American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent. Brinton Daniel Garrison

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.СКАЧАТЬ