American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent

Meanwhile the two brothers grew up. The one was named Ioskeha. He went about the earth, which at that time was arid and waterless, and called forth the springs and lakes, and formed the sparkling brooks and broad rivers. But his brother, the troublesome Tawiscara, he whose obstinacy had caused their mother's death, created an immense frog which swallowed all the water and left the earth as dry as before. Ioskeha was informed of this by the partridge, and immediately set out for his brother's country, for they had divided the earth between them.

Soon he came to the gigantic frog, and piercing it in the side (or armpit), the waters flowed out once more in their accustomed ways. Then it was revealed to Ioskeha by his mother's spirit that Tawiscara intended to slay him by treachery. Therefore, when the brothers met, as they soon did, it was evident that a mortal combat was to begin.

Now, they were not men, but gods, whom it was impossible really to kill, nor even could either be seemingly slain, except by one particular substance, a secret which each had in his own keeping. As therefore a contest with ordinary weapons would have been vain and unavailing, they agreed to tell each other what to each was the fatal implement of war. Ioskeha acknowledged that to him a branch of the wild rose (or, according to another version, a bag filled with maize) was more dangerous than anything else; and Tawiscara disclosed that the horn of a deer could alone reach his vital part.

They laid off the lists, and Tawiscara, having the first chance, attacked his brother violently with a branch of the wild rose, and beat him till he lay as one dead; but quickly reviving, Ioskeha assaulted Tawiscara with the antler of a deer, and dealing him a blow in the side, the blood flowed from the wound in streams. The unlucky combatant fled from the field, hastening toward the west, and as he ran the drops of his blood which fell upon the earth turned into flint stones. Ioskeha did not spare him, but hastening after, finally slew him. He did not, however, actually kill him, for, as I have said, these were beings who could not die; and, in fact, Tawiscara was merely driven from the earth and forced to reside in the far west, where he became ruler of the spirits of the dead. These go there to dwell when they leave the bodies behind them here.

Ioskeha, returning, peaceably devoted himself to peopling the land. He opened a cave which existed in the earth and allowed to come forth from it all the varieties of animals with which the woods and prairies are peopled. In order that they might be more easily caught by men, he wounded every one in the foot except the wolf, which dodged his blow; for that reason this beast is one of the most difficult to catch. He then formed men and gave them life, and instructed them in the art of making fire, which he himself had learned from the great tortoise. Furthermore he taught them how to raise maize, and it is, in fact, Ioskeha himself who imparts fertility to the soil, and through his bounty and kindness the grain returns a hundred fold.

Nor did they suppose that he was a distant, invisible, unapproachable god. No, he was ever at hand with instruction and assistance. Was there to be a failure in the harvest, he would be seen early in the season, thin with anxiety about his people, holding in his hand a blighted ear of corn. Did a hunter go out after game, he asked the aid of Ioskeha, who would put fat animals in the way, were he so minded. At their village festivals he was present and partook of the cheer.

Once, in 1640, when the smallpox was desolating the villages of the Hurons, we are told by Father Lalemant that an Indian said there had appeared to him a beautiful youth, of imposing stature, and addressed him with these words: "Have no fear; I am the master of the earth, whom you Hurons adore under the name Ioskeha. The French wrongly call me Jesus, because they do not know me. It grieves me to see the pestilence that is destroying my people, and I come to teach you its cause and its remedy. Its cause is the presence of these strangers; and its remedy is to drive out these black robes (the missionaries), to drink of a certain water which I shall tell you of, and to hold a festival in my honor, which must be kept up all night, until the dawn of day."

The home of Ioskeha is in the far East, at that part of the horizon where the sun rises. There he has his cabin, and there he dwells with his grandmother, the wise Ataensic. She is a woman of marvelous magical power, and is capable of assuming any shape she pleases. In her hands is the fate of all men's lives, and while Ioskeha looks after the things of life, it is she who appoints the time of death, and concerns herself with all that relates to the close of existence. Hence she was feared, not exactly as a maleficent deity, but as one whose business is with what is most dreaded and gloomy.

It was said that on a certain occasion four bold young men determined to journey to the sun-rising and visit the great Ioskeha. They reached his cabin and found him there alone. He received them affably and they conversed pleasantly, but at a certain moment he bade them hide themselves for their life, as his grandmother was coming. They hastily concealed themselves, and immediately Ataensic entered. Her magic insight had warned her of the presence of guests, and she had assumed the form of a beautiful girl, dressed in gay raiment, her neck and arms resplendent with collars and bracelets of wampum. She inquired for the guests, but Ioskeha, anxious to save them, dissembled, and replied that he knew not what she meant. She went forth to search for them, when he called them forth from their hiding place and bade them flee, and thus they escaped.

