Note 66 — Chapter V · DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER (continued 2)

The inference in these lines seems to be that whereas Itzpapalotl was formerly the goddess of a hunting tribe who sacrificed deer to her, she has now become the deity of the cultivated field and a settled agricultural community. This hypothesis would appear to gain strength from the text of the Anales de Quauhtitlan, where Itzpapalotl is spoken of as the foundress of the oldest Chichimec kingdom in Nequameyocan, “Place of the Wild Agave.” Camargo states66 that the tribes issuing from Chicomoztoc, “The Seven Caves,” first came to Mazatepec, “The Deer Mountain,” then to the province of Tepeueuec, where a victim was sacrificed to Itzpapalotl by shooting him with arrows, a circumstance which in itself proves the goddess to have been associated with the earth.