Mexico (27 page)
The powerful god of the Cave People acquired its name Glittering-Fish Color-Bird in this curious way.
Sometime around the birth of Christ the Cave People had seen in a river a fish whose scales seemed to be made of some glittering substance that caught the sun and held it prisoner. After three days of marveling at the phenomenon, the priests proclaimed the fish a god, for it was apparent that it had some control over the sun, and for six or seven hundred years it was worshiped as one of the Cave People's principal deities.
In the year 753, three hundred years before the Cave People set forth on their tribal journey through Mexico, one of their scouting parties brought back from Guatemala a dead specimen of that extraordinary bird the quetzal, whose bright bronze-green and red plumage and immensely long tail would excite all Indian tribes who saw it. The priests were convinced that no such bird could have been placed on earth without the direct intervention of the gods, so on the spot they added the divinity of this colorful bird to that of the glittering fish to create one god.
When trying to explain Glittering-Fish Color-Bird to people who do not know Mexico, I have found it helpful to remind them that the god was a composite whose two halves had originated seven centuries apart. Glittering-Fish was a primal god who could be represented by any kind of shimmering material, and since the Cave People had no metal of any kind, they used waxy leaves, fish scales, polished bones and human teeth to indicate the glittering quality of their deity. The glitter also represented the movement of water that brought fish, the movement of the heavens that brought the growing seasons, and the radiance of the sun. Thus Glittering-Fish was one of the most practical gods in Mexican history, and one of the most serviceable, for he served as intermediary with the rivers, the fields, the flowers and the life-giving sun.
The attributes of glorious Color-Bird, represented by feathers, flowers and iridescent stones, were the intangible virtues such as love of beauty--even though the Cave People were deficient in this--honesty and loyalty. Color-Bird was worshiped by displaying before him featherwork, bouquets of flowers and costumed dancers. The figure chosen to represent this benign deity was, appropriately, an androgynous figure with a benevolent countenance and an all-embracing smile.
About the year 1000, a small group of priests serving the Cave People decided that their tribe might be better guided if their rather languid god Glittering-Fish Color-Bird was replaced by one with more clearly defined manly virtues. One of the younger priests, a man of vision and vigor, argued: "If we are ever to move south into the good lands we've been scouting, we'll meet enemies who will want to prevent us from coming into their territory. Since we'll have to fight them to gain what we need, we must have a god who will lead us in battle." So slowly the priests began to transform Glittering-Fish Color-Bird into a more commanding figure with more rigorous demands. His smile became a scowl, his hands held not flowers but obsidian-studded maces. He now gave the impression of being eager to lead men into battle rather than to protect them in their homes and fields.
This new god, taller and bigger than his predecessor, demanded for tribute not flowers and colored feathers but war clubs, obsidian daggers and shields made of closely woven matting. At his stone feet a hollow was kept filled with short lengths of wood to feed the fire that smoldered perpetually, producing soot that darkened the figure and gave it a menacing look.
The transformed god transformed his worshipers. Under his triumphant guidance the Cave People moved slowly but steadily south, thrusting aside small communities of Indians less well organized than they and occupying always more attractive land. In these first years of their migration they met no armed resistance, but they felt confident that if battle was forced upon them they would win.
Even with their new, belligerent god the Cave People might have proved a commendable force in Mexican history if they had not remained totally ignorant. If their priests had been aware of the extraordinary discoveries in astronomy made a thousand years before by Indians in other parts of Mexico they would not have found it necessary to initiate the horrible rites that have severely damaged their image in later years.
For more than three thousand years, learned men in various parts of Mexico, priests and astronomers alike, had been aware that in what we now call the month of December the sun wandered each day farther and farther south until, as the twenty
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first of December approached, it looked as if it might continue its flight south until it disappeared altogether. Primitive men must have feared that it would never return, so curious rites, mainly involving sacrifices, were invented to lure it back, and since they invariably worked, they became fixed in religious practices. But thoughtful men deduced the rules governing the seasons and realized that the sun was bound to return to perform its functions whether or not it was appeased by rites of any kind. Had the Cave People known this simple fact the abominations I am about to describe would not have happened.
The Cave priests repeatedly told their people: "We sacrificed to our gods, and the sun came back. If we had not, our crops would never have grown and we would have starved," and the listeners agreed, for they saw that the sun did return. But as the first millennium ended, the priests argued: "Since you are determined to move south in search of better living, sooner or later we will encounter strong tribes who will forbid us to touch their land. So we need his continued help in new and more persuasive ways to ask our god to help us. To a god leading us in battle, the offering of fruit and flowers is no longer proper. Our god deserves the ultimate sacrifice, a human being, one a day in the critical period, so that he not only will dissuade the sun from leaving us in the chill darkness but also will
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guarantee our victory in battle."
When one listener asked, "How will the sacrificial man be chosen?" the high priest replied quickly: "No member of the Cave People will ever be selected. We will offer only enemy soldiers we have captured in battle. The best and the bravest, men of valor. Our god will recognize them as major gifts and will be eager to help us, so let us accept this new form of worship gladly."
On a day in mid-December when the sun was perilously low, citizens assembled in the area facing the image of the new god and watched as a prisoner from a recently vanquished tribe was brought forth, a handsome young warrior who had fought with valor and who now stared defiantly at his captors. He was half led, half dragged toward a huge rounded log, and four priests, grabbing his ankles and wrists, lifted him high in the air and then brought him down forcefully on his back across the log. In this position the young warrior looked into the eyes of a ferocious priest who approached with a long, sharp dagger, which he drove into the prisoner's chest under the last rib and across the belly. Reaching with his left hand into the cavity to tear out the living heart, he offered it as food for the god of battle.
The people were awed by the terrible power of their new god, that he could command such a sacrifice, and in the days that followed they watched five successive ritual murders. After the final sacrifice everyone gathered in a public square to spend the night in prayer and religious ritual, imploring the sun to return. As dawn approached, a priest who was monitoring the sun's movement turned to the waiting crowd and shouted triumphantly: "The sun has halted his flight south. He's coming back to save us."
Later, in a year when no prisoners were taken for the good reason that this barren part of Mexico had no inhabitants, December approached with no captives to sacrifice. But the ritual had become so sacred, so vital, in the life of the Cave People, that it was an easy transition from sacrificing enemy warriors to plunging the obsidian knife into the chest of the tribe's own warriors. Within the space of a mere fifty years the priests had convinced the Cave People that this was the noblest way to leave this earth, a death that was more to be desired than life itself.
In their first encounters with other tribes, the wandering Cave People gained significant victories, and so grateful were they to Glittering-Fish Color-Bird that they dropped the complex double name and referred to him thereafter simply as War God. His original attributes were ignored, and few in the tribe remembered that he had once been their god of fertility and beauty.
After they had been wandering for thirty years in the general direction of Yucatan, they encamped somewhere in north
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central Mexico--the place has never been identified--which was entirely different from their riverbank home: it was a broad, arid plain whose fields were surrounded by cactus. Here they stayed for about half a century to recoup strength, during which they introduced certain innovations. First, they were so impressed by the cactus plant that when there was no one surviving who could remember the caves they renamed themselves the Cactus People. Second, from the tanned skins of large snakes that infested the area they built themselves a huge drum that they beat whenever they were to offer a human sacrifice. Third, they were so fascinated by the soaring eagles that guarded the cactus plains that they adopted the habit of dressing their chief warriors in costumes that made them look like eagles, and it was these fighters who would soon be dreaded by much of Mexico.
A fourth change was one that occurred in the hearts of the people, for when the leaders decided that the time was ripe for a major thrust at some area in which they could settle permanently and cease their aimless wandering, the priests advised: "For an adventure of this magnitude, in which we may have to wage prolonged war against well-prepared adversaries, we should carry with us a powerful image of our god, one that reminds us of his strength and our enemies of his power." (Up to this time other peoples had been, known as strangers; now anyone not of their clan carried automatically the label of enemy.)
Accordingly a hideous image was carved that represented a tyrant who sat in judgment not only of captives hauled before him but also of his own people. Held between his knees was a stone bowl, into which were thrown the still-pulsing human hearts ripped from the chests of living men. Smoke, emblem of the power of fire, curled about the figure, which in the years of its horrible existence became blackened with soot, and always there was that bottomless bowl into which heart after heart was thrown.
After the harvest period in the year 1130 the Cactus People held a convocation where in a two-day period they sacrificed four hundred and eighty men, of whom nineteen were Drunken Builders who had been surprised on a hunting trip. They were the first Indians from the high valley to die at the hands of War God. The military leaders and the priests presented the people with options: "One scouting party proposes yearly marches until the rich lands of Yucatan are reached, and rich they are, but the distance is endless, requiring so many years to traverse, that some of you would not live to see it." The people shouted down this proposal, so the leaders continued: "Other scouts have found a lake region only two years distant. But it has no high land in the vicinity except smoking volcanoes." To this the people cried: "We want no burning mountain," and it was rejected. At this impasse, the high priest spoke: "There is one land that I myself have seen. It lies not far away, set among hills. It is a high valley, the kind of land our people have always sought, and it contains a man-made mountain upon which the present inhabitants have erected their temple. It almost looks as if it were waiting for our War God."
"Are the people living there warlike?" the king asked.
"We've engaged them in minor skirmishes," the high priest assured him, "and they are easy prey. War God has assured us that we can capture their city."
At the time of this meeting, City-of-the-Pyramid and its supporting countryside counted a population of about sixty thousand, whereas the nomadic Cactus People could not have numbered more than five thousand; furthermore, each year upward of a hundred of the best Cactus warriors were sacrificed to War God, which constantly weakened the tribe, but on the other hand the weak, the worn-out and the blind were also killed off, which constantly strengthened it.
The elite warriors that remained were among the most effective fighting men in Mexico and the idea of engaging an enemy twelve times their number in no way disturbed them. From having defeated many different tribes they had accumulated some of the most advanced weapons of the age: obsidian war clubs, shields of hardened wood, mechanical spear
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throwers, and sharp-tipped arrows. Their War God was decorated with turquoise and silver, which made him flash when fires were lighted at his feet and magnified his aura of evil menace.
The Cactus People were convinced that sixty thousand lackadaisical Drunken Builders could not withstand them. Therefore, in the year 1130 the Cactus People decided to move slowly but with constant pressure against City-of-the-Pyramid and occupy it. For the first fifteen years of this slow encroachment the Drunken Builders were not even aware that hostile forces were approaching, but in the spring of 1145 they awakened to the fact that the nomads were encamped only sixty miles away. Although there was consternation, no one knew what to do about the distressing situation.
During these critical years, the king of the Drunken Builders was Tlotsin, a descendant of Nopiltzin, the discoverer of pulque, and of all that his ancestors had accomplished in the high valley Tlotsin appreciated most the brewing of this beverage. He could not be called a hopeless drunkard, but he did find solace in drink.