It was said of Ioskeha that he acted the part of husband to his grandmother. In other words, the myth presents the germ of that conception which the priests of ancient Egypt endeavored to express when they taught that Osiris was "his own father and his own son," that he was the "self-generating one," even that he was "the father of his own mother." These are grossly materialistic expressions, but they are perfectly clear to the student of mythology. They are meant to convey to the mind the self-renewing power of life in nature, which is exemplified in the sowing and the seeding, the winter and the summer, the dry and the rainy seasons, and especially the sunset and sunrise. They are echoes in the soul of man of the ceaseless rhythm in the operations of nature, and they become the only guarantors of his hopes for immortal life.[17]

Let us look at the names in the myth before us, for confirmation of this. Ioskeha is in the Oneida dialect of the Iroquois an impersonal verbal form of the third person singular, and means literally, "it is about to grow white," that is, to become light, to dawn. Ataensic is from the root aouen, water, and means literally, "she who is in the water."[18] Plainly expressed, the sense of the story is that the orb of light rises daily out of the boundless waters which are supposed to surround the land, preceded by the dawn, which fades away as soon as the sun has risen. Each day the sun disappears in these waters, to rise again from them the succeeding morning. As the approach of the sun causes the dawn, it was merely a gross way of stating this to say that the solar god was the father of his own mother, the husband of his grandmother.

The position of Ioskeha in mythology is also shown by the other name under which he was, perhaps, even more familiar to most of the Iroquois. This is Tharonhiawakon, which is also a verbal form of the third person, with the dual sign, and literally means, "He holds (or holds up) the sky with his two arms."[19] In other words, he is nearly allied to the ancient Aryan Dyâus, the Sky, the Heavens, especially the Sky in the daytime.

The signification of the conflict with his twin brother is also clearly seen in the two names which the latter likewise bears in the legends. One of these is that which I have given, Tawiscara, which, there is little doubt, is allied to the root, tiokaras, it grows dark. The other is Tehotennhiaron, the root word of which is kannhia, the flint stone. This name he received because, in his battle with his brother, the drops of blood which fell from his wounds were changed into flints.[20] Here the flint had the same meaning which I have already pointed out in Algonkin myth, and we find, therefore, an absolute identity of mythological conception and symbolism between the two nations.

Could these myths have been historically identical? It is hard to disbelieve it. Yet the nations were bitter enemies. Their languages are totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all the more credible explanation.

The impressions which natural occurrences make on minds of equal stages of culture are very much alike. The same thoughts are evoked, and the same expressions suggest themselves as appropriate to convey these thoughts in spoken language. This is often exhibited in the identity of expression between master-poets of the same generation, and between cotemporaneous thinkers in all branches of knowledge. Still more likely is it to occur in primitive and uncultivated conditions, where the most obvious forms of expression are at once adopted, and the resources of the mind are necessarily limited. This is a simple and reasonable explanation for the remarkable sameness which prevails in the mental products of the lower stages of civilization, and does away with the necessity of supposing a historic derivation one from the other or both from a common stock.

[Footnote 1: The writers from whom I have taken this myth are Nicolas Perrot, Mémoire sur les Meurs, Coustumes et Relligion des Sauvages de l'Amérique Septentrionale, written by an intelligent layman who lived among the natives from 1665 to 1699; and the various Relations des Jesuites, especially for the years 1667 and 1670.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull has pointed out that in Algonkin the words for father, osh, mother, okas, and earth, ohke (Narraganset dialect), can all be derived, according to the regular rules of Algonkin grammar, from the same verbal root, signifying "to come out of, or from." (Note to Roger Williams' Key into the Language of America, p. 56). Thus the earth was, in their language, the parent of the race, and what more natural than that it should become so in the myth also?]

[Footnote 3: William Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 98.]

[Footnote 4: Doctor Francisco de Avila, Narrative of the Errors and False Gods of the Indians of Huarochiri (1608). This interesting document has been partly translated by Mr. C.B. Markham, and published in one of the volumes of the Hackluyt Society's series.]

[Footnote 5: See H.R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, Vol. v, pp. 418, 419. Relations des Jesuites, 1634, p. 14, 1637, p. 46.]

