Note 37 — Chapter V · DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER

Quecholli.—The people of Tlaxcallan held a festival to Xochiquetzal in the month quecholli, when the Mexicans celebrated the feast of Mixcoatl. At the Tlaxcaltec feast numbers of young women were sacrificed to the goddess, “to the honour of love,” and the prostitutes were also in the habit of offering themselves for immolation, we are informed by Torquemada,37 first haling the “honest” women through the mire and subjecting them to the foulest abuse. The Tlalhuica, who lived in the hot lands south of Mexico, themselves, like the Tlaxcaltecs, a people of Nahua race, held a festival in honour of Xochiquetzal in the month tepeilhuitl, which the Mexicans dedicated to the Tlaloque, gods of rain, as is related by the interpreter of the Codex Magliabecchiano. Torquemada, too,38 states that the Tlaxcaltecs sacrificed many children to Xochiquetzal and to the mountain-gods (Tlaloque) evidently at this season. Xochiquetzal was also connected with the festival of the atamalqualiztli, celebrated every eight years. In the picture of that feast in the Sahagun MS. we observe her seated at a loom. From these considerations it is manifest that the verdurous and “watery” attributes of the goddess connected her with the Tlaloque, but that she was not actually of their company.