eyes, without being either asleep or dreaming, I behold your face and your person. For many days have I expected this, and my heart has been going out toward the regions whence you have come, from the place which is hidden to all and is behind clouds and mists. I now see that it was true what the departed lords left word with us: that you would return to reign in these realms and would seat yourself on your throne and in your chair. Be welcome! Rest now after the labor you have had in coming such long ways. This is your house and these are your palaces — take them and rest therein with your captains and the companions who have come with you." "1 My quotation of the above texts in full, notwithstanding the repetitions they contain, is excusable for the reason that, collectively, they constitute the most authentic and valuable testimony we possess concerning Montezuma's origin and ancestry. It will be seen that the name Quetzalcoatl does not appear in any of these, the earliest texts; nor do they contain any reference of a religious or superstitious nature to the sun or to any deity excepting "the All-embracing One" and "our gods." It is my belief that it would scarcely occur to any one, on reading the above texts for the first time, to interpret Montezuma's account of his ancestry as a solar myth, or to identify the reputed leader of the colonists as a "solar god" or "dawn hero." 2 Yet, notwithstanding the incongruity of certain details recorded (as, for instance, the fact that, unlike the sun, the solar god took his departure toward the east), the current belief is that Montezuma narrated "the Quetzalcoatl myth "3 to the Spaniards and that he sacrificed himself and his people to a foolish superstitious belief in an imaginary god or hero. It seems strange that, if this was actually the case, the astute Cortés did not simply inform the emperor that Montezuma had recounted to him "a ridiculous fable about their gods," a phrase often used by his contemporaries in speaking of native religious myths. And what is stranger still, is that the keenminded Friar Sahagun, who obtained a deep knowledge of the native religion and superstitions, writes naught about a connection 1 Op. cit., book XII, ¶ 16. 2 See D. G. Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 186. between this historical tradition and a religious or solar myth. Nor does Bernal Diaz, who was present when Montezuma delivered his discourse and who described its contents from memory after a lapse of forty-eight years, mention the name of Quetzalcoatl or state that a fable or religious myth had been related. It being impossible for me to attempt to trace here the evolution of the Quetzalcoatl myth, I cannot do more than to point out the facts that the ancient Mexicans, like ourselves, applied the word "lord" to the deity as well as to a superior, and that the name Quetzalcoatl, besides being the name of the Air-god, was also a title assumed by a certain grade of priesthood. Under such circumstances it was inevitable that a confusion of persons and titles should have been made and that Montezuma's testimony should have thus become invalidated and dismissed as irrelevant. I cannot but think, however, that a careful and unbiased study of the above original texts, the Nahuatl version of two of which have hitherto been inaccessible to students, will convince others, as it has me, that Montezuma absolutely believed in the foreign origin of his ancestors and sacrificed his power and position to what might be termed a quixotic conception of his duty toward the rightful, though remote, sovereign of his people. The argument that he so successfully employed to persuade his subordinate chieftains to transfer their allegiance from him to Cortés, namely, that it was his and their duty to make amends for the insubordination and disloyalty of their forefathers toward their lord, while comprehensible if that leader was a real, though unpopular, personage, would seem singularly irrelevant in connection with mythology. Nor do any passages in the texts contradict, so far as I am able to see, the impression they so clearly convey that Montezuma's attitude toward the Spaniards was influenced by a plain historical tradition handed down from his forefathers. Without entering here into a discussion of the problem whence the foreign colonists came to the eastern coast of Mexico, I will but emphasize the remarkable but undeniable fact that the strange language and appearance of the Spaniards and the distance of their journey across the ocean only confirmed Montezuma in his belief that these strangers came from the original home of his ancestors. The hypothesis that these ancestors came to the eastern coast of the Gulf of Mexico from some other part of the American continent, from the peninsula of Yucatan, for instance, consequently involves the less plausible theory that Montezuma believed that the Spaniards also hailed from these adjacent and familiar regions. Whatever other interpretations may be put upon them, the foregoing data conclusively show that Montezuma, who, of all Mexicans, best knew the traditions of his race, believed that these furnished an overwhelming and positive proof that his line had originated in a land over the sea, as remote as Spain was said to be. In conclusion, the problem here submitted for impartial judgment is, whether Montezuma's genuine belief in his foreign ancestry and its far-reaching influence on his actions merits, as I maintain, our serious consideration and acceptance as important historical evidence, or whether it deserves the treatment it has received from some champions of autochthony who either overlook it entirely or endeavor to eliminate it from the pages of Mexican