The birth of Huitzilopochtli.

I can’t help comparing the playfulness of the North American Indian tales with the severity of the Mexican Indian myths. While the American Indian trickster is a mix of a god, a cheater and a fool, the characters of the Mexican tales are solemn, violent and terribly powerful gods. Sometimes they seem to have in them a small part of the trickster attitude as well, but no one would ever dare to mock them.

One of my favorite Mexican Indian myths is the one that recounts the birth of Huitzilopochtli. Huitzilopochtli was the god of war - like Ares was for the Greeks - and he was the principal deity of the Aztec people. Because I wanted to share this myth with you, I have attempted to translate it from Miguel Leon-Portilla’s spanish version. I tried to keep the rhythm that characterizes the original tale, which shows particularly well the Indian oral tradition. In a way, the verse and the repetition is very much like the Navajo Night Chant; only the theme and tone of this myth is… well, slightly different.

Anyway, I hope you will be as fascinated and throughly horrified as I was when I first encountered this story.

In Coatepec, close to Tula,

There a woman had been living

There a woman lived

Called Coatlicue.

She was the mother of the 400 Southerners

And of a sister of theirs,

Called Coyolxauhqui.

And this Coatlicue was doing penitence there

She swept, she was in charge of the sweeping,

That’s how she did her penitence,

In Coatepec, the Mountain of the Snake.

And once,

When Coatlicue was sweeping,

Out of the sky came a plumage

Like a fine ball of feathers.

Right away, Coatlicue picked it up,

And put it in between her breasts.

When she was done with the sweeping,

She searched for the feathers between her breasts

But there was nothing there.

That’s how Coatlicue became pregnant.

When the 400 Southerners learned that their mother was pregnant,

They were very angry and said:

“Who has done this to her?

Who got her pregnant?

He is insulting us, he is dishonoring us.”

And their sister, Coyolxauhqui told them:

“Brothers, she is the one dishonoring us,

We shall kill our mother,

The perverse one, already with child.”

When Coatlicue found out about this,

She was very frightened,

She was very sad.

But her son, Huitzilopochtli, already in her womb,

Confronted her, told her:

“Fear not

I already know what I should do.”

Having heard her son’s words,

Coatlicue was comforted,

Her heart calmed down,

She felt at ease.

In the meanwhile, the 400 Southerners

Got together to reach an agreement

And unanimously determined

To kill their mother,

For she had dishonored them all.

They were very angry

They were very upset,

It was as if their hearts would jump right out of their chests.

Coyolxauhqui urged them all the time,

She invigorated the fury of her brothers

So that they would kill their mother.

And the 400 Southerners

Prepared themselves

And put on war clothes.

And these 400 Southerners

Were like captains

They twisted and tangled their hair,

Like warriors they fixed their hair.

But one of them called Cuahuitlicac

Was untrue in his words

What the other Southerners said

He immediately went to tell,

To communicate to Huitzilopochtli.

And Huitzilopochtli’s answer was:

“Be careful, stay vigilant, 

My uncle, I know quite well what I must do.”

So when the 400 Southerners were finally decided,

When they had reached an agreement

To kill, to finish off their mother,

They started to move forward,

Guided by Coyolxauhqui.

They were well strengthened, well dressed,

Well prepared for the war,

They distributed their paper-clothes,

Their anecúyotl, their bracelets,

Their flaps of painted paper;

They tied little bells around their ankles,

Those bells called oyohualli.

Their arrows had barbed tips.

Then they started to move,

They walked in order, in a line,

In a neat arrangement,

And Coyolxauhqui guided them.

But Cuahuitlicac went up into the mountain

To talk to Huitzilopochtli

And he told him:

“They are coming.”

Huitzilopochtli answered:

“Pay close attention and tell me from where they’re coming.”

Then Cuahuitlicac said:

“They are coming from Tzompantitlan.”

And once again Huitzilopochtli asked him:

“From where are they coming now?”

Cuahuitlicac answered:

“They are coming from Coaxalpan.”

And again Huitzilopochtli asked Cuahuitlicac:

“Look well and tell me where are they.”

Right away Cuahuitlicac replied:

“They are now in the mountain slope.”

And yet another time Huitzilopochtil said:

“Pay attention, tell me where are they.”

