Volume II Part 8 (1/2)

* For a brief account of Sahagun and the fortunes of his book, see Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, iii. 231, note 61. The references here to Sahagun's own work are to the translation by MM. Jourdanet and Simeon, published by Ma.s.son, Paris, 1880. Bernal Diaz is referred to in the French edition published by M. Lemerre in 1879.

** _Veridique Histoire_, chap, xcii.

As to the mythical habits of the Aztec Olympians in general, Sahagun observes that ”they were friends of disguise, and changed themselves often into birds or savage beasts”. Hence he, or his informants, infer that the G.o.ds have originally been necromancers or medicine-men, now wors.h.i.+pped after death; a natural inference, as magical feats of shape-s.h.i.+fting are commonly ascribed ”everywhere to witches and warlocks”. As a matter of fact, the Aztec G.o.ds, though bedizened with the attributes of mortal conjurors, and with the fur and feathers of totems, are, for the most part, the departmental deities of polytheism, each ruling over some province of nature or of human activity. Combined with these are deities who, in their origin, were probably ideal culture-heroes, like Yehl, or Qat, or Prometheus. The long and tedious myths of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca appear to contain memories of a struggle between the G.o.ds or culture-heroes of rival races. Such struggles were natural, and necessary, perhaps, before a kind of syncretism and a general tolerance could unite in peace the deities of a realm composed of many tribes originally hostile. In a cultivated people, made up out of various conquered and amalgamated tribes, we must expect polytheism, because their Olympus is a kind of divine representative a.s.sembly. Anything like monotheism, in such a state, must be the result of philosophic reflection. ”A laughable matter it is,”

says Bernal Diaz, ”that in each province the Indians have their G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds of one province or town are of no profit to the people of another. Thus have they an infinite number of idols, to each of which they sacrifice.”*

* Bernal Diaz, chap. xcii.

He might have described, in the same words, the local G.o.ds of the Egyptian nomes, for a similar state of things preceded, and to some extent survived, the syncretic efforts of Egyptian priesthood.

Meanwhile, the _Teocallis_, or temples of Mexico, gave hospitable shelter to this mixed mult.i.tude of divinities. Hard by Huitzilopochtli was Tezcatlipoca (Tezcatepuca, Bernal calls him), whose chapel ”stank worse than all the shambles of Castile”. He had the face of a bear and s.h.i.+ning eyes, made of mirrors called _Tezcut_. He was understood by Bernal to be the Mexican Hades, or warden of the dead. Not far off was an idol, half-human and half-lizard, ”the G.o.d of fruits and harvest, I remember not his name,” and all his chapel walls dripped blood.

In the medley of such a pantheon, it is difficult to arrange the deities on any principle of order. Beginning with Huitzilopochtli, as perhaps the most famous, it is to be observed that he indubitably became and was recognised as a G.o.d of battles, and that he was also the guide and protector who (according to the Aztec painted scriptures) led the wandering fathers through war and wilderness to the promised land of Mexico. His birth was one of those miraculous conceptions which we have seen so frequently in the myths and _marchen_ of the lower and the higher races. It was not by swallowing a berry, as in Finland, but by cheris.h.i.+ng in her bosom a flying ball of feathers that the devout woman, Coatlicue, became the mother of Huitzilopochtli. All armed he sprang to the light, like Athene from the head of Zeus, and slew his brothers that had been born by natural generation. From that day he received names of dread, answering to _Deimos_ and _Phobos_.*

* Clavigero, _Staria Ant. del Mexico_, ii. 17, 19; Bancroft, iii. 290.

By another myth, euhemeristic in character, Huitziton (the name is connected with _huitzilin_, the humming-bird) was the leader of the Aztecs in their wanderings. On his death or translation, his skull gave oracles, like the head of Bran in the Welsh legend. Sahagun, in the first page of his work, also euhemerises Huitzilopochtli, and makes him out to have been a kind of Hercules _double_ with a medicine-man; but all this is mere conjecture. The position of Huitzilopochtli as a war-G.o.d, guardian and guide through the wilderness is perfectly established, and it is nearly as universally agreed that his name connects him with the humming-bird, which his statue wore on its left foot. He also carried a green bunch of plumage upon his head, shaped like the bill of a small bird Now, as J. G. Muller has pointed out, the legend and characteristics of Huitzilopochtli are reproduced, by a coincidence startling even in mythology, in the legend and characteristics of Picus in Latium. Just as Huitzilopochtli wore the humming-bird indicated by his name on his foot, so Picus was represented with the woodp.e.c.k.e.r of his name on his head.*

* J. G. Muller, _Uramerik. Rel_., p. 595.

On the subject of Picus one may consult Ovid, _Metamorph_, xiv. 314.

Here the story runs that Circe loved Picus, whom she met in the woods.

He disdained her caresses, and she turned him into the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, ”with his garnet head”. ”Et fulvo cervix pnecingitur auro.”

According to Virgil (J. Sn., vii. 187), the statue of this Picus was settled in an old Laurentian temple or palace of unusual sanct.i.ty, surrounded by images of the earlier G.o.ds. The woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, _pici_, are known _Martio cognomine_, says Pliny (10, 18, 20, -- 40), and so connected with the Roman war-G.o.d, _Picas Martius_.

In his Romische Mythologie, i. 336, 337, Preller makes no use of these materials for comparison, though the conduct and character of the other beast of war, the wolf, as guide and protector of the Hirpi (wolves), and wors.h.i.+pped by them with wolf-dances, is an obvious survival of totemism. The Picini have their animal leader, Picus, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, the Hirpi have their animal leader, the wolf, just as the humming-bird was the leader of the Aztecs.

