Note 2 — Chapter IV · THE CREATIVE DEITIES

These deities were identified by the Mexicans with the Creator, the Tloque Nahuaque, of whom almost every one of the post-Conquest Spanish writers speaks. Indeed the Codex Telleriano-Remensis expressly identifies them with the creative force. The passage runs: “All those epithets (God, Lord, Creator) they bestowed on their god Tonacatecutli, who, according to their account, was the god who created the world; and they painted him alone with a crown as lord of all. They never offered sacrifices to this god, for they said that he did not regard them.” Of the female deity the Codex Vaticanus says: “Tonacacigua was the wife of Tonacatecutle; for, as we have observed, although their gods were not, as they affirm, united together for matrimonial purposes, still they assigned to each a goddess as a companion. They called her by another name, Suchiquetzal and Chicomecoual, which means Seven Serpents, for they say that she was the cause of sterility, famine, and all the miseries of life.”2