I
Out of the seven Caverns he sprung (was born).
II
Out of the land of the prickly plant he sprung.
III
I came down (was born)
I came down
With my spear made of the prickly plant
I came down
I came down
With my spear of the prickly plant.
IV
I came down
I came down
With my net bag.
I seize him
I seize him
And I seize him, and he is seized.
[[315]]
FESTIVAL
The great festival of Mixcoatl was the hunt-drive in the month quecholli. Sahagun says of this observance[5]:
“Quecholli was the name of the fourteenth month, Mixcoatl being honoured with festivals. Arrows and darts for use in war were made, and many slaves were slaughtered in honour of this god. During the five days spent in making the arrows, everyone slit their ears and rubbed their temples with the blood thus drawn. Penance was supposed to be thus performed before the deer-hunting commenced. Those who did not slit themselves were deprived of their cloaks as tribute. During these days no man cohabited with his wife, and the aged abstained from the use of pulque, as penance was being performed. The four days employed in the making of arrows and darts being ended, smaller arrows were made and tied in bundles of four to which were added four pine torches. These were placed as offerings upon the graves of the dead, besides two tamalli to each bundle. These remained for a day upon the tombs and were then burned during the night, other ceremonies being held as well in honour of the dead.
“On the tenth day of this month the Mexicans and the Tlatelulca resorted together to the mountain of Cacatepec, which they called their mother. On reaching it they constructed thatched huts, lighted large fires, and spent the day in absolute idleness.
Next morning they breakfasted and went out together into the country. There they spread themselves out in a circular line, in which were enclosed a large number of animals—deer, rabbits, and others; they gradually approached them so as to enmesh them in a small space, and the hunt then began, each one taking what he could.
“After the hunt, captives and slaves were slaughtered in the temple called Tlamatzinco. They were bound hand and foot and were carried up the temple stairs in the same fashion as a deer is carried by its four legs when taken to the butcher. They were put to death with great ceremony. The man and the woman who represented the image of [[316]]Mixcoatl and his companion were slain in another temple, which was called Mixcoateopan. Several other rites were performed.”
Of this festival Acosta gives a slightly different version:
“The feast they made was pleasant and in this sort: They sounded a trumpet at break of day, at the sound whereof they all assembled with their bows, arrows, nets, and other instruments for hunting; then they went in procession with their idol, being followed by a great number of people to a high mountain, upon the top whereof they had made a bower of leaves, and in the middest thereof an altar richly decked, whereupon they placed the idol. They marched with a great bruit of trumpets, cornets, flutes and drums, and being come unto the place they environed this mountain on all sides, putting fire to it on all parts: by means of which many beasts flew forth, as stags, conies, Hares, foxes and Woolves, which went to the top flying from the fire. These hunters followed after with great cries and noise of divers instruments, hunting them to the top before the idol, whither flew such a great number of beasts, in so great a press, that they leaped one upon another, upon the people, and upon the altar, wherein they took great delight. Then took they a great number of these beasts, and sacrificed them before the idol, as stags and other great beasts, pulling out their hearts as they use in the sacrifice of men, and with the like ceremony: which done they took all their prey upon their shoulders, and retired with their idol in the same manner as they came, and entered the city laden with all these things, very joyfully with great store of music, trumpets, and drums until they came to the temple where they placed their idol with great reverence and solemnity. They presently went to prepare their venison wherewith they made a banquet to all the people; and after dinner they made their plays, representations and dances before the idol.”
TEMPLES
Mixcoatl’s temples in Mexico were the Mixcoapan tzompantli and the Mixcoateopan. In the first were preserved the heads [[317]]of the victims sacrificed to the god. The ceremony of quecholli was commenced in the latter.
