Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by Edward B. Tylor

The Aztec historians ascribe the building of the Pyramid of Cholula to the prophet Quetzalcoatl. The legends which relate to this celebrated personage are to be found in writers on Mexican history, and, more fully than elsewhere, in the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg’s work.

I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a mythical one. He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed. He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the “place of the fugitive”), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days and years, and to perform penance to appease the gods.

A relic of the father of Quetzalcoatl is said to have been kept until after the Spanish Conquest, when it was opened, and found to contain a quantity of fair human hair. The prophet himself departed from Cholula, and put to sea in a canoe, promising to return. So strong was the belief in the tradition of these events among the Aztecs, that when the Spaniards appeared on the coast, they were supposed to be of the race of the prophet, and the strange conduct of Montezuma to Cortes is to be ascribed to the influence of this belief.

There is a singular legend, mentioned by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, of a white man, with a hooded robe and white beard, bearing a cross in his hand, who lands at Tehuantepec (on the Pacific coast of Mexico), and introduces among the Indians auricular confession, penance, and vows of chastity.

The coming of white, bearded men from the East, centuries before the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and the introduction of new arts and rites by them in Mexico, is as certain as most historical events of which we have only legendary knowledge. As to who they were I cannot offer an opinion. There are, however, one or two points connected with the presence of the Irish and Northmen in America in the 9th and following centuries—a period not very far from that ascribed to Quetzalcoatl—which are worthy of notice.

The Scandinavian antiquarians make the “white-man’s land” (Hvitramannaland) extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests papa (more properly papahua), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that they found living there “Christian men whom the Northmen call Papa.” These latter are shown by the context to have been Irish priests. The Aztec root teo (teo-tl, God) comes nearer to the Greek and Latin, but is not unlike the Irish dia, and the Norse ty-r. The Aztec root col (charcoal) is exactly the Norse kol (our word coat), but not so near to the Irish gual. It is desirable to notice such coincidences, even when they are too slight to ground an argument upon.

This seems to be the proper place to mention the many Christian analogies to be found in the customs of the ancient Aztecs.

Children were sprinkled with water when their names were given to them. This is certainly true, though the statement that they believed that the process purified them from original sin is probably a monkish fiction. Water was consecrated by the priests, and was supposed thus to acquire magical qualities. In the coronation of kings, anointing was part of the ceremony, as well as the use of holy water. The festival of All Souls’ Day reminds us of the Aztec feasts of the Dead in the autumn of each year; and in Mexico the Indians still keep up some of their old rites on that day. There was a singular rite observed by the Aztecs, which they called the teoqualo, that is, “the eating of the god.” A figure of one of their gods was made in dough, and after certain ceremonies they made a pretence of killing it, and divided it into morsels, which were eaten by the votaries as a kind of sacred food.

We may add to the list the habitual use of incense in the ceremonies: the existence of monasteries and nunneries, in which the monks wore long hair, but the nuns had their hair cut off: and the use of the cross as a religious emblem in Mexico and Central America.

Less certain is the recorded use of knotted scourges in performing penance, and the existence of a peculiar kind of auricular confession.