I muster my friends;
I follow your flight.
Doesn’t this sound like a bit from the Saga of Harold Hadrada?
Mexico did better in choosing her crested eagle, the harpy (Thrasaëtus harpia),a magnificent representative of its race, renowned from Paraguay to Mexico for its handsome black-and-white plumage adorned with a warrior’s crest, and for its grand flight, dauntless courage and amazing endurance. Quesada tells us that the Aztecs called it the winged wolf. The princes of Tlascala wore its image on their breasts and on their shield as a symbol of royalty; and in both Mexico and Peru, where it was trained for sport in falconry, it was preferred to the puma, which also was taught to capture deer and young peccaries for its master, as is the cheeta in India. Captive harpies are still set to fight dogs and wildcats in village arenas, and rarely are vanquished.
The tradition is that the Aztecs, a northern Nahuatl tribe, escaping from the tyranny of the dominant Chichemecas, moved about A. D. 1325 into the valley of Mexico (Tenochtitlan), and settled upon certain islets in a marshy lake—the site of the subsequent City of Mexico; and this safe site is said to have been pointed out to them by a sign from their gods—an eagle perched upon a prickly-pear cactus, the nopal, in the act of strangling a serpent. This is the picture Cortez engraved on his Great Seal, and Mexico has kept it to this day.
Guatemala was a part of ancient Mexico; and perched on the shield in Guatemala’s coat-of-arms is the green or resplendent trogon (Pharomacrus mocinno), the native and antique name of which is quetzal. This is one of the most magnificent of birds, for its crested head and body (somewhat larger than a sparrow’s) are iridescent green, the breast and under parts crimson, and the wings black overhung by long, plumy coverts. The quetzal’s special ornament, however, is its bluish-green tail, eight or ten inches long, whose gleaming feathers curve down in the graceful sweep of a sabre. It has been called the most beautiful of American birds, and it is peculiar to Central America.
How this trogon came to be Guatemala’s national symbol, made familiar by all its older postage-stamps, is a matter of religious history. One of the gods in the ancient Aztec pantheon was Quetzalcoatl, of whom it was said in their legends “that he was of majestic presence, chaste in life, averse to war, wise and generous in action, and delighting in the cultivation of the arts of peace.” He was the ruler of the realm far below the surface of the earth, where the sun shines at night, the abode of abundance where dwell happy souls; and there Quetzalcoatl abides until the time fixed for his return to men. The first part of the name of this beneficent god, associated with sunshine and green, growing things, meant in the Nahuatl language a large, handsome, green feather, such as were highly prized by the Aztecs and reserved for the decoration of their chiefs; and one tradition of the god’s origin and equipment relates that he was furnished with a beard made of these plumes. These royal and venerated feathers were obtained from the trogon, which his worshippers called Quetzal-totl. The emerald-hued hummingbirds of the tropics also belonged to him.
Although Mexico and Central America were “converted” to Christianity by a gospel of war and slavery, the ancient faith lived on in many simple hearts, especially in the remoter districts of the South, and nowhere more persistently than among the Mayas of Guatemala and Yucatan, whose pyramidal temples are moldering in their uncut forests. When, in 1825, Guatemala declared its independence and set up a local government, what more natural than that it should take as a national symbol the glorious bird that represented to its people the best influence in their ancient history and the most hopeful suggestion for the future.
In the religion of the Mayas of Yucatan the great god of light was Itsamna, one of whose titles was The Lord, the Eye of the Day—a truly picturesque description of the sun. A temple at Itzmal was consecrated to him under the double name Eye of Day-Bird of Fire. “In time of pestilence,” as Dr. Brinton informs us,[[27]] “the people resorted to this temple, and at high noon a sacrifice was spread upon the altar. The moment the sun reached the zenith a bird of brilliant plumage, but which in fact was nothing else than a fiery flame shot from the sun, descended and consumed the offering in the sight of all.” Another authority says that Midsummer-day was celebrated by similar rites. Hence was held sacred the flame-hued ara, or guacamaya, the red macaw.
The Musicas, natives of the Colombian plateau where Bogotá now stands, had a similar half-superstitious regard for this big red macaw, which they called “fire-bird.” The general veneration for redness, prevalent throughout western tropical America, and in Polynesia, is doubtless a reflection of sun-worship.