Quetzalcoatl Element Analysis

Quetzalcoatl and the Myth of the Return

			The element of the myth cycle which formed the pivot point around which so many of the mythic elements were recast was the motif of Quetzalcoatl's return and its relationship to the arrival of the Spaniards. The dual aspects of Quetzalcoatl's promise of a return and the arrival of the Spaniards were associated very early in the literature, and forms some of the earliest European information on Nahua mythology. Cortés himself remarks on this amazingly providential tale when he recalls the welcoming speech of Moctezuma: "For a long time we have known from the writings of our ancestors that neither I [Motecuzoma], nor any of those who dwell in this land, are natives of it, but foreigners who came from a very distant land and likewise we know that a chieftain, of whom they were all vassals, brought our people to this region. And he returned to his native land and after many years came again, by which time all those who had remained were married to native women and had built up the villages and raised children. And when he wished to lead them away again they would not go, nor even admit him as their chief; and so he departed. And we have always held that those who descended from him would come and conquer this land and take us as their vassals. So because of the place from which you claim to come, namely from where the sun rises, and the thing you tell us of the great Lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain that his is our natural Lord, especially as you say that he has known of us for some time." (Hernan Cortés, Letters from Mexico, translated by A.R. Pagden, (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971), 85-60.) This passage is remarkable, and perhaps too remarkable, considering the number of translations Moctezuma's words endured before reaching Cortés (Nahuatl to Maya to Spanish), and the length of time before the speech was written. In Pagden's note to this speech he expresses his doubts about its authenticity: Both this speech and the one that follows would seem to be apocryphal. Motecuzoma could never have held the views with which Cortés accredits him. Eulalia Guzmán has pointed out the Biblical tone of both these passages and how their phraseology reflects the language of the Siete Partidas. Cortés is casting Motecuzoma into the role of a 16th Century Spaniard welcoming his "natural Lord", who in this case has been accredited with a vaguely Messianic past. (Cortés, 1971, 467.) Pagden hedges his bet against pure fabrication by indicating that some sort of similar tale did seem to have been current in the native culture, but it is probable that it is not faithfully reproduced in this record.(1) The structure of the promise of a return as related by Cortés does not fit that of the Quetzalcoatl legends. In the Cortés report, a foreign leader comes to this land and brings his people. They intermarry, and when he asks them to leave, they refuse. None of these elements match precisely with the Quetzalcoatl material, although there are points of similarity. The issue is whether those points of similarity arise because Cortés is reporting a native legend, or whether the native material eventually gets reworked to better match this early assertion by Cortés. For purposes of reconstruction pre-Hispanic material, the question must be asked whether this myth was a part of the Quetzalcoatl cycle, or like many other later elements, was tacked on to the Quetzalcoatl material as that deity was the most likely candidate for the anonymous chieftain to whom Cortés refers. There are two parts of the motif of the return. The first part is the departure of Quetzalcoatl, and the second is the promise that he would return. What is not in question is the tale of the departure. Indeed, the departure of the Quetzalcoatl from Tula is structurally integral to the tale, and certain to be pre-Hispanic (though the refusal of his people to leave is attested only in Cortés' citation of Montezuma's speech). The issue is the promise of the return. On this point the evidence becomes complex. It is understandable that the myth of the return is more prevalent in Spanish sources than it is in native sources. However, what is most unusual is that even the native evidence for the myth of the return is ambiguous. When the native sources describe the departure of Quetzalcoatl, they include his departure and death or apotheosis. At that point in the legendary material, precisely the point at which one would expect the prophetic promise of a return, all native sources are silent. It is possible that the very departure might imply the possibility of a return, but the texts extant make no direct mention of it. Sahagún's informants do clearly link a return of Quetzalcoatl to the arrival of Cortés, but every one of those citations is in direct relation to the arrival of the Spaniards. As we have seen, the influence of Spanish categories is present even in such native texts as the Florentine Codex, so the question remains open as to whether or not the specific promise of a return was ever part of the native, pre-Hispanic lore.