history by denouncing it as irrelevant and valueless and fit only to be consigned to the nebulous realm of mythology. II THE ORIGIN OF THE ARTIFICIAL THEORY OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS In Sahagun's original Nahuatl text, which is quoted in the preceding essay, the invention and the institution of the calendar and form of government which were in use at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, as well of as the building of the great pyramids the ruins of which still exist, are attributed to the foreign colonists who were said to have arrived from the east in ancient times, in boats, and landed at Panuco on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. According to said text, it was after the departure of their leader that four elders agreed to institute a tetrarchy and devised the calendar as a means of regulating and controlling communal life. Torquemada,' the Spanish historian, gives the following additional details concerning this episode: "These four lords jointly constituted the head of the government. Nothing could be done throughout the republic without the consent of all 1 Monarquia Indiana, book XI, chap. 24. four . . . they divided the city and province into four parts, forming four principalities or tetrarchies. . One of the most striking examples of a tetrarchy which existed in Mexico when the Spaniards arrived was the small republic of Tlaxcala. An examination of the ancient Mexican calendar reveals its perfect accord with a tetrarchical system of government. Its twentyday period is formed by four principal day-signs (which were also year-signs), each of which presided over four minor day-signs. Its solar cycle of 4 × 13 = 52 years was formed by the rotation of the four principal signs, representing a reed, a flint knife, a house, and a rabbit. These signs were symbolical of the four elements and were associated with the cardinal points and the sacred elemental colors: blue, red, yellow, and green. In the center of the so-called Mexican calendar-stone, which exhibits a synopsis of the great tetrarchical plan or system of the native philosophers, symbols corresponding to the four elements are carved in an ollin, a quadruplicate sign which is employed in native pictography to express movement or motion. Resting on the hieroglyph for earth, this ollin signifies, for instance, an earthquake. While the said sculptured monument thus demonstrates that the ancient Mexicans associated the united four elements with movement, i. e., life, their mortuary custom of clothing a dead chieftain in succession with perishable garments of the four elemental gods and their colors indicates a belief that death was a dissolution and return to the elements — earth, air, fire, and water. Ever since the above indications came under my notice I have been deeply interested in the fact which they undeniably establish, namely, that the ancient Mexicans not only believed in the existence of the said four elements but also deified and symbolized them and incorporated them in their artificial system of government by means of an ingenious cyclical calendar. To me the presence of this group of correlated ideas in precolumbian America seemed very remarkable, strange, and perplexing, especially after I had investigated the evolution of the artificial theory of the four elements in other ancient civilizations. On communicating some of the results of my investigations to certain of my colleagues, I found that none shared my keen interest in the question, their view being the same as that expressed by Dr Daniel G. Brinton: "The simple theory that the world is composed of four elements, fire, water, air and earth, is one which presents itself so naturally to primitive thought that traces of it can be seen in most mythologies which have passed beyond the rudimentary forms." According to my colleagues the tetrarchical form of government and the cyclical calendar were also only the natural products of the primitive mind. I confess that, much as I respected the views expressed, they did not satisfy or convince me. A prolonged investigation of the evolution of philosophical speculation had taught me that, for instance, in Greece the artificial doctrine of the four elements was not formulated until Greek philosophy had reached what George Henry Lewes designates as "the second epoch in its development, in which the failure of earlier cosmological speculations directed the efforts of the philosophers (i. e., Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus) to the psychological problems of the origin and limits of knowledge." " 2 The following extracts from Lewes' writings furnish an outline sketch of the process by which, after several centuries of speculation, Greek thinkers evolved the identical "simple theory of the four elements" that, in ancient America, is said to have naturally presented itself to the primitive mind. More than a century before the birth of Heraclitus, Thales (640-550 B. C.) had formulated the doctrine of a single original and eternal element-Water, the beginning of all things. To Anaximenes it was Air that seemed the very stream of life. Diogenes of Apollonia adopted the tenet of Anaximenes respecting Air as the origin of things, but gave a wider and deeper significance to the tenet by pointing out the analogy of Air with the soul, or vital force, and thus opened the way to Anaximander of Miletus, the father of abstract and deductive philosophy and the first of the mathematicians to formulate the doctrine that not water, nor air, but the "Infinite is the origin of all things." 1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 141. 2 History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 66. |
