Note IX-71 — Chapter IX · GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP. (continued 2)

Without laying any particular stress on this lighting a fire before Yiacatecutli—perhaps here necessary as a camp-fire and probably, at any rate, a thing done before many other gods—it may be noticed that the fire god seems to be particularly connected with the merchant god and indeed with the merchants themselves. Describing a certain coming down or arrival of the gods among men, believed to take place in the twelfth Mexican month, Sahagun—after describing the coming, first of Tezcatlipoca, who, 'being a youth, and light and strong, walked fastest,' and then the coming of all the rest (their arrival being known to the priests by the marks of their feet on a little heap of maize flour, specially prepared for the purpose)—says that a day after all the rest of the gods, came the god of fire and the god of the merchants, together; they being old and unable to walk as fast as their younger divine brethren: 'El dia siguiente llegaba el dios de los Mercaderes llamado Yiaiacapitzaoac, ó Yiacatecutli, y otro Dios llamado Hiscocauzqui (Yxcocauhqui), ó Xiveteuctli (Xiuhtecutli), que és el Dios del fuego á quien los mercaderes tienen grande devocion. Estos dos llegaban á la postre un dia despues de los otros, porque decian que eran viejos y no andaban tanto como los otros:' Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. vii., p. 71, or Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. ii., p. 158. See also, for the connection of the fire god Xiuhtecutli with business, this vol. p. 226; and for the high position of the merchants themselves besides Tezcatlipoca see this vol., p. 228.