, there is a definable stratum of virtually identical primitive thought. Nevertheless, these unities are cut across by differences, partly environmental and partly historical in origin, which give, as said above, distinctive character to the parallel groups of the two continents. One might, indeed, say that the cultural division is twinned, north and south,—with a certain primacy, as of elder birth and clear superiority in the northern groups; for, on the whole, the Maya is superior to the Inca, just as the Iroquois and Sioux are superior to Carib and Araucanian, and the Eskimo to the Fuegian.

Such, in loose form, is the native configuration of American culture and hence of native American thought, and without question a desirable mode of treating the latter would be to follow this natural chart. Nevertheless, there are reasons which fully justify, in the study of native ideas, the bringing together in a single treatment of all the materials relating to the peoples of Latin America. The most obvious of these reasons is the unity of the descriptive literature, in its earlier and primary works almost wholly Spanish. It is not merely that such writers as Las Casas, Acosta, Herrera, and Gómara pass ubiquitously from region to region of the Spanish conquests, now north, now south, in the course of their narratives; it is rather that a certain colouristic harmony is derived from what might be termed the linguistic prejudices of their tongue, which, therefore, they share with those Spanish chroniclers whose field of description is limited to some one region. The mere fact that the ideas of an Indian nation are first described by a sixteenth century Spaniard—friar, bishop, or cavalier—gives to them the flavour of their translation and context, and thus establishes a sort of community between all groups of ideas so described. Nor need this be matter for regret: primitive thought, with its burning concreteness and its lack of relational expression, is as truly untranslatable into analytical languages as poetry is untranslatable; and it is, on the whole, good fortune to have, as it were, but one linguistic colour cast upon so large a body of aboriginal ideas.

Further—what may not be to the liking of the ethnologist, but is certainly of high zest to the lover of romance—the Spanish colour is quite as much in the nature of imagination as in the hue of expression. No book on Latin American mythology could be complete without description of those truly Latinian fables which the discoverers brought with them to the New World, and there, wedding them to native traditions (ill-heard and fabulously repeated), soon created such a realm of gorgeous marvel as glamoured the age with fantasy and set the coolest heads to mad adventure. In such names as Antilles, Brazil, the Amazon, Old World myths are fixed in New World geography; and beyond these there is the whole series of fantastic tales with which the Spaniard, in a sort of imaginative munificence, has enriched the literature and the romantic resources of this world of ours. The Fountain of Eternal Youth, the Seven Cities of Cibola, the Island of the Amazons and the marvellous virtues of the Amazon Stone, El Dorado ("the Gilded Man"), the treasure cities of Manoa and Omagua, the lost empire of the Gran Moxo and the Gran Paytiti, Patagonian giants, and "men whose heads do grow between their shoulders," and finally, most wide-spread of all, the miracles of the robed and bearded white man who, long ago, had come to teach the Indian a new way of life and a purer worship and had left the cross to be his sign, in whom no pious mind could see other than the blessed Saint Thomas: all these were in part a freight of the caravels, and they represent collectively a chapter second to none in mythopoesy. There is no match for this cargo of imported fantasy in the parts of America colonized by the English and the French. This, however, need not be accredited merely to cooler blood and calmer race: the North American colonies belong to the seventeenth century, a good hundred years after the Spaniards had completed their most golden conquests, and for the Spaniard, no less than for the others, the hour of intoxication and extravagance had by then gone by—leaving its flamboyant tones to warm the colours of succeeding times. Thus it is that Latin American myth is in no faint degree truly Latinian.

But while there is a certain Old World seasoning in Latin American myth, native traditions are, of course, the substantial material of the study. This material is striking and various. It embraces the usual substrata of demoniac beliefs and animistic credulities, and above these such elaborate formations as the Aztec and Maya pantheons, with their amazing astral and calendric interpretations, or the enigmatic and fervid religion of Peru. Many of the stories are little more than vocal superstitions; others, such as the conquering of death in the Popul Vuh, the Brazilian tale of the release of the imprisoned night, or the superb Surinam legend of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, will compare, both for dramatic power and subtle suggestion, with the best that the world can show. There is, of course, the constant difficulty of deciding where myth clearly emerges from the misty realm of folk-lore, and, at the other extreme, where it is succeeded by science and religion; but this difficulty is more theoretic than practical: in its central character mythology is present wherever there are animating gods operant in the body of nature, and myth is present wherever spirits or deities are shown as dramatically interacting causes. With a few possible exceptions (the possibility being probably but the expression of our ignorance), all American Indians are mythopoets, whose mythology is characterized in characterizing their beliefs.

The practical problem of handling and apportioning the subject-matter is similar to that presented in the case of North America, and rather more difficult. In the first place, it were idle to undertake the mere narration of stones and superstitions without some delineation of the conditions of the life and culture of those who make them; frequently, the whole relevance of the tale is to the manner of life. In the next place, the feasible mode of apportionment, by regional divisions, is made difficult not only by the vastness of some of the regions, but even more so by the unevenness of culture, and hence of the range of ideas. If the lines were drawn on the scale of Old World studies, Mexico (Nahua and Maya) and Peru would each deserve a volume; and the proportionately slight attention which they receive in the present work is due partly to the need of giving reasonable space to other regions, partly to the fact that the myths of these fallen empires are already represented by an accessible literature. Still a third problem has to do with the order in which the matters should be presented. From the point of view of native affinities, the logical step from the Antilles is to the Orinoco and Guiana region (that is, from Chapter I to Chapter VIII).[3] But since, in beginning with the Antilles, one is really following the course of discovery—seeing, as it were, with Spanish eyes—the natural continuation is on to Mexico and Peru, and thence to the more slowly uncovered regions of central South America. This procedure, also, follows a certain bibliographical trend: the relative importance of Spanish authors is much less for the latter chapters of the book, and the sources of material, in general, are of later origin.

Finally, a word might be said with respect to interpretation. No matter how conscientiously one may aim at straight narration, the mere need for coherence will compel some interpreting; while every translation is, in its degree, an interpretation (and one literally impossible). Besides and beyond all this, there are the prepossessions of the recorders to be taken into account—honest men who interpret according to their lights. There are the Biblical prepossessions of the early Padres, for whom the Tower of Babel and the Dispersion were recent and real events: granting a Noachian Deluge of the thoroughness which they had in mind, nothing could be more rational than were their readings of aboriginal legends of events of a kindred nature, or than their speculations as to what sons of Shem the Indians might be. There are the traditionary visions of migratory descendants of the Lost Tribes, of far-wandering Buddhist monks, of sea-faring Orientals, and forgotten Atlantideans; and there is the wonderful Euhemerism of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (ever the more admirable in the more reading)—neither the first nor the last of his tribe, but assuredly the most gifted of them all. There are, again, the theological biases of missionaries, for whom the devil is seldom far and God is generally near; and there are the no less ingrained prejudices of the anthropologists who serenely Tylorize and fetishize the most recalcitrant materials, and of the philologists who solarize and astralize because the model was once set for them. America has proven an abundant field for the illustration of all these methods of reading the riddle of man's fancy; and it is scarcely to be desired that one should report the matters without some reflection of the colourations. But, in sooth, how could myth be myth apart from meaning?

Which leads (by no devious routing of reflection) to some consideration of the meaning of mythology and of our interest in it. Such interest may be of any of several types. A first, and still persistent, interest, and one to which we owe, for America, from Ramon Pane onward, more actual material than to any other, is the desire of the Christian missionary to discover in the native mind those points of approach and elements of community which will best enable him to spread the faith of Christendom. In many cases, of course, the missionary is seized with a purely speculative zeal for recording facts, but it is usually possible in such records to detect the influence of the impulse which first brought him into the field,—and which, it may be added, makes of his services a matter for the gratitude of all who follow him. A second interest, which is often not sharply divorced from the first, as instanced in Missionary Brett's poetizing of the myths of the Guiana Indians,[4] is the aesthetic and imaginative. What classical mythology has done for the art and poetry of Christian Europe all men know: Dante and Milton, Botticelli and Michelangelo are only less its debtors than are Homer and Phidias. Further, the Renaissance curiosity, with its passion for the antique gems and heathen gods whose forms so stimulated its own expressions, was at its height when America was discovered and conquered; and it is small wonder that that interest was transformed, where the marvel of the New World was in question, into a wave of American exotism which rose to its crest in the humanitarian enthusiasm of the eighteenth century.[5] In our own day this interest is continuing, more soberly but not less fruitfully, in a deliberate effort on the part of artists, of poets, and of musicians to discover the elements of lasting beauty in the native arts and mythic themes. From a certain point of view there is a peril in the aesthetic interest: most investigators consciously or unconsciously possess it, and most recorders of native myths consciously or unconsciously dress their materials with the suaver forms of expression which the cultivated languages of Europe have developed. There is, in other words, some untruth to aboriginal thought in the desire to find or inject art where the original motive was realistic, or, if aesthetic, governed by a taste foreign to our own. On the other hand, we recognize readily enough that the real creative gain, in an artistic sense, must come from an amalgamation, and with such an example of artistic achievement through amalgamation as is afforded by the Renaissance, we can but hope that the more intimate adoption of the ideas and motives of American Indian art into our own aesthetic consciousness may yet result in an American Renaissance no less notable.

A third interest in American mythology is that of the anthropologists, by whom the domain is today most cultivated. Here the foundation is scientific curiosity and the modes are those of the natural and historical sciences. This type of interest, of course, determines its own problems and methods. For example, to it we owe most of the exact recording and minute analysis of materials: the preservation of texts in the native tongues, and the careful application of ethnological and archaeological observations to their interpretation. Naturally, the key-problem here is of the origin and distribution of the American Indian peoples, and the reconstruction of their history, both physical and ideational,—wherein recent advances have been veritably in the nature of strides. Along with this problem of distribution and genesis there has co-existed the complementary question of the influence of nature (human and environmental) upon the forms of expression—a question to which one might ascribe three facets, the philological, the sociological, and the more strictly bionomic, with its strong Darwinian leanings. Ultimately the two complemental problems resolve into an effort to read human nature, as human nature is reflected in its express reactions to the complex world by which it is modified even while it offers a conserving resistance, born of the strength of its traditions and of racial solidarity. This means, at the bottom, an interest in human psychology.

It is here that the anthropological interest in mythology passes over into the philosophical. Philosophy strives to achieve, as it were, a generalized autobiography of the human mind. It starts, inevitably, with psychology, and with those elemental unities of experience which our senses (inner and outer) determine for us; it goes on to try to discover the range and fullness of meaning of all the variations of human experience. Philosophers are interested in mythology, therefore, primarily from a psychological standpoint: they are interested in reading the mind's complexion, as mythopoesy reflects it; in analyzing out the images of sense in human thought, the images of instinct, of kind and kin, of speech and number; and again in reviewing the natural reactions of the human spirit to the visible and sensible world, with its seasons and cycles and evident metamorphoses,—reactions which start, apparently, with a dreamy consciousness of the fluid and incoherent character of an outer, man-environing world, and culminate in a sense of the allegory and drama of things physical, and the discovery of a thinking self, still hazy as to its powers and its limitations. The biographic tale is a long one; it begins in savagery and continues on into the highest civilization; it is today unfinished, and so long as man lives and thinks must continue unfinished; but it is not without form, and its continuities become the more obvious with the extension of our knowledge of men.

It should be added that each of the interests which have been named shares in or leads to that final interest which is most appropriate to all, namely, a common concern for human welfare. The missionary interest is obviously actuated by this from the very beginning, and, as applied to America, it has produced (in Las Casas and his many notable successors) a truly wonderful series of apostolic figures—in themselves a moving revelation of the possibilities of human nature. Hardly less striking is the humanitarianism which has accompanied the aesthetic interest—one need but mention Montaigne's sympathetic curiosity, Rousseau, fantastic in his eighteenth century credulity, Chateaubriand, with his "epic of the man of nature," or Fenimore Cooper's idealization of the savage chivalrous,—while the curiosity of the anthropologist and the philosopher, as must all honest curiosity about things human, leads at the last to understanding and sympathy, and ultimately to an active desire to preserve the manifest good which enlightens every chapter in the narrative of human progress.

Finally, it is perhaps worth observing that America affords a field of truly unique profit for all of these interests. The long isolation of its inhabitants from the balance of mankind, the variety of the forms and levels of their native achievement, the intrinsic value to humanity at large of what they did achieve, both in material and ideal modes, all unite to give to the races of the New Hemisphere an almost other-world distinction from the Old World peoples from whose midst (in some remote day) they doubtless sprang. It is true that the resemblances between the modes of life and the bent of thought in the two Worlds are as striking and numerous as their divergences; but this fact is in itself of the highest significance in that it emphasizes that fundamental unity, spiritual as well as physical, which is of the whole human brotherhood.

It is surely apparent that one book cannot satisfy all the interests which have been here defined. It is possible, however, that a description which should show what, in the main, are the materials to be found and how they are distributed with reference to accessible sources of study might well contribute to all. Nothing more ambitious than this is in the plan of the present work.

[CHAPTER I]

THE ANTILLES

I. THE ISLANDERS[6]

A glance at a map of the Western Hemisphere reveals two great continents, North and South America, somewhat tenuously united by the Isthmus and the Antilles. The Isthmus is solid, mountainous land, forming a part of that backbone of the hemisphere which extends along its western border, continuous from Alaska to the Land of Fire. The Antilles are an archipelago, or rather a group of archipelagos, extending without gap from the tip of Florida to Trinidad and the mouths of the Orinoco. Both connexions have a certain weight, or leaning, toward North America. The Isthmus narrows southward almost to the point of its attachment to South America, while to the north it broadens out into Central America, the peninsula of Yucatan, and the plateau of Mexico. Similarly, the southern division of the archipelago, the Lesser Antilles, forms an arc of islets, mere stepping-stones, as it were, from the southern continent to the large islands of the Greater Antilles—Porto Rico, Hispaniola or Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba—which are natural outliers of the continent to the north. Cuba, indeed, almost unites Yucatan and Florida; while breasting Cuba and Florida, toward the open sea, is a third island group, the Bahamas, still further emphasizing the northern predominance.

There is a superficial resemblance between the connexions of the northern and southern land bodies in the Old World and in the New—the Isthmus of Suez having its counterpart in Panama; the peninsulas and large islands of southern Europe corresponding to Florida, Yucatan, and the Greater Antilles; and the break at Gibraltar suggesting the uncertain bridge of the Lesser Antilles. But the resemblance is merely superficial. The Mediterranean served far more as a unifier than as a divider of cultures and civilizations in antiquity; all its shores were in a sense a single land even before Rome united them politically. The Caribbean, on the other hand, was a true obstacle to the primitive intercourse of the western continents, having its proper Old World analogue in the Sahara Desert rather than in the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, we can carry this truer analogy a step further, pointing out that just as Old World culture went southward, from Egypt into Ethiopia, by way of the comparatively secure route of the Nile, so New World civilization found its securest path by way of the solid land of the Isthmus, while the islets of the Lesser Antilles and the isle-like oases of the Sahara were alike unfriendly to profoundly influential intercourse.

In one striking particular the analogies of the Old World are reversed in the New: at least in recent periods, the migration of native races and culture has been from the south to the north. This is the more extraordinary in view of the land predominance which, as has been indicated, belongs to the north. The Isthmus was held by, and is now representative of, the Chibchan stock, extending far south into Ecuador; while the Antilles, at the time of the discovery, were almost entirely possessed by tribes of two great South American stocks, Arawakan and Carib. In Cuba, and probably in the Bahamas, there were remnants of more ancient peoples—timid and crude folk, whose kindred seem to have been the makers of the shell-mounds of Florida, and whose provenience was doubtless the northern continent; but neither the race nor the affinities of these vanished peoples is certainly known; even in pre-Columbian times they were succumbing to the war-like Calusa of southern Florida and to the still more dangerous Arawakan tribes from the south.

Of the two powerful races from the south, the first comers were doubtless the Taïno[7] (as the Antillean Arawak are named), whom the Spaniards found in possession of most of Cuba and of the other greater islands, Porto Rico alone showing a strong Carib element along with the Arawak. The Lesser Antilles, bordering the sea which was named for their race, was inhabited by Carib tribes, whose language comprised a man-tongue and a woman-tongue, the latter containing many Arawak words—a fact which has led to the interesting (though uncertain) inference that the first Carib invaders slew all the warriors of their Arawak predecessors, taking the women for their own wives. Only when they came to Porto Rico, the first of the Greater Antilles in their route, were they partially stopped by the mass and strength of the more highly developed Taïno peoples; some, indeed, obtained a foothold here, while beyond, in Hispaniola, one of the five caciques[8] dividing the power of the island was reputed a Carib, and in Cuba itself have been found bones believed to be those of Carib marauders. The typical culture of the Antilles, that of the Arawakan Taïno, was scarcely less aggressive than the Carib. Arawaks gained a foothold in Florida, and their influence, in trade at least, seems to have extended far into Muskhogean territories to the north, while it may have affected Yucatan and Honduras to the west. Nor was it meanly savage in type. The Antilles furnish every incentive of climate, food supply, rich resources, and easy communication for development of civilization; and at the time of the discovery of the Taïno peoples, they were already advanced in the arts of agriculture, pottery-making, weaving, and stone-working, combined with some knowledge of metals. Furthermore, they had developed their social organization to such an extent that their chiefs, or caciques, with power in some cases hereditary, were the heads of veritable nations—all of Jamaica was under one ruler, Hispaniola had five, while the Ciboney of Cuba and the Borinqueño of Porto Rico were powerful peoples. The Spanish conquerors of the islands succeeded early in virtually annihilating these nations, but their handiwork and the traditions which they have left still command respect.

II. THE FIRST ENCOUNTERS[9]

Even before Columbus's day the mythical Island of Antilia was marked on the maps out in the Atlantic west; and when the archipelago which Columbus first discovered came to be known as an archipelago, the name, in the plural form Antilles, was not unnaturally applied to it. Probably, too, it was with more than the glamour of discovery—enchanting as that must have been—that Columbus first looked upon the new-found lands. From time immemorial European imagination had been haunted by legends of Isles of the Gods, Isles of the Happy Dead—Fortunate Isles, in some weird sense, lying far out in the enchanted seas; and it is no marvel if Columbus should have felt himself the finder of this blessed realm. In one of his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella he wrote: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendour; the natives love their neighbours as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your highness there is not a better people in the world."

Something of the same idealization, coupled with a happy ignorance, underlay, no doubt, the statement which Columbus makes in his letters to Ferdinand's officials, Gabriel Sanchez and Luis de Santangel, describing his first voyage: "They are not acquainted with any kind of worship and are not idolaters, but believe that all power and, indeed, all good things are in heaven." Columbus adds that the natives believed him and his vessels and his crews to be descended from heaven, and the Indians whom he took with him from his first landing, to serve as interpreters, cried out to the others, "Come, come, and see the people from heaven!" This same simplicity was cruelly exploited by the Spaniards of later date, for after the mines of Hispaniola were opened, and the native labour of the island was exhausted, the Bahamas were nearly emptied of inhabitants by the ruse that the Spaniards would convey them to the shores where dwelt their departed relatives and friends. Belief in heaven-spirits and belief in living souls of their dead were surely deep-seated in these first-met of New World peoples.

The earliest encounters were probably with tribes of the Taïno race, for the Indians taken from San Salvador were readily understood in the Greater Antilles; and it was with this race that Columbus had to do on his initial voyage. Yet even then he was learning of other peoples. He was told that in the western part of Cuba ("Juana" was the name he gave to the island) there was a province whose inhabitants were born with tails—a form of derogation of inferior peoples familiar in many parts of the world—and the story very likely designated remnants of the autochthones of the islands. Again, as he explored eastward, he began to hear of the Carib cannibals, with whom he became acquainted on later voyages. "These are the men," he reports, "who form unions with certain women who dwell alone in the island of Matenino, which lies next to Española on the side toward India; these latter employ themselves in no labour suitable to their own sex, for they use bows and javelins as I have already described their paramours as doing, and for defensive armour they have plates of brass, of which metal they possess great abundance." Thus we have the beginning of that legend of Amazons[10] in the New World which not only occupied the fancies of explorers and historiographers for many decades, but eventually, as the domain of these mythical women was pushed farther and farther into the beyond, gave its name to the great river which drains what was then the mysterious heart of the southern continent. Possibly the source of the tale lay in a difference of Taïno and Carib customs, for among the latter the women, as the Spaniards speedily discovered, were quick with bow and spear; possibly it lay in the fact, already noted, that the Caribs, dispatching the men of a conquered tribe, formed unions with their women, who spoke a language differing from that of their conquerors.

Other legends of the Old World, besides that of Amazonian warriors, gained a footing in the New, mingling, not infrequently, with similar native tales. The "Septe Cidade" of the Island of Antilia had been founded, according to Portuguese tradition, by the Archbishop of Oporto and six bishops, fleeing from the Moors in the eighth century; and it was these cities, identified by the Spaniards with the seven caves whence the Aztecs traced their race, that led Cabeza de Vaca onward in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola and resulted in the discovery of the Pueblos in New Mexico. Similarly, Ponce de León partly brought and partly found the story of the Fountain of Youth,[11] or the life-renewing Jordan, in search of which he went into Florida. The story is narrated in the "Memoir on Florida" of Hernando d'Escalente Fontaneda, who says that the Indians of Cuba and the other isles told lies of this mythical river; but that the story was not merely invented as a gratification of the Spaniards' thirst for marvels is suggested by Fontaneda's further statement that long before his time a great number of Indians from Cuba had come into Florida in search of this same wonder—a possible explanation of the Arawakan colony on the Florida coast.

But it was chiefly with tales of gold that the Spaniards' ears were pleasured. Columbus, writing to de Santangel, promised his sovereigns not only spices and dyes and Brazil-wood from their new realm, fruits and cotton and slaves, but "gold as much as they need"; and this promise was all too well founded for the good of either Spaniard or native, since the spoil of western gold, more than aught else, resulted in the wars which eventually impoverished Spain; and thirst for sudden wealth was the chief cause of the early extermination of the native peoples of the Antilles. Las Casas, bitter and full of pity, gives us the contrasting pictures. The first is of the cacique Hatuey,[12] fled from Haiti to Cuba to escape the Spaniards and there assembling his people before a chest of gold: "Behold," he said, "the god of the Spaniards! Let us do to him, if it seem good to you, areitos [solemn dances], that thus doing we shall please him, and he will command the Spaniards that they do us no harm." The other is the image of the Spanish tyrant, enslaving the Indians in mines "to the end that he might make gold of the bodies and souls of those for whom Jesus Christ suffered death."

III. ZEMIISM[13]

The Spanish conquistador, reckless of native life in his eager quest of gold, and the Spanish preaching friar, often yielding himself to death for the spread of the Gospel, are the two types of men most impressively delineated in the pages of the first decades of Spain's history in America, illustrating the complex and conflicting motives which urged the great adventure. As early as the writings of Columbus these two motives stand out, and the promise of wealth and the promise of souls to save are alike eloquent in his thought. In order to convert, one must first understand; and Columbus himself is our earliest authority on the religion of the men of the Indies, showing how his mind was moved to this problem. In the History of the Life of Columbus, by his son Fernando, the Admiral is quoted in description of the Indian religion.

"I could discover," he says, "neither idolatry nor any other sect among them, though every one of their kings ... has a house apart from the town, in which there is nothing at all but some wooden images carved by them, called cemis; nor is there anything done in those houses but what is for the service of those cemis, they repairing to perform certain ceremonies, and pray there, as we do to our churches. In these houses they have a handsome round table, made like a dish, on which is some powder which they lay on the head of the cemis with a certain ceremony; then through a cane that has two branches, clapped to their nose, they snuff up this powder: the words they say none of our people understand. This powder puts them beside themselves, as if they were drunk. They also give the image a name, and I believe it is their father's or grandfather's, or both; for they have more than one, and some above ten, all in memory of their forefathers.... The people and caciques boast among themselves of having the best cemis. When they go to these, their cemis, they shun the Christians, and will not let them go into those houses; and if they suspect they will come, they take away their cemis and hide them in the woods for fear they should be taken from them; and what is most ridiculous, they used to steal one another's cemis. It happened once that the Christians on a sudden rushed into the house with them, and presently the cemi cried out, speaking in their language, by which it appeared to be artificially made; for it being hollow they had applied a trunk to it, which answered to a dark corner of the house covered with boughs and leaves, where a man was concealed who spoke what the cacique ordered him. The Spaniards, therefore, reflecting on what it might be, kicked down the cemi, and found as has been said; and the cacique, seeing they had discovered his practice, earnestly begged of them not to speak of it to his subjects, or the other Indians, because he kept them in obedience by that policy."

This, the great Admiral quaintly concedes, "has some resemblance to idolatry." In fact, his description points clearly to well-developed cults: there are temples, with altars, idols, oracles, and priests, and there is even a shrewd adaptation of religion to politics—the certain mark of sophistication in matters of cult. Benzoni, who visited the Indies some fifty years after their discovery, says of the islanders: "They worshipped, and still worship, various deities, many painted, others sculptured, some formed of clay, others of wood, or gold, or silver.... And although our priests still daily endeavour to destroy these idols, yet the ministers of their faith keep a great many of them hidden in caves and underground, sacrificing to them occultly, and asking in what manner they can possibly expel the Christians from their country." Idols of gold and silver have not been preserved to modern times, but examples in stone and wood and baked clay are in present-day collections, and one, at least, of the wooden images has a hollow head, open at the back for the reception of the speaking-tube by which the priest conveyed the wisdom of his cacique. A peculiar type of Antillean cultus-image, mentioned by Peter Martyr, among others, was made of "plaited cotton, tightly stuffed inside," though its use seems to have been rather in connexion with funeral rites (perhaps as apotropaic fetishes) than in worship of nature-powers.

The work of archaeologists, especially in the Greater Antilles, has brought to light many curious objects certainly connected with the old Antillean cults. There are idols and images, ranging in height from near three feet to an inch or so; and the latter, often perforated, were used, perhaps, as Peter Martyr describes: "When they are about to go into battle, they tie small images representing little demons upon their foreheads." There are, again, masks and grotesque faces, sometimes cunningly carved, sometimes crude pictographs. Most characteristic are the triangular stones with a human or an animal face on one side; the stone collars or yokes, some slender and some massive in construction, but all representing laborious toil; and the "elbow stones" with carved panels—objects of which the true use and meaning is forgotten, though their connexion with cult is not to be doubted.[14] Possibly a hint of their meaning is to be found in the narrative of Columbus, which, after describing the zemis, goes on to say: "Most of the caciques have three great stones also, to which they and their people show a great devotion. The one they say helps corn and all sorts of grain; the second makes women be delivered without pain; and the third procures rain and fair weather, according as they stand in need of either."

PLATE II.

Antillean triangular carved stones, lateral and top views. In addition to the grotesque masks, limbs are clearly indicated. For reference to their probable significance, see pages [23-24] and note [14]. After 25 ARBE, Plates XLVI and XLIX.

From the name zemi (variously spelt by the older writers), applied to the Antillean cult-images, the aboriginal faith of this region has come to be called zemiism; and it is not difficult, from the descriptions left us, to reconstruct its general character. "They believe," says Peter Martyr, "that the zemes send rain or sunshine in response to their prayers, according to their needs. They believe the zemes to be intermediaries between them and God, whom they represent as one, eternal, omnipotent, and invisible. Each cacique has his zemes, which he honours with particular care. Their ancestors gave to the supreme and eternal Being two names, Iocauna and Guamaonocon. But this supreme Being was himself brought forth by a mother, who has five names, Attabeira, Mamona, Guacarapita, Iella, and Guimazoa." Here we have the typical American Indian conception of Mother Earth and Father Sky and a host of intermediary powers, deriving their potency in some dim way from the two great life-givers. In the name zemi itself is perhaps an indication of the animistic foundation of the religion, for by some authorities it is held to mean "animal" or "animal-being," while others see in it a corruption of guami, "ruler"—a source which would ally it with one of the terms for the Supreme Being as given by Peter Martyr; for Guamaonocon is interpreted as meaning "Ruler of the Earth."

Other appellations of the Sky Father, who "lives in the sun," are Jocakuvague, Yocahu, Vague, and Maorocon or Maorocoti; while Fray Ramon Pane gives names for the Earth Mother closely paralleling Peter Martyr's list: Atabei ("First-in-Being"), Iermaoguacar, Apito, and Zuimaco. Guabancex was a goddess of wind and water, and had two subordinates, Guatauva, her messenger, and Coatrischie, the tempest-raiser. Yobanua-Borna was a rain-deity whose shrine was in a cavern, and who likewise had two subordinates, or ministers. The Haitians are said to have made pilgrimages to a cave in which were kept two statues of wood, gods again of rain, or of sun and rain; and it is likely that the double-figure images preserved from this region are representations of these or of some other pair of Antillean twin deities. Baidrama, or Vaybrama, was also seemingly a twinned divinity, and clearly was the strength-giver: "They say," Fray Ramon tells us, "in time of wars he was burnt, and afterwards being washed with the juice of yucca, his arms grew out again, his body spread, and he recovered his eyes"; and the worshippers of the god bathed themselves in the sap of the yucca when they desired strength or healing. Other zemis mentioned by Pane are Opigielguoviran, a dog-like being which plunged into a morass when the Spaniards came, never to be seen again; and Faraguvaol, a beam or tree-trunk with the power of wandering at will. Here there seems to be indication of a vegetation-cult, which is borne out by Pane's description of the way in which wooden zemis were made—strikingly analogous to West African fetish-construction: "Those of wood are made thus: when any one is travelling he says he sees some tree that shakes its root; the man, in great fright, stops and asks who he is; it answers, 'My name is Buhuitihu [15] and he will inform you who I am.' The man repairing to the said physician, tells him what he has seen. The wizard, or conjurer, runs immediately to see the tree the other has told him of, sits down by it and makes it cogioba [an offering of tobacco].... He stands up, gives it all its titles, as if it were some great lord, and asks of it, 'Tell me who you are, what you do here, what you will have with me, and why you send for me? Tell me whether you will have me cut you, whether you will go along with me, and how you will have me carry you; and I will build you a house and endow it.' Immediately that tree, or cemi, becomes an idol, or devil, answers, telling how he will have him do it. He cuts it into such a shape as he is directed, builds his house, and endows it; and makes cogioba for it several times in the year, which cogioba is to pray to it, to please it, to ask and know of the said cemi what good or evil is to happen, and to beg wealth of it."

In such descriptions we get our picture of zemiism, a religion rising above the animism which was its obvious source, becoming predominantly anthropomorphic in its representations of superhuman beings, yet showing no signs of passing from crude fetish-worship to that symbolic use of images which marks the higher forms of idolatry. The ritual was apparently not bloody—offerings of tobacco, the use of purges and narcotics inducing vision and frenzy, and the dramatic dances, or areitos, which marked all solemn occasions and the great seasons of life, such as birth and marriage and death—these were the important features. Oblatio sacrificiorum pertinet ad jus naturale, says Las Casas (quoting St. Thomas Aquinas) in his description of Haitian rites; and to the law of man's nature may surely be ascribed that impulse which caused the Antillean to make his offerings to Heaven and Earth and to the powers that dwell therein.

Nor was he forgetful of the potencies within himself. With his nature-worship was a closely associated ancestor-worship. When they can no longer see the reflection of a person in the pupil of the eye, the soul is fled, say the Arawak—fled to become a zemi. The early writers all dwell upon this belief in the potency and propinquity of the souls of the departed. They are shut up by day, but walk abroad by night, says Fray Ramon; and sometimes they return to their kinsmen in the form of Incubi: "thus it is they know them: they feel their belly, and if they cannot find their navel, they say they are dead; for they say the dead have no navel." The navel is the symbol of birth and of the attachment of the body to its life; hence the dead, though they may possess all other bodily members, lack this; and the Indians have, says Pane, one name for the soul in the living body and another for the soul of the departed.

The bones of the dead, especially of caciques and great men, enclosed sometimes in baskets, sometimes in plaited cotton images, were regarded as powerful fetishes; and from what is told us of the funeral ceremonies certain beliefs may be inferred. The statement by Columbus, already quoted, closes with an account of some such rites: "When these Indians die, they have several ways of performing their obsequies, but the manner of burying their caciques is thus: they open and dry him at the fire, that he may keep whole. Of others they take only the head, others they bury in a grot or den, and lay a calabash of water and bread on his head; others they burn in the house where they die, and when they are at the last gasp, they suffer them not to die but strangle them; and this is done to caciques. Others are turned out of the house, and others put them into a hammock, which is their bed, laying bread and water by their head, never returning to see them any more. Some that are dangerously ill are carried to the cacique, who tells them whether they are to be strangled or not, and what he says is done. I have taken pains to find out what it is they believe, and whether they know what becomes of them after they are dead," and the answer was that "they go to a certain vale, which every great cacique supposes to be in his country, where they affirm they find their parents and all their predecessors, and that they eat, have women, and give themselves up to pleasures and pastimes." This is very much the belief of all the primitive world, but it has one interesting feature. The strangling of caciques and of those named by caciques clearly indicates that there was a belief in a different fate for men who die by nature and men who die with the breath of life not yet exhausted; quite likely it was some Valhalla reserved for the brave, such as the Norseman found who escaped the "straw death," or the Aztec warrior whom Tonatiuh snatched up into the mansions of the Sun.

IV. TAÏNO MYTHS[16]

"I ordered," says Columbus, "one Friar Ramon, who understood their language, to set down all their language and antiquities"; and it is to this Fray Ramon Pane, "a poor anchorite of the order of St. Jerome," as he tells us, that thanks are due for most of what is preserved of Taïno mythology. The myths which he gathered are from the island of Haiti, or Hispaniola, but it is safe to assume that they represent cycles of tales shared by all the Taïno peoples. They believe, says the friar, in an invisible and immortal Being, like Heaven, and they speak of the mother of this heaven-son, who was called, among other names, Atabei, "the First-in-Existence." "They also know whence they came, the origin of the sun and moon, how the sea was made, and whither the dead go."

The earliest Indians appeared, according to the legend, from two caverns of a certain mountain of Hispaniola—"most of the people that first inhabited the island came out of Cacibagiagua," while the others emerged from Amaiauva (it is altogether likely that the two caves represent two races or tribal stocks). Before the people came forth, a watchman, Marocael, guarded the entrances by night; but, once delaying his return into the caves until after dawn, the sun transformed him into a stone; while others, going a-fishing, were also caught by the sun and were changed into trees. As for the sun and moon, they, too, came from a certain grotto, called Giovava, to which, says Fray Ramon, the Indians paid great veneration, having it all painted "without any figure, but with leaves and the like"; and keeping in it two stone zemis which looked "as if they sweated"; to these they went when they wanted rain.

PLATE III.

Antillean stone ring, of the ovate type, with carved panels. Stone rings, or "collars," form one of the types of symbolic stones from this region the significance of which has so profoundly puzzled archaeologists. Reference to their possible meaning will be found on page [24] and note [14]. there referred to. The specimen here figured is in the Museum of the American Indian, New York. Joyce (Central American Archaeology, pages 189-91) interprets the design as a human figure. The disks on either side of the head are ear-plugs; arms and hands may be seen supporting them; the pit between the elbows is the umbilicus; while the legs are represented by the upper segments of the decorated panels exterior to the disks.

The story of the origin of the sea is a little more complex. In introducing the tale, Fray Ramon says: "I, writing in haste and not having paper enough, could not place everything rightly.... Let us now return to what we should have said first, that is, their opinion concerning the origin and beginning of the sea." There was a certain man, Giaia, whose son, Giaiael ("Giaia's son"), undertook to kill his father, but was himself slain by the parent, who put the bones into a calabash, which he hung in the top of his house. One day he took the calabash down, and looking into it, an abundance of fishes, great and small, came forth, since into these the bones had changed. Later on, while Giaia was absent, there came to his house four sons, born at a birth from a certain woman, Itiba Tahuvava, who was cut open that they might be delivered—"the first that they cut out was Caracaracol, that is, 'Mangy.'" These four brothers took the calabash and ate of the fish, but seeing Giaia returning, in their haste they replaced it badly, with the result that "there ran so much water from it as overflowed all the country, and with it came out abundance of fish, and hence they believe the sea had its origin." Fray Ramon goes on to tell how, the four brothers being hungry, one of them begged cassaba bread of a certain man, but was struck by him with tobacco. Thereupon his shoulder swelled up painfully; and when it was opened, a live female tortoise issued forth—"so they built their house and bred up the tortoise."

"I understood no more of this matter, and what we have writ signifies but little," continues the friar; yet to the modern reader the tales have all the marks of a primitive cosmogony, a cosmogony having many analogues in similar tales from the two Americas. The notion of a cave or caves from which the parents of the human race and of the animal kinds issue to people the world is ubiquitous in America; so, too, is the notion of an age of transformations, in which beings were altered from their first forms. Peter Martyr, who tells the same stories in résumé, as he says, of Pane's manuscript, adds a number of interesting details; as that after the metamorphosis of Marocael, or Machchael, as Martyr calls him, the First Race were refused entrance into the caves when the sun rose "because they sought to sin," and so were transformed—a moral element which recalls similar motifs in Pueblo myths. But perhaps the most striking analogies are with the cosmogonies of the Algonquian and Iroquoian stocks. The four Caracarols (caracol, "shell," plural cacaracol, is the evident derivation), one of whom was called "Mangy," recall the Stone Giants, and again recall the twins or (as in a Potawatomi version) quadruplets whose birth causes their mother's death, while the tortoise cut from the shoulder (Martyr says it was a woman by whom the brothers successively became fathers of sons and daughters) is at least suggestive of the cosmogonic turtle of North American myth. In the flood-legend, the idea of fishes being formed from bones is remotely paralleled by the Eskimo conception of the creation of fishes from the finger-bones of the daughter of Anguta; and Benzoni tells how, in his day, the Haitians still had a pumpkin as a relic, "saying that it had come out of the sea with all the fish in it."

In the order of his narrative—though not, apparently, in the order in which he deemed the events ought to lie—Fray Ramon follows the story of the emergence of the First People from caves with the adventures of a hero whom he calls Guagugiana, but whom Peter Martyr terms Vagoniona. It is easy to recognize in this hero an example of the demiurgic Trickster-Transformer so common in American myth. Like the Trickster elsewhere, he has a servant or comrade, Giadruvava, and the first story that Pane tells is one of which we would fain have a fuller version, for even the fragmentary sketch of it is full of poetic suggestion. Guagugiana, it seems, was one of the cave-dwellers of the First Race. One day he sent forth his servant to seek a certain cleansing herb, but, as Pane has it, "the sun took him by the way, and he became a bird that sings in the morning, like the nightingale"; to which Peter Martyr adds that "on every anniversary of his transformation he fills the night air with songs, bewailing his misfortunes and imploring his master to come to his help."

In this tale, slender as it is, there is an element of unusual interest, fortified by various other allusions to Antillean beliefs. It would appear that the First People, the cave-dwellers, were of the nature of spirits or souls, and that the Sun was the true Transformer, whose strength-giving rays gave to each, as it emerged to light, the form which it was to keep. The disembodied soul (opia) haunts the night, moreover, as if night were its native season; in the day it is powerless, and men have no fear of it. Surely it is a beautiful myth which makes of the night-bird's song a longing for the free life of the spirit, or at least an expression of the feeling of kinship with the spirit-world.

The tale goes on to tell how Guagugiana, lamenting his lost comrade, resolved to go forth from the cave in which the First People dwelt. Yet he went not alone, for he called to the women: "Leave your husbands! Let us go into other countries, where we shall get jewels enough! Leave your children; we will come again for them; carry only herbs with you." The women, abandoning all save their nursing children (as Peter Martyr tells), followed Guagugiana to the island of Matenino, and there he left them; but the children he took away and abandoned them beside a brook—or perhaps, as Martyr implies, he brought them back and left them on the shore of the sea—where, starving, they cried, "Toa, toa," which is to say, "Milk, milk!" "And they thus crying and begging of the earth, saying, 'toa, toa,' like one that very earnestly begs a thing, they were transformed into little creatures like dwarfs, and called tona, because of their begging the earth." Martyr's more prosaic version says that they were transformed into frogs; but both authorities agree that this is how the men came to be left without wives; and doubtless it is this myth from which Columbus gained at least a part of his notion of the Amazon-like women "who dwell alone in the island of Matenino."

Other episodes in the career of Guagugiana, which Pane recounts in a confused way, are his going to sea with a companion whom he tricked into looking for precious shells and then threw overboard; his finding of a woman of the sea who taught him a cure for the pox; this woman's name was Guabonito, and she taught him the use of amulets and of ornaments of white stone and of gold. Peter Martyr's variant says: "He is supposed to go to meet a beautiful woman, perceived in the depths of the sea, from whom are obtained the white shells called by the natives cibas, and other shells of a yellowish colour called guianos, of both of which they make necklaces; the caciques, in our own time, regard these trinkets as sacred." In this there is a striking suggestion of the Pueblo myths of the White-Shell Woman of the East and of the sea-dwelling Guardian of the yellow shells of the West; and it is quite to be inferred that the regard in which the caciques held these objects was due to a ritual and magical significance analogous to that which we know in the Pueblos.

V. THE AREITOS

"The Spaniards," says Peter Martyr,[17] "lived for some time in Hispaniola without suspecting that the islanders worshipped anything else than the stars, or that they had any kind of religion,... but after mingling with them for some years ... many of the Spaniards began to notice among them divers ceremonies and rites." These ceremonies are called areitos, or areytos, by the Spanish writers; and from the early descriptions it is obvious that they were rites of the typical American kind, dramatic dances or mysteries performed in the great crises of national and personal life, or in the changes and climaxes of that course of the seasons, which is the life of Nature. As in the case of myths, so in the case of rites, it is chiefly those of Haiti which are described for us; but there is little reason to doubt that these are typical of all the Greater Antilles.

Birth, marriage, death, going to war, curing the sick, initiation, and puberty rites all seem to have had their appropriate ceremonies. Songs played an important part in these ceremonies; indeed, the word areito is frequently restricted to funeral chants, or elegies in praise of heroes. But the chief rite known to us, and, we may feel assured, the chief rite of the whole Taïno culture, was the ceremony in honour of the Earth Goddess. This ceremony, as celebrated by the Haitians, is described by both Benzoni and Gómara with some detail. Gómara's account is as follows:[18]

"When the cacique celebrated the festival in honour of his principal idol, all the people attended the function. They decorated the idol very elaborately; the priests arranged themselves like a choir about the king, and the cacique sat at the entrance of the temple with a drum at his side. The men came painted black, red, blue, and other colours or covered with branches and garlands of flowers, or feathers and shells, wearing shell bracelets and little shells on their arms and rattles on their feet. The women also came with similar rattles, but naked, if they were maids, and not painted; if married, wearing only breechcloths. They approached dancing, and singing to the sound of the shells, and as they approached the cacique he saluted them with a drum. Having entered the temple, they vomited, putting a small stick into their throat, in order to show the idol that they had nothing evil in their stomach. They seated themselves like tailors and prayed with a low voice. Then there approached many women bearing baskets and cakes on their heads and many roses, flowers, and fragrant herbs. They formed a circle as they prayed and began to chant something like an old ballad in praise of the god. All rose to respond at the close of the ballad; they changed their tone and sang another song in praise of the cacique, after which they offered the bread to the idol, kneeling. The priests took the gift, blessed, and divided it; and so the feast ended, but the recipients of the bread preserved it all the year and held that house unfortunate and liable to many dangers which was without it."

In this rite it is easy to recognize a festival in honour of a divinity of fertility, probably a corn deity, or perhaps a goddess who is the mother of corn spirits. Benzoni says of the Haitians that "they worshipped two wooden figures as the gods of abundance, and at some periods of the year many Indians went on a pilgrimage to them." These may be the two zemis of the painted grotto of the Sun and the Moon, mentioned by Ramon Pane and Peter Martyr, for the latter says that "they go on pilgrimages to that cavern just as we go to Rome"; but it is certain that they were associated with agriculture, since it was to them that prayers were made for rain and fruitfulness. In an interesting old picture, printed in Picart, the rite of the Earth Goddess is represented, much as described by Gómara and Benzoni. The goddess herself is shown with several heads, each that of a different animal, and near her are two lesser idols of grotesque form. It is possible that the Earth was conceived as the mother of all life, animal as well as vegetable, and that her two attendants represented yucca and maize, the two principal food plants of the Antilleans. Some authorities regard the chief of the Taïno gods, the son of the great First-in-Being, as a yucca spirit; and, indeed, the name of the plant appears to enter into such forms as Iocauna, Jocakuvague, Yocahuguama. Yet it is little likely that we shall ever have certainty on this point, for of the poems which, Peter Martyr tells us, the sons of chiefs sang to the people on feast days, in the form of sacred chants, none are preserved to us.

PLATE IV.

Dance, or Areito, of the Haitian Indians in honor of the Earth Goddess. The ceremony is described by both Benzoni and Gómara, the latter's description being quoted in this volume, pages [33-34]. After the drawing in Picart, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the known World, London, 1731-37, Plate No. 78.

That the Taïno had, besides these great public festivals, rites for the individual also is abundantly witnessed in the old books. Like all American Indians, they were mystics and vision-seekers. Benzoni says that when the doctors wished to cure a man who was ill, he was lulled into unconsciousness by tobacco smoke, and "on returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the council of the gods and other high visions"—a description which recalls im Thurn's account of his own experiences in the hands of an Arawak peaiman.[19] Something analogous to the individual totem, or "medicine," of other Indians was certainly known to them. "The islanders," says Peter Martyr, "pay homage to numerous zemes, each person having his own. Some are made of wood, because it is amongst the trees and in the darkness of night they have received the message of the gods. Others, who have heard the voice among the rocks, make their zemes of stone; while others, who heard their revelation while they were cultivating their ages—the kind of cereal I have already mentioned [sweet potato, or yam],—make theirs of roots." Martyr goes on to describe trances, induced, he thinks, by tobacco, in which the chiefs seek prophetic revelations, stammered out in incoherent words. One of the most interesting of the early stories tells of such a prophecy received from Yocahuguama, the yucca spirit. Doubtless the earliest version of the tale is that of Ramon Pane:[20]

"That great lord who, they say, is in heaven ... is this Cazziva [cassava], who kept a sort of abstinence here, which all of them generally perform; for they shut themselves up six or seven days, without taking any sustenance but the juice of herbs, with which they also wash themselves. After this time they begin to eat something that is nourishing. During the time they have been without eating, weakness makes them say they have seen something they earnestly desired, for they all perform that abstinence in honour of the cemies to know whether they shall obtain victory over their enemies, or to acquire wealth or any other thing they desire. They say this cacique affirmed he spoke with Giocauvaghama, who told him that whosoever survived him would not long enjoy his power, because they should see a people clad, in their country, who would rule over and kill them, and they should die for hunger. They thought at first these should be the cannibals, but afterwards considering that they only plundered and fled, they believed it was some other people the cemi spoke of; and now they believe it is the admiral and those that came with him." This is the first of those stories of clothed and bearded strangers (the beard is added in some versions), coming to overthrow the gods and kingdoms of the Indians, which were encountered in various portions of the New World. So much importance was attached to it, says Gómara, that a song was formed commemorating it, sung as an areito in a ceremonial dance.

VI. CARIB LORE[21]

Not only Columbus, but other early writers praised the peacefully happy and amiably virtuous character of the Indians of the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles; and though this description may have been in some degree coloured by their ideal of what dwellers in the Fortunate Isles ought to be, there is yet little in the old accounts of these Indians to contravene their good report. With small question, however, this same picture served only to intensify the grimness of its companion portrait, for the folk of the Lesser Antilles, the "Caribbee Islands" of seamen's romance, were painted as hard and mirthless savages, murderers and marauders, ferocious in war, and abhorrent cannibals—altogether such as would be dramatically appropriate as the aborigines of islands that were to become the paradise of pirates.

On his second voyage Columbus encountered men of this race, finding them treacherous and fierce. Unlike the Taïno, the men wore their hair long and they painted themselves with strange devices; their beards were plucked out, and their eyes and eyebrows were stained to give them a terrible appearance—at least so thought Chanca, who describes them for us. The women—that is, the true Carib women, not the captives, of whom they had many—were as savage fighters as the men; and the Spaniards distinguished them from the captive Taïno women by the leg-bands, fastened below the knee and above the ankle, which caused the leg-muscles to swell out—a trait recorded by im Thurn of the true Carib of Guiana.

There is small question that these people came from the mouth of the Orinoco in the southern continent just as the ancestors of the Taïno had doubtless come before them; and even at the time of the discovery they were invading the Greater Antilles and had secured a foothold in Porto Rico. Nevertheless, they had already been in the lesser islands for a period sufficiently long to differentiate them, in a degree, from their continental congeners and to develop among them a distinctly Antillean type of Carib culture, related on the one hand to the continent they had left, on the other to the islands they had conquered. Doubtless the fundamental modification was due not so much to the change of habitat or to the difference between alluvial and insular life as to the fact—repeated from Columbus onward—that they spared and married with the women of the dispossessed tribes and so fell heirs to many of their arts and ideas.

Of all Carib customs, after their cannibalism (the word "cannibal" is a variant of "Carib"), the most striking is the couvade—the Custom whereby the husband and father, at the birth of a child, takes to his bed, or rather hammock, as if he were suffering the pangs of labour. For forty days he remains in retirement, fasting or on meagre diet; and at the end of this period a feast is held at which the invited guests lacerate the skin of the patient with their nails and wash the wounds with a solution of red pepper, he bearing his pain heroically. Even then his trials are not at an end; for six moons more he must be careful of his food—should he eat turtle, the child will become deaf, and so of other creatures, bird and fish,—such being Père du Tertre's description of this rite, still in vogue on the southern continent.

Other Carib festivals are mentioned by Davies. A ceremony attended a council of war, the killing of an enemy, and the return from war; the launching of a canoe, the building of a house, and the making of a garden; the birth of a child and the cutting of its hair; adolescence and participation in the first war-party; the death of parents, husband, or wife. They had, of course, their doctors or medicine-men—the peaimen of the continent, apparently called boii by the islanders, a name which is surely a variant of the Taïno buhuitihu and doubtless was adopted from the latter; especially as Maboya ("the Great Boye" or "Great Snake") is a name recorded for the tutelary power of these boii, or "snakes." Maboya, or Mapoia, is the god who sends the hurricane; and here we have an interesting point of contact with the mythology of the great isthmus, since Hurakan, the hurricane, is the Mayan storm-god. Du Tertre says that there were many Maboyas; and it may be that the term is the insular equivalent for "Kenaima," by which the mainland Carib designate a member of the class of death-bringing powers.

Good spirits were also recognized. The names Akambou and Yris are found for the highest of all, and the name Chemin—doubtless related to zemi—is applied to the sky-god. It may be that the island Carib possessed a whole pantheon of celestial deities, or perhaps the name for the Great Spirit varied from island to island, as similar names vary among the related tribes of Guiana.

Fragments of the legends of the island Carib are preserved. Louquo, the first man, came down from the sky; other men were born from his body; and after his death he ascended into the heavens. The sky itself is eternal; the earth, at first soft, was hardened by the sun's rays. The First Race of men were nearly exterminated by a deluge, from which a lucky few escaped in a canoe. After death the soul of the valiant Carib ascends to heaven; the stars are Carib souls. All these are beliefs which we need not ascribe to Old World suggestion, for they are found far and wide in America; and equally native must be the Carib notion that each man has three souls—one in his heart, one in his head, and one in his shoulders—though it is only the heart-soul that ascends to paradise at death, while the other two wander abroad as dangerous and evil powers. The islanders possessed also a legend of their origin or migration from among the Galibi, their continental relatives, "Galibi" being, apparently, yet another variant of "Carib." Their ancestor, Kalinago, they said, wearying of life among his own people, embarked for the conquest of new lands, and after a long voyage settled in Santo Domingo with his kin, where his numerous children, conspiring against him, gave him poison. His body died, but his soul found an avatar in a terrible fish, Atraioman; while his slayers, pursued by his vengeance, scattered afar among all the isles. Wherever they went, they destroyed the men, but spared the women; and they placed the heads of their enemies in rocky caves that they might show their sons and their sons' sons these symbols of the valour of their fathers. According to some tales all brave Caribs at death enter a paradise where they forever wage successful war against the Arawak, while cowards are condemned in the future world to be enslaved to Arawak masters.

A more agreeable picture of Carib nature is suggested by their belief in Icheiri—a kind of Lares and Penates—to whom in each cabin was erected an altar of banana leaves or of cane, upon which were placed offerings of cassava flour and of the first fruits of the field, these Icheiri being conceived as kindly and familiar intermediaries between man below and the distant heaven power above. There were also spirits that could enter into a man to lead him to inspired vision—"medicine" spirits, or tutelaries. The god Yris seems to have been of this character, for du Tertre, who received the story from one of the missionaries in Santo Domingo, relates that Yris entered into a certain woman and transported her far above the sun, where she saw lands of a marvellous beauty with verdant mountains from which gushed springs of living water; and the god promised her that after her death she should come thither to dwell with him forever. The savage mystic, too, it would appear, has her visions of a divine spouse, who shall one day welcome her into the heaven above the heavens.

[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."

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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."

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.

[CHAPTER III]

MEXICO

(Continued)

I. COSMOGONY[47]

Mexican cosmogonies conform to a wide-spread American type. There is first an ancient creator, little important in cult, who is the remote giver and sustainer of the life of the universe; and next comes a generation of gods, magicians and transformers rather than true creators, who form and transform the beings of times primeval and eventually bring the world to its present condition. The earlier world-epochs, or "Suns," as the Mexicans called them, are commonly four in number, and each is terminated by the catastrophic destruction of its Sun and of its peoples, fire and flood overwhelming creation in successive cataclysms. Not all of this, in single completeness, is preserved in any one account, but from the various fragments and abridgements that are extant the whole may be reasonably reconstructed.

One of the simpler tales (simple at least in its transmitted form) is of the Tarascan deity, Tucupacha. "They hold him to be creator of all things," says Herrera,[48] "that he gives life and death, good and evil fortune, and they call upon him in their tribulations, gazing toward the sky where they believe him to be." This deity first created heaven and earth and hell; then he formed a man and a woman of clay, but they were destroyed in bathing; again he made a human pair, using cinders and metals, and from these the world was peopled. But the god sent a flood, from which he preserved a certain priest, Texpi, and his wife, with seeds and with animals, floating in an ark-like log. Texpi discovered land by sending out birds, after the fashion of Noah, and it is quite possible that the legend as recounted is not altogether native.

More primitive in type and more interesting in form is the Mixtec cosmogony narrated by Fray Gregorio García, which begins thus:[49] "In the year and in the day of obscurity and darkness, when there were as yet no days nor years, the world was a chaos sunk in darkness, while the earth was covered with water, on which scum and slime floated." This exordium, with its effort to describe the void by negation and the beginning of time by the absence of its denominations, is strikingly reminiscent of the creation-narrative in Genesis ii. and of the similar Babylonian cosmogony; the negative mode, employed in all three, is essentially true to that stage when human thought is first struggling to grapple with abstractions, seeking to define them rather by a process of denudation than by one of limitation of the field of thought. The Mixtec tale proceeds with a group of incidents. (1) The Deer-God and the Deer-Goddess (the deer is an emblem of fecundity)—known also as the Puma-Snake and the Jaguar-Snake, in which character they doubtless represent the tawny heaven of the day-sky and the starry vault of night—magically raised a cliff above the abyss of waters, on the summit of which they placed an axe, edge upward, upon which the heavens rested. (2) Here, at the Place-where-the-Heavens-stood, they lived many centuries, and here they reared their two boys, Wind-of-the-Nine-Serpents and Wind-of-the-Nine-Caves, who possessed the power of transforming themselves into eagles and serpents, and even of passing through solid bodies. The symbolism of these two boys as typifying the upper and the nether world is obvious; they can only be one more example of the demiurgic twins common in American cosmogony. (3) The brothers inaugurated sacrifice and penance, the cultivation of flowers and fruits; and with vows and prayers they besought their ancestral gods to let the light appear, to cause the water to be separated from the earth, and to permit the dry land to be freed from its covering. (4) The earth was peopled, but a flood destroyed this First People, and the world was restored by the "Creator of all Things."

It is probable that this Mixtec Creator-of-All-Things was the same deity as he who was known to their Zapotec kindred as Coqui-Xèe or Coqui-Cilla ("Lord of the Beginning"), of whom it was said that "he was the creator of all things and was himself uncreated." Seler is of opinion that Coqui-Xèe is a spirit of "the beginning" in the sense of dawn and the east and the rising sun, and that since he is also known as Piye-Tào, or "the Great Wind," he is none other than the Zapotec Quetzalcoatl, who also is an increate creator. Coqui-Xèe, however, is "merely the principle, the essence of the creative deity or of deity in general without reference to the act of creating the world and human beings"; for that act is rather to be ascribed to the primeval pair (equivalent to the Deer-God and Deer-Goddess of the Mixtec), Cozaana ("Creator, the Maker of all Beasts") and Huichaana ("Creator, the Maker of Men and Fishes").

The ideas of the Nahuatlan tribes were similar. Of the Chichimec Sahagun[50] says that "they had only a single god, Mixcoatl, whose image they possessed; but they believed in another invisible god, not represented by any image, called Yoalli Ehecatl, that is to say, God invisible, impalpable, beneficent, protector, omnipotent, by whose strength alone the whole world lives, and who, by his sole knowledge, rules voluntarily all things." Mixcoatl ("Cloud-Snake"), the tribal god of the Chichimec and Otomi, is certainly an analogue of Quetzalcoatl or of Huitzilopochtli, like them figuring as demiurge; and Yoalli Ehecatl ("Wind and Night," or "Night-Wind") is an epithet applied to Tezcatlipoca, who also is addressed as "Creator of Heaven and Earth."

All of these gods are of the sky and atmosphere, and all of them appear as creative powers, though mainly in the demiurgic rôle. Back of and above them is the ancient Twofold One, the Male-Female or Male and Female principle of generation, which not only first created the world, but maintains it fecund. This being, sometimes called Tloque Nauaque, or "Lord of the By," i.e. the Omnipresent, is represented as a divine pair, known under several names. Sahagun commonly speaks of them as Ometecutli and Omeciuatl ("Twi-Lord," "Twi-Lady"), and in his account of the Toltec he states that they reign over the twelve heavens and the earth; the existence of all things depends upon them, and from them proceeds the "influence and warmth whereby infants are engendered in the wombs of their mothers." Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciutl ("Lord of Our Flesh," "Lady of Our Flesh") is another pair of names, used with reference to the creation of the human body out of maize and to its support thereby.[51] A third pair of terms, appearing in Mendieta and in the Annals of Quauhtitlan, is Citlallatonac and Citlalicue ("Lord" and "Lady of the Starry Zones"). In the Annals Quetzalcoatl, as high-priest of the Toltec, is said to have dedicated a cult to "Citlalicue Citlallatonac, Tonacaciuatl Tonacatecutli ... who is clothed in charcoal, clothed in blood, who giveth food to the earth; and he cried aloft, to the Omeyocan, to the heaven lying above the nine that are bound together." Nevertheless, these deities—or rather deity, for Tloque Nauaque seems to be, like the Zuñi Awonawilona, bisexual in nature—received little recognition in the formal cult; and it was said that they desired none.

PLATE XII.

Figures representing the heavenly bodies. The upper figure, from Codex Vaticanus B, represents the conflict of light and darkness. The Eagle is either the Morning Star or the Sun; the Plumed Serpent is the symbol of the Cosmic Waters, from whose throat the Hare, perhaps the Earth or Moon, is being snatched by the Eagle. Similar figures appear in other codices, the Serpent being in one instance represented as torn by the Eagle's talons.

The lower figure, from Codex Borgia, portrays Sun, Moon, and Morning Star. The Sun-god is within the rayed disk; he holds a bundle of spears in one hand, a spear-thrower in the other; a stream of blood, apparently from a sacrifice offered by the Morning Star, which has the form of an ocelot, nourishes the Sun. The Moon appears as a Hare upon the face of the crescent, which is filled with water and set upon a background of dark sky.

In connexion with these primal creators appear the demiurgic transformers, Quetzalcoatl usually playing the important part. According to Sahagun's fragmentary accounts, the gods were gathered from time immemorial in a place called Teotiuacan. They asked: "Who shall govern and direct the world? Who will be Sun?" Tecuciztecatl ("Cockle-Shell House") and the pox-afflicted Nanauatzin volunteered. They were dressed in ceremonial garments and fasted for four days; and then the gods ranged themselves about a sacrificial fire, which the candidates were asked to enter. Tecuciztecatl recoiled from the intense heat until encouraged by the example of Nanauatzin, who plunged into it; and because of this Nanauatzin became the Sun, while Tecuciztecatl assumed second place as Moon. The gods now ranged themselves to await the appearance of the Sun, but not knowing where to expect it, and gazing in various directions, some of them, including Quetzalcoatl, turned their faces toward the east, where the Sun finally manifested himself, close-followed by the Moon. Their light being then equal, was so bright that none might endure it, and the deities accordingly asked one another, "How can this be? Is it good that they should shine with equal light?" One of them ran and threw a rabbit into the face of Tecuciztecatl, which thenceforth shone as does now the moon; but since the sun and the moon rested upon the earth, without rising, the gods saw that they must immolate themselves to give motion to the orbs of light. Xolotl fled, but was finally caught and sacrificed; yet even so the orbs did not stir until the wind blew with such violence as to compel them—first, the sun, and afterward the moon. Quetzalcoatl, the wind-god, is, of course, thus the giver of life to sun and moon as he is also, in the prayers the bearer of the breath of life from the divine pair to the new-born.

A complete version of the same myth is given by Mendieta,[52] who credits it to Fray Andrés de Olmos, transmitted by word of mouth from Mexican caciques. Each province had its own narrative, he says, but they were agreed that in heaven were a god and goddess, Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, and that the goddess gave birth to a stone knife (tecpatl), to the amazement and horror of her other sons which were in heaven. The stone hurled forth by these outraged sons and falling to Chicomoxtoc ("Seven Caves"), was shattered, and from its fragments arose sixteen hundred earth-godlings. These sent Tlotli, the Hawk, heavenward to demand of their mother the privilege of creating men to be their servants; and she replied that they should send to Mictlantecutli, Lord of Hell, for a bone or ashes of the dead, from which a man and woman would be born. Xolotl was dispatched as messenger, secured the bone, and fled with it; but being pursued by the Lord of Hell, he stumbled, and the bone broke. With such fragments as he could secure he reached the earth, and the bones, placed in a vessel, were sprinkled with blood drawn from the bodies of the gods. On the fourth day a boy emerged from the mixture; on the eighth, a girl; and these were reared by Xolotl to become parents of mankind. Men differ in size because the bone broke into unequal fragments; and as human beings multiplied, they were assigned as servants to the several gods. Now, the Sun had not been shining for a long time, and the deities assembled at Teotiuacan to consider the matter. Having built a great fire, they announced that that one among their devotees who should first hurl himself into it should have the honour of becoming the Sun, and when one had courageously entered the flames, they awaited the sunrise, wagering as to the quarter in which he would appear; but they guessed wrong, and for this they were condemned to be sacrificed, as they were soon to learn. When the Sun appeared, he remained ominously motionless; and although Tlotli was sent to demand that he continue his journey, he refused, saying that he should remain where he was until they were all destroyed. Citli ("Hare") in anger shot the Sun with an arrow, but the latter hurled it back, piercing the forehead of his antagonist. The gods then recognized their inferiority and allowed themselves to be sacrificed, their hearts being torn out by Xolotl, who slew himself last of all. Before departing, however, each divinity gave to his followers, as a sacred bundle, his vesture wrapped about a green gem which was to serve as a heart. Tezcatlipoca was one of the departed deities, but one day he appeared to a mourning follower whom he commanded to journey to the House of the Sun beyond the waters and to bring thence singers and musical instruments to make a feast for him. This the messenger did, singing as he went. The Sun warned his people not to harken to the stranger, but the music was irresistible, and some of them were lured to follow him back to earth, where they instituted the musical rites. Such details as the formation of the ceremonial bundles and the journey of the song-seeker to the House of the Sun immediately suggest numerous analogues among the wild tribes of the north, indicating the primitive and doubtless ancient character of the myth.

II. THE FOUR SUNS[53]

In the developed cosmogonic myths the cycles, or "Suns," of the early world are the turns of the drama of creation. Ixtlilxochitl names four ages, following the creation of the world and man by a supreme god, "Creator of All Things, Lord of Heaven and Earth." Atonatiuh, "the Sun of Waters," was the first age terminated by a deluge in which all creatures perished. Next came Tlalchitonatiuh, "the Sun of Earth"; this was the age of giants, and it ended with a terrific earthquake and the fall of mountains. "The Sun of Air," Ehcatonatiuh, closed with a furious wind, which destroyed edifices, uprooted trees, and even moved the rocks. It was during this period that a great number of monkeys appeared "brought by the wind," and these were regarded as men changed into animals. Quetzalcoatl appeared in this third Sun, teaching the way of virtue and the arts of life; but his doctrines failed to take root, so he departed toward the east, promising to return another day. With his departure "the Sun of Air" came to its end, and Tlatonatiuh, "the Sun of Fire," began, so called because it was expected that the next destruction would be by fire.

Other versions give four Suns as already completed, making the present into a fifth age of the world. The most detailed of these cosmogonic myth-records is that given in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas. According to this document Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciuatl dwelt from the beginning in the thirteenth heaven. To them were born, as to an elder generation, four gods—the ruddy Camaxtli (chief divinity of the Tlascalans); the black Tezcatlipoca, wizard of the night; Quetzalcoatl, the wind-god; and the grim Huitzilopochtli, of whom it was said that he was born without flesh, a skeleton. For six hundred years these deities lived in idleness; then the four brethren assembled, creating first the fire (hearth of the universe) and afterward a half-sun. They formed also Oxomoco and Cipactonal, the first man and first woman, commanding that the former should till the ground, and the latter spin and weave; while to the woman they gave powers of divination and grains of maize that she might work cures. They also divided time into days and inaugurated a year of eighteen twenty-day periods, or three hundred and sixty days. Mictlantecutli and Mictlanciuatl they created to be Lord and Lady of Hell, and they formed the heavens that are below the thirteenth storey of the celestial regions, and the waters of the sea, making in the sea a monster Cipactli, from which they shaped the earth. The gods of the waters, Tlaloctecutli and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, they created, giving them dominion over the Quarters. The son of the first pair married a woman formed from a hair of the goddess Xochiquetzal; and the gods, noticing how little was the light given forth by the half-sun, resolved to make another half-sun, whereupon Tezcatlipoca became the sun-bearer—for what we behold traversing the daily heavens is not the sun itself, but only its brightness; the true sun is invisible. The other gods created huge giants, who could uproot trees by brute force, and whose food was acorns. For thirteen times fifty-two years, altogether six hundred and seventy-six, this period lasted—as long as its Sun endured; and it is from this first Sun that time began to be counted, for during the six hundred years of the idleness of the gods, while Huitzilopochtli was in his bones, time was not reckoned. This Sun came to an end when Quetzalcoatl struck down Tezcatlipoca and became Sun in his place. Tezcatlipoca was metamorphosed into a jaguar (Ursa Major) which is seen by night in the skies wheeling down into the waters whither Quetzalcoatl cast him; and this jaguar devoured the giants of that period. At the end of six hundred and seventy-six years Quetzalcoatl was treated by his brothers as he had treated Tezcatlipoca, and his Sun came to an end with a great wind which carried away most of the people of that time or transformed them into monkeys. Then for seven times fifty-two years Tlaloc was Sun; but at the end of this three hundred and sixty-four years Quetzalcoatl rained fire from heaven and made Chalchiuhtlicue Sun in place of her husband, a dignity which she held for three hundred and twelve years (six times fifty-two); and it was in these days that maize began to be used. Now two thousand six hundred and twenty-eight years had passed since the birth of the gods, and in this year it rained so heavily that the heavens themselves fell, while the people of that time were transformed into fish. When the gods saw this, they created four men, with whose aid Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl again upreared the heavens, even as they are today; and these two gods becoming lords of the heavens and of the stars, walked therein. After the deluge and the restoration of the heavens, Tezcatlipoca discovered the art of making fire from sticks and of drawing it from the heart of flint. The first man, Piltzintecutli, and his wife, who had been made of a hair of Xochiquetzal, did not perish in the flood, because they were divine. A son was born to them, and the gods created other people just as they had formerly existed. But since, except for the fires, all was in darkness, the gods resolved to create a new Sun. This was done by Quetzalcoatl, who cast his own son, by Chalchiuhtlicue, into a great fire, whence he issued as the Sun of our own time; Tlaloc hurled his son into the cinders of the fire, and thence rose the Moon, ever following after the Sun. This Sun, said the gods, should eat hearts and drink blood, and so they established wars that there might be sacrifices of captives to nourish the orbs of light. Most of the other versions of the myth of the epochal Suns similarly date the beginning of sacrifice and penance from the birth of the present age.

The Annals of Quauhtitlan gives a somewhat different picture of the course of the epochs. Each epoch begins on the first day of Tochtli, and the god Quetzalcoatl figures as the creator. Atonatiuh, the first Sun, ended with a flood and the transformation of living creatures into fish. Ocelotonatiuh, "the Jaguar Sun," was the epoch of giants and of solar eclipse. Third came "the Sun of Rains," Quiyauhtonatiuh, ending with a rain of fire and red-hot rocks; only birds, or those transformed into them, and a human pair who found subterranean refuge, escaped the conflagration. The fourth, Ecatonatiuh, is the Sun of destruction by winds; while the fifth is the Sun of Earthquakes, Famines, Wars, and Confusions, which will bring our present world to destruction. The author of the Spiegazione delle tavole del codice mexicano (Codex Vaticanus A)—not consistent with himself, for in his account of the infants' limbo he makes ours the third Sun—changes the order somewhat: first, the Sun of Water, which is also the Age of Giants; second, the Sun of Winds, ending with the transformation into apes; third, the Sun of Fire; fourth, the Sun of Famine, terminating with a rain of blood and the fall of Tollan. Four Suns passed, and a fifth Sun, leading forward to a fifth eventual destruction, seems, most authorities agree, to represent the orthodox Mexican myth; though versions like that of Ixtlilxochitl represent only three as past, while others, as Camargo's account of the Tlascaltec myth, make the present Sun the third in a total of four that are to be. Probably one cause of the confusion with respect to the order of the Suns is the double association of Quetzalcoatl—first, with the Sun of Winds, which he, as the Wind-God, would naturally acquire; and second, with the fall of Tollan and of the Toltec empire, for Quetzalcoatl, with respect to dynastic succession, is clearly the Toltec Zeus. The Sun of Winds is normally the second in the series; the fall of Tollan is generally associated with the end of the Sun last past: circumstances which may account for the shortened versions, for it seems little likely (judging from American analogies) that the notion of four Suns passed is not the most primitive version.

PLATE XIII.

Figures from Codex Vaticanus A representing cataclysms bringing to an end cosmic "Suns," or Ages of the World.

The upper figure represents the close of the Sun of Winds, ending with the transformation of men, save for an ancestral pair, into apes. The lower pictures the end of the Sun of Fire, whence only birds and a human pair in a subterranean retreat escaped.

Another myth confusedly associated now with the Sun of Waters, now with the Sun last past, is the story of the deluge. In the pattern conception (if it may so be termed) each Sun begins with the creation or appearance of a First Man and First Woman and ends with the salvation of a single human pair, all others being lost or transformed. The first Sun ends with a deluge and the metamorphosis of the First Men into fish; but a single pair escaped by being sealed up in a log or ark. In the Chimalpopoca (Quauhtitlan) version given by Brasseur de Bourbourg it is related that the waters had been tranquil for fifty-two years; then, on the first day of the Sun, there came such a flood as submerged even the mountains, and this endured for fifty-two years. Warned by Tezcatlipoca, however, a man named Nata, with Nena his wife, hollowed a log and entered therein; and the god closed the port, saying, "Thou shalt eat but a single ear of maize, and thy wife but a single ear also." When the waters subsided, they issued from their log, and seeing fish about, they built a fire to roast them. Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, beholding this from the heavens, said: "Divine Lord, what is this fire? Wherefore does this smoke cloud the sky?" Whereupon Tezcatlipoca descended in anger, crying, "What fire is this?" And he seized the fishes and transformed them into dogs. Certainly one would relish an elaboration of this tale; for it would seem that a theft of the fire must precede—perhaps a suffering Prometheus may have followed—the anger of the gods. In another version the Mexican Noah is named Coxcox, his wife bears the name of Xochiquetzal; and it is said that their children, born dumb, received their several forms of speech from the birds. Now Xochiquetzal is associated (doubtless as a festal goddess) with Tollan and the age in which she appears is the last of all, that in which Tollan is destroyed; whence the deluge is placed at the end of the fourth Sun.

To the same group of events—the passing of Tollan and the deluge—belong the stories of the building of the great pyramid of Cholula and the portents which accompanied it. It is said[54] that, reared by a chief named Xelua, who escaped the deluge, it was built so high that it appeared to reach heaven; and that they who reared it were content, "since it seemed to them that they had a place whence to escape from the deluge if it should happen again, and whence they might ascend into heaven"; but "a chalcuitl, which is a precious stone, fell thence [i.e. from the skies] and struck it to the ground; others say that the chalcuitl was in the shape of a toad; and that whilst destroying the tower it reprimanded them, inquiring of them their reason for wishing to ascend into heaven, since it was sufficient for them to see what was on the earth." It is worth while to remember that the hybristic scaling of heaven is no uncommon motive in American Indian myth, while the moral of the tale is honestly pagan—"mortal things are the behoof of mortals," saith Pindar; nor can we fail to see in the green jewel the jealous Earth-Titaness, for the toad is Earth's symbol.

The duration of the cosmic Suns is given various values by the recorders of the myths. These, no doubt, issued from variations in calendric computations; for the Mexicans not only possessed an elaborate calendar; they also used it, in its involved circles of returning signs, as the foundation for calculating the cycles of cosmic and of human history. It is essential, therefore, if the genius of Mexican myth be fully grasped, that the elements of its calendar be made clear.

III. THE CALENDAR AND ITS CYCLES[55]

The Mexican calendar is one of the most extraordinary inventions of human intelligence. Elsewhere the science of the calendar is a lore of sun, moon, and stars, and of their synodic periods; in the count of time astronomy is mistress, and number is but the handmaiden. In the Mexican system this relation is distinctly reversed: it is number that is dominant, and astronomy that is ancillary. One might, indeed, add that the number is geometric. It is common enough elsewhere to find the measures of space influencing the measures of time, but ordinarily they are the measures of celestial, not of terrestrial, space; and they are, therefore, moving, and not stationary, numbers. In the Mexican system the controlling numerical ideas appear to be the 4 (5) and the 6 (7) of the world-quarters—these in their duplicate forms, 9 (= 2 x 4 + 1) and 13 (= 2 x 6 + 1)—and all are under the domination of the four by five digits (two fives of fingers and two of toes) of their vigesimal system of counting. Man in the Middle Place of his cosmos; oriented to the rising Sun; four-square with the Quarters, which are duplicate in the Above and the Below; counting his natural days by his natural digits: this is the image which makes most plausible our explanations of the peculiarly earth-tethered calendar of the Mexicans, and, in consequence, of a cosmographical rather than an astrological conception of the Fates and Influences.

Not that the moving heavens were without computation: astronomy, though secondary, was indispensable.[56] The day, of course, is the creation of the journey of the sun; and the day, as a time-unit, plays in the Mexican count a part altogether commensurate in importance with that given to the sun in myth and ritual. The moon, though far less prominent in every respect, is still conspicuously figured. The morning star (far and wide a great deity of the American Indian nations) was second in significance only to the sun; indeed, one of the most extraordinary achievements of aboriginal American science was the identification of Phosphorus and Hesperus as the same star, and the computation of a Venus-period of five hundred and eighty-four days (the exact period being five hundred and eighty-three days and twenty-two hours). Comets and meteors were regarded as portents; the Milky Way was the skirt of Citlalicue, or was the white hair of Mixcoatl of the Zenith; and in the patterns of the stars were seen the figures that define the topography of the nocturnal heavens. Sahagun mentions three constellations, which he vaguely identifies with Gemini, Scorpio, and Ursa Minor; and in the chart of heavenly bodies, given with his Nahuatlan text, he figures two other stellar groups; while five is the number which Tezozomoc names as those for which the king elect must keep watch on the night of his vigil. Doubtless many other star-patterns were observed, but these five seem predominant. Stansbury Hagar, resolving what he regards as the Mexican Scorpio into Scorpio and Libra, would see in Sahagun's figures half of the zodiacal twelve; and in both Mexico and Peru he believes that he has identified a series of signs closely equivalent to that of the Old World zodiac. Another view (presented by Zelia Nuttall) conceives the Aztec constellations as forming a series of twenty, corresponding to the twenty day-signs employed in the calendar. A third interpretation, on the whole, accordant with the evidence, is that of Seler, who maintains that the five constellations named by Sahagun and Tezozomoc represent, instead of a zodiac, the four quarters and the zenith of the sky-world, and are, therefore, spatial rather than temporal guides. Seler identifies Mamalhuaztli, "the Fire-Sticks," with stars of the east, in or near Taurus. The Pleiades, rising in the same neighbourhood, he believes to have been the sign of the zenith; and at the beginning of a new cycle of fifty-two years the new fire was kindled when the Pleiades were in the zenith at midnight—the very hour, according to Tezozomoc, when the king rises to his vigil. Citlalachtli, "the Star Ball-Ground," is called "the North and its Wheel" by Tezozomoc, and must refer to the stars which revolve about the northern pole. Colotlixayac, "Scorpion-Face," marks the west; while Citlalxonecuilli—so named, Sahagun tells us, from its resemblance to S-shaped loaves of bread which were called xonecuilli—is clearly identified by Tezozomoc with the Southern Cross and adjacent stars. Thus it appears (granting Seler's interpretation) that the constellations served but to mark the pillars of this four-square world.

Essentially the Mexican calendar is an elaborate day-count. As with many other American peoples, the system of notation was vigesimal (probably developed from a quinary mode of counting), and the days were accordingly reckoned by twenties: twenty pictographs served as day-signs, endlessly repeated like the names of the days of the week. These twenty-day periods are commonly called "months" (following the usage of Spanish writers), though they have no relation to the moon and its phases; they are, however, like our months, used as measures of the primitive solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, the Aztec year comprising eighteen months (or sets of twenties) plus five nemontemi, or "Empty Days," regarded as unlucky. According to Sahagun, six nemontemi were counted every fourth year; if this were true (it is widely doubted), the Mexicans would have had a calendar which was Julian in effect. Like our months, each of the eighteen twenties of the solar year had its own name and its characteristic religious festivals; during the nemontemi there were neither feasts nor undertakings. The beginning of the solar year is placed by Sahagun on the first day of the month Atlcaualco—corresponding, he says, to February 2—the period of the cessation of rains, and the time of rites in honour of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. Some authorities, however, believe that the year really began with Toxcatl, corresponding to the earlier part of May, the period of the celebration of the great festival of Tezcatlipoca, when his personator was sacrificed and the next year's victim was chosen. The location of the nemontemi in the year is not certain.

From the fact that to the days of the year were assigned twenty endlessly repeating signs, and the further fact that the nemontemi were five in number (18 x 20 + 5 = 365), it follows that the first day of the year would always fall upon one of four signs; and these signs—Colli ("House"), Tochtli ("Rabbit"), Acatl ("Reed"), and Tecpatl ("Flint")—inevitably became emphasized in the imagination, not only with units of time, but also with the Quarters which divide the world.

But the designation of the days was not simply by the series of pictographic signs. An additional series was formed of the numbers one to thirteen, which, like the signs, were repeated over and over; so that each day had not only a sign, but also a number. Since only thirteen numerals were employed, it follows that if any given twenty days have the number one accompanying the sign of its first day, the sign of the first day of the ensuing twenty days will be accompanied by the number eight, the sign of the first day of the third twenty by two, and so on; not until the end of two hundred and sixty days (since thirteen is a prime number) will the same number recur with the initial sign. The representation of this period of thirteen by twenty days, in which the cycles of numerals and pictographs passed from an initial correspondence to its first recurrence, was called by the Aztec the Tonalamatl, or "Book of Good and Bad Days"—a set of signs employed for divination as the name implies. Since the Tonalamatl represents only two hundred and sixty days, it follows that the last one hundred and fifteen days of the year will have the same signs and numerals as the first one hundred and fifteen. For this reason De Jonghe and some others believe that a third set of day-signs was employed—the nine Lords of the Night, which (since two hundred and sixty is not evenly divisible by nine) would suffice to differentiate the days throughout the year. Seler, however maintains that he has disproved this theory; if so, there would still be the possibility of differentiating the days of the second Tonalamatl from those of the first by employing the sign of that one of the eighteen "months" in which the day fell.

PLATE XIV.

The Aztec "Calendar Stone," one of the two monuments (see Plate [V] for the other) found beneath the pavement of the plaza of the city of Mexico in 1790. The outer band of decoration is formed of two "Fire Snakes" (cf. Plates [VII] 3 and [XXI]), each with a human head in its mouth; between the tips of the serpents' tails is a glyph giving the date, 13 Acatl, of the historical Sun, that is, the beginning of the present Age of the World. A decorative band formed of the twenty day signs surrounds the central figure, which consists of a Sun-face, with the glyph 4 Olin; while in the four adjacent compartments are the names of the eras of the four earlier "Suns." Sun rays, with other figures, appear in the spaces between the inner and outer decorative bands. Below is given a key (after Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, page 74).

In addition to the Tonalamatl, there is another consequence of the double designation of the days. Each year, it has been noted, begins with one of four day-signs. But three hundred and sixty-five is indivisible, evenly, by thirteen; therefore, the day-signs and numerals for succeeding years must vary, the day-signs recurring in the same order every four years, and the numerals in the same order every thirteen years (since 365 = 13 x 28 + 1), while not until there has elapsed four times thirteen years will the same day-sign and the same numeral occur on the first day of the year. These divisions of the years into groups, determined by their signs and numbers, were of great significance to the Mexican peoples. The sign which began each group of thirteen years was regarded as dominant during that period, and as each of these signs was dedicated to one of the four Quarters, it is to be supposed that the powers of the ruling sign determined the fortunes of the period. The cycle was complete when, at the end of fifty-two years, the same sign and number recurred as the emblem of the year. Such an epoch was the occasion for prognostics and dread anticipations, and it was celebrated with a special feast at which all fires were extinguished and a new flame was kindled on the breast of a sacrificial victim. This festival was called "the Knot of the Years," and in Aztec pictography past periods were represented by bundles, each signifying such a cycle of fifty-two years.

It will be noted that the fifty-two year cycle is also the period for the recurring coincidence of the day-signs and numerals in the year and in the Tonalamatl (for, 365 factoring 73 x 5, and 260 factoring 52 x 5, it follows that 52 years will equal 73 Tonalamatls). It is, therefore, the more extraordinary that in the usual mode of figuring the Tonalamatl it is begun, not with one of the four signs which name the years and their cycles, but with another day-sign, Cipactli ("Crocodile"). The plausible explanation of this is that since the Crocodile was the monster from which Earth was formed by the creative gods, the divinatory period was inaugurated under his sign.

The origin of so peculiar a reckoning as the Tonalamatl is one of the puzzles of Americanist studies. Effort has been made to connect it with lunar movements, but no astronomical period corresponds with it. Again, it has been pointed out that the two hundred and sixty days of the Tonalamatl approximate the period of gestation, and in view of its use, for divinations and horoscopic forecasts, this is not impossible as an explanation of its origin. The obvious fact that it expresses the cycle of coincidence of the twenty day-signs and thirteen numerals only carries the puzzle back to the origination of the numeration, with its anomalous thirteen—for which, as a significant number, no more satisfactory astronomical reason has been suggested than León y Gama's, that it represents half of the period of the moon's visibility. In myth the invention of the Tonalamatl is ascribed to Cipactonal and Oxomoco (in whom Señor Robelo sees the personification of Day and Night), and again to Quetzalcoatl. At his immolation the heart of Quetzalcoatl, it will be recalled, flew upward to become the Morning Star, and in special degree the god is associated with this star. "They said that Quetzalcoatl died when the star became visible, and henceforward they called him Tlauizcalpantecutli, 'Lord of the Dawn.' They said that when he died he was invisible for four days; they said he wandered in the underworld, and for four days more he was bone. Not until eight days were past did the great star appear. Quetzalcoatl then ascended the throne as god." One of the early writers, Ramon y Zamora, states that the Tonalamatl was determined by the Mexicans as the period during which Venus is visible as the evening star; and Förstemann discovered representations of the Venus-year of five hundred and eighty-four days divided into periods of ninety, two hundred and fifty, eight, and two hundred and thirty-six days, which he estimated to represent respectively the period of Venus's invisibility during superior conjunction (ninety days), of its visibility as evening star (two hundred and fifty days), of its invisibility during inferior conjunction (eight days), and of its visibility as morning star (two hundred and thirty-six days). The near correspondence of the period of two hundred and fifty days with the Tonalamatl, coupled with the identity of the eight days' invisibility with the period of Quetzalcoatl's wandering and lying dead in the underworld, which was followed by his ascension to the throne of the eastern heaven, as related in the myth, give plausibility to the traditions which associate the formation of the Tonalamatl with the Venus-period. Seler suggests—and this is perhaps the best explanation yet offered—that the Tonalamatl is the product of an indirect association of the solar year (three hundred and sixty-five days) and of the Venus-period (five hundred and eighty-four days), for the least common multiple of the numbers of days in these two periods is twenty-nine hundred and twenty days, equal to eight solar years and five Venus years; in associating the two, he says, the inventors of the calendar lighted upon the number thirteen (8 + 5), and hence upon the Tonalamatl of two hundred and sixty days. If this be the case, the belief in thirteen heavens and thirteen hours of the day would be derivative from temporal rather than spatial observations, from astronomy rather than cosmography. A somewhat analogous association might be offered in connexion with the nine of the heavens and the nine of the hours of the night; for just as there are four signs that always recur as the designations of the solar years, so for the Venus-period there are five (since five hundred and eighty-four divided by twenty leaves four as divisor of the signs), and the sum of these is nine.

The signs which inaugurate the Venus periods are Cipactli ("Crocodile"), Coatl ("Snake"), Atl ("Water"), Acatl ("Reed"), and Olin ("Motion"). But here again the numerals enter in to complicate the series, so that while the day-signs which inaugurate the Venus-periods recur in groups of five, they do not recur with the same numeral until the lapse of thirteen times five periods. This great cycle of Venus-days, comprising sixty-five repetitions of the apparent course of the planet, is also a common multiple of the solar year and of the Tonalamatl, comprising one hundred and four of the former and one hundred and forty-six of the latter. Thus it was that at the end of one hundred and four years of three hundred and sixty-five days the same sign and number-series recurred in the three great units of the Aztec calendar. When it is remembered that prognostics were to be drawn not merely from the complex relations of the signs to their place in each of the three time-units, with their respective elaborations into cycles; but from their further relations with the regions of the upper and lower worlds, and also from the numerals, which had good and evil values of their own, it will be seen that the Mexican priests were in possession of a fount of craft not second to that of the astrologers of the Old World.

That so complex a system could easily give rise to error is evident, and it is probable that, as tradition asserts, from time to time corrections were made, serving as the inauguration of new "Suns" or as new "inventions" of time. It may even be that the "Suns" of the cosmogonic myths are reminiscences of calendric corrections, and it is at least a striking coincidence that the traditions of these "Suns" make them four in number, like the year-signs, or five in number, like the Venus-signs. The latter series, too, is distinctly cosmogonic in symbolism—Crocodile suggests the creation from a fish-like monster; Snake, the falling heavens; Water, the "Water-Sun" and the deluge; Reed (the fire-maker), the Sun of Fire; Motion, the Sun of Wind, or perhaps the Earthquake. But whatever be the value of these symbolisms, it is certain that the Mexicans themselves associated perilous times and cataclysmic changes with the rounding out of their cycles.

IV. LEGENDARY HISTORY

The cosmogonic and calendric cycles (intimately associated) profoundly influenced the Mexican conception of history. Orderly arrangement of time is as essential to an advancing civilization as the ordering of space, and it is natural for the human imagination to form all of its temporal conceptions into a single dramatic unity—a World Drama, with its Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Judgement; or a Cosmic Evolution from Nebula to Solar System, and Solar System to Nebula. In the making, such cosmic dramas start from these roots: (1) Cosmogony and Theogony, for which there is no simpler image in nature than the creation of the Life of Day from the Chaos of Night at the command of the Lord of Light; (2) "Great Years," or calendric cycles, formed by calculations of the synodic periods of sun and moon and wandering stars, or, as in the curious American instance, mainly from simple day-counts influenced by a complex symbolism of numbers and by an awkward notation; (3) the recession of history, back through the period of record to that of racial reminiscence and of demigod founders and culture-heroes. Of these three elements, the first and third constitute the material, while the second becomes the form-giver—the measure of the duration of the acts and scenes of the drama, as it were—adding, however, on the material side, the portents and omens imaged in the stars.

The Mexican system of cosmic Suns is a capital example of the first element—each Sun introducing a creation or restoration, and each followed by an elemental destruction, while all are meted out in formal cycles. It is no matter for wonder that there are varying versions of the order and number of the cosmogonic cycles, nor that a nebulous and legendary history is varyingly fitted into the cyclic plan; for each political state and cultural centre tended to develop its own stories in connexion with its own records and traditions. Nevertheless, there is a broad scheme of historic events common to all the more advanced Nahuatlan peoples, the uniformity of which somewhat argues for its truly historic foundation. This is the legend which assigns to the plateau of Anahuac three successive dominations, that of the Toltec, that of the Chichimec nations, and that of the Aztec and their allies. Although the remote Toltec period is clouded in myth, archaeology tends to support the truth of the tales of legendary Tollan, at least to the extent of identifying the site of a city which for a long period had been the centre of a power that was, by Mexican standards, to be accounted civilized.

The general characters of Toltec civilization, as tradition shows it, are those recorded by Sahagun.[57] The Toltec were clever workmen in metals, pottery, jewellery, and fabrics, indeed, in all the industrial arts. They were notable builders, adorning the walls of their structures with skilful mosaic. They were magicians, astrologers, medicine-men, musicians, priests, inventors of writing, and creators of the calendar. They were mannerly men, and virtuous, and lying was unknown among them. But they were not warlike—and this was to be their ruin.

PLATE XV.

The temple of Xochicalco, partially restored. The relief band, of which a section is given for detail, shows a serpent; a human figure, doubtless a deity, is seated beneath one of the great coils. After photographs in the Peabody Museum.

Their principal deity was Quetzalcoatl, and his chief priest bore the same name. The temple of the god was the greatest work of their hands. It was composed of four chambers: that to the east, of gold; that to the west, encrusted with turquoise and emerald; that to the south, with sea-shells and silver; that to the north, with reddish jasper and shell. In another similar shrine, plumage of the several colours adorned the four apartments. The explicator of Codex Vaticanus A says that Quetzalcoatl was the inventor of round temples (it is possible that the rotundity of his shrines was due to the presumption that the wind does not love corners), and that he founded four; in the first princes and nobles fasted; the second was frequented by the lower classes; the third was "the House of the Serpent," and here it was unlawful to lift the eyes from the ground; the fourth was "the Temple of Shame," where were sent sinners and men of immoral life. Details such as these—obviously referring to familiar features of American Indian ritual—as well as the numerous myths that narrate the departure of Quetzalcoatl for the mysterious Tlapallan, followed by a great part of the Toltec population, clearly belong in the realm of fancy, shimmeringly veiling historic facts. Thus, when Ixtlilxochitl states that the reign of each Toltec king was just fifty-two years, we see simply a statement which identifies calendric with political periods; yet when he goes on with the qualification that those kings who died under such a period were replaced by regents until a new cycle could begin with the election of a new king, and when he specifically notes that, as exceptions, Ilacomihua reigned fifty-nine years, and Xiuhquentzin, his queen, four years after him, we are in the presence of a tradition which looks much more like history than myth—for there is no mythic reason that satisfies this shift. Fact, too, should underlie Sahagun's naïve remark that the Toltec were expert in the Mexican tongue, although they did not speak it with the perfection of his day, and again that communities which spoke a pure Nahua were composed of descendants of Toltecs who remained in the land when Quetzalcoatl departed—for behind such notions should lie a story of linguistic supersession.

Such, indeed, appears to have been the course of events. The date of the founding of Tollan, according to the Annals of Quauhtitlan, is, computed in our era, 752 a. d. Ixtlilxochitl puts the beginning of the Toltec kingship as early as 510 a. d.; and the end he sets in the year 959, when the last Toltec king, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, was overthrown and departed, none knew whither. It is a plausible hypothesis which assumes the historicity of this event and which accounts for the myths of the departure of Quetzalcoatl, the god, as due in part to a confusion of the permutations of a nature deity with the gesta of an earthly hero—a process exemplified in the Old World in the tales of King Arthur, Celtic god and British hero-king. It is certain that from an early date the civilization of the Mexican plateau was racially akin to that of the Maya in the south; it is not improbable that the Toltec represent an ancient northern extension of Maya power (the oldest stratum at Tollan shows Huastec influences, and the Huastec are of Maya kin); and, finally, when the political overthrow of the Toltec was accomplished, and their leaders fled away to Tlapallan, to the south-east, the northern barbarians who had replaced them gradually learned the lesson of civilization from the sporadic groups which remained in various centres after the capital had fallen—Cholula, Cuernavaca, and Teotihuacan, cities which were to figure in Nahuatlan lore as the centres of priestly learning. Such an hypothesis would account for Sahagun's statement that the Toltec spoke Nahua imperfectly, for those who remained would have changed to this language; while what may well be an historical incident of the period of change is Ixtlilxochitl's account of the reply of the Toltec king of Colhuacan to the invading Chichimec, refusing to pay tribute, for "they held the country from their ancestors, to whom it belonged, and they had never obeyed or payed tribute to any foreign lord ... nor recognized other master than the Sun and their gods." However, less able in arms than the invaders, they fell to no great force.

The Chichimec, according to the prevailing accounts, were a congeries of wild hunting tribes, cave-dwellers by preference, who vaguely and imperfectly absorbed the culture that had preceded them in the Valley of Mexico. Ixtlilxochitl has it that, under the leadership of a chief named after the celestial dog Xolotl, they entered the Toltec domain a few years after the fall of Tollan, peaceably possessing themselves of an almost deserted land. They were soon followed by related tribes, among whom the most important were the Acolhua, founders of Tezcuco; while later came the Mexicans, or Aztec, who wandered obscurely from place to place before they finally established the town which was to be the capital of their empire. For several centuries, as the chronicler pictures it, these related peoples warred and quarrelled turbulently, owning the shadowy suzerainty of "emperors" whose power waxed or waned with their personal force—altogether such a picture as is presented by Mediaeval Europe after the recession of the Roman Empire before the incursive barbarians. Gradually, however, just as in Europe, the seed of the elder civilization took root, and the culture which the Spaniards discovered grew and consolidated.

Its leaders were not the Aztec, but the related Acolhua, whose capital, Tezcuco, became the Athens of an empire of which Tenochtitlan was to be the Rome; and the great age of Tezcuco came with King Nezahualcoyotl, less than a century before the appearance of Cortez. Cautious writers point to the resemblances between the career and character of this monarch as pictured by Ixtlilxochitl, and that of the Scriptural David: both, in their youth, are hunted and persecuted by a jealous king, and are forced into exile and outlawry; both triumphantly overthrow their enemies and inaugurate reigns of splendour, erecting temples, cultivating the arts, and reforming the state; both are singers and psalmists, and prophets of a purified monotheism; both assent to the execution of an eldest son and heir because of palace intrigue; and, finally, both, in the hour of temptation, cause an honoured thane to be treacherously slain in order that they may possess themselves of a woman who has captivated their fancy. In each case, too, the queen dishonourably won becomes the mother of a successor whose reign is followed by a decline of power, for Nezahualpilli was the last of the great Tezcucan kings. Certainly the parallels are striking and the chronicler may well have been influenced by Biblical analogy in the form which he gives his stories; but it is surely not unfair to remark that such repetitions of event are to be expected in a world whose possibilities are, after all, limited in number; that, for example, a whole series of similarities can be drawn between Inca and Aztec history (where there is no suspicion of influence), and that there are not a few striking likenesses of the characters of Nezahualcoyotl and Huayna Capac, to both of whom is ascribed an enlightened monotheism. Various fragments of Nezahualcoyotl's poems—or such as bear his name—have survived, among them a lament which has the very tone of the Aztec prayers preserved by Sahagun, and which, indeed, breathes the whole world-weary dolour of Nahuatlan religion.[58]

"Hearken to the lamentations of Nezahualcoyotl, communing with himself upon the fate of Empire—spoken as an example to others!

"O king, inquiet and insecure, when thou art dead, thy vassals shall be destroyed, scattered in dark confusion; on that day rulership will no longer be in thy hand, but with God the Creator, All-Powerful.

"Who hath beheld the palace and court of the king of old, Tezozomoc, how flourishing was his power and firm his tyranny, now overthrown and destroyed—will he think to escape? Mockery and deceit is this world's gift, wherefore let all be consumed!

"Dismal it is to contemplate the prosperity enjoyed by this king, even to his senility, like an old willow, animated by desire and by ambition, uplifting himself above the weak and humble. Long time did the green and the flowers offer themselves in the fields of springtime, but at last, worm-eaten and dried, the wind of death seized him, uprooted him, and scattered him in fragments on Earth's soil. So, also, the olden king Cozastli passed onward, leaving neither house nor lineage to preserve his memory.

"With such reflections, with melancholy song, I bring again the memory of the flowery springtime gone, and of the end of Tezozomoc who so long knew its joys. Who, harkening, shall withhold his tears? Abundance of riches and varied pleasures, are they not like culled flowers, passed from hand to hand, and at the end cast forth stripped and withered?

"Sons of kings, sons of great lords, give heed and consideration to what is made manifest in my sad and lamenting song, as I relate how passed the flowery springtime and the end of the powerful king Tezozomoc! Ah, who, harkening, will be hard enough to restrain his tears—for all these varied flowers, these pleasures sweet, wither and end with this passing life!

"Today we possess the abundance and beauty of the blossoming summer, and harken to the melody of birds, where the butterflies sip sweet nectar from fragrant petals. But all is like culled flowers, that pass from hand to hand, and at the end are cast forth, stripped and withered!"

V. AZTEC MIGRATION-MYTHS[59]

Common tradition makes of the Aztec, or Mexica, late comers into the central valley, although they are regarded as belonging to the general movement of tribes known as the Chichimec immigration. Apparently they entered obscurely in the wake of kindred groups, perhaps in the middle of the eleventh century; wandered from place to place for a period; and finally settled on the swampy islands of Lake Tezcuco, founding Tenochtitlan, or Mexico, which eventually became the capital of empire. The founding of the city is variously dated—one group of references placing it at or near 1140, and another assigning dates from 1321 to 1327, variations which may refer to an earlier and later occupation by different or related tribal groups. The Aztec formed a league with their kindred neighbours, the Tecpanec of Tlacopan and the Acolhua of Tezcuco, in which their own rôle was a secondary one, until finally, under Axayacatl, Tizoc, and Ahuitzotl, the immediate predecessors of the last Montezuma (whose name is variously rendered Moteuhçoma, Moteczuma, Moteçuma, Motecuhzoma, etc.), they rose to undisputed supremacy. This, however, was in war and politics, for Tezcuco, previous to the Conquest, was still the seat of Mexican learning.

