The gods of Mexico

by Lewis Spence

THE HISTORIA DE LOS MEXICANOS

The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas is a manuscript of such importance to the study of Nahua Cosmogony that a short précis of its earlier chapters may, perhaps, be found of value in this place.

“Tonacatecutli and his consort Tonacaciuatl, who had existed from the beginning, resolved to undertake the work of creation. They had four sons, the eldest of whom was Tlactlauque-Tezcatlipocâ, or Camaxtli. He was born of a red colour. The second son, Yayanque-Tezcatlipocâ, was greater and more powerful than the rest. He was born black. The third was Quetzalcoatl or Yacatecutli, and the fourth Omitecilt, and for another name Magueycoatl, and the Mexicans called him Ochilobi (Uitzilopochtli), for he was left-handed and was chief god to those of Mexico, and their war-god. Of these four, Tezcatlipocâ was the wisest, was in all places, and knew the hearts and thoughts of everyone. And for this he was called Moyocoya, “he who is all-powerful, and who has all those things without which nothing can be.” Uitzilopochtli was born without flesh, but with bones,[25] and in this state he remained for six hundred years, during which time the gods made nothing.

“After six hundred years these four god-like brothers were born, and all came together to order what was to be and the law that they should hold. They made a half-sun in the midst, the other luminaries great and small, [[49]]and a man and woman named Oxomuco and Cipactonal, commanding him to till the earth and her to spin and weave. From these were born the maceguales or labourers. And to Cipactonal the gods gave certain grains of maize that she might keep them and use them for charms and riddles, and since that day women have used them for that purpose.

“The gods then gave this pair the days of the calendar and divided them into months, twenty days to each month, and three hundred and sixty days in the year. Then they made Mictlantecutli and Mictecaciuatl, man and wife, to be the gods of the infernal regions. Later they made the heavens and space and the water, and then a great fish like the cayman, which is called cipactli, from which they shaped the earth. In order to create the gods of water, all four gods joined together and made Tlaloc and his wife Chalchihuitlicue.

“These gods of water have their place in the four quarters, and in the middle of it was a great court, where there were four tubs of water. One water is very good, and this rains when they grow grain and wheat. And these gods of water have many dwarfish servants in the said house, and these have pitchers, with which they take the water from the tubs, and sticks in the other hand. When the gods of water wish them to go to the boundaries, they take the pitchers and sticks and sprinkle the water as they are told. And when it thunders, they crack the pitchers with the sticks, and when it lightens they break off a portion of the pitcher.

“All the aforesaid things had been made and created without taking any account of the years, and without respect of time. The first man and woman had a son called Piltzintecutli, who desired a wife with whom to live. So the gods made of the hairs of Xochiquetzal a woman, and thus was the first marriage made. This having been done, all the four gods saw that the half-sun which had been created gave but little light. And they saw that they must make another half, because the existing light was not able to illuminate the world.… Then Tezcatlipocâ became the sun-bearer. And the gods created the giants, who were very [[50]]great men and of much strength.… And they called the age in which Tezcatlipocâ was the sun the age of boasting and of tigers, for the giants gorged and ate and wanted for nothing. And when thirteen times fifty and two years were passed, Quetzalcoatl was the sun. Then Tezcatlipocâ took a great stick and struck upon the water, and turning himself into a tiger, went out to kill the giants. Afterwards he appeared in the sky, for they said that the ursa major sank in the water, because it is Tezcatlipocâ.… During the time Quetzalcoatl was the sun another count went on, which, having ended, Tezcatlipocâ cast out Quetzalcoatl, who became the wind, which, when it blew on the maceguales, turned them into monkeys and apes. And there was for sun Tlaloc, which lasted three hundred and sixty-four years.… During these years Quetzalcoatl rained fire on the sun, and then created as the sun his wife Chalchihuitlicue. She was the sun for three hundred and twelve years.

“In the last year in which Chalchihuitlicue was the sun, it rained so heavily that all the maceguales were turned into fishes. And when it had ceased to destroy, the heavens fell upon the earth and the great rain began, the which year was tochtli. And the gods ordered four roads to be made to the middle of the earth for them, and raised the heavens, and to help them in holding them up they created four men, called Cotemuc, Yzcoadt, Yzmali, and Tenesuchi, who were created by Tezcatlipocâ and Quetzalcoatl. Then they made great trees, Tezcatlipocâ one which was called tazcaquavlt, which is to say “tree of the mirror,” and Quetzalcoatl one which was called queçalhuesuch, and with the help of the men they had made and the trees the gods held up the heavens and the stars and made a road in the sky.

“After the heavens had been raised, in the second year after the flood, which was acatl, Tezcatlipocâ pronounced his name, and there appeared the dumb Mixcoatl, ‘Serpent of the Clouds.’ And they paint him as a serpent. And they drew fire from fire-sticks, which they called heart of the fire. In the seventh year after the flood was born Cinteotl, the first son of the first man, who was a god, and [[51]]his wife a goddess, and he was made of the hairs of the mother goddess, and it was said that he was not able to die. And in the eighth year after the flood the gods created the maceguales, like those that were before. When the first three years of this group of years had passed, in the first of the next group all the four gods came together, and said that because the earth had no light, and was dark, and that because there was no fire, they would make a sun which would give light to the earth, and which would eat hearts and drink blood. In order to do this they made war, by which they were able to procure hearts and blood. In this time Tezcatlipocâ made four hundred men and a hundred women, and on these the sun lived. In the tenth year, Suchicar, the first wife of Piltzintecutli, the son of the first man, was killed in the war, and was the first so to die.”

If we search for a common factor among these conflicting ideas, we will, indeed, find the task one of difficulty. The nature of the sources from which we obtain them does not permit us to arrange them chronologically, and all that we can found upon in this respect is their subject-matter, which cannot enlighten us much. As has been said, we are probably on safe ground if we accept the version of the several ages hypothetically contained in the so-called Calendar Stone of Mexico. The circumstance, too, that the sun and moon myth, as related by Olmos, agrees for the most part with the version of Sahagun, permits us to regard it as a well-recognized belief. Nor can the variant myth regarding the creation of mankind, which is briefly described in an annotation, shake our confidence in the credibility of Olmos, as it obviously differs more in the names of the actors in the drama of creation than in the circumstances, which are almost identical. But if it is impossible to verify strictly the place of origin of the Olmos myth, although Texcuco was claimed as its home, it is permissible to indicate the universal character of that portion of it which deals with the creation of the heavenly bodies, from its similarity to the analogous passage in Sahagun’s rendering, which proves that that part of it at least must have been more or less widely [[52]]disseminated throughout Mexico. We know that after the collection of data in any district it was his custom to submit them to experts in other and distant parts of the country for comparison and verification. We may thus be justified in classing the Calendar-stone version of the world’s ages and the Sahagun portion of the creation myth of the luminaries of the last age as among the standard beliefs of Mexican theology. It follows from Sahagun’s general agreement with the Olmos-Mendieta account that the portion of that version which he does not treat of must naturally be within reasonable distance of exactitude. The circumstance that both of these accounts relate the self-immolation of the gods by the sacrificial method of having their breasts opened, seems to prove that the myth was no older than the institution of human sacrifice, which we are perhaps correct in regarding as of no very great antiquity, although arguments of sufficient cogency might be brought against this view.