[Footnote 6: In the Ojibway dialect of the Algonkins, the word for day, sky or heaven, is gijig. This same word as a verb means to be an adult, to be ripe (of fruits), to be finished, complete. Rev. Frederick Baraga, A Dictionary of the Olchipwe Language, Cincinnati, 1853. This seems to correspond with the statement in the myth.]

[Footnote 7: H.E. Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, vol. i, pp. 135, et seq.]

[Footnote 8: Brasseur de Bourbourg, Dissertation sur les Mythes de l'Antiquite Americaine, §vii.]

[Footnote 9: H.R. Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, Vol. i, p. 179, Vol. ii, p. 117. The word animikig in Ojibway means "it thunders and lightnings;" in their myths this tribe says that the West Wind is created by Animiki, the Thunder. (Ibid. Indian Tribes, Vol. v, p. 420.)]

[Footnote 10: When Father Buteux was among the Algonkins, in 1637, they explained to him the lightning as "a great serpent which the Manito vomits up." (Relation de la Nouvelle France, An. 1637, p. 53.) According to John Tanner, the symbol for the lightning in Ojibway pictography was a rattlesnake. (Narrative, p. 351.)]

[Footnote 11: This transformation is well set forth in Mr. Charles Francis Keary's Outlines of Primitive Belief Among the Indo-European Races (London, 1882), chaps, iv, vii. He observes: "The wind is a far more physical and less abstract conception than the sky or heaven; it is also a more variable phenomenon; and by reason of both these recommendations the wind-god superseded the older Dyâus. * * * Just as the chief god of Greece, having descended to be a divinity of storm, was not content to remain only that, but grew again to some likeness of the older Dyâus, so Odhinn came to absorb almost all the qualities which belong of right to a higher god. Yet he did this without putting off his proper nature. He was the heaven as well as the wind; he was the All-father, embracing all the earth and looking down upon mankind."]

[Footnote 12: H.R. Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, Vol. i, p. 216. Indian Tribes, Vol. v, p. 420.]

[Footnote 13: "Michabou, le Dieu des Eaux," etc. Charlevoix, Journal Historique, p. 281 (Paris, 1721).]

[Footnote 14: John Tanner, Narrative of Captivity and Adventure, p. 351. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, Vol. v, p. 420, etc.]

[Footnote 15: Thomas Campanius (Holm), Description of the Province of New Sweden, book iii, ch. xi. Campanius does not give the name of the hero-god, but there can be no doubt that it was the "Great Hare."]

[Footnote 16: The sources from which I draw the elements of the Iroquois hero-myth of Ioskeha are mainly the following: Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, 1640, 1671, etc. Sagard, Histoire du Canada, pp. 451, 452 (Paris, 1636); David Cusick, Ancient History of the Six Nations, and manuscript material kindly furnished me by Horatio Hale, Esq., who has made a thorough study of the Iroquois history and dialects.]

[Footnote 17: Such epithets were common, in the Egyptian religion, to most of the gods of fertility. Amun, called in some of the inscriptions "the soul of Osiris," derives his name from the root men, to impregnate, to beget. In the Karnak inscriptions he is also termed "the husband of his mother." This, too, was the favorite appellation of Chem, who was a form of Horos. See Dr. C.P. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, pp. 124, 146. 149, 150, etc.]

[Footnote 18: I have analyzed these words in a note to another work, and need not repeat the matter here, the less so, as I am not aware that the etymology has been questioned. See Myths of the New World, 2d Ed., p. 183, note.]

[Footnote 19: A careful analysis of this name is given by Father J.A. Cuoq, probably the best living authority on the Iroquois, in his Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise, p. 180 (Montreal, 1882). Here also the Iroquois followed precisely the line of thought of the ancient Egyptians. Shu, in the religion of Heliopolis, represented the cosmic light and warmth, the quickening, creative principle. It is he who, as it is stated in the inscriptions, "holds up the heavens," and he is depicted on the monuments as a man with uplifted arms who supports the vault of heaven, because it is the intermediate light that separates the earth from the sky. Shu was also god of the winds; in a passage of the Book of the Dead, he is made to say: "I am Shu, who drives the winds onward to the confines of heaven, to the confines of the earth, even to the confines of space." Again, like Ioskeha, Shu is said to have begotten himself in the womb of his mother, Nu or Nun, who was, like Ataensic, the goddess of water, the heavenly ocean, the primal sea. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, pp. 84-86.]

[Footnote 20: Cuoq, Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise, p. 180, who gives a full analysis of the name.]

CHAPTER III.
THE HERO-GOD OF THE AZTEC TRIBES

§1. The Two Antagonists.

