Ixtlilxochitl

“ Not knowing what might follow this exodus, Cortés hastened to fortify his quarters and to collect supplies, aided by Ixtlilxochitl, who had succeeded somewhat in reassuring the people. In order to restore confidence, however, and win the inhabitants to his purposes, he saw that there should be a recognized head, with influence to control them, and one whom he could trust. The former necessity demanded that the choice should be made among the brothers of Cohuanacoch, children of Nezahualpilli, and of these Ixtlilxochitl and Tecocoltzin were the only professed friends of the Spaniards. ”

“ Ixtlilxochitl’s writings have many of the defects belonging to his age. He often crowds the page with incidents of a trivial, and sometimes improbable, character. The improbability increases with the distance of the period; for distance, which diminishes objects to the natural eye, exaggerates them to the mental. His chronology, as I have more than once noticed, is inextricably entangled. He has often lent a too willing ear to traditions and reports which would startle the more skeptical criticism of the present time. ”

“ Ixtlilxóchitl is who commanded the hundreds of thousands of anahuaca warriors, who ordered cutting the water supply to Tenochtitlan and above all, who planned the spanish rescue out of Tenochtitlan, on which the official hispanic history is silent. In the early morning of the day of the spaniards rescue, Ixtlilxóchitl first attacked the mexicas by water, so when they counterattacked spaniards were able to leave the besieged site. Ixtlilxóchitl also sent an army of 100,000 men to protect the spanish retreat in the plains of Otumba. ”

“ An examination of the poems of Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, recorded by Ixtlilxochitl, will afford sufficient 471proof of the expressiveness and richness of the Aztec language. [702] The song on the “Mutability of Life” and the ode on the tyrant Tezozomoc have often been translated and admired. [703] One of the leading characteristics of American language, it has been said, is “agglutination,” but we must add that the term employed is not sufficiently comprehensive. ”

“ Ixtlilxochitl tells another story. The kings were brought out three hours before dawn for fear of a tumult. The two of Mexico and Tlacopan had already been hanged, and Cohuanacoch was about to be, when his brother, Ixtlilxochitl, being advised, rushed forth and called upon the Indians. Perceiving the danger, Cortés cut the rope and saved the half-strangled king of Tezcuco. He thereupon proceeded to explain to Ixtlilxochitl the just reasons which had brought about the execution. The prince appeared convinced, and dismissed the auxiliaries, who stood ready to fall upon the Spaniards. ”

“ Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl claims our attention as a native historian who has labored zealously to vindicate the glorious antecedents of his race, particularly the Acolhuas, whose loyal devotion to the Spanish invaders he advocates with an enthusiasm as unblushing as it is inconsistent. The chief hero of the theme is his ancestor and namesake, King Ixtlilxochitl, his great great grandfather, according to Muñoz’ genealogic list. ”

“ Thanks to Ixtlilxóchitl, the spanish took refuge in Tlaxcala and prevented the mexicas from persecuting and killing them. Another myth is that Cortés and his men built and constructed three ships, to subsequently besiege Tenochtitlan. The ships were mere adornment in the battle of Tenochtitlan because the Lake was very shallow and warfare techniques were by using thousands of small canoes from both sides. The most powerful weapon of the invaders was smallpox. ”

“ A remarkable native development of Mexican theism must be admitted, in so far as we may receive the native historian Ixtlilxochitl's account of the worship paid by Nezahualcoyotl, the poet-king of Tezcuco, to the invisible supreme Tloque-Nahuaque, he who has all in him, the cause of causes, in whose star-roofed pyramid stood an idol, and who there received no bloody sacrifice, but only flowers and incense. Yet it would have been more satisfactory, were the stories told by this Aztec panegyrist of his royal ancestors confirmed by other records. ”

“ To this learned writer, Ixtlilxochitl, we owe these valuable remains of the monarch, and to the fact that he was his descendant, doubtless, is due the favorable picture that is drawn of this king.
We are told that Nezahualcoyotl delighted in the study of nature, and became a fair astronomer by studying the heavens. Such plants and animals as he could not keep alive at his court he caused paintings to be made of, by skilled native artists. These were seen by a learned Spanish naturalist, after the Conquest, who declared they were true to the life. ”

“ Historia de México, by Antonio de Solis and others, like the Indian writers, Tezozomoc and Ixtlilxochitl, Diego Duran, and Juan de Tobar, also Torquemada, Monarchía Indiana; Veytia, Historia antigua de México. Modern writers on the conquest of Mexico are so numerous that it is not possible to enumerate them. ”

“ The royal posterity became so numerous in a few generations that it was common to see them reduced to great poverty and earning a painful subsistence by the most humble occupations. Ixtlilxochitl, who was descended from the principal wife or queen of Nezahualpilli, maintained a very respectable position. He filled the office of interpreter to the viceroy, to which he was recommended by his acquaintance with the ancient hieroglyphics and his knowledge of the Mexican and Spanish languages. ”

“ Nearer the truth comes Ixtlilxochitl, who, while disposed to credit his countrymen, dares not accuse the Spaniards, and so takes the prudent middle course of casting the blame on the Tlascaltecs. Prompted by the hatred bred of former wrongs inflicted by Mexicans, and by greed for spoils, they invent charges of treason and speedy revolt. ”

“ In the original pre-Spanish chronicles important events are recorded in connection with fifty-two year signs falling in regular order and then repeating. In the well-intentioned attempts to restore Mexican history entire cycles are interpolated in several places and the rulers are given lives of impossible length. In the case of Ixtlilxochitl we possess, fortunately, the principal documents which this descendant of the Texcocan kings attempted to interpret. ”

“ Even such writers as Ixtlilxochitl and Camargo, from whom, considering their Indian descent, we might expect more independence, seem less solicitous to show this, than their loyalty to the new faith and country of their adoption. Perhaps the most honest Aztec record of the period is to be obtained from the volumes, the twelfth book particularly, of father Sahagun embodying the traditions of the natives soon after the Conquest. ”

“ Not unlike the rewards of Ixtlilxochitl were those of the Tlascaltecs, to whom the Spaniards owed a vast debt — their lives, and the moral and physical aid which sustained them in adversity, and in the initiatory operations which led to ultimate success. In this act of forging fetters for adjoining peoples, fetters which were also to shackle themselves, they had been impelled not alone by a hatred of the Aztecs, more intense and exalted than that of the Tezcucan prince, but by a friendship based on admiration, and cemented by Cortés' politic favors. ”

“ There were, it is true, some exceptions to these, and among them Ixtlilxochitl, the young lord of Tezcuco, and Chichemecatl, the valiant Tlascalan chieftain, who, with a few of their immediate followers, still remained true to the banner under which they had enlisted. But their number was insignificant. The Spaniards beheld with dismay the mighty array, on which they relied for support, thus silently melting away before the breath of superstition. Cortés alone maintained a cheerful countenance. ”

“ Yet to him we probably owe the preservation of the writings of Ixtlilxochitl, Tezozomoc, and others who wrote in Spanish, and whose volumes have since seen the light in the collections of Bustamente, Lord Kingsborough, Ternaux-Compans, and elsewhere.
The Nahuatl MSS. have remained unedited. Few took an interest in their contents, fewer still in the language. The science of linguistics is very modern, and that even so perfect an idiom as the Nahuatl could command the attention of scholars for its own sake, had not dawned on the minds of patrons of learning. ”

“ He finds that Veytia, in his account of the Toltecs, beside depending on Sahagún and Torquemada, finds a chief source in Ixtlilxochitl, and locates Huehue-Tlapallan in the north; and Veytia’s statements reappear in Clavigero.
The best narratives of the Toltec history are those in Veytia, Historia Antigua de Méjico (Mexico, 1806) ; Brasseur’s Hist. Nations Civilisées (vol. i.) , and his introduction to his Popul Vuh; and Bancroft (v. ch. 3 and 4) : but we must look to Ixtlilxochitl, Torquemada, Sahagún, and the others, if we wish to study the sources. ”

“ Their rage at the sight that met their eyes may be imagined. The bloody followers of Huitzilopochtli were driven from their homes, and the allies their bravery had gained were lost to them. [VI-34] Ixtlilxochitl, without mentioning their return to Culhua favor by the Xochimilco war, says that the Aztecs escaped from their bondage at Culhuacan on hearing that king Calquiyauhtzin intended to massacre them, and resided, for a time, at Iztacalco, whence they made inroads upon Culhua territory, but finally retreated to the island where Tenochtitlan was founded. ”

“ Meanwhile Nezahualpilli had died without naming a successor, and the council, influenced by Montezuma, set aside the claims of an elder brother and declared Cacama king. Actuated both by personal ambition and patriotic resentment against Aztec interference, Ixtlilxochitl denounced the electors as tools of the imperial intriguer. Finding his protests unheeded, he began to interest the interior provinces in his own behalf, by applying patriotic arguments, and in 1517 he descended from Meztitlan with a force estimated at a hundred thousand men. ”

“ His head-adornment was an open crown, covered in its circumference with white and green feathers, and from behind it over the shoulder depended other plumes of red and white. Sometimes the insignium of the thunderbolt is omitted with this god, and Ixtlilxochitl represents him, in the picture of the month Etzalli, with a cane of maize in the one hand, and in the other a kind of instrument with which he was digging in the ground. In the ground thus dug were put maize leaves filled with a kind of food, like fritters, called etzalli ”

“ They appeared in the same idol dress as the dead king, though with more elaborate ornaments. We find them on one occasion as demons with faces at different parts of their dress, set with eyes of mirrors and gaping mouths; and at another time with blackened or dyed bodies and paper maxtlis, swinging the yellow sticks used to stir the ashes. According to Ixtlilxochitl, the high-priest of Cihuacoatl, who was supposed to gather the dead, came out to receive the procession. ”

“ The narrative is based upon the Tezcucan historian, Ixtlilxochitl's, brief account of the overthrow of his ancestral government by Tezozomoc, the Tepanec king, in 1418; and its restoration, under Prince Nezahualcoyotl, eight or ten years later.
The wonderful experience of Nezahualcoyotl—Hungry Fox— (abbreviated, for convenience, to 'Hualcoyotl) is made the nucleus around which the story is woven. ”

“ Here the rebellious Tezcocan prince, Ixtlilxochitl, with a portion of his army, met them and tendered his services to the Spanish crown, offering to join forces with Cortez if he would attack the Mexican king. He was quieted for a while with a diplomatic answer, and went back to his mountain capital to nurse his wrath till the time arrived for action.
Great crowds, that continually increased, now obstructed the way; curiosity alone moved them to inspect these strangers, for they were the first that had ever entered their territory. ”

“ With regard to the number of these destructions it is hard to speak positively, as on no single point in the wide range of early American religion, does there exist so much difference of opinion. All the way from twice to five times, following different accounts, has the world been desolated by tremendous convulsions of nature. I follow most closely the version of the Tezcucan historian Ixtlilxochitl, as being one of the earliest accounts, as, prima facie, from its origin, one of the most authentic, and as being supported by a majority of respectable historians up to the time of Humboldt. ”

“ In addition to his Historia Chichimeca and his Relaciones, (both of which are given by Kingsborough, while Ternaux has translated portions,) —the MS. of the Relaciones being in the Mexican archives,—Ixtlilxochitl left a large mass of his manuscript studies of the antiquities, often repetitionary in substance. Some are found in the compilation made in Mexico by Figueroa in 1792, by order of the Spanish government (Prescott, i. 193) . Some were in the Ramirez collection. ”

“ But he also passed away, his life having been overshadowed to some extent by the singular belief or prediction of the fall of his people in the coming of the white man from the East—a belief which influenced both the Texcocans and the Aztecs. His son Ixtlilxochitl, the historian above named, was in power at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, but he hated the Aztecs with a bitter hatred in consequence of their influence upon his people, and the installing by the machinations of Montezuma of an elder brother upon the throne, which had plunged the kingdom into civil war. ”