And so Cuahuitlícac said:

“They are already in the mountain top, they are coming,

Coyolxauhqui is guiding them.”

In that precise moment Huitzilopochtli was born;

He wore his war clothing,

He took his shield made from eagle feathers,

His darts, his blue dart thrower,

The so-called turquoise dart thrower.

He painted his face

With diagonal strips,

With the color called “child paint”.

On his head he wore fine feathers,

He also put on his earmuffs.

And one foot, the left one, was dried up,

But it was wearing a sandal covered with feathers,

And Huitzilopochtli’s legs and arms

Where painted in blue.

Then the so-called Tochancalqui

Set fire to the snake made of torches – called Xiuhcoatl,

And this snake obeyed Huitzilopochtli.

Huitzilopochtli used the snake to wound Coyolxauhqui,

And he cut off her head,

Which fell to laid abandoned

In the slope of Coatepec,

The Mountain of the Snake.

Coyolxauhqui’s body

Rolled down the slope,

It fell down to pieces,

On different places laid her hands,

Her legs, her body.

Then Huitzilopochtli straightened up,

And persecuted the 400 Southerners,

He harassed them, he made them scatter

From the mountaintop of Coatepec,

The Mountain of the Snake.

And when he had followed them

To the foot of the mountain,

He persecuted them,

He chased them as if they were rabbits.

In vain they tried doing something against him,

In vain they moved at the beat of the bells,

In vain they shook their shields.

There was nothing they could do,

There was nothing they could achieve,

They had nothing to defend themselves with.

Huitzilopochtli chased them, frightened them,

Destroyed them, annihilated them.

And even then,

He continued to pursue them.

They begged quite a lot, and said:

“Stop already!”

But Huitzilopochtli was not satisfied,

With more strength he fought against them.

Just a few managed to escape,

And were able to run free from Huitzilopochtli’s hands.

They went south,

Those few who were able to escape from Huitzilopochtli’s hands,

And their name is 400 Southerners.

And when Huitzilopochtli had killed many,

When his rage diminished,

He took their clothes, their finery, their anecuyotl,

And wore it all, took all for himself,

Made all those things his badges.

And this Huitzilopochtli, it was said,

Was like a portent,

Because with just one fine feather

Felled from the sky into his mothers womb

He was conceived.

He never had a father.

He was worshiped by the mexica people,

For him they offered sacrifices,

He was honored and served by them.

And Huitzilopochtli rewarded

He who worshipped him like that.

And his cult came from that place,

From Coatepec, the Mountain of the Snake,

As it had happened in ancient times.

This huge stone depicts Coyolxauhqui, ripped apart by her brother Huitzilopochtli. 

About power

There is a strange notion of power in the Indian trickster tales, specially surrounding the figure of the Trickster. For a modern western mind, it is usually very hard to conceive that the same character could be wise and almost all-powerful sometimes and a plain fool with barely any power whatsoever in others.

In the creation tales, like the Yokut tale “The Beginning of the World” or the Miwok story “How people were made”, the Trickster is a god-like character with magical powers, capable of making the earth and the people. It is somewhat odd, however, that even in the creation tales, the characters are never almighty. Unlike the Jew-Christian god, the creator-trickster has always some material to start working from. In “The Beginning of the World” the setting already includes the earth covered by water, Eagle, Coyote and a turtle. In other stories, the sun and the moon are stolen, but never created. Nature is always preceding the creator, instead of being created by him.

Another interesting feature of the trickster tales is that power can belong to just about anyone, both individually and as a community. A pueblo can be the owner of the sun and the moon, a man in a village can have magical powers or a possible bag which will make him rich. And the trickster, of course, will use every resource at hand to get those things from the people. The trickster is always powerful, but usually his power lies precisely in the resourcefulness and cleverness used to gain even more power.


I think this notion is in tune with the Indian worldview, and with the comical aspect as well. Everyone has an equal chance of possessing magic and richness, and of stealing it away from others as well. Magic, being part of the natural world, is usually freely given and shared; a man with the ability to produce meat out of nowhere will share its secret with the trickster every time. However, magic itself can be a way of tricking the trickster. All those stories where the trickster is warned never to use a magic trick more than four times, teach that greediness will take all the power away. And so, we can laugh at Veeho when he ends up stuck in a tree, or with a wounded back. The want of power is nothing but a part of the cosmic comedy.