NATURE AND STATUS
Mixcoatl was primarily the great god of the Chichimecs and the Otomies, a god of the wild hunting tribes of the plains to the north. Numbers of these had settled in Mexico City and elsewhere within Anahuac, to which they had carried his worship with them. The tribal legends connected with him seem to imply that he was regarded in one of his phases, that of Iztac Mixcoatl, as the Chichimec Adam or Abraham, and he is even alluded to as the “father” of Quetzalcoatl and “brother” of Uitzilopochtli. The probabilities are that he was the god of a section of the Nahua who entered Mexico proper before the advent of the worshippers of Uitzilopochtli, and as he had similar characteristics to the latter deity, he became connected with him in the popular imagination.
Mixcoatl seems to me one of that large class of conceptions which recur so frequently in all mythologies—the rain- and lightning-bearing cloud, which in the mind of the savage takes the form of a great monster, a dragon or serpent, vomiting fire and discharging water. The name Mixcoatl means “Cloud-serpent” and serves to substantiate this conception of him. But in the eyes of a hunting people he came, like other deities of the kind, to be regarded as the great hunter who casts the thunderbolt, the lightning-arrow, and therefore as the god-like prototype of the savage sportsman. Mixcoatl’s possession of the obsidian arrow-head, which became personified in Itzpapalotl, gives further weight to this idea.
Because he partook of the attributes of a sky-god, Mixcoatl almost inevitably became identified with the stellar deities dwelling in the heavens above. He is, indeed, Chief of the Centzon Mimixcoa, which has been translated “The Four Hundred Northerners,” the host of stars to the north of the Equator, in contradistinction to the Centzon Uitznaua, or “Four Hundred Southerners,” who were scattered by Uitzilopochtli immediately after his birth. But here a question of some difficulty arises. Uitznaua may correctly [[318]]be translated “southerners,” whereas Mimixcoa can scarcely be rendered otherwise than as the plural of “cloud-serpent.” The insignia of these latter deities, however, are certainly stellar. They wear the stellar face-mask and are in every way to be connected with the stars. It is clear, too, that Mixcoatl in one of his manifestations must be connected with the morning star. But I take this connection, as in the case of Quetzalcoatl, to have arisen at a period comparatively late. Again, we frequently find in Mexican myth that the stars are regarded as serpentine in character, and indeed, as in the case of the Tzitzimimê, partake of insect characteristics.
“Mixcoatl” is the expression in use at the present time among the natives of Mexico for the tropical whirlwind[6]—obviously a much later conception of his nature, and one more intimately connected with that of Tezcatlipocâ, as I have attempted to show in the passages relating to that god, and to Quetzalcoatl. There is, indeed, a strong resemblance between Mixcoatl and Tezcatlipocâ, both of whom are connected with obsidian, and carry the hunter’s bag of obsidian darts.
Mixcoatl’s festival is obviously one of considerable antiquity. As practised in Mexico-Tenochtitlan it was obviously a reminiscence of the great communal hunt. Its sacrifice of women in the place of deer, the victims being “carried up the temple stairs in the same fashion as a deer is carried by its four legs when taken to the butcher,” is obviously a substitution in more civilized times of human for deer sacrifice, either because the animals of the hunt were not so easily obtained or for the reason that the idea of human sacrifice had so thoroughly interpenetrated Mexican religious usage as to render the older form unacceptable, merely retaining its broader characteristics. It has also a strong resemblance to those medicine-hunts until recently practised by the Indians of North America, and in the Zuñi mysteries of to-day, a procuring of magical virtue for the arrows which were made during the first five days of the festival, and smaller models of which were offered up on the graves of the dead. Mixcoatl’s [[319]]wife Itzcuêyê is a deer and, as we have seen, the deer was the disguise of his surrogate, Camaxtli. The deer is the animal connected in the barbarian mind with the quest for water or food. Where the deer migrated in search for these the savage must follow. The animals which compose the staple food-supply of savages are frequently regarded as their gods. In America, on the introduction of later anthropomorphic deities, the animal forms are frequently conceived of as the mates of these—perhaps one explanation of the belief in descent from animal forms.
Because of his connection with the lightning Mixcoatl was also god of the fire-twirler, the apparatus with which fire was made, and he appears in this character during the fire festival.