Note 28 — Chapter II

For data concerning the use of these numbers by American peoples north of Mexico, see Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, x, Ch. IX, iv, and Notes 11, 31, 42, 50, with references there given. Further allusions to the nine and thirteen of Mexican cosmology will be found infra, Ch. III, i, iii. The origin of the peculiar uses of the number thirteen is a puzzle without satisfactory solution. In the explanation of Vaticanus A (Kingsborough, vi. 198, note), it is said—referring to the statement that "Tonacatecotle" presides over the "thirteen causes"—that "the causes are really only nine, corresponding in number with the heavens. But since four of them are reckoned twice in every series of thirteen days, in order that each day might be placed under some peculiar influence, they are said to be thirteen." This, however, is probably assuming effect for cause (cf. Ch. III, iii).