YACATECUTLI = “LORD WHO GUIDES,” OR “GUIDANCE”
- Area of Worship: Plateau of Anahuac (worshipped by Mexican merchants while at home and when travelling).
- Festival: Panquetzalitztli.
- Symbol: The merchant’s staff.
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ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The ground of the face-painting is white, but portions of the face, especially the forehead, nose, and chin, and the region in front of the ears, are brilliantly coloured. The hair is puffed up and is bound with bands of quetzal-feathers. The ear-plugs are of gold. The large mantle which almost covers the body is decorated with the cross-hatching symbolic of water and has the red rim of the eye-motif. The shield bears the Greek key motif, such as is seen in the tribute-lists of the Codex Mendoza. In his hand the god bears the bamboo staff of the merchant or traveller, which typifies his nature and which was worshipped, as being symbolic of him, by all traders.
FESTIVAL
Panquetzalitztli.—Yacatecutli, says Sahagun,[1] was the first merchant and prototype of traffickers, so was chosen by the merchants as their god. They dressed his statue with paper and greatly venerated the staff he carried, which was of massive wood, or else of dark cane, very light, but strong, such as the merchants carried on their journeys. He had four brothers and a sister, also reverenced by traders. He was usually depicted as a man on a journey, equipped with such a staff as has been mentioned.
Arrived at the place where they were to pass the night, the merchants laid their staves in a heap and drew blood from their ears and limbs, which they offered to it, burning incense before it, and praying for protection from the dangers of the road. At the festival of panquetzalitztli, thousands of members of the powerful Pochteca, or merchant guild, proceeded to the vicinity of Tochtepec, where they invited the Tlatelolcans of that place to a festival in honour of Yacatecutli. They decorated his temple and spread mats before his image. Then they opened the bundles in which they had brought presents and ornaments for the god, and placed them, along with their staves, before his idol. If a merchant laid two [[342]]staves at the feet of the god, that signified that it was his intention to sacrifice two slaves, a man and a woman, in his honour; if four, he would devote two wretched creatures of either sex. These slaves were covered with rich mantles and paper. If the staff represented a male slave, it was also equipped with the maxtli, or loin-cloth, but if a female, the uipilli, or chemise, and the cueitl, or skirt.
The Mexican merchants then accompanied their Tlatelolcan confrères to the villages, where they feasted, drank cocoa, and smoked. Quails were then decapitated, their heads thrown into the fire, and incense was offered to the four cardinal points. An address was delivered by one of their number practised in oratory. The magnificence of this festival, with its richly jewelled accessories, was probably unsurpassed in Mexican ritual, as on this occasion the Pochteca employed their entire stock of trinkets and ornaments for the temporary decoration of the victims. Yacatecutli was also associated in worship with Coyotlinauatl, god of the guild of feather-workers of the quarter of Amantlan.
NATURE AND STATUS
Bancroft[2] connects Yacatecutli with the Fire-god, with whom, indeed, Clavigero would seem to equate him, and in describing the return of the gods in the twelfth month, Sahagun makes both deities arrive together. Xiuhtecutli was certainly the god who was believed to settle disputes at law, but I am unable to connect Yacatecutli with him in any satisfactory manner. Yacatecutli, “the lord who guides,” seems to me a mere deification of the merchant’s staff, an artificial deity invented as the patron of a caste in an environment where it was not difficult to invent gods. By this I do not mean to convey the impression that the staff was necessarily his earliest form, but that, whatever his primitive shape, the merchant’s stick came to symbolize him.
The names of Yacatecutli’s brothers and sister seem to me to allegorize the circumstances of the travelling merchant’s [[343]]career in the same manner as the names of the companions of a folk-tale hero may have a bearing upon his story.
Thus Chiconquiauitl (“Seven-rains” or “All-weathers”) may portend the varied climatic conditions which the chapman has to face; Xomocuitl (“Caught-drake”) the kind of fare he may expect in an unfrequented country; Naxtit (“Four-feet”) may typify endurance in walking; Cochimetl, (Sleeping-maguey) may apply to the leaves of the maguey-plant which shaded the traveller from the heat during his noonday siesta, or from the wind if he used them to construct a temporary shelter, as was often done; Yacapitzanac (“Sharp-nose”) needs little explanation in connection with the peddler’s calling, and the name of the one goddess of the series, Chalmecaciuatl, is evidently that of a tribal deity of the Chalmeca, with whom the Mexicans traded. [[344]]
[1] Bk. i, c. xix; bk. ix, passim. [↑]
[2] Nat. Rac. Pac. States, vol. iii, p. 417, note. [↑]