TEOYAOMIQUI.
The idol dug up in the Plaza in Mexico is here presented, after a cut, following Nebel, in Tylor’s Anahuac, showing the Mexican goddess of war, or death. Cf. cut in American Antiquarian, Jan., 1883; Powell’s First Rept. Bur. Ethn., 232; Bancroft, iv. 512, 513, giving the front after Nebel, and the other views after Léon y Gama. Bandelier (Arch. Tour, pl. v) gives a photograph of it as it stands in the court-yard of the Museo Nacional.
Gallatin (Am. Ethn. Soc. Trans., i. 338) describes Teoyaomiqui as the proper companion of Huitzilopochtli: “The symbols of her attributes are found in the upper part of the statue; but those from the waist downwards relate to other deities connected with her or with Huitzilopochtli.” Tylor (Anahuac, 222) says: “The antiquaries think that the figures in it stand for different personages, and that it is three gods: Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and Mictlantecutli the god of hell.” Léon y Gama calls the statue Teoyaomiqui, but Bandelier, Archæol. Tour, 67, thinks its proper name is rather Huitzilopochtli. Léon y Gama’s description is summarized in Bancroft, iii. 399, who cites also what Humboldt (Vues, etc., ii. 153, and his pl. xxix) says. Bancroft (iii. 397) speaks of it as “a huge compound statue, representing various deities, the most prominent being a certain Teoyaomiqui, who is almost identical with, or at least a connecting link between, the mother goddess” and Mictlantecutli, the god of Mictlan, or Hades. Cf. references in Bancroft, iv. 515.
Brinton’s Names of the gods in the Kiché myths, a monograph on Central American mythology (Philad. Am. Philos. Soc., 1881), is a special study of a part of the subject.
Brinton (Myths, etc., 184) considers the best authorities on the mythology of the Muyscas of the Bogota region to be Piedrahita’s Historia de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada (1668, followed by Humboldt in his Vues) and Simm’s Noticias historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada, given in Kingsborough, vol. viii.
The mythology of the Quichuas in Peru makes the staple of chap. 5 of Brinton’s Amer. Hero-Myths. Here the corresponding hero-god was Viracocha. Brinton depends mainly on the Relacion Anónyma de los Costumbres Antiguos de los Naturales del Piru, 1615 (Madrid, 1879); on Christoval de Molina’s account of the fables and religious customs of the Incas, as translated by C. R. Markham in the Hakluyt Society volume, Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas (London, 1873); on the Comentarios reales of Garcilasso de la Vega; on the report made to the viceroy Francisco de Toledo, in 1571, of the responses to inquiries made in different parts of the country as to the old beliefs which appear in the “Informacion de las idolatras de los Incas é Indios,” printed in the Coleccion de documentos ineditos del archivo de Indias, xxi. 198; and in the Relacion de Antigüedades deste Reyno del Piru, by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachicuti.
ANCIENT TEOCALLI, OAXACA, MEXICO.
After a cut in Squier’s Serpent Symbol, p. 78.