Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/Appendix 4 of the Second Letter
APPENDIX IV.
QUETZALCOATL
Montezuma here refers to Quetzalcoatl who figures, under different names in different times and places, as a mortal man, as a deified legislator, and as a primitive divinity, so that it is difficult to separate the mythical in his history from the real. He was known in Yucatan under the name of Kukulcan, the meaning of which is identical with Questzalli and Cohuatl—a plumed serpent.
Quetzalcoatl was a Toltec deity, and was venerated as the god of the air, especially identified with the east wind, which brought the fertilising rains. As the teachings and prophecies attributed to him potently influenced the attitude of the Mexicans towards the Spaniards, on their arrival in the country, it is necessary to consider both his mythical and historical character. In the native mythology, Quetzalcoatl personified the principle of good in contradistinction to the principle of evil, under the figure of Tezcatlipoca. The story of his residence among the peoples of Anáhuac relates that he arrived at Tollan (Tula) the capital of the Toltecs, as chief of a band of strangers, from unknown parts, and that he was well received by the natives to whom he taught the arts of agriculture, metal working, architecture, and mechanics. He introduced also the new religious virtues of chastity, trust in one God, the love of peace, and the practice of charity and penance. He also brought the Toltec calendar to the state of perfection in which it was found amongst the Aztecs. He wore a white tunic on which were black or red crosses, which sounds something like a pallium. He was large of person, white faced, and wore his black hair and beard long. Exercising the high priesthood, he initiated the golden age of the Toltecs, during which the cotton grew in various colours, red, blue, orange, and purple, maize crops were over-abundant, the canes grew as large round as tree trunks, and pumpkins so big that a man's arms could not encircle one; nobody was ever hungry, animals were all tame, and the birds sang wonderfully. Sahagun catalogues him as the eighth king of the Toltecs. This halcyon period was brought to an end by the machinations of the evil spirit Tezcatlipoca who descended to earth on a spider's web, and, taking the form of a venerable sage, tempted, Quetzalcoatl beyond his strength, and made him drunk on pulque, during which orgies the god violated his vows of chastity. This fall shook the faith of his people and the legend recounts further, that, in a war brought on by the same evil-spirit, the Toltecs were worsted. A universal famine followed upon the war, only to be succeeded by a terrible pestilence. Signs and portents foretold the destruction of the race, and Quetzalcoatl burned his house, buried his treasures in a secret place, and, despite the opposition of his adherents, left, called as he declared, by his master, to the mystic land of Tlapallan. His progress through the country was attended by prodigies and miracles until he reached Cholula, where he rested for twenty years, teaching the people, and pontificating in their great temple. But the enemy, hearing of this, prepared again to make war on the friends of Quetzalcoatl, who, to prevent this disaster, left with four disciples for the sea-coast. Here according to some versions, the waves parted, allowing him to pass, and according to others, he made himself a raft of serpents, and, spreading his mantle for a sail, was wafted away to the unknown east. Another legend describes him as causing his funeral pyre to be erected, from which his heart ascended into the skies, where it figures as the planet Venus.
The belief in his prophecy, that he or his representatives would one day return to re-establish and render triumphant his religious teachings, was wide-spread, and furnishes something of a parallel to the Messianic hope prevalent amongst the Jews, or to the expectation of a second visible coming of Christ on which the early Christians counted. He was to return as an avenger, and hence his coming was dreaded by the Aztecs, who believed in it so firmly that they carried on a cult to propitiate him, though their religious practices did violence to his humaner teachings.
The mysterious disappearance of the Toltecs from Anáhuac may have been caused by the war, famine, and pestilence, of this legend, and the remnant of the people may have made an exodus with their priestly leader, leaving their city to the victors, and thus might be explained the sudden disappearance of that people. While the material benefits which Quetzalcoatl brought to the Toltecs and Cholulans were readily enough assimilated, it is probable that his religious teachings were not widely diffused or properly understood by the mass of the people, and after his departure they rapidly became mixed with ancient superstitions. Christian doctrines became denaturalised and blended with pagan traditions, thus losing their significance and efficacy. The original, national cult of the Toltecs reasserted itself with the addition of some beliefs and ritual forms. The passage through Mexico of a few Christians under the leadership of one possessing the superior character and intelligence attributed to Quetzalcoatl would suffice to introduce new moral and religious ideas, and produce great changes in the beliefs of the more cultivated people; for the indubitable unity of all mankind is essentially a unity of spirit, which draws together widely diversified races, whose physical features are dissimilar, and whose customs are alien to one another. Religion springs from an inherent aspiration, common to human nature everywhere, towards a knowledge of, and union with, what is divine and eternal. The development of this instinct carries humanity through the same phases according to laws governing religious evolution, which are universal. Asia, Africa, and ancient Europe, have produced religious systems, each with its myths, rites of sacrifice, practices of penance, vigils, ceremonial observances, and consecrated priests, and the conclusion seems obvious that within human nature itself are found the springs from which these various independent systems—identical in their intention but so different in their moral value—originate. Man is potential to respond to the demands of his own being, whether in the physical and material, or in the moral and spiritual order, and, although the organisation and development observed in primitive religions many differ widely in different quarters of the globe, yet wherever mankind dwells in community, religious development stands on the same foundation and proceeds according to the same fundamental law.
It need therefore in reality be no more astonishing that the Maya race and its descendants should have evolved a completely organised religious system, with an impressive ritual and a well-ordered calendar of ecclesiastical festivals, independently of any previous communication with the old world, than that they were found to have a knowledge of spinning, weaving, and metal working, and an effective system of civil government. All due allowance being made however for such considerations, the beliefs and practices of the Mexicans, which were so like Christian ones as to exclude the hypothesis of mere chance, were numerous and striking.
