Note 32 — Chapter III · THE GREAT GODS

His primary character notwithstanding, Uitzilopochtli in later times came to possess a very different significance for the Mexicans of Tenochtitlan—such a significance, in short, as the development of their religious conceptions demanded. Thus we find him at the period of the Spanish Conquest possessing solar characteristics and a place in the Mexican pantheon which, if not the most important, had essentially the greatest local significance in the city of Tenochtitlan, of which he was the tutelary god. His status in the days of the second Motecuhzoma is, perhaps, most clearly illustrated by the circumstances of his myth as given by Sahagun, which is obviously ætiological and exhibits the influences both of priestly contrivance and popular imagination. His mother, Coatlicue, has been elsewhere in this work identified with the earth, but in the myth is euhemerized as a pious widow. That she was originally one of those mountain goddesses, like Xochiquetzal, from whose sacred heights the rain descended to the parched fields of Mexico, seems plain from the name of her abode, Coatepetl (“Serpent Mountain”), the serpents of which her skirt is composed, being symbolical, perhaps, of the numerous streams flowing from the tarns or pools situated on its lower acclivities. That such a mountain actually existed in the vicinity of Tollan is proved by the statement of Sahagun. Uitzilopochtli is the sun which rises out of the mountain,32 or is born from it, fully armed with the xiuhcoatl, or fire-snake (the red dawn), with which he slays his sister Coyolxauhqui, the moon, whose lunar attributes are clearly defined in her face-painting, which comprises half-moons and a shell-motif, a lunar symbol. Her nose-plate is also the half-moon symbol. The Centzonuitznaua, or “Four Hundred Southerners,” are the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. These the new-born god puts to flight with ease.33 If further verification of what is obviously a most artificial and operose myth is required, it is only necessary to indicate that one of the subsidiary names of Uitzilopochtli, as recorded by Sahagun, was Ilhuicatl Xoxouhqui, “The Blue Heaven,” the expanse of the sky, showing that, like many another sun-god, he typified the blue vault of heaven.34 Acosta, too, states that the azure colour of his throne signified “that he sat in the heavens.”35 But the myth possesses an allegorical as well as an ætiological character. Thus Coatlicue, the earth, is fructified by the ball of humming-birds’ feathers, that is, by the humming-bird itself, which, in Mexico, is the means of fructifying the plants, its movements causing the transfer of the pollen from the stamens to the germ-cells.