THE CONTEST OF QUETZALCOATL AND TEZCATLIPOCA–QUETZALCOATL THE LIGHT-GOD–DERIVATION OF HIS NAME–TITLES OF TEZCATLIPOCA–IDENTIFIED WITH DARKNESS, NIGHT AND GLOOM.

§2. Quetzalcoatl the God.

MYTH OF THE FOUR BROTHERS–THE FOUR SUNS AND THE ELEMENTAL CONFLICT–NAMES OF THE FOUR BROTHERS.

§3. Quetzalcoatl the Hero of Tula.

TULA THE CITY OF THE SUN–WHO WERE THE TOLTECS?–TLAPALLAN AND XALAC–THE BIRTH OF THE HERO-GOD–HIS VIRGIN MOTHER, CHIMALMATL–HIS MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION–AZTLAN, THE LAND OF SEVEN CAVES, AND COLHUACAN, THE BENDED MOUNT–THE MAID XOCHITL AND THE ROSE GARDEN OF THE GODS–QUETZALCOATL AS THE WHITE AND BEARDED STRANGER.

THE GLORY OF THE LORD OF TULA–THE SUBTLETY OF THE SORCERER, TEZCATLIPOCA–THE MAGIC MIRROR AND THE MYSTIC DRAUGHT–THE MYTH EXPLAINED–THE PROMISE OF REJUVENATION–THE TOVEYO AND THE MAIDEN–THE JUGGLERIES OF TEZCATLIPOCA–DEPARTURE OF QUETZALCOATL FROM TULA–QUETZALCOATL AT CHOLULA–HIS DEATH OR DEPARTURE–THE CELESTIAL GAME OF BALL AND TIGER SKIN–QUETZALCOATL AS THE PLANET VENUS.

§4. Quetzalcoatl as Lord of the Winds.

THE LORD OF THE FOUR WINDS–HIS SYMBOLS THE WHEEL OF THE WINDS, THE PENTAGON AND THE CROSS–CLOSE RELATION TO THE GODS OF RAIN AND WATERS–INVENTOR OF THE CALENDAR–GOD OF FERTILITY AND CONCEPTION–RECOMMENDS SEXUAL AUSTERITY–PHALLIC SYMBOLS–GOD OF MERCHANTS–THE PATRON OF THIEVES–HIS PICTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS.

§5. The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

HIS EXPECTED RE-APPEARANCE–THE ANXIETY OF MONTEZUMA–HIS ADDRESS TO CORTES–THE GENERAL EXPECTATION–EXPLANATION OF HIS PREDICTED RETURN.

I now turn from the wild hunting tribes who peopled the shores of the Great Lakes and the fastnesses of the northern forests to that cultivated race whose capital city was in the Valley of Mexico, and whose scattered colonies were found on the shores of both oceans from the mouths of the Rio Grande and the Gila, south, almost to the Isthmus of Panama. They are familiarly known as Aztecs or Mexicans, and the language common to them all was the Nahuatl, a word of their own, meaning "the pleasant sounding."

Their mythology has been preserved in greater fullness than that of any other American people, and for this reason I am enabled to set forth in ampler detail the elements of their hero-myth, which, indeed, may be taken as the most perfect type of those I have collected in this volume.

§1. The Two Antagonists.

The culture hero of the Aztecs was Quetzalcoatl, and the leading drama, the central myth, in all the extensive and intricate theology of the Nahuatl speaking tribes was his long contest with Tezcatlipoca, "a contest," observes an eminent Mexican antiquary, "which came to be the main element in the Nahuatl religion and the cause of its modifications, and which materially influenced the destinies of that race from its earliest epochs to the time of its destruction."[1]

The explanations which have been offered of this struggle have varied with the theories of the writers propounding them. It has been regarded as a simple historical fact; as a figure of speech to represent the struggle for supremacy between two races; as an astronomical statement referring to the relative positions of the planet Venus and the Moon; as a conflict between Christianity, introduced by Saint Thomas, and the native heathenism; and as having other meanings not less unsatisfactory or absurd.

Placing it side by side with other American hero-myths, we shall see that it presents essentially the same traits, and undoubtedly must be explained in the same manner. All of them are the transparent stories of a simple people, to express in intelligible terms the daily struggle that is ever going on between Day and Night, between Light and Darkness, between Storm and Sunshine.

Like all the heroes of light, Quetzalcoatl is identified with the East. He is born there, and arrives from there, and hence Las Casas and others speak of him as from Yucatan, or as landing on the shores of the Mexican Gulf from some unknown land. His day of birth was that called Ce Acatl, One Reed, and by this name he is often known. But this sign is that of the East in Aztec symbolism.[2] In a myth of the formation of the sun and moon, presented by Sahagun,[3] a voluntary victim springs into the sacrificial fire that the gods have built. They know that he will rise as the sun, but they do not know in what part of the horizon that will be. Some look one way, some another, but Quetzalcoatl watches steadily the East, and is the first to see and welcome the Orb of Light. He is fair in complexion, with abundant hair and a full beard, bordering on the red,[4] as are all the dawn heroes, and like them he was an instructor in the arts, and favored peace and mild laws.

His name is symbolic, and is capable of several equally fair renderings. The first part of it, quetzalli, means literally a large, handsome green feather, such as were very highly prized by the natives. Hence it came to mean, in an adjective sense, precious, beautiful, beloved, admirable. The bird from which these feathers were obtained was the quetzal-tototl (tototl, bird) and is called by ornithologists Trogon splendens.

The latter part of the name, coatl, has in Aztec three entirely different meanings. It means a guest, also twins, and lastly, as a syncopated form of cohuatl, a serpent. Metaphorically, cohuatl meant something mysterious, and hence a supernatural being, a god. Thus Montezuma, when he built a temple in the city of Mexico dedicated to the whole body of divinities, a regular Pantheon, named it Coatecalli, the House of the Serpent.[5]

Through these various meanings a good defence can be made of several different translations of the name, and probably it bore even to the natives different meanings at different times. I am inclined to believe that the original sense was that advocated by Becerra in the seventeenth century, and adopted by Veitia in the eighteenth, both competent Aztec scholars.[6] They translate Quetzalcoatl as "the admirable twin," and though their notion that this refers to Thomas Didymus, the Apostle, does not meet my views, I believe they were right in their etymology. The reference is to the duplicate nature of the Light-God as seen in the setting and rising sun, the sun of to-day and yesterday, the same yet different. This has its parallels in many other mythologies.[7]

The correctness of this supposition seems to be shown by a prevailing superstition among the Aztecs about twins, and which strikingly illustrates the uniformity of mythological conceptions throughout the world. All readers are familiar with the twins Romulus and Remus in Roman story, one of whom was fated to destroy their grandfather Amulius; with Edipus and Telephos, whose father Laios, was warned that his death would be by one of his children; with Theseus and Peirithoos, the former destined to cause the suicide of his father Aigeus; and with many more such myths. They can be traced, without room for doubt, back to simple expressions of the fact that the morning and the evening of the one day can only come when the previous day is past and gone; expressed figuratively by the statement that any one day must destroy its predecessor. This led to the stories of "the fatal children," which we find so frequent in Aryan mythology.[8]

The Aztecs were a coarse and bloody race, and carried out their superstitions without remorse. Based, no doubt, on this mythical expression of a natural occurrence, they had the belief that if twins were allowed to live, one or the other of them would kill and eat his father or mother; therefore, it was their custom when such were brought into the world to destroy one of them.[9]

We shall see that, as in Algonkin story Michabo strove to slay his father, the West Wind, so Quetzalcoatl was in constant warfare with his father, Tezcatlipoca-Camaxtli, the Spirit of Darkness. The effect of this oft-repeated myth on the minds of the superstitious natives was to lead them to the brutal child murder I have mentioned.

It was, however, natural that the more ordinary meaning, "the feathered or bird-serpent," should become popular, and in the picture writing some combination of the serpent with feathers or other part of a bird was often employed as the rebus of the name Quetzalcoatl.

He was also known by other names, as, like all the prominent gods in early mythologies, he had various titles according to the special attribute or function which was uppermost in the mind of the worshipper. One of these was Papachtic, He of the Flowing Locks, a word which the Spaniards shortened to Papa, and thought was akin to their title of the Pope. It is, however, a pure Nahuatl word,[10] and refers to the abundant hair with which he was always credited, and which, like his ample beard, was, in fact, the symbol of the sun's rays, the aureole or glory of light which surrounded his face.

His fair complexion was, as usual, significant of light. This association of ideas was so familiar among the Mexicans that at the time of an eclipse of the sun they sought out the whitest men and women they could find, and sacrificed them, in order to pacify the sun.[11]

His opponent, Tezcatlipoca, was the most sublime figure in the Aztec Pantheon. He towered above all other gods, as did Jove in Olympus. He was appealed to as the creator of heaven and earth, as present in every place, as the sole ruler of the world, as invisible and omniscient.