Duran says of their triune idol that "being one," he is adored under three names, and having three names, he is adored as one almost as we believe in the most Holy Trinity. The persons of this trinity were Totec the lord of the majesty and fear; Xipe, the man despised and persecuted, and Tlatlauhquitezcatl, the mirror of splendour. Children were baptized between three and twelve years—signifying a new birth—by pouring on of water to cleanse them from the taint of inherited sin; and auricular confession was practised for the forgiveness of sin committed, penances being imposed. Even their revolting human sacrifices seem to have been a degraded and materialised interpretation of our Lord's words of consecration when instituting the Eucharistic sacrifice, for the flesh of the victim was eaten reverently, while sacramental words were pronounced calling it the food of the soul and the very flesh of the god to whom the sacrifice was being offered. Holy water was used in many ceremonies, and especially at the crowning of kings. At stated times, a sort of passion play was performed in which a man was bound to a cross and killed with arrows. All these, and many other ceremonies bearing a striking analogy to Christian rites, much impressed the Spaniards, especially the friars, who composed a voluminous literature on the subject. Sometimes, indeed, theories were built up on rather frail foundations of fact, and conclusions were reached by undue straining of the imagination rather than by the exercise of critical research. The Indians frequently misled their new teachers, giving such interpretation of their rites as they thought would be most acceptable, when not themselves ignorant of the real significance of their symbols and ceremonies; as, indeed, many poorly instructed Christians to-day could not explain intelligibly, to an inquiring visitor from Mars, the meaning of emblems and practices with which they are, nevertheless, familiar. But with every such allowance, there still remains a sufficient number of authenticated and perfectly understood doctrines and observances in the ancient Mexican cult, to argue convincingly their Christian origin; hence many writers have identified Quetzalcoatl with some unknown Christian missionary priest—possibly an Oriental bishop—while others have even thought he was the apostle St. Thomas. This startling opinion has not lacked eloquent defenders, but it is excluded from serious consideration by the fact that St. Thomas lived in the first century, and Quetzalcoatl in the tenth, without adducing others which conclusively disprove it.
The identity of Quetzalcoatl remains an unsolved mystery, and, after his departure, it became merged into that of mythical divinities, with a plumed serpent for his emblem. The confused notions which the Mexicans preserved concerning his life, his acts and miracles, and his final disappearance, and their interweaving of other legends of their more beneficent deities with his imperfectly transmitted doctrines, and the distorted facts in his personal history are no more extraordinary than many of the popular tales from lives of the saints, and other wonder stories which are cherished from generation to generation by ignorant and imaginative people everywhere. Unless some heretofore undiscovered treasure house of lost records delivers the key to the early history of the Toltecs, there seems little hope that our imperfect knowledge concerning him will receive any important additions. The systematic destruction of the picture writings of the ancient Mexicans, and particularly of everything connected with their religion, which was carried on for years with misguided zeal by the Spaniards, cut off the source from which fuller information might have been hoped. Much and very severe criticism has fallen upon the ecclesiastics—notably Bishop Zumarraga—by whom this sad destruction was accomplished, and the not unnatural vexation, with which historians view what now seems to have been a work of ignorant and unnecessary fanaticism, has lent undue vehemence to the blame assigned to these well-intentioned iconoclasts. The destruction is undoubtedly most regrettable, but, in strict justice, it must be admitted that the extent of the loss which American history sustained is entirely problematical, for we do not certainly know that the destroyed records contained anything which has not been learned from others which were preserved, and from the Indians themselves at the time of the conquest. On the other hand our debt to the friars is very great, for to them alone is it owing that anything at all survived the Spanish conquest. They alone, amidst the hordes of gold-greedy colonists who scoured the country in search of mines and slaves, established humane relations with the Indians, learned their language, studied their records, and while bringing them into schools to teach them Christianity, learned from them all that could be discovered concerning their own religion, history, and traditions. Franciscans such as Sahagun, Torquemada, Motolinia, Landa, and Lizana, Jesuits such as Acosta, Duran, and later Clavigero—to mention some of the more notable amongst many workers—are the fathers of American history, to whose labours is due the preservation of an enormous mass of information—all we possess in fact—which would otherwise have perished irrevocably.
It may be safely assumed that little or nothing of importance which the Indians themselves knew escaped the researches which these and other men of their order conducted with patience and intelligence. Those among the early ecclesiastics in whom the critical faculty was wanting made good this lack by their diligence, amassing the materials which served later writers, to whom fell the task of assorting the confused historical lumber they had collected. It appears that the Mexicans knew surprisingly little about their own history, and that their trustworthy traditions did not carry them very far back. The Indians of Yucatan, in' the time of Diego Landa, were unable to decipher the inscriptions on the ruined temples, and only the most vague and improbable legends concerning the buildings of their ancient cities survived amongst them. It does not seem, therefore, unreasonable to temper our impatience towards Bishop Zumarraga's act of vandalism by the reflection that the destroyed records would have probably furnished no link between the civilisation of Anahuac and that of Yucatan and Central America.
Authorities consulted on Quetzalcoatl, Sahagun, lib. iii., cap. v.xiv.; Torquemada, lib. iii., cap., vii.; Motolinia in Icazbalceta pp. lo, 30, 65; Mendieta, p. 82-98; Clavigero, tom. ii., p. 11-14; Servando Teresa de Mier in Bustamante; Orozco y Berra, tom. i., cap. iv., tom. ii., cap. iii.; Brasseur de Bourbourg, lib. ii., cap. iv., lib. iii., cap. ii. Charnay, Ancient Cities ; Bulletins of Bureau of American Ethnology.