Both myths are aitiological, and explained by the sacrifice system (Opferkultus). This is shown in the case of the four prisoners, of whom we shall learn more in the third story. The second story personifies the Aztec and the Colhua peoples in the two men, the second nation supplying the first with human sacrifices. With the sacrifice of Xomimitl, the parallelism of which to the four Xochimilcos cannot be overlooked by any one, the first temple of Huitzilopochtli, in Tenochtitlan, was inaugurated.
The third sacrifice shows still more closely the religious basis (Kultusgrundlage) of the myth. Here also, as in the former, we have to do with a Colhua. The Aztecs offered the Colhua king to show divine honors to his daughter and to apotheosize her into the mother of their national god, declaring that such was the will of the deity. The king, rejoicing at the honor intended for his daughter, let her go, and she was brought to Tenochtitlan with great pomp. No sooner, however, had she arrived than she was sacrificed, flayed, and one of the bravest youths dressed in her skin. The king was invited to the solemn act of the deification of his daughter, and only became aware of her death when the flame from the copal gum revealed to him the bloody skin about the youth placed at the side of the god. The daughter was, however, at once formally declared mother of Huitzilopochtli and of all the gods.
TETEIONAN.
This aitiological cultus-myth is easily explained. The name of the daughter is Teteionan, whom we have learned to know as the gods'-mother, and as Tocitzin, 'our grandmother.'[VIII-14] She was never the daughter of a human king, but has been transformed into one by euhemerism, somewhat as Iphigenia is to be considered as originally Artemis. The goddess Teteionan had her special festival in Mexico, when a woman, dressed as goddess, was sacrificed; while held on the back of another woman, her head was cut off, then she was flayed, and the skin carried by a youth, accompanied by a numerous retinue, as a present to Huitzilopochtli. Four prisoners of war were, moreover, previously sacrificed.
Similar to this story, told by Clavigero, is another, narrated by Acosta. According to the latter, Tozi was the daughter of the king of Culhuacan, and was made the first human sacrifice by order of Huitzilopochtli, who desired her for a sister. Tozi is, however, none other than Tocitzin, and is also shown to be 'our grandmother.' According to the Aztec version, the custom of dressing priests in the skin of sacrificed beings dates from her—such representations are often seen, especially in Humboldt; the Bâsle collection of Mexican antiquities possesses also the stone image of a priest dressed in a human skin. The fourth month, Tlacaxipehualitzli, this is, 'to flay a man,' derived its name from this custom, which is said to have been most frequent at this period of the year.
Goddesses, or beings representing goddesses, are sacrificed in both of these fables. We have met with human sacrifices among the Muyscas in Central America, and in connection with many deities of the Mexicans, in which the human victim represents the god to whom he is to be sacrificed. Slaves impersonating gods were also sacrificed among the northern Indians, the so-called Indios bravos. The person sacrificed is devoured by the god, is given over to him, is already part of him, is the god himself. Such was the case with the slave that personated Quetzalcoatl in the merchants' festival in Cholula.
The critic is only able to admit the relative truth of the recentness of the period in which the origin of Mexican human sacrifices is placed by these three myths. We already know that human sacrifices are very ancient in all America, and that they have only been put aside at a few places by humane efforts; as in Peru to some extent by means of the Incas. We have met with them throughout all South America.
The statement so generally made that the Toltec Quetzalcoatl preached against human sacrifices, certainly implies the previous existence of such sacrifices. This statement about Quetzalcoatl also points out the way to the assimilation of the varying accounts, fables, and myths. In very ancient times human sacrifices predominated everywhere. The Toltecs, like the Incas, endeavored more or less to abolish them, and, even if not altogether successful, they reduced them considerably. The Aztecs reintroduced them. In the East Indies, these sacrifices date back to the era before the flood, and the Greeks there met with remains of anthropophagy, the basis thereof.
Brahmanism sought to exterminate these ancient sacrifices, and the Vedas forbid them, a prohibition which, in connection with the custom of pretending to sacrifice human beings, gives evidence of a former use of actual sacrifices. The later sect of Shiwaits again introduced them.
However ancient the national political phase of Huitzilopochtli may be, the nature phase is still older. This god, too, has a nature-basis which not only explains his being, but throws light upon his further unfolding as a national or war god. All searchers who do not begin with this basis, see nothing but inexplicable riddles and contradictions before them.