In these Latin legends, as in the legends of Huit-zilopochtli, the basis, as J. G. Muller sees, is the bird--the humming-bird in one case, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r in the other. The bird is then euhemerised or brought into anthropomorphic form. It is fabled that he was originally a man (like Picus before Circe enchanted him to a bird's shape), or, in Mexico, a man named Huitziton, who during the Aztec migrations heard and pursued a little bird that cried ”Tinni,” that is, ”Follow, follow”.*

Now we are all familiar with cla.s.sical legends of races that were guided by a bird or beast to their ultimate seats. Muller mentions Battus and the raven, the Chalcidians and the dove, the Cretans and the dolphin, which was Apollo, Cadmus and the cow; the Hirpi, or wolves, who followed the wolf. In the same way the Picini followed the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, _Picus_, from whom they derived their name, and carried a woodp.e.c.k.e.r on their banners. Thus we may connect both the Sabine war-G.o.ds and the bird of the Mexican war-G.o.ds with the many guiding and protecting animals which occur in fable. Now a guiding and protecting animal is almost a synonym for a totem. That the Sabine woodp.e.c.k.e.r had been a totem may be pretty certainly established on the evidence of Plutarch. The people called by his name (Picini) declined, like totemists everywhere, to eat their holy bird, in this case the woodp.e.c.k.e.r.**

* Bancroft, iii. 69, note, quoting Torquemada.

** Quoest. Rom., xxi.

The inference is that the humming-bird whose name enters into that of Huitzilopochtli, and whose feathers were worn on his heel, had been the totem of an Aztec kindred before Huitzilopochtli, like Picus, was anthropomorphised. On the other hand, if Huitzilopochtli was once the Baiame of the Aztecs, their Guide in their wanderings, he might, in myth, be mixed up with a totem or other wors.h.i.+pful animal. ”Before this G.o.d was represented in human form, he was merely a little humming-bird, Huitziton; but as the anthropomorphic processes advanced, the bird became an attribute, emblem, or symbol of the deity.”* If Huitzilopochtli is said to have given the Aztecs fire, that boon is usually regarded by many races, from Normandy to Australia, as the present given to men by a bird; for example, the fire-crested wren.**

Thus understood, the ornithological element in Huitzilopochtli is purely totemic. While accepting the reduction of him to a hummingbird, M.

Reville ingeniously concludes that he was ”a derivative form of the sun, and especially of the sun of the fair season”. If the bird was wors.h.i.+pped, it was not as a totem, but as ”the divine messenger of the spring,” like ”the plover among the Latins”.*** Attempts have been made, with no great success, to discover the cosmical character of the G.o.d from the nature of his feasts.

* J. G. Muller, op. cit. i. p. 596.

** Bosquet, La Normandie Merveilleuse, Paris, 1845; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i.; Kuhn, Herabkunft, p. 109; Journal Anthrop. Inst., November, 1884; Sproat, Savage Life (the cuttlefish), p. 178; Bancroft, iii. 100.

*** Hibbert Lectures, 1884, English trans., pp. 54, 55. The woodp.e.c.k.e.r seems a better Latin example than the plover.

The Mexican calendar, ”the Aztec year,” as described at considerable length by Sahagun, was a succession of feasts, marked by minute and elaborate rites of a magical character. The G.o.ds of rain were frequently propitiated, so was the G.o.ddess of maize, the mountain G.o.d, the mother of the G.o.ds, and many other divinities. The general theory of wors.h.i.+p was the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a man for male G.o.ds, of a woman for each G.o.ddess. The latter victims were regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in each case; for no system of wors.h.i.+p carried farther the identification of the G.o.d with the sacrifice, and of both with the officiating priest. The connection was emphasised by the priest's wearing the newly-flayed skins of the victims, just as in Greece, Egypt and a.s.syria the fawn-skin, or bull-hide, or goat-skin, or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the celebrants. Finally, an image of the G.o.d was made out of paste, and this was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who communicated.*

* Copious details as to the sacraments, human sacrifices, paste figures of G.o.ds, and ident.i.ty of G.o.d and victim, will be found in Sahagun's second and third books. The _magical_ character of the ritual deserves particular attention. See many examples of G.o.ds made of flour and eaten in Liebrecht's _Zur Volkskunde_, ”Der aufgegessene Gott,” p. 436. It will be noted that the feasts of the corn G.o.ddess, like the rites of Demeter, were celebrated with torch-dances. The ritual of the month Quecholli (iii. 33, 144) is a mere medicine hunt, as Tanner and the Red Indians call it, a procuring of magical virtue for the arrows, as in the Zuni mysteries to- day. Compare _Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, vol. ii., ”Zuni Prey G.o.ds”.

From the special ritual of Huitzilopochtli Mr. Tylor conjectures that this ”inextricable compound parthenogenetic G.o.d may have been originally” a nature deity whose life and death were connected with the year”.* This theory is based on the practice at the feast called Panquetzaliztli.** ”His paste idol was shot through with an arrow,” says Mr. Tylor, ”and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten; wherefore the ceremony was called _Teoqualo_, or 'G.o.d-eating,' and this was a.s.sociated with the winter solstice.” M. Reville says that this feast coincided with our month of December, the beginning of the cold and dry season, Huitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers and all the beauteous adornments of spring and summer; but like Adonis, like Osiris, and so many other solar deities, he only died to live and to return again. Before identifying him with the sun, it may be remarked that the Aztec feast of the return of the G.o.ds was celebrated in the twelfth month and the paste sacrifice of Huitzilopochtli was in the fifteenth.