Iztaccihuatl

“ The challengers have advanced half-way; the Aztecs must meet them.”
The conjecture was speedily verified. Iztlil’ had, in fact, ill brooked the superior skill, or better fortune, of the ’tzin; the applause of the populace had been worse than wounds to his jealous heart. Till this time, however, he had restrained his passion; now the foe were ranged as if challenging attack: he threw away his useless bow, and laid his hand on his maquahuitl.
“It is not for an Aztec god that we are fighting, O comrade!” he cried to Tlahua. “It is for ourselves. Come, let us show yon king a better war!” ”

“ One hundred years of successful government had made the Aztecs proud. Their enemies feared them. Surrounding nations sought their friendship for the sake of peace. The great house of Texcuco had allied itself with their king in marriage. Mingled in the veins of Montezuma with the savage blood of the worshippers of Huitzilopochtli, the terrible god of war, was a gentler strain of the delicate culture of the family of Nezahualcoyotl. ”

“ It may also be mentioned in passing that the date of Uitzilopochtli's (and Camaxtli's) movable feast was I. tecpatl (tecpatl being the stone-knife day-sign) , and, as will be explained later, gods were often known by calendrical names. Mixcoatl's knife was said to be a symbol of the peculiar female deity Itzpapalotl (" obsidian butterfly") , a star-goddess associated with fire and lightning, and occasionally identified with a mythological two-headed deer called Itzcueye which figures in the legends of Mixcoatl and Camaxtli as the captive and wife of the god. ”

“ AZTECS (from the Nahuatl word aztlan, “place of the Heron,” or “Heron” people) , the native name of one of the tribes that occupied the tableland of Mexico on the arrival of the Spaniards in America. It has been very frequently employed as equivalent to the collective national title of Nahuatlecas or Mexicans. The Aztecs came, according to native tradition, from a country to which they gave the name of Aztlan, usually supposed to lie towards the north-west, but the satisfactory localization of it is one of the greatest difficulties in Mexican history. ”

“ The tyrant Maxtla, after having put Izcohuatl's brother, Chimalpopoca, to death, continued to oppress the Mexican nation, and the monarch determined to shake off the yoke. At that time Maxtla had also usurped the kingdom of Texcoco, and the legitimate king, Netzahualcoyotl, was a fugitive in the mountains of Tlaxcala, and as the king of Tlaltelolco was also dissatisfied with the tyrannical rule of Maxtla, Izcohuatl formed a league with him, and visited Netzahualcoyotl to offer him an alliance against the common enemy. ”

“ Satisfied with the experiment, the gods repeated it, and at the end of another four days a girl arose from the vessel. Xolotl was appointed guardian to the children so miraculously created,14 and nourished them upon the milk-like juice of the maguey plant. They throve apace, and in course of time became [42] man and woman, the progenitors of the entire human race, who differ in bulk and stature as the pieces of the rescued bone varied in size and shape. Thus were born Iztac Mixcoatl the first man and Ilanceuitl or Ilamatecutli, his wife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For even now his admiring gaze could with difficulty be torn away from yonder younger, even more lovely, visage; although as yet the maiden had spoken no word, even shrinking away from this strangely speaking Aztec as though in affright.
“Come, brother, or too late,” urged Ixtli, almost sternly. “Save you, or Glass-eyes call Ixtli dog-liar. Come; must run, no fight; too big many for that.” ”

“ In 1417 Itzcoatl succeeded to power in Tenochtitlan; the Aztec had by this time increased considerably in numbers and prosperity, and the new ruler proved himself a man of action and an excellent general. He definitely espoused the cause of the exile, with the result that the latter, aided by the people of Tlaxcala and Uexotzinco, succeeded in recapturing Tezcoco and killing every Tepanec in the city. At the same time Coatlichan was stormed by the Chalca, who had also offered assistance to Nezahualcoyotl. ”

“ On the ascension of Itzcoatl to the Mexican throne, who was accounted one of the most prudent of their kings, he built temples, &c. subdued some neighbouring provinces, and concluded an alliance with the exiled prince of Acolhuacan, whose father had been killed, and himself supplanted by a neighbouring king. This prince immediately declared war against the usurper, and took several towns. Itzcoatl sent Montezuma, the son of Huitzilihuitl to congratulate him. ”

“ Ixtli expressed great surprise when this fact became evident, and he showed uneasiness as to the welfare of his beloved patroness and kindly teacher.
Surely something evil was impending! His father, Aztotl, was chieftain of the guards, and wholly devoted to the Sun Children, ready at all times to risk life in their behalf. Now, if the usual guards were lacking, surely it portended evil,—treachery, no doubt, at the bottom of which the paba and the 'Tzin almost certainly lurked. ”

“ Like Mixcoatl, with whom she is closely associated, Itzpapalotl appears to have been originally one of the ancient stellar and lightning deities of the Chichimec or nomadic tribes of the northern plains. Later, on the abandonment of the hunting mode of subsistence and the acceptance of a more settled and agricultural mode of life by the tribes who worshipped her, Itzpapalotl would appear (as the allusion to [227] her in the song to Tlazolteotl seems to show) to have become a goddess of the food-supply, the melon-patch, and the maize-crop. ”