(2) A possible exception to the hypothesis that the element of the return was not associated with the departure myth comes from Chimalpahin, a native historian writing in the 17th century. Chimalpahin is one of the few authors who does not mention Cortés when he relates the return motif: "the people of Topiltzin Acxitl Quetzalcoatl left Tollan,... they left by the sea and left the saying that one day they would return again." (Domingo Francisco de San Anton Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, Relaciónes Originales de Chalco Amaquemecan, (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), 65.) However, given the late date and the permeation of the myth of the return in all conquest literature by that time period, it cannot be determined if this short passage reflects a pre-Hispanic or post-Hispanic version of the tale. Regardless of whether or not the myth of the return were a native category, it is clear from the sources that it rapidly become much more important on the Spanish side of the lore cycle than on the native. It is surprisingly difficult to find a text which mentions the return of Quetzalcoatl without specifically tying it to the arrival of the Spaniards, not simply the return of Quetzalcoatl. Even the native historian Alvarado Tezozomoc reports: "their god Quetzalcoatl... went to the heavens and said when he left that he would come again, and would bring his children..." (Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crónica Mexicana, (Mexico: Ediciones de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1943), 170.) Motolinía appears to give an account which merely mentions the connection without specifying a prophecy about the Spaniards: This Quetzalcoatl, said the Indians, was a native of the pueblo called Tulla, and he left and built the provinces of Tlaxcalla, Huexucinco, Chololla, etc, and after he left for the coast of Couatzacualco and their disappeared, and always they awaited his return, and when they saw the ships of the don Hernando Cortés, and the Spaniards that conquered this land, seeing them come at the sail, they said that now came their god Quetzalcoatl, who brought temples through the ocean, but when [the Spaniards] disembarked they said that they were many gods, which in their language is quiteteuh.( Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinía, Memoriales o Libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y de los naturales de ella, ed. Edmundo O'Gorman, (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1971), 81.) This passage appears simply to report that the arrival of the Spaniards was connected to the appearance of the Quetzalcoatl, without implying that it was a prediction of their coming. However, this same Motolinía clearly supports the theme that the coming of the Spaniards is the predicted return. In another passage, he relates a miraculous visit of an angel to a native, prior to the conquest: This angel said to that Indian: "Have strength and confidence, and do not fear, for God of the heaven will show you mercy, and say to those who now sacrifice and spill blood, that very soon they will cease the sacrifice and spilling of human blood, and that soon will come those who are to command and govern in this land." (Toribio de Benavente, 1971, 214.) This passage is much more a Christian propaganda piece than a record of an historical event. Not only is it an angel who appears to the native, but the admonition to "have strength, confidence, and do not fear" echoes biblical language for a visiting angel. The text of the "revelation" is also clearly self-serving for the Spaniards, and therefore quite doubtful as an accurate representation of a pre-Hispanic myth. The process of transforming the return of Quetzalcoatl into a prediction (and justification) for the arrival of the Spaniards is fully developed in most later writers. It may have been well developed much earlier. The presence of the following passage in both Torquemada and Mendieta may indicate that the original writer was Fray Andrés de Olmos whom they both used extensively. Fray Olmos was one of the original 12 priests to come to the New World. If this passage does originate with Olmos, the political implications of the Quetzalcoatl legend became apparent very early in the post-contact period. He said of those who dwelt in the city of Cholula, they held for certain that in coming times were to come form the Sea towards the rising sun, white men with white beards, like him, and that they would be Lords of these lands, and that they were their brothers. And in this way the Indians always awaited the fulfillment of this prophecy, and when they saw the Christians, they called them gods, and brothers of Quetzalcoatl." (Torquemada, 