It was the second month, called Tlacaxiphualiztli,[IX-78] or 'the flaying of men,' that was specially famous for its gladiatorial sacrifices, sacrifices already described and performed to the honor of Xipe, or Xipetotec.[IX-79]
The third month called Tozoztontli, 'the lesser fast or penance,' was inaugurated by the sacrifice on the mountains of children to the Tlalocs. Those also that traded in flowers and were called Sochimanque, or Xochimanqui, made a festival to their goddess, Coatlycue, or Coatlantona, offering her the first-fruits of the flowers of the year, of these that had grown in the precincts of the cu yapico, a cu as we have seen, consecrated to Tlaloc. Into a cave belonging to this temple there were also at this time cast the now rotten skins of the human beings that had been flayed in the preceding month. Thither, "stinking like dead dogs," as Sahagun phrases it, marched in procession the persons that wore these skins and there they put them off, washing themselves with many ceremonies; and sick folk troubled with certain skin-diseases followed and looked on, hoping by the sight of all these things to be healed of their infirmities. The owners of the captives that had been slain had also been doing penance for twenty days, neither washing nor bathing during that time; and they now, when they had seen the skins deposited in the cave, washed and gave a banquet to all their friends and relatives, performing many ceremonies with the bones of the dead captives. All the twenty days of this month singing exercises, praising the god, were carried on in the houses called Cuicacalli, the performers not dancing but remaining seated.
The fourth month was called, in contradistinction to the third, Veitozoztli, or Hueytozoztli, that is to say, 'the greater penance or letting of blood;' because in it not only the priests but also the populace and nobility did penance, drawing blood from their ears, shins, and other parts of the body, and exposing at their doors leaves of sword-grass stained therewith. After this they performed certain already described ceremonies,[IX-80] and then made, out of the dough known as tzoalli,[IX-81] an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl, in the court-yard of her temple, offering before it all kinds of maize, beans, and chian, because she was the maker and giver of these things and the sustainer of the people. In this month, as well as in the three months preceding, little children were sacrificed, a cruelty which was supposed to please the water gods, and which was kept up till the rains began to fall abundantly.
THE MONTH TOXCATL.
The fifth month, called Toxcatl and sometimes Tepopochuiliztli,[IX-82] was begun by the most solemn and famous feast of the year, in honor of the principal Mexican god, a god known by a multitude of names and epithets, among which were Tezcatlipoca, Titlacaoan, Yautl, Telpuchtli, and Tlamatzincatl. A year before this feast, one of the most distinguished of the captives reserved for sacrifice was chosen out for superior grace and personal appearance from among all his fellows, and given in charge to the priestly functionaries called calpixques. These instructed him with great diligence in all the arts pertaining to good breeding, according to the Mexican idea: such as playing on the flute, walking, speaking, saluting those he happened to meet, the use and carrying about of straight cane tobacco-pipes and of flowers, with the dexterous smoking of the one, and the graceful inhalation of the odor of the other. He was attended upon by eight pages, who were clad in the livery of the palace, and had perfect liberty to go where he pleased night and day; while his food was so rich that to guard against his growing too fat, it was at times necessary to vary the diet by a purge of salt and water. Everywhere honored and adored as the living image and accredited representative of Tezcatlipoca, he went about playing on a small shrill clay flute, or fife, and adorned with rich and curious raiment furnished by the king, while all he met did him reverence kissing the earth. All his body and face was painted—black, it would appear; his long hair flowed to the waist; his head was covered with white hens' feathers stuck on with resin, and covered with a garland of the flowers called yzquisuchitl; while two strings of the same flowers crossed his body in the fashion of cross-belts. Earrings of gold, a necklace of precious stones with a great dependent gem hanging to the breast, a lip-ornament (barbote) of sea-shell, bracelets of gold above the elbow on each arm, and strings of gems called macuextli winding from wrist almost to elbow, glittered and flashed back the light as the doomed man-god moved. He was covered with a rich beautifully fringed mantle of netting, and bore on his shoulders something like a purse made of white cloth of a span square, ornamented with tassels and fringe. A white maxtli of a span broad went about his loins, the two ends, curiously wrought, falling in front almost to the knee. Little bells of gold kept time with every motion of his feet, which were shod with painted sandals called ocelunacace.