House Made of Dawn

These past few days, I have been reading the novel House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, and I would like to share a fragment in here. I love the way the author portrays the natural world in the text. It feels so alive, as if Nature was one huge being with the ability to experience itself through out eternity; it's not just human, it is way bigger than that. With just one description, one can understand the notions of balance, dynamism, awareness of the world (both ancient and new) and the sense of communal living. It is so powerful.
Throughout the novel, I've also noticed the wariness which seems to be a part of the indian perspective, especially perhaps in modern times. The land itself is wary, as it is certain than even life at the peak of its existence will not last forever. There is always a struggle to be alive.

July 28 [Fragment]


There is a kind of life that is peculiar to the land in summer - a wariness, a seasonal equation of well-being and alertness. 
Road runners take on the shape of motion itself, urgent and angular, or else they are like the gnarled, uncovered roots of ancient, stunted trees, some ordinary ruse of the land itself, immovable and forever there. And quail, at evening, just failing to suggest the waddle of too much weight, take cover with scarcely any talent for alarm, and spread their wings to the ground; and if then they are made to take flight, the imminence of no danger on earth can be more apparent; they explode away like a shot, and there is nothing but the dying whistle and streak of their going. Frequently in the sun there are pairs of white and russet hawks soaring to the hunt. And when one falls off and alights, there will be a death in the land, for it has come down to place itself like a destiny between its prey and the burrow from which its prey has come; and then the other, the killer hawk, turns around in the sky and breaks its glide and dives. It is said that hawks, when they have nothing to fear in the open land, dance upon the warm carnage of their kills. In the highest heat of the day, rattlesnakes lie outstretched upon the dunes, as if the sun had wound them out and lain upon them like a line of fire, or, knowing of some vibrant presence on the air, they writhe away in the agony of time. And of their own accord they go at sundown into the earth, hopelessly, as if to some unimaginable reckoning in the underworld. Coyotes have the gift of being seldom seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to. 

Myths

I have been thinking this whole week about myths. For Greek thinkers as Plato and Aristotle, there were two ways of approaching knowledge in the world: mythos and logos. Logos was the rational explanation, the knowledge gained by observation and the use of reason; mythos, on the other hand, was what belonged to stories, that which was not necessarily true and was gained by intuition. Logos was the philosopher’s way; mythos was the way of the poets. Plato’s ideal society, as we learn in The Republic, would have no dealings with poets, and hence, no myths. Myths, even back then, where considered dangerous things, simple stories that would spread like a plague and would fill people’s heads with nonsense. 

I wonder now, thousands of years later, can this be true? Is it really possible that a myth is nothing more than a dangerous story, a huge sack of nonsense that people will believe easily and without making questions? I must say I believe it sometimes is.

Before this continent was colonized by Europe, the Aztecs, living in the central plains of Mexico, had their own system of beliefs. They believed in Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and many other gods. They had stories about them, too. They built temples and statues, and they had priests who offered sacrifices to them. For the Aztec people, their gods were very real. When the Spanish came to their land, they were horrified. Their gods were no gods, they said, but demons. Their religion was no true religion… it was nothing but a bunch of dangerous myths. 

The Spanish degraded the Aztec’s religion to myths (now equivalent to lies), imposed a new religion and created a whole new different set of myths about the culture they were colonizing and partially destroying: the natives adored Satan, the natives were like children, the natives had no soul… the natives were not people. And the whole of Europe believed it easily and without asking to many questions for a good number of centuries. The same happened with many, if not all of the Native American cultures. 

So, the way I see it, there are two kinds of myths involved in the American Indian world: the myths that surround the American Indians, and the ones that come from within the different Native American cultures. They are both powerful and dangerous, but their nature is completely different.

Here, I would like to explore a few myths that surround American Indians.

Geographical myth – America is a continent, not a country. I understand that this class will deal with the literature of the Indian cultures in the U.S. and that’s great, but we should keep in mind that Indian cultures are all over the continent; and during the pre-colonial times, there were no countries.  A Maya or a Mapuche is no less an American Indian than a Cherokee is. And, then again, that does not mean they are the same.

Linguistic myth – Because most native languages did not have a written form before the colonial age, there is a belief that native languages are primitive, or inferior in quality of those with a written form. This myth was encouraged by some European and American linguists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. 

