Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (65 page)

Some modern critics and historians dismiss the accounts of Aztec sacrifice as propaganda written by the Spanish invaders to justify their own brutality. But the vast majority of scholarly research and recent archaeology supports the view that the Aztecs had elevated human sacrifice to a ghastly cultural rite.

Did the Aztecs really think the Spanish were gods?

Back in grade school, if they were still teaching anything about the arrival of the Spanish in what would become Mexico, you may have heard this version of events. When the Spaniards arrived, riding horses then unknown in the Americas and wearing metal armor that made great noise, the “primitive” Aztecs unwittingly welcomed them, believing that Cortés was the returning god Quetzalcoatl. With a relatively small band of men, Cortés entered Tenochtitlán, took Moctezuma captive, and, in short order, captured the city and the Aztec empire, eventually destroying it.

The real history, as usual, is a little more complex. First, we should begin with the source of this story—or legend, as it might be called. Most accounts of the arrival of Cortés and the Spaniards, and specifically his encounter with Moctezuma, come from Cortés and other conquistadors, and, later, priests. That’s like reading Captain John Smith’s history of colonial-era Virginia, or accepting Hitler’s view of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It is hardly unbiased history.

In fact, Cortés landed on the east coast of Mexico in 1519, and marched inland to the Aztec capital. He and his men, who were not all trained soldiers, were joined by thousands of natives who had been conquered by the Aztecs and resented Aztec rule. Moctezuma II did not oppose the advancing Spaniards and did invite them in, but then they took him hostage. In 1520, the Aztecs rebelled and drove the Spaniards from the city. Moctezuma died that year, either executed or from wounds received early in the rebellion. Cortés reorganized his army and began a bloody attack on Tenochtitlán in May 1521. Moctezuma’s successor, Cuauhtémoc, surrendered in August the same year. He was later hanged by the Spanish for “treason.”

So, the question remains: did myth play any role in this fatal encounter? Most histories of the conquest state that Moctezuma believed Cortés represented the returning god Quetzalcoatl. But anthropologist and Latin studies expert Matthew Restall counts this as one of the
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
, the title of his 2003 history. He is joined by other recent scholars who question this very old assumption. John H. Elliott, a British historian, suggests that this story of the role of Aztec myth in the conquest is layered with its own set of legends. First of all, Cortés himself never mentioned the Quetzalcoatl story in his own writings. Restall and Elliott believe that the stories of a returning god from the East only sprang up later—perhaps twenty years after the Spanish arrived. Elliott also dismisses Cortés’s accounts of two speeches made by Moctezuma as the elaborate creation of the Spaniard, written for the consumption of the Spanish royal court. There are no contemporary records—in the writings of Cortés or later Aztec accounts—to confirm the idea that the Aztecs thought the Europeans were gods.

Whether or not the Aztecs actually believed that Cortés was the returning Quetzalcoatl remains an intriguing historical mystery. But it is certainly not what brought about the ultimate downfall of a mighty empire. In his landmark book about the role of disease in history,
Plagues and Peoples
, William H. McNeill writes: “Four months after the Aztecs had driven Cortés and his men from their city, an epidemic of small pox broke out among them, and the man who had organized the attack on Cortés was among those who died…. Such partiality could only be explained supernaturally, and there could be no doubt about which side of the struggle enjoyed divine favor. The religions, priest-hoods, and way of life built around the old Indian gods could not survive such a demonstration of the superior power of the God the Spaniards worshipped.”

What is the “Day of the Dead”?

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica around 1500, one of the native traditions they encountered was a month-long ritual that seemed to mock death. Though the tradition had roots stretching back thousands of years, the Catholic priests saw it as “pagan” and did their best to eradicate it.

During this celebration, the Aztecs and other Mesoamericans displayed skulls, which symbolized the twin ideas of death and rebirth. The skulls were used to honor the dead, who were thought to come back and visit during the month long celebration, which was presided over by Mictecacihuatli, the goddess of the underworld known as “lady of the dead.”

