She was nurtured on the hearts of deer,
Our mother, the Earth-goddess.
The reference to the Nine Plains alludes to the circumstance that Itzpapalotl is a goddess of the Chichimec, or hunting people. The two first lines of this song are translated by Seler as follows:
“O, she has become a goddess of the melon cactus,
Our mother Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly.”
The inference in these lines seems to be that whereas Itzpapalotl was formerly the goddess of a hunting tribe who sacrificed deer to her, she has now become the deity of the cultivated field and a settled agricultural community. This hypothesis would appear to gain strength from the text of the Anales de Quauhtitlan, where Itzpapalotl is spoken of as the foundress of the oldest Chichimec kingdom in Nequameyocan, “Place of the Wild Agave.” Camargo states[66] that the tribes issuing from Chicomoztoc, “The Seven Caves,” first came to Mazatepec, “The Deer Mountain,” then to the province of Tepeueuec, where a victim was sacrificed to Itzpapalotl by shooting him with arrows, a circumstance which in itself proves the goddess to have been associated with the earth.
NATURE AND STATUS
Like Mixcoatl, with whom she is closely associated, Itzpapalotl appears to have been originally one of the ancient stellar and lightning deities of the Chichimec or nomadic tribes of the northern plains. Later, on the abandonment of the hunting mode of subsistence and the acceptance of a more settled and agricultural mode of life by the tribes who worshipped her, Itzpapalotl would appear (as the allusion to [[227]]her in the song to Tlazolteotl seems to show) to have become a goddess of the food-supply, the melon-patch, and the maize-crop. She was one of the Tzitzimimê, or demons of darkness, and as such symbolically took insect shape (cf. Xochiquetzal as a spider), but beneath her butterfly form there lurks the symbol of the old, fierce earth-mother with claws and merciless, protruding teeth, which were originally evolved from those of the cipactli, or earth-monster. It seems to me also that she bears about her the marks of the deer, and at this I am not surprised, as I am convinced that in many lands the deer is regarded as a surrogate of the dragon, and is thus frequently associated with fire and water. Indeed, in places, Itzpapalotl is tacitly identified with the mythical deer Itzcuêyê,[67] the captive and wife of Mixcoatl.
That Itzpapalotl is associated with fire is probable, and we know from the song that she was nurtured on the hearts of deer. From her association with the obsidian cult and the fact that she is closely connected with Mixcoatl, whose obsidian knife is her symbol, I should not be surprised to find further evidence that she is in some manner identified with the lightning, the heavenly fire, or the stars. Again, we know that the butterfly was in some measure associated with the Ciuateteô, the women who died in childbed. We know, too, from Sahagun’s account that at the festival of the Ciuateteô the people offered cakes stamped with a butterfly and S-shaped cakes to these spirits, to represent the lightning. In Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Itzpapalotl wears the male loin-cloth, like the Ciuateteô, and in Codex Vaticanus B (sheet 92) there is represented near her a flowering tree broken in the middle and spouting blood, the glyph or symbol of Tamoanchan, the paradise of the west, where dwelt the Ciuateteô. In the Mexican mind the gaudy hues of the butterfly may have become associated with the brilliance of the western sky at sunset, and this may account for the connection which undoubtedly exists between Itzpapalotl and the western home of the Ciuateteô. Again, the insect may [[228]]typify the frivolous nature of these dead women.[68] However, the precise significance of this goddess is by no means easy to arrive at, and in any case is composed of elements of considerable obscurity and diversity.[69]
Tezcatlipocâ, it may be recalled, is “the obsidian snake.” His obsidian sandals in some MSS. bear the zigzag lines of the snake and, as has already been said, the footgear is frequently eloquent of the name or character of a person or divinity in Mexican painting. In Itzpapalotl we seem to see another deity of the obsidian cult. Certain of her pictures as a butterfly are, as has been indicated, of dragon-like aspect, and we know that the butterfly is in some countries a surrogate of the dragon. Is obsidian to be regarded as the “bones” of the cipactli, the earth-beast or dragon?