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What kind of teteo are you? Initial indigenous perception of Cortés and his companions-in-arms through early colonial sources

4th May 2021

What kind of {italicteteo} are you? Initial indigenous perception of Cortés and his companions-in-arms through early colonial sources

Mexicolore contributor Dr. Anastasia Kalyuta

We are sincerely grateful to Dr. Anastasia Kalyuta, Senior Researcher at the Saint Petersburg Institute of History, a research institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for writing specially for us this illuminating article on the controversy surrounding just how the Mexica (Aztecs) perceived Cortés and his comrades, and just how to interpret the profound Nahua concept of teotl.

My paper continues the series of works dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes and his followers. Today I wish to return to the much-debated hypothesis that the native population of Mexico, including the supreme ruler of the Mexica “empire” Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, identified Hernan Cortes with the returning god and cultural hero Quetzalcoatl. This hypothesis became so popular and widespread even among non-specialists that it inspired several works of fiction including the novel by the American writer Lew Wallace, The Fair God. In recent years this hypothesis has been constantly refuted and described as a Post-Conquest fabrication invented by the Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun and his native pupils from the Colegio Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. We need only recall the article by the influential American ethnