Quetzalcoatl and the Toltec Era.
The chronology of the Toltecs and their successors is greatly dilated in several historical compilations made after the Spanish conquest by intelligent natives who interpreted fragments of ancient pictographic year counts then surviving in Mexico. Thanks to a modern survey of materials much more extensive than those which Chimalpahin, Ixtlilxochitl, etc., had at their disposal, we are now able to avoid the errors of these writers.
In the original pre-Spanish chronicles important events are recorded in connection with fifty-two year signs falling in regular order and then repeating. In the well-intentioned attempts to restore Mexican history entire cycles are interpolated in several places and the rulers are given lives of impossible length. In the case of Ixtlilxochitl we possess, fortunately, the principal documents which this descendant of the Texcocan kings attempted to interpret. Also in the case of the Annals of Quauhtitlan, an early compilation made by a nameless student of ancient history, we are in position to adjudicate wide errors in chronology. There is an annotation on this manuscript reading “6 times 4 centuries, plus 1 century, plus 13 years, today the 22nd of May 1558.” The “centuries” are the native cycles of fifty-two years and the total on this basis would amount to 1313 years. Subtracted from 1558 the beginning would be found in 245 A. D., while the years set down by the compiler in an unbroken series reach back to 635 A. D. But there is no pre-Spanish support for written history, outside the Mayan area, of anything like this antiquity.
The Toltec Era was established by Quetzalcoatl, after a simplified model of the Mayan calendar, on August 6, 1168 A. D., this date corresponding to a day 1 Tecpatl (1 Flint) in the first position of a month Toxcatl. This day gave its name to the entire year and its hieroglyph was one of a series of fifty-two used to designate years in the pictographic records. Most of the Mexican year counts begin with the particular sign 1 Tecpatl which corresponds to 1168-69 A. D. In others there is reference to a day 7 Acatl 1 Panquetzaliztli in a year 2 Acatl (February 16, 1195 A. D.) upon which a new fire ceremony, established by Quetzalcoatl in accordance with Mayan usage, was celebrated at intervals of fifty-two years.
The conclusions are supported by evidence in Guatemalan chronicles and also in records of the Mayas for we have already seen that Quetzalcoatl conquered Chichen Itza in 1191 A. D. The three great Toltec emperors, Huetzin, Ihuitimal, and Quetzalcoatl, swept over an area extending from Durango to Nicaragua, the three seats of their government being Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, Chichen Itza in Yucatan, and Iximché in Guatemala.
Quetzalcoatl probably spent his youth in Yucatan, returning to his highland home with strange religious and social ideas. His opposition to the Toltec idea of human sacrifice was followed by a war of cults. Quetzalcoatl began the construction at Tula with serpent columns like those of his lofty temple in Chichen Itza. Also he appears to have founded Cholula as a special center for his humane religion. His death occurred in connection with a prognostication in the Venus calendar of the Mayas, for the year 1 Acatl, 1207-08 A. D.
Quetzalcoatl, perhaps the most remarkable figure in ancient American history, was emperor, artist, scientist, and humanist philosopher. He established orders of knighthood as well as the coronation ceremony used by the later Mexican kings. He developed the various industrial arts and built up a wide trade in cotton, cacao, and other products. As a patron of the peripatetic merchant he appears under the name Nacxitl, which means Four-way Foot. Apotheosis being an idea strongly fixed among the Toltecs, Quetzalcoatl was deified as Ehecatl, God of Winds, on account of his support of the Mayan god of rainstorms, and for his astronomical work he was further deified as God of the Planet Venus.
[Plate XXXII.]
The Temple at Xochicalco before Restoration. The lower part of the picture shows the sculptured base of the temple pyramid. The walls of the temple itself are seen above.