Also, in America surged the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which stated that language shaped or conditioned our view of the world. Sapir and Whorf studied many Native American languages and proposed that the interpretation of the world changed according to the language a certain tribe used. According to this theory, an apache had a different way of regarding snow than an english-speaker. This was discovered to be false. Even though language does reveal a lot about a culture, it does not limit our perception of the world. Besides, every natural language has the same value and complexity.  There are no superior or inferior languages, just as there are no superior or inferior races.

Identity myth – I will not get into the discussion of the “proper” way of naming the “Indians”. I will just say that we usually group various things and then believe they are the same. It’s like asking a Nigerian about Congo because he or she is African. The identity of the American Indians has been defined as one thing mostly by colonizers of different kinds.

First, by the Spanish, English and French people coming to the continent in the 16^th century.  They treated all the natives as “Indians”, and rarely gave them a name or made a distinction between them. If they ever did, it was merely due to scientific curiosity or for religious purposes. Then, in the 19^th century, the governments perpetrated the identity myth. There’s no better proof for that than the Indian Reservations, where many tribes were forced to coexist in the same piece of land. Lastly, as we saw in Reel Injun, there’s Hollywood as one of the most dangerous colonizers. By depicting the Indian as one thing, and only one thing, it robed the true identities of many tribes and kept the world ignorant about the real situation of American Indians.

Extermination myth – I grew up thinking the Indians were truly mythological creatures. Like ancient Greeks and Romans, all we had left from them was words. Aztecs, Mayas and Cherokees…  they were all long gone. In Mexico’s case, I thought they had blended in Mexican society; we are all mestizos, half-breeds. As for the Indians living in the U.S, I was convinced they had been exterminated.  I now realize that cannot be true. Not for Mexico, not for the U.S. In both countries the Indians faced the threat of extermination, in both they blended to become mestizos, and in both they remain, marginal but very much alive. 

After all those myths… they are still alive. 

"Nevertheless (..) it is important to acknowledge the grand importance of the performed literatures as a major (possibly The Major) part of Native American literatures."  - Kenneth M. Roemer

Night Chant Recording

I don't know if this is truly a part of the "Night Chant" or the ceremony surrounding it, but I found this recording and I think it's pretty interesting. When I read songs, specially if they are translations, I'm always wondering how did they really sound like, what was the music or the melody that accompanied the words. It's good to be able to hear something, even if it's just an approximation to the real thing.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Night+Chant/3qp8mQ?src=5

One thing you should know about me is that I have no sense of orientation whatsoever. I was born without it. It’s true. I have been lost my whole life, at the movie theater, in the hospital, in my home town, in Madrid, Barcelona, Disney World… Name the place. If I’ve been there, I was once lost there. Sometimes when i am lost it is funny, sometimes it’s not. One thing is certain, though: I always learn something from the experience. 

 So, after many years of living with myself, I came to appreciate my ability to get lost even in the most familiar domains of my own mind. I will not even attempt to explain how one can get lost in his or her own mind, but I will say that yesterday, while watching Reel Injun, I knew immediately I was absolutely lost, and absolutely happy about it.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an indian. Not a Mexican indian, not a Maya or an Aztec (those where too terrifying for me, with the human sacrifices and all), I wanted to be an ancient North American indian. I wanted to be a Cherokee or a Sioux -never mind that I didn’t even know what those indians were like, and what were the differences between them. To me, they where all just beautiful, strong-willed people, full of spirit and songs, perfectly aware of their connection to nature. My image of American Natives was that of  Rousseau’s “bon sauvage”. For many, many years I bought the “single story” the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie talks about. I had a single story for the Mexican and for the North American indians.

Last semester, when I took a class of Mexican prehispanic and colonial literature, I got a new perspective on the Mexican indians, and became more aware of my roots. I was thrilled with the beauty of their poetry, and the cruelty of their myths. In those numerous stories I read, I found a piece of myself that had been lost for more than twenty years.

And as I watched Reel Injun in the classroom, I realized I didn’t know a single thing for sure about American Indians. I am very much lost in their domains.  I can only hope that, through the readings and the class, I will end up having many stories to tell about them. 

Chimamanda Adichie - The Danger of the Single Story