The numerous titles by which he was addressed illustrate the veneration in which he was held. His most common name in prayers was Titlacauan, We are his Slaves. As believed to be eternally young, he was Telpochtli, the Youth; as potent and unpersuadable, he was Moyocoyatzin, the Determined Doer;[12] as exacting in worship, Monenegui, He who Demands Prayers; as the master of the race, Teyocoyani, Creator of Men, and Teimatini, Disposer of Men. As he was jealous and terrible, the god who visited on men plagues, and famines, and loathsome diseases, the dreadful deity who incited wars and fomented discord, he was named Yaotzin, the Arch Enemy, Yaotl necoc, the Enemy of both Sides, Moquequeloa, the Mocker, Nezaualpilli, the Lord who Fasts, Tlamatzincatl, He who Enforces Penitence; and as dark, invisible and inscrutable, he was Yoalli ehecatl, the Night Wind.[13]

He was said to be formed of thin air and darkness; and when he was seen of men it was as a shadow without substance. He alone of all the gods defied the assaults of time, was ever young and strong, and grew not old with years.[14] Against such an enemy who could hope for victory?

The name "Tezcatlipoca" is one of odd significance. It means The Smoking Mirror. This strange metaphor has received various explanations. The mirrors in use among the Aztecs were polished plates of obsidian, trimmed to a circular form. There was a variety of this black stone called tezcapoctli, smoky mirror stone, and from this his images were at times made.[15] This, however, seems too trivial an explanation.

Others have contended that Tezcatlipoca, as undoubtedly the spirit of darkness and the night, refers, in its meaning, to the moon, which hangs like a bright round mirror in the sky, though partly dulled by what the natives thought a smoke.[16]

I am inclined to believe, however, that the mirror referred to is that first and most familiar of all, the surface of water: and that the smoke is the mist which at night rises from lake and river, as actual smoke does in the still air.

As presiding over the darkness and the night, dreams and the phantoms of the gloom were supposed to be sent by Tezcatlipoca, and to him were sacred those animals which prowl about at night, as the skunk and the coyote.[17]

Thus his names, his various attributes, his sacred animals and his myths unite in identifying this deity as a primitive personification of the Darkness, whether that of the storm or of the night.[18]

This is further shown by the beliefs current as to his occasional appearance on earth. This was always at night and in the gloom of the forest. The hunter would hear a sound like the crash of falling trees, which would be nothing else than the mighty breathings of the giant form of the god on his nocturnal rambles. Were the hunter timorous he would die outright on seeing the terrific presence of the god; but were he of undaunted heart, and should rush upon him and seize him around the waist, the god was helpless and would grant him anything he wished. "Ask what you please," the captive deity would say, "and it is yours. Only fail not to release me before the sun rises. For I must leave before it appears."[19]

§2. Quetzalcoatl the God.

In the ancient and purely mythical narrative, Quetzalcoatl is one of four divine brothers, gods like himself, born in the uttermost or thirteenth heaven to the infinite and uncreated deity, which, in its male manifestations, was known as Tonaca tecutli, Lord of our Existence, and Tzin teotl, God of the Beginning, and in its female expressions as Tonaca cihuatl, Queen of our Existence, Xochiquetzal, Beautiful Rose, Citlallicue, the Star-skirted or the Milky Way, Citlalatonac, the Star that warms, or The Morning, and Chicome coatl, the Seven Serpents.[20]

The usual translation of Tonaca tecutli is "God of our Subsistence," to, our, naca, flesh, tecutli, chief or lord. It really has a more subtle meaning. Naca is not applied to edible flesh–that is expressed by the word nonoac--but is the flesh of our own bodies, our life, existence. See Anales de Cuauhtitlan, p. 18, note.]

Of these four brothers, two were the black and the red Tezcatlipoca, and the fourth was Huitzilopochtli, the Left handed, the deity adored beyond all others in the city of Mexico. Tezcatlipoca–for the two of the name blend rapidly into one as the myth progresses–was wise beyond compute; he knew all thoughts and hearts, could see to all places, and was distinguished for power and forethought.

At a certain time the four brothers gathered together and consulted concerning the creation of things. The work was left to Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. First they made fire, then half a sun, the heavens, the waters and a certain great fish therein, called Cipactli, and from its flesh the solid earth. The first mortals were the man, Cipactonal, and the woman, Oxomuco,[21] and that the son born to them might have a wife, the four gods made one for him out of a hair taken from the head of their divine mother, Xochiquetzal.