1943, 2:51 and Mendieta, 1971, 92-93.) The obvious import of the myth of the return as it appears in most sources is that it predicts the arrival of the Spaniards. This is quite different from a legend which predicts a return of Quetzalcoatl. As the motif of the return became increasingly Hispanicized, the flavor of the myth increasingly became a justification for the Conquest, in all of its excesses. In Durán we find the final words of Quetzalcoatl to his people before his departure: ... and delivering to them [those of Tula] a large discourse, he prophesied the coming of a strange people from the Eastern parts who would land in this place, with strange clothes of different colors, dressed from head to foot, and with coverings on their heads, and that this punishment was to be sent them from God in payment of the poor treatment which they had given him, and the agony he had suffered. With this great punishment, small and large would perish, not being able to escape from the hands of these his sons; that they were to come to destroy them, even though they were to hide in caves and in the caverns of the earth, and from there they would be taken and there they would go to persecute and kill these people. (Durán, 1967, 1:11.) The idea that the Conquest came in retribution for past sins must have had a general effect on the thinking prevalent after the event since even the native chronicler Ixtlilxochitl echoes the same prophetic doom: [Quetzalcoatl] said that in coming times, in a year which would be called ce acatl he would return, and then his doctrine would be received and his children would be Lords and possess the land, and that they (the Indians) and their descendants would suffer many calamities and persecutions. ( Ixtlilxochitl, 1891, 1:20.) Durán presents another interesting twist on this theme of the return. In Durán (and this element is exclusive to Durán), the prophecy includes the coming of the Spaniards to rule, but rather than justify the physical excesses, Durán uses the Quetzalcoatl mythology to justify the Spanish greed: [From a speech given by Moctezuma"] I have provided jewels and precious stones and feathers so that you may take them as a present to those who have arrived in our land, and I very much desire that you discover who is the lord and principal among them, to whom I want you to give all that you carry, and discover for certain if they are our ancestors, named Topiltzin, or by another name, Quetzalcoatl, of whom our histories say left this land and left the saying that they were to return to reign in this land, he or his children, to possess the gold and silver and jewels which he left hidden in the hills and the rest of the riches that we now possess. (Durán, 1967, 2:507. See also 2:514.) The ultimate validity of the myth of the return and its relationship to Quetzalcoatl may never be determined. However, I find it curious that some sort of a myth of return appears to have shown up wherever the Spaniards went. Jacques LaFaye indicates: And the prophecy of Quetzalcoatl was a specific Mexican instance of a belief common to the majority of the Indian peoples. Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca heard of it during his trek across the Southwest; Gómara cites it for Española; the Chibchas, the Tupi of Brazil, the Guaraní of Paragua, had similar beliefs. In different regions of the New World the Spaniards were taken for "Children of the Sun." (LaFaye, 1974, 157.) The widespread nature of the myth of the return certainly points to something greater than a single Mexican myth. There are two reasonable possibilities. The first is that there was some pan-American mythology of a return. The second is that, since these prophecies are always associated with the Spaniards, they may have originated with the Spaniards as a convenient justification for their arrival and conquests. After all, it worked quite well for Cortés. 1. Cortés, 1971, 467. Hugh Thomas exercises a similar caution "Whether the myth of Quetzalcoatl, or Tezcatlipoca, or any other deity, did or did not exercise a decisive influence over Montezuma's judgements we may never know. But he was exceptionally superstitious, even for a Mexican. He certainly seems, at the very least for a time, to have toyed with the idea of identifying Cortés with a lost lord who vanished into the east. But this identification did not necessarily implicate Quetzalcoatl." Hugh Thomas, Conquest, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 406. 2. Sahagún, 1950-75, 8:21, 12:5, 12:7. Lockhart agrees that this passage in Sahagún is questionable: "As to the well-aired notion of Cortés being supposed to have been the god Quetzalcoatl returning, the suspect first portion of Book 12 contains the only such references in the Nahuatl corpus (to the best of my knowledge)." James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 20.
			by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998