“During this month festivals were held in honour of the high mountains which were the point of departure of the clouds, and which are very numerous in this land of New Spain. To each of these a statue in human form was erected out of a paste called tzoalli, and offerings were made to these idols in honour of these mountains.
“Serpents were also made in their honour out of wood or the roots of trees, which were so carved as to terminate in an adder’s head. Long pieces of wood of the size of a fist were also made, which were called ecatotontin (“little winds”). They were smoothed on the surface with a lump of tzoalli, and were baptized as mountains, being placed upon men’s heads.
“Images were also made in memory of people who had been drowned, or of those who had died such a death as entitled their bodies to be buried instead of being burnt.
“Having placed the statues just described upon the altars with great ceremony, tamalli and many other foods were offered to them; hymns were chanted, and wine drunk in their honour.
“The day of the mountain festival having come round, four women and a man were slain. One of the women was called Tepexoch, the second Matlalque, the third Xochitecatl, the fourth Mayauel; the man bore the name of Milnauatl.[21] These women, as well as the man, were decked with paper [[251]]anointed with ulli gum, and certain females, richly dressed, carried them in litters upon their shoulders to the place where they were to be killed.
“After they were slain and their hearts torn out, they were taken slowly away, being dragged down the temple stairs to the bottom, where their heads were cut off and placed upon wooden pikes, while their bodies were taken to the calpulli[22] and there divided for eating. The papers with which the statues were decorated were hung up in the temples, after the statues had been broken up for food.”[23]
Atemoztli.—On the sixteenth month, atemoztli, the people celebrated the Rain-god’s festival in right good earnest. Says Sahagun[24]:
“The sixteenth month was called atemoztli, that is to say the rain month, when the thunder and heavy rains began to display themselves. The people said, ‘Now the Tlaloquê come.’
“At this time the priests began to pray earnestly for rain, doing penance the while. Taking their censers of serpent-headed brass, they threw the incense called yiauhtli, they rang little bells attached to the censer, and censed all the statues of the gods and all the quarters of the town. As on another occasion, they made images of the mountains during the time they fasted, and prepared the paper usually used in these ceremonies. During five days when they bathed themselves they permitted no water to fall upon the head or to go above the neck. They also abstained from women. The night which preceded the atemoztli, which they celebrated on the twentieth day of the month, they occupied in cutting the paper, which they gummed with ulli, and which was then called teteuitl. These they attached to long poles, which they planted in the courts of the houses, where they remained during the day of the feast. The paste images they made represented the mountains surrounding the valley of Anahuac. These were placed in the oratory of the house, where they were offered food, and people sat in front of them, serving them in tiny vessels full of food, little pots and [[252]]vessels of cocoa and food, which were offered four times a night. Nor was an offering of pulque forgotten. They sang all night before these images, and played on the flute. At daybreak the priests asked the people of the house for a tzotzo paztli, or weaver’s bodkin, with which they opened the stomachs of the images. They also beheaded them and drew out their hearts, which they handed to the master of the house in a green porringer. They then stripped them of the paper with which they were decked, which they burned in the court of the house along with the viands offered to the images.”[25]
Camargo, who had witnessed the festivals to Tlaloc thirty years before writing his book, states that[26] when the rain failed and the land was parched with drought, great processions were made in which a number of the hairless edible dogs of the country were carried on decorated litters to a place of sacrifice and there killed and their hearts cut out, after which the bodies were eaten with much festivity. This, of course, related to a period subsequent to the Conquest, when human sacrifice was forbidden. He further states that old Aztec priests had informed him that the hearts of the human beings sacrificed to Tlaloc were first held up to the sun, then to the remaining three cardinal points, after which they were burned. Tlaloc was held in high respect, and priests alone had the right to enter his temple. Whoever dared to blaspheme against him was supposed to die suddenly by a thunderbolt, no matter how clear the sky may have been. The priests, he adds, took good care to retard his festivals until they saw indication of coming rain.