All this was the attire he wore from the beginning of his year of preparation; but twenty days before the coming of the festival, they changed his vestments, washed away the paint or dye from his skin, and cut down his long hair to the length, and arranged it after the fashion, of the hair of the captains, tying it up on the crown of the head with feathers and fringe and two gold-buttoned tassels. At the same time they married to him four damsels, who had been pampered and educated for this purpose, and who were surnamed respectively after the four goddesses, Xochiquetzal, Xilonen, Atlatonan, and Vixtocioatl.[IX-83] Five days before the great day of the feast,[IX-84] the day of the feast being counted one, all the people, high and low, the king it would appear being alone excepted, went out to celebrate with the man-god a solemn banquet and dance, in the ward called Tecanman; the fourth day before the feast, the same was done in the ward in which was guarded the statue of Tezcatlipoca. The little hill, or island, called Tepetzinco, rising out of the waters of the lake of Mexico, was the scene of the next day's solemnities; solemnities renewed for the last time on the next day, or that immediately preceding the great day, on another like island called Tepelpulco, or Tepepulco. There, with the four women that had been given him for his consolation, the honored victim was put into a covered canoe usually reserved for the sole use of the king; and he was carried across the lake to a place called Tlapitzaoayan, near the road that goes from Yztapalapan to Chalco, at a place where was a little hill called Acacuilpan, or Cabaltepec. Here left him the four beautiful girls, whose society for twenty days he had enjoyed, they returning to the capital with all the people; there accompanying the hero of this terrible tragedy only those eight attendants that had been with him all the year. Almost alone, done with the joys of beauty, banquet, and dance, bearing a bundle of his flutes, he walked to a little ill-built cu, some distance from the road mentioned above, and about a league removed from the city. He marched up the temple steps, not dragged, not bound, not carried like a common slave or captive; and as he ascended he dashed down and broke on every step one of the flutes that he had been accustomed to play on in the days of his prosperity. He reached the top;—by sickening repetition we have learned to know the rest; one thing only, from the sacrificial stone his body was not hurled down the steps, but was carried by four men down to the Tzompantli, to the place of the spitting of heads.
THE FEAST OF TOXCATL.
And the chroniclers say that all this signified that those who enjoyed riches, delights in this life, should at the end come to poverty and sorrow—so determined are these same chroniclers to let nothing escape without its moral.
In this feast of Toxcatl, in the cu called Huitznahuac, where the image of Huitzilopochtli was always kept, the priests made a bust of this god out of tzoalli dough, with pieces of mizquitl-wood inserted by way of bones. They decorated it with his ornaments; putting on a jacket wrought over with human bones, a mantle of very thin nequen, and another mantle called the tlaquaquallo, covered with rich feathers, fitting the head below and widening out above; in the middle of this stood up a little rod, also decorated with feathers and sticking into the top of the rod was a flint knife half covered with blood. The image was set on a platform made of pieces of wood resembling snakes and so arranged that heads and tails alternated all the way round; the whole borne by many captains and men of war. Before this image and platform a number of strong youths carried an enormous sheet of paper resembling pasteboard, twenty fathoms long, one fathom broad, and a little less than an inch thick; it was supported by spear-shafts arranged in pairs of one shaft above and one below the paper, while persons on either side of the paper held each one of these pairs in one hand. When the procession, with dancing and singing, reached the cu to be ascended, the snaky platform was carefully and cautiously hoisted up by cords attached to its four corners, the image was set on a seat, and those that carried the paper rolled it up and set down the roll before the bust of the god. It was sunset when the image was so set up; and the following morning every one offered food in his own house before the image of Huitzilopochtli there, incensing also such images of other gods as he had, and then went to offer quails' blood before the bust set up on the cu. The king began, wringing off the heads of four quails; the priests offered next, then all the people; the whole multitude carrying clay fire-pans and burning copal incense of every kind, after which every one threw his live coals upon a great hearth in the temple-yard. The virgins painted their faces, put on their heads garlands of parched maize with strings of the same across their breasts, decorated their arms and legs with red feathers, and carried black paper flags stuck into split canes. The flags of the daughters of nobles were not of paper but of a thin cloth called canaoac, painted with vertical black stripes. These girls joining hands danced round the great hearth, upon or over which on an elevated place of some kind there danced, giving the time and step, two men, having each a kind of pine cage covered with paper flags on his shoulders, the strap supporting which passed, not across the forehead—the usual way for men to carry a burden—but across the chest as was the fashion with women. The priests of the temple, dancing on this occasion with the women, bore shields of paper, crumpled up like great flowers; their heads were adorned with white feathers, their lips and part of the face were smeared with sugar-cane juice which produced a peculiar effect over the black with which their faces were always painted. They carried in their hands pieces of paper called amasmaxtli, and sceptres of palm-wood tipped with a black flower and having in the lower part a ball of black feathers. In dancing they used this sceptre like a staff, and the part by which they grasped it was wrapped round with a paper painted with black lines. The music for the dancers was supplied by a party of unseen musicians, who occupied one of the temple buildings, where they sat, he that played on the drum in the centre, and the performers on the other instruments about him. The men and women danced on till night, but the strictest order and decency were preserved, and any lewd word or look brought down swift punishment from the appointed overseers.
DEATH OF THE YXTEUCALLI.