MENDIETA'S EUHEMERISTIC THEORY.
Mendieta says: "It is to be noted for a general rule that, though these people, in all the continent of these Indias, from the farthest parts of New Spain to the parts of Florida, and farther still to the kingdoms of Peru, had, as has been said, an infinity of idols that they reverenced as gods, nevertheless, above all, they still held the sun as chiefest and most powerful. And they dedicated to the sun the greatest, richest, and most sumptuous of their temples. This should be the power the Mexicans called Ipalnemohuani, that is to say, 'by whom all live,' and Moyucuyatzin ayac oquiyocux ayac oquipic, that is to say, 'he that no one created or formed, but who, on the contrary, made all things by his own power and will.' ... So many are the fictions and fables that the Indians invented about their gods, and so differently are these related in the different towns, that neither can they agree among themselves in recounting them, nor shall there be found any one who shall understand them. In the principal provinces of this New Spain, they had—after the sun, which was the common god of them all—each province, its particular and principal god, to which god above all others they offered their sacrifices; as the Mexicans to Uzilopuchtli—a name that the Spaniards not being able to pronounce called Ocholobos, 'eight wolves', or Uchilobos; as the Tezucans to Tezcatlipuca; as the Tlaxcalans to Camaxtli, and as the Cholulans to Quetzalcoatl; doubtless all these were famous men that performed some notable feats, or invented some new thing, to the honor and benefit of the state; or perhaps again these gave the people laws and a rule of life, or taught them trades, or to offer up sacrifices, or some other thing that appeared good and worthy to be rewarded with grateful acknowledgements.... The demon, the old enemy, did not content himself with the service that these people did him in the adoration of almost every visible creature, in making idols of them, both carven and painted, but he also kept them blinded with a thousand fashions of witchcrafts, parodies of sacraments, and superstitions."[VI-31]
"It is well to remark," writes Camargo, "that although the Indians had a divinity for each thing, they were aware of the existence of a Supreme God that they named Tloque-Nahuaque, or He who contains all, regarding the same as superior to all the other gods." This Tlascaltec author has also preserved us a native prayer couched in the following terms: "O, all-powerful gods, that inhabit the heavens, even as far as the ninth, where abides your master and ours, the great Tloque-Nahuaque (this name means, He that accompanies the other gods[VI-32])—you that have all power over men forsake us not in danger. We invoke you, as well also as the sun Nauholin, and the moon, spouse of that brilliant luminary, the stars of heaven also, and the wind of the night and of the day."[VI-33]
According to the somewhat vague and incomplete account of Fray Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinia—the latter his adopted name and that by which he is best known—another of the original and early authorities in matter concerning the gentile Mexicans: "Tezcatlipoca was the god or demon that they held for greatest and to whom most dignity was attributed.... They had idols of stone, and of wood, and of baked clay; they also made them of dough and of seeds kneaded into the dough.... Some of them were shaped like men, ... some were like women; ... some were like wild beasts, as lions, tigers, dogs, deer, and such other animals as frequented the mountains and plains; ... some like snakes of many fashions, large and coiling.... Of the owl and other night-birds, and of others as the kite, and of every large bird, or beautiful, or fierce, or preciously feathered—they had an idol. But the principal of all was the sun. Likewise had they idols of the moon and stars, and of the great fishes, and of the water-lizards, and of toads and frogs, and of other fishes; and these they said were the gods of the fishes.... They had for gods fire, water, and earth; and of all these they had painted figures.... Of many other things they had figures and idols, carved or painted, even of butterflies, fleas, and locusts."[VI-34]
THE CREED OF NEZAHUALCOYOTL.
Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, was he who—according to the no doubt somewhat partial account of his descendant Ixtlilxochitl—pushed the farthest into overt speech and act his contempt of the vulgar idolatry and his recognition of a high, holy, and to a great extent unknowable supreme power. This thoughtful monarch "found for false all the gods adored by the people of this land, saying that they were statues and demons hostile to the human race; for he was very learned in moral things, and he went to and fro more than any other, seeking if haply he might find light to affirm the true God and creator of all things, as has been seen in the discourse of his history, and as bear witness the songs that he composed on this theme. He said that there was only One, that this One was the maker of heaven and earth, that he sustained all he had made and created, and that he was where was no second, above the nine heavens; that no eye had ever seen this One, in a human shape nor in any shape whatever; that the souls of the virtuous went to him after death, while the souls of the bad went to another place, some most infamous spot of earth, filled with horrible hardships and sufferings. Never—though there were many gods representing many idols—did the king neglect an opportunity of saying when divinity was discussed, 'yntloque in nauhaque y palne moalani,' which sentence sums up his convictions as above expressed. Nevertheless he recognized the sun as his father and the earth as his mother."[VI-35]
Now it is in the face of much that has been said denying or doubting Ixtlilxochitl's account of the creed of Nezahualcoyotl that I have selected the passage above translated, from among other passages touching the same subject in the Historia Chichimeca and in the Relaciones. I have selected it not because it is the most clearly worded, or the most eloquent, or the most complete; but solely on account of the sentence with which it concludes: Nezahualcoyotl "recognized the sun as his father and the earth as his mother." These few words occurring at the end of a eulogy of the great Tezcucan by a confessed admirer, these few words that have passed unnoticed amid the din and hubbub raised over the lofty creed to which they form the last article, these few words so insignificant apparently and yet so significant in their connection—should go far to prove the faithfulness of Ixtlilxochitl's record, and the greater or less completeness of his portrait of his great ancestor. Were Ixtlilxochitl dishonest, would he ever have allowed such a pagan chord as this to come jangling into the otherwise perfect music of his description of a perfect sage and Christian, who believed in a God alone and all-sufficient, who believed in a creator of all things without any help at all, much less the help of his dead material creatures the sun and the earth? Let us admit the honesty of Ixtlilxochitl, and admit with him a knowledge of that Unknown God, whom, as did the Athenians, Nezahualcoyotl ignorantly worshiped; but let us not be blinded by a glitter of words—which we may be sure lose nothing in the repetition—as to the significance of that 'ignorantly;' let us never lose sight across the shadow of that obscure Athenian altar to the Unknown God, of the mighty columns of the Acropolis and the crest of the Athena Promachos. Nezahualcoyotl seems a fair type of a thoughtful, somewhat sceptical Mexican of that better-instructed class which is ever and everywhere the horror of hypocrites and fanatics, of that class never without its witnesses in all countries and at all times, of that class two steps above the ignorant laity, and one step above the learned priesthood, yet far still from that simple and perfect truth which shall one day be patent enough to all.
AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY.
Turning from the discussion of a point so obscure and intangible as the monotheism of Nezahualcoyotl and the school of which he was the type, let us review the very palpable and indubitable polytheism of the Mexicans. It seems radically to differ little from other polytheisms better known, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia; it seems to have been a jumble of personified powers, causes, and qualities, developed in the ordinary way from the mythical corruption of that florid hyperbolical style of speech natural to all peoples in days before the exact definition of words was either possible or necessary; just such a jumble as the Aryan polytheisms were in the days of the Euhemerists, and for too long after unfortunately; such a jumble as Aryan mythology was till the brothers Grimm led the van of the ripest talent and scholarship of the nineteenth century into the paths of 'word-shunting,' which led again into god or hero shunting, if the term may be invented. Unfortunately the philologic and mythologic material for such an exhaustive synthesis of the origin and relations of the American creeds as Mr Cox, for example, has given to the world on the Aryan legends, in his Mythology of the Aryan Nations, is yet far from complete; which fact indeed makes the raison d'être of works like the present. There is nothing for me at present but to gather, sift, and arrange, with such sifting and arrangement as may be possible, all accessible materials relating to the subject in hand; that done let more skilled workmen find and give them their place in the wall of science. For they have a place there, whether or no it be found to-day or to-morrow; a breach is there that shall be empty until they fit and fill it.
Tezcatlipoca seems to have been considered on the whole, and the patron-gods of different cities aside, as the most important of the Mexican gods. We have seen him identified in several of the preceding quotations with a supreme invisible god, and I now proceed, illustrating this phase of his character, to translate as closely as possible the various prayers given by Sahagun as addressed to this great deity under his various names, Titlacoan, Yautl, Telpuchtli, Tlamatzincatl, Moiocoiatzin, Iaotzin, Necociautl, Necaoalpilli, and others:—