The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

PLATE XVII.

Interior of chamber, Mitla, showing type of mural decoration peculiar to this region. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.

Nevertheless the memory of the King did not fade from native imagination with the fall of his throne. Stories of the greatness, the pride and the destruction of Montezuma spread; they became confused with older legends; and finally the Mexican monarch himself became the subject of myth. Far to the north the Papago[65] still show the cave of Montezuma, whom they have identified with Sihu, the elder brother of Coyote; and they tell how Montezuma, coming forth from a cave dug by the Creator, led the Indian nations thence. At first all went happily, and men and beasts conversed with one another until a flood ended this age of felicity, only Montezuma and his brother, Coyote, escaping in arks which they made for themselves. When the waters had subsided, they aided in the repeopling of the world, and to Montezuma was assigned the lordship of the new race, but, being swollen with pride and arrogance by his high dignity, he failed to rule justly. The Great Spirit, to punish him, removed the sun to a remote part of the heavens; whereupon Montezuma set about building a house which should reach the skies, and whose apartments he lined with jewels and precious metals. This the Great Spirit destroyed with his thunder; but Montezuma was still rebellious, whereupon as his supreme punishment, the Great Spirit sent an insect to summon the Spaniards from the East for his destruction.

How far the political influence of the Aztec Empire extended is not clearly certain, but there are numerous indications that its cultural relations were very wide. There are rites and myths of the Pueblo Indians, Hopi and Zuñi, whose resemblance to the Mexican seems surely to imply a connexion not too remote; while far to the south, among the Nahua of Lake Nicaragua, the creator pair and ruling gods, Tamagostad and Çipattoval, are identical with the Mexican generative couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal.[66]

In outlying districts today the less-touched Nahuatlan tribes preserve their essential paganism, and Lumholtz's and Preuss's accounts[67] of the pantheons of the Cora and Huichol Indians give us a living image of what must have been the ancestral religion of the Nahuatlan tribes, at least in the crude days of their wanderings. Father Sun, say the Cora, is fierce in the summer-time, slaying men and animals; but Chuvalete, the Morning Star, keeps watch over him to prevent him from harming the people. Morning Star is cool and dislikes heat, and once he shot the Sun, causing him to fall to earth; but an old man restored him to the heavens, giving him a new start, Chuvalete is the first friend of the Cora among the gods, and it is to him that they address their prayers as they go to the spring to bathe in the early dawn; they call him, "Elder Brother," just as the Earth is "Our Mother" and the Sun "Our Father." The Water Serpent of the West, the Moon, the Winds, the Rain, the Lightning,—all these are familiar deities. Preuss[68] calls attention to the striking emphasis which the Cora place on the power of thought: the leaders of the ceremonies are called "thinkers" and in their prayers and rites the conception of a magical preservative and creative power in thought frequently recurs, not only as a power of priests, who have obtained it through purification, but as the essential power of the gods. Thus, of the sun about to rise:

"Our Father in Heaven thinks upon his Earth, our Father the Shining One.
There he is, on the other side of the World.
He thinks with his Thought, our Father, the Shining One.
He remembers, too, what he is, our Father, the Shining One."

And again it is the sacred words handed down in ritual through which men acquire that mystical participation in the divine power that preserves them in life:

"Here are present his Words, which he has given to us, his children,
Wherewith we live and continue in the World.
Indeed, all his Words are here present, which he has uttered and left unto us.
Here leaves he unto his children his Thought."

The Huichol have a more populous pantheon. Tatevali ("Grandfather Fire") is the deity of life and health, and also of shamans and prophesying. Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is likewise a fire-god and a singing shaman; he is the son of Grandfather Fire and yet his elder; for, it is said, Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is the spark produced in striking flint, while Grandfather Fire is the flame fed by wood. Father Sun is another important deity who was created, they say, when the Corn Mother (or the Eagle Mother, as some have it) threw her young son, armed with bow and arrows, into an oven, whence he emerged as the divinity. Setting Sun is the assistant of Father Sun; and with the Moon, who is a Grandmother, he helps to keep Tokakami, the black and blood-smeared god of death, from leaving his underworld abode to devour the Indians. Tamats, the Elder Brother, is divinity of wind and air and messenger of the gods;[69] the cock belongs to him, because it follows the course of the Sun and always knows where the Sun is; and he is also the deity who conquered the underworld people and put the world into shape. He appears in different forms (like Tezcatlipoca), now a wolf, now a deer, a pine-tree, a whirlwind; and it is he who taught the ancients "all they had to do in order to comply with what the gods wanted at the five points of the world." There are goddesses, too. Takotsi Nakawe ("Grandmother Growth") is the Earth goddess who gives long life and is the mother of the armadillo, the peccary, and the bear; to her belong maize, and squash, and beans, and sheep; she is water, likewise, and is a Rain-Serpent in the east. Rain-Serpent goddesses live in each of the Quarters—she of the east is red, and the flowers of spring are her skirt; she of the west is white, like a white cloud; blue is the Rain-Serpent goddess of the south, and to her belong seeds and singing shamans; while the Rain-Serpent goddess of the north, whose name means "Rain and Fog hanging in the Trees and Grass," is spotted. Another goddess is Young Mother Eagle, the Sun's mother, and it is she who holds the world in her talons and guards everything; the stars are her dress. With Grandmother Growth beneath, Young Mother Eagle above, and the four Rain-Serpent goddesses, the six cardinal points of the world are defined. It will be observed, too, that the goddesses are deities of the feminine element, earth and water; while the gods are divinities of the masculine elements, fire and air.