Many of the Nahuatlan peoples retained mythic reminiscences of the period and course of their migrations; but of the narratives which remain hardly two are in accord, although most of them mention the "House of Seven Caves" (Chicomoztoc) as a place of dispersal. Back of this several of the narratives go, giving details of which the purely mythic character is evident, for the leaders named are gods and eponymous sires, while tribes of utterly unrelated stocks are given a common source. Thus, according to Mendieta's account,[60] at Chicomoztoc dwelt Iztacmixcoatl ("the White Cloud-Serpent") and his wife Ilancue ("the Old Woman"), from whom were sprung the ancestors—"as from the sons of Noah"—of the leading nations of Mexico, excepting that the Toltec were descended from Ixtacmixcoatl by a second wife, Chimalmatl (or Chimalma), who is named as mother of Quetzalcoatl, and who is represented elsewhere as the priestess or ancestress of the Aztec in their fabled first home, Aztlan.

Sahagun[61] gives a version starting with the landing of the ancestral Mexicans at Panotlan ("Place of Arrival by Sea"), whence he says that they proceeded to Guatemala, and thence, guided by a priest, to Tamoanchan, where the Amoxoaque, or wise men, left them, departing toward the east with their ritual manuscripts and promising to return at the end of the world. Only four of the learned ones remained with the colonists—Oxomoco, Cipactonal, Tlaltetecuin, and Xochicauaca—and it was they who invented the calendar and its interpretation in order that men might have a guide for their conduct. From Tamoanchan the colonists went to Teotihuacan, where they made sacrifices and erected pyramids in honour of the Sun and of the Moon. Here also they elected their first kings, and here they buried them, regarding them as gods and saying of them, not that they had died, but that they had just awakened from a dream called life. "Hence the ancients were in the habit of saying that when men die, they in reality began to live," addressing them: "Lord (or Lady), awake! the day is coming! Already the first light of dawn appears! The song of the yellow-plumed birds is heard, and the many-coloured butterflies are taking wing!" Even at Tamoanchan a dispersal of the tribes had begun: the Olmac and the Huastec had departed toward the east, and from them had come the invention of the intoxicating drink, pulque, and (apparently as a result of this) the power of creating magical illusions; for they could make a house seem to be in flames when nothing of the sort was taking place, they could show fish in empty waters, and they could even make it appear that they had cut their own bodies into morsels. But the peoples associated with the Mexicans departed from Teotihuacan. First went the Toltec, then the Otomi, who settled in Coatepec, and last the Nahua; they traversed the deserts, seeking a home, each tribe guided by its own gods. Worn by pains and famines, they at length came to the Place of Seven Caves, where they celebrated their respective rites. The Toltec were the first to go forth, finally settling at Tollan. The people of Michoacan departed next, to be followed by the Tepanec, Acolhua, Tlascaltec, and other Nahuatlan tribes, and last of all by the Aztec, or Mexicans proper, who, led by their god, came to Colhuacan. Even here they were not allowed to rest, but were compelled to resume their wanderings, and, passing from place to place—"all designated by their names in the ancient paintings which form the annals of this people"—finally they came again to Colhuacan, and thence to the neighbouring island where Tenochtitlan was founded.

PLATE XVI.

Section, comprising about one third, of the "Map Tlotzin," after Aubin, Mémoires sur la peinture didactique (Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale), Plate I. The map is described by Boturini as a "map on prepared skin representing the genealogy of the Chichimec emperors from Tlotzin to the last king, Don Fernando Cortès Ixtilxochitzin." Two of the six "caves," or ancestral abodes of the Chichimec, shown on the whole map, are here represented. At the right, marked by a bat in the ceiling, is Tzinacanoztoc, "the Cave of the Bat"; below it, in Nahuatl, being the inscription, "Tzinacanoztoc, here was born Ixtilxochitzin." The second cave shown is Quauhyacac, "At the End of the Trees"; and here are shown a group of ancestral Chichimec chieftains, whose wanderings are indicated in the figures below. The Nahuatlan text below the figure of the cave is translated: "All came to establish themselves there at Quauhyacoc, where they were yet all together. Thence departed Amacui; with his wife he went to Colhuatlican. Thence again departed Nopal; he went with his wife to Huexotla. Thence again departed Tlotli; he went with his wife to Oztoticpac."

Of the "ancient paintings," mentioned by Sahagun, several are preserved,[62] portraying the journey of the Aztec from Aztlan, their mythical fatherland, which is represented and described as located beyond the waters, or as surrounded by waters; and the first stage of the migration is said to have been made by boat. For this reason numerous speculations as to its locality have placed it overseas—in Asia or on the North-west Coast of America—although the more conservative opinion follows Seler, who holds that it represents simply an island shrine or temple-centre of the national god, and hence a focus of national organization rather than of tribal origin. According to the Codex Boturini (one of the migration picture-records), as interpreted by Seler and others, after leaving Aztlan, represented as an island upon which stood the shrine of Huitzilopochtli in care of the tribal ancestor and his wife Chimalma, the Aztec landed at Colhuacan (or Teocolhuacan, i. e. "the divine Colhuacan"), where they united with eight related tribes, the Uexotzinca, Chalca, Xochimilca, Cuitlauaca, Malinalca, Chichimeca, Tepaneca, and Matlatzinca, who are said to have had their origin in a cavern of a crook-peaked mountain. From Colhuacan, led by a priestess and four priests, they journeyed to a place (represented in the codex by a broken tree) which Seler identifies as Tamoanchan, or "the House of Descent," and which is also the "House of Birth," for it is here that souls are sent from the thirteenth heaven to be born. Thence, after a sojourn of five years, the Aztec, perhaps urged on by some portent of which the broken tree is a symbol, took their departure alone, leaving their kindred tribes; and guided by Huitzilopochtli, they came to the land of melon-cacti and mesquite, where the god gave them bow and arrows and a snare. This land they called Mimixcoua ("Land of the Cloud-Serpent"); and it was here that they changed their name, for the first time calling themselves "Mexica"—an appellation which Sahagun describes as formed from that of a chieftain, who was also an inspired priest, ruling over the nation while they were in the land of the Chichimec, and whose cradle, it was said, was a maguey plant, whence he was called Mexicatl ("Mescal Hare"). Perhaps this is the incident represented in the curious picture which shows human beings clad in skins and with ceremonial face-paintings, recumbent upon desert plants; and no doubt it signifies some important change in cult, such, perhaps, as the introduction of the mescal intoxication, with its attendant visions. It may, too, portray the institution of human sacrifice; for the next station indicated on the chart, Cuextecatlichocayan ("Where the Huastec Weep"), was the scene of the offering of the Huastec captives by arrow-slaying (see p. [79], supra). From this place the journey led to Coatlicamac ("In the Jaws of the Serpent"), where the people "tied the years" and kindled the new fire; and from Coatlicamac they made their way to Tollan, with the reaching of which the first stage of the migration-story may be said to end. Seler regards the whole as a myth of the world-quarters: Tamoanchan is the West, as in the Books of Fate; Mimixcoua is the North; Cuextecatlichocayan is the East, as the reference to the Huastec shows; and Coatlicamac is the South; finally, Tollan is the Middle Place, being regarded, like other sacred cities, as the navel of the world.

A second stage of the myth depicts the journey of the Aztec from Tollan, through many stops, back to Colhuacan, until at last they came to the site of Tenochtitlan. It is said that as the tribes halted by the waters of Tezcuco they beheld a great eagle perched on a cactus growing from a wave-washed rock; and while they gazed the bird ascended to the rising sun with a serpent in his talons. This was regarded as a divine augury, and here Tenochtitlan was founded. Such is the tradition which gives modern Mexico its national emblem. The places of sojourn between Tollan and Tenochtitlan, as represented in the writings, are all with fair certainty identified with towns or sites in the Valley of Mexico, so that here we are in the realm of history rather than of myth. Historic also are the names (and approximate dates) of the nine lords or emperors who ruled from the Mexican capital before the coming of the Spaniards brought the native power to its unhappy end.

The fifth of the Aztec monarchs was the first Montezuma. Of him it is told (the story is recorded by Fray Diego Durán)[63] that after he had extended his realm and consolidated his rule, he decided to send an embassy to the home of his fathers, especially since he had heard that the mother of Huitzilopochtli was still living there. He summoned his counsellor Tlacaelel, who brought before him an aged man learned in the nation's history. "The place you name," said the old man, "is called Aztlan ['White'], and near it, in the midst of the water, is a mountain called Culhuacan ['Crooked Hill']. In its caverns our fathers dwelt for many years, much at their ease, and they were known as Mexitin and Azteca. They had quantities of duck, heron, cormorants, and other waterfowl, while birds of red and of yellow plumage diverted them with song. They had fine large fish; handsome trees lined the shores; and the streams flowed through meadows under the cypress and alder. In canoes they fared upon the waters, and they had floating gardens bearing maize, chile, tomatoes, beans, and all the vegetables which we now eat and which we have brought thence. But after they left this island and set foot on land, all this was changed: the herbs pricked them, the stones wounded, and the fields were full of thistle and of thorn. Snakes and venomous vermin swarmed everywhere, while all about were lions and tigers and other dangerous and hurtful beasts. So is it written in my books." Then the king dispatched his messengers with gifts for the mother of Huitzilopochtli. They came first to Coatepec, near Tollan, and there called upon their demons (for they were magicians) to guide them; and thus they reached Culhuacan, the mountain in the sea, where they beheld the fisherfolk and the floating gardens. The people of the land, finding that the foreigners spoke their tongue, asked what god they worshipped, and when told that it was Huitzilopochtli and that they were come with a present for Coatlicue, his mother, if she yet lived, they conducted the strangers to the steward of the god's mother. When they had delivered their message, stating their mission from the King and his counsellor, the steward answered: "Who is this Montezuma and who is Tlacaelel? Those who went from here bore no such names; they were called Teçacatetl, Acacitli, Oçelopan, Ahatl, Xomimitl, Auexotl, Uicton, Tenoch, chieftains of the tribes, and with them were the four guardians of Huitzilopochtli." The messengers answered: "Sir, we own that we do not know these lords, nor have we seen them, for all are long dead." "Who, then, killed them? We who are left here are all yet living. Who, then, are they who live to-day?" The messengers told of the old man who retained the record of the journey, and they asked to be taken before the mother of the god to discharge their duty. The old man, who was the steward of Coatlicue, led them forward; but the mountain, as they ascended, was like a pile of loose sand, in which they sank. "What makes you so heavy?" asked the guide, who moved lightly on the surface; and they answered, "We eat meat and drink cocoa." "It is this meat and drink," said the elder, "that prevent you from reaching the place where your fathers dwelt; it is this that has brought death among you. We know naught of these, naught of the luxury that drags you down; with us all is simple and meagre." Thereupon he took them up, and swift as wind brought them into the presence of Coatlicue. The goddess was foul and frightful to behold, and like one near death, for she was in mourning for her son's departure; but when she heard the message and beheld the rich gifts, she sent word to her son, reminding him of the prophecy that he had made at the time of his going forth: how he should lead the seven tribes into the lands they were to possess, making war and reducing cities and nations to his service; and how at last he should be overthrown, even as he had overthrown others, and his weapons cast to earth. "Then, O mother mine, my time will be accomplished, and I will return fleeing to thy lap, but until then I shall know naught save pain. Therefore give me two pairs of sandals, one for going forth and one for returning, and four pairs of sandals, two pair for going forth and two for returning." "When he thinks on these words," continued the goddess, "and remembers that his mother yearns after him, bring to him this mantle of nequen and this breechband." With these gifts she dismissed the messengers; and as they descended, the steward of Coatlicue explained how the people of Aztlan kept their youth, for when they grew old, they climbed the mountain, and the climbing renewed their years. So the messengers returned, by the way they had come, to King Montezuma.

VI. SURVIVING PAGANISM

In 1502 Montezuma Xocoyotzin ("Montezuma the Young") was elected Emperor of Mexico, assuming a pomp and pride unknown to his predecessors. Five years later, in 1507, the Aztec "tied the years" and for the last time kindled the new fire on the breast of a noble captive. Ominous portents began to appear with the new cycle, and the chronicles abounded with imaginations of disaster.[64] The temple turret of the war-god was burned; another shrine was destroyed by fire from heaven, thunderlessly fallen in the midst of rain; a tree-headed comet was seen; Lake Tezcuco overflowed its banks for no cause; a rock which the King had ordered made into a sacrificial altar refused to be moved, saying to the workmen that the Lord of Creation would not suffer it; twins and monsters were born, and there were nightly cries, as of women in travail—

"Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New-hatched to the woeful time."

Fishermen caught a strange bird with a crystal in its head, and in the crystal, as in a mirror, Montezuma beheld unheard-of warriors, armed and slaying. Most terrible of all, a huge pyramid of fire appeared in the east, night after night, coruscating with points of brilliance. In his terror Montezuma summoned old Nezahualpilli of Tezcuco, noted as an astrologer, to interpret the sign; and this King, whose star was in the decline, took perhaps a grim satisfaction in reading from the portents the early overthrow of the empire. Montezuma, it is said, put the interpretation to test, challenging Nezahualpilli to the divinatory game of tlachtli; but just on the point of winning, the monarch lost and returned discomfited. Another tale, doubtless apocryphal, tells how Papantzin, sister of Montezuma, died and was buried; shortly afterward she was found sitting by a fountain in the palace garden, and when the lords were assembled in her presence, she told how a winged youth had taken her to the banks of a river, beside which she saw the bones of dead men and heard their groans, while upon the waters were strange craft, manned by fair and bearded warriors coming to possess the kingdom. Certain it is, at least, that the hearts of all men regarded the return of Quetzalcoatl as near—the oppressed looking with hope, the powerful with dread, to the coming of the god—and the vestments of the deity were among the first gifts with which the unhappy Mexican sought to win the favour of Cortez.