The Spanish considered the ritual barbarous and sacrilegious, an extension of the human sacrifices that they had eliminated. “Good Christians” simply didn’t go around worshipping skulls or other body parts (unless, of course, they should happen to be the remains or “relics” of a dead saint!). In their attempts to convert the natives to Catholicism, the Spanish tried to stamp out this celebration, which fell in the Aztec solar calendar’s ninth month—around August. When they could not eliminate it, the priests simply moved the celebration to coincide with the Catholic feast days, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day (November 1 and 2).

It is another classic example of how myths are transformed from one culture to another. Just as the Church had succeeded in converting the Celtic Samhain—also a time when the dead walked the earth—into All Souls’ Day (see chapter 5), the Aztec celebration of the dead was merged with Catholic tradition. But the ancient native roots of what is now known as Día de los Muertos (“day of the dead”) didn’t go away. Although increasingly commercialized into a “Hispanic Halloween” festival that extends well beyond October 31, the ancient traditions of this celebration of the dead are very much alive. Today, people in Mexico and Latin America, as well as many Hispanic Americans, don wooden skull masks and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. Wooden skulls are also placed on altars dedicated to the dead. Candy “skulls” of sugar and “Day of the Dead” cookies are widely sold. In many places, it is customary to make a trip to the cemetery for a graveside picnic comprising the deceased person’s favorite foods. Gifts for the dead are also placed on graves.

WHO’S WHO OF AZTEC GODS

The Aztecs worshipped hundreds of divinities who were believed to rule all human activities and aspects of nature. This list includes some of the Aztecs’ central deities.

Centeotl
(
Cinteotl
) God of the all-important maize, Centeotl is a key fertility figure. Every April, people offer him their blood, which is dropped on reeds and displayed on front doors. Centeotl also performs penitence that ensures abundant crops for mankind. All the attributes connected to Centeotl—blood sacrifice, penitence, and an April festival—were connected by Catholic priests to Jesus and his springtime crucifixion and resurrection.

Coatlicue
Known as the Lady of the Serpent Skirt, Coatlicue is the mother of the central god Huitzilopochtli as well as an earth serpent goddess. She wears a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace of human hearts, and carries a skull pendant. Endowed with flabby breasts and clawed hands and feet, Coatlicue feeds on human corpses. But she is not totally without redeeming qualities. Since she is goddess of the fertility of the earth, she freely gives life-sustaining crops to humanity.
In a key Aztec myth, Coatlicue is magically impregnated in an “immaculate conception” when a ball or clump of feathers falls from the sky and lands on her breast. Thinking that their mother has disgraced herself by becoming pregnant, Coatlicue’s 400 children plan to kill her to uphold the family honor. In some accounts, Coatlicue is killed; in others, she lives. Either way, she gives birth to Huitzilopochtli, who springs from her body fully formed and kills many of his half-siblings. The idea of the virgin birth of Jesus would have been completely acceptable to the people who embraced this myth of a god born from a pregnancy that came from a clump of heavenly feathers.

Huitzilopochtli
While many Aztec deities were borrowed or transformed from other myths of Mesoamerica, Huitzilopochtli is “All-Aztec.” Chief deity of the Aztecs, the god of war and the sun, Huitzilopochtli commands the Aztec warriors to create an empire, fight without mercy, and gather the captives necessary for sacrifice to the gods. Each night he undergoes a transformation, much like the Egyptian Re, becoming bones and returning to the world the next morning. His name means “blue hummingbird of the left,” because dead warriors become hummingbirds and fly to the underworld. Appropriately, Huitzilopochtli is depicted as a blue man fully armed and decorated with hummingbird feathers.
Huitzilopochtli’s birth is exceptional because he springs fully formed from his mother Coatlicue’s body just as she is about to be killed by her 400 children. Huitzilopochtli kills his half-sister
Coyolxauhqui,
or Golden Bells, and tosses her head into the heavens, where it becomes the moon. With his mother the earth, his sister the moon, and his 400 brothers who comprise the stars of the Milky Way, Huitzilopochtli and his family make up the entire cosmos.

Mictlantecuhtli
God of death, Mictlantecuhtli rules the silent kingdom of the dead known as Mictlan. Depicted as a skeleton wearing a pleated conical cap, Mictlantecuhtli figures in the Aztec story of the origin of people. Once the gods decide to repopulate the earth—after a flood!—they send the god Quetzalcoatl to the underworld to gather the bones of the dead who will be brought back to life. While Quetzalcoatl is carrying these bones, Mictlantecuhtli tries to trick him. Quetzalcoatl drops some of the bones and breaks them. When he gathers them up and returns to earth, the bones are sprinkled with the blood of the gods and are changed into men. Because some of the bones are broken, men come in different sizes.

Ometecuhtli
(
Ometeotl
) The supreme creator god of the Aztecs, Ometecuhtli lives in the highest part of heaven and is known as the “dual lord” or “two-god.” His name is fitting, since the “dual lord” takes a variety of forms, including a dual incarnation as a divine couple who are the parents of the four great Aztec gods: Huitzilopochtli, Xipe Totec (“the flayed lord”), Tezcatlipoca, and Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl
The dying and rising god, Quetzalcoatl is the great king and bringer of civilization. Known as the “plumed serpent,” Quetzalcoatl is depicted as a combination of a snake with the feathers of the quetzal, a brilliantly colored bird whose feathers signal authority among the Maya (it is still the national bird of Guatemala). A semilegendary ruler with roots in the older Toltec and Mayan myths, he may have been based on a Toltec priest-king, although one of the Mayan Creation gods,
Gucumatz
(or Kukulkán), is also called “plumed serpent” in the Popol Vuh.
His wife or sister,
Chalchiuhtlicue
, is goddess of running water. She protects newborn children, marriage, and innocent love.
In the complex Aztec-calendar religion, which includes four eras of varying length from hundreds to thousands of years called “suns,” Quetzalcoatl rules the second sun, which ends with hurricanes, and men being transformed into monkeys—a vestige of Mayan myth. The first sun is ruled by Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl’s brother, and comes to an end when beasts consume the world. The third sun is ruled by Tlaloc, god of rain and fertility, and ends in fire. The fourth sun is ruled by Tlaloc’s wife, Chalchiuhtlicue, and ends in the flood in which men are changed to fish. After the fourth sun, Quetzalcoatl makes his trip to the underworld to repopulate the earth. Humanity at present is in the fifth sun, ruled by the fire god
Xiuhtecuhtli
, which will end with earthquakes. This highly apocalyptic view of the world squared neatly with Catholic teachings.
Quetzalcoatl figures in an important myth, in which he argues with his brother Tezcatlipoca. There are two accounts of what happens next. Quetzalcoatl either sails away in a raft or immolates himself, in either case promising to return someday. This is the myth Cortés supposedly exploited in his conquest of the Aztecs, although the jury is now out on that one.

Tezcatlipoca
The brother and sometimes adversary of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca (“lord of the smoking mirror”) is god of the summer sun and the harvest as well as drought, darkness, war, and death. His name derives from the mirrors made from obsidian, which sorcerers used to predict the future. A black stone, obsidian was also employed to make spear points, war axes, and, most important, sacrificial knives.
Tezcatlipoca is a fickle deity with a split personality, who can be cruel or kind. Taking pleasure in battle, he is thought to die each night and return to the world in the morning.
In Tenochtitlán, custom held that handsome young men were sometimes selected to impersonate Tezcatlipoca for a year, after which they were killed with an obsidian knife, their hearts removed and offered as sacrifices.

Tlaloc
An ancient rain-and-fertility god adapted from the earlier Toltec people, Tlaloc is portrayed as a black man with tusklike jaguar’s teeth, rings around his eyes, and a scroll emerging from his mouth. He controls rain, lightning, and wind, as well as afflictions such as leprosy. According to the grim accounts of Tlaloc, his ritual sacrifices in Tenochtitlán required infant subjects. If the mothers of the sacrificial infants wept, the worshippers believed rain for the crops was assured. The flesh of these sacrificial victims was then eaten by the priests and nobility. (Tlaloc corresponds to the Mayan
Chac
, who also demanded sacrifice.)
Tlaloc’s consort is She of the Jade Skirt (Chalchiuhtlicue), the goddess of rivers and standing waters. She of the Jade Skirt also protects children. Perhaps she is associated with them because of the water that breaks before a woman gives birth.