“ The others, led by the old chief, Xicotencatl, whose son was commander of the armies, counselled opposition to them from the very beginning. Maxacatzin had suggested that these were probably the messengers sent from the god of the air, but the wise and sagacious Xicotencatl repelled this insinuation with scorn. "Those men," he said, "who demand entrance into our city appear to be rather monsters cast up by the sea, because it could not endure them in its waters, than gods descended from heaven, as some have vainly imagined. ”

“ Maxtla is a mighty king; Itzalmo an old man, whose life is of little account to anyone, least of all to himself. Was his life a thousand times more valuable than it is, it would yet be as many times too small a price to purchase that which you ask. Itzalmo has lived true to his prince, and will die as he has lived. ”

“ Unhappily, they were fast falling under the dominion of the warlike Aztecs. And that people repaid the benefits received from their more polished neighbours by imparting to them their own ferocious superstition, which, falling like a mildew on the land, would soon have blighted its rich blossoms of promise, and turned even its fruits to dust and ashes.
Fernando de Alva Ixtlixochitl, who flourished in the beginning of the seventeenth century. was a native of Tezcuco, and descended in a direct line from the sovereigns of that kingdom. ”

“ With a powerful army he entered the kingdom again, and though Ixtlilxochitl was prepared to resist him, he was surprised in a wood where he was hunting. Immediately he and those who accompanied him were put to death, the royal insignia were carried to Atzcapotzalco, and Tezozomoc was crowned king of Texcoco. Ixtlilxochitl's son witnessed from a tree the death of his father and swore to avenge it, as he did, killing in 1531 Tezozomoc's son and successor, Maxtla. ”

“ As I knew, it was in keeping with the Aztec customs that prisoners taken in war thus should be brought first of all before the god Huitzilopochtli, that they and their captors together might do him reverence; therefore, I was not surprised when a priest came forth from behind the altar and bade us prostrate ourselves in adoration of the idol. As this order was given, all the Aztlanecas with us bowed themselves to the floor; but Young, who did not understand the order, and I, who felt my gorge rising at the thought of thus humbling myself, remained erect. ”

“ Ixtual declared.
“He says there is a legend among his people that in a spur of the Sierra Chuchumatlane mountains are two peaks beyond which no living man has ever looked and that they were sacred to those who built the temples here,” the doctor answered concisely enough, and still speaking in Spanish as if to make certain that Ixtual might understand. But the latter was not satisfied.
“Señores,” he said gravely, “those peaks are sacred to my people and were once a part of their religion. A man does not betray his religion, does he?” ”

“ The Aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen dii majores and over 200 dii minores. To each of these a special day was assigned in the calendar, with its appropriate festival. Chief of them all was that bloodthirsty monster Huitsilopochtli, the hideous god of war—tutelary deity of the nation. There was a huge temple to him in the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of human victims was being constantly poured out. ”

“ When Xicotencatl and Maxixcatzin were convinced that it was our determination to march to Mexico, they grew anxious on our account. They urgently dissuaded Cortes from it, and warned him not to put the slightest trust in Motecusuma, nor altogether in any of the Mexicans,—to put no faith in his show of veneration, his courteous and humble talk. All their professions of friendship, said they, and even their very presents had treachery at the bottom; for what they give at one moment they take away at another. ”

“ Let Maxtla do his worst; I have spoken," was the heroic reply of the old Tezcucan.
"You forget, old man, in whose presence you are, and to whom you speak. Know you, that a word from us would consign you to the sacrifice? Have a care, or your age may not save you," said the tyrant, his face darkening with suppressed passion. He paused and looked with an angry scowl upon the brave and silent man before him. "Hark you, Itzalmo," he continued, "and mark well what I say; if you give us not the information we have asked for, it is our decree that you shall starve ”

“ A heart for a heart it shall be—not Itzalmo's, but thine, shall fall to-day, to assuage the offended gods. Take him hence to the block, and let his blood condone his offense." Thus did the keeper of Itzalmo's dungeon become, innocently, the victim of Maxtla's ferocity. ”

“ Uitzilopochtli had grown with the Aztec people. He bears, amongst other surnames, that of Mextli, the warrior, whence the name of Mexico. He protects his people and ever extends the boundaries of its empire. And thus, in spite of his bearing the name of a little bird, his statue as an incarnate deity had become colossal. Yet the Aztecs did not lose the memory [59] of his original minuteness of stature. Did you observe, in the account given by Bernal Diaz, that there stood at the feet of the huge idol another quite small one, that served, according to the Spanish Captain, as his page? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HUITZILOPOCHTLI, the supreme being in the religions of ancient Mexico, and as a specialized deity, the god of war. He was the mythic leader and chief divinity of the Aztecs, dominant tribe of the Nahua nation. As a humming-bird Huitzilopochtli was alleged to have led the Aztecs to a new home. ”

“ Ixtlilchoatl's plans for meeting his adversary had been decided upon. He purposed standing on the defensive, and, if Maxtla was not informed as to the make-up of his army, felt that he could defeat him. He accordingly, at their request, placed three grand divisions—those of Tlacopan and the other two allies—in front to meet the onslaught of the enemy, while two divisions of Tezcucans were conveniently located to support them. The right of his line was made especially strong, in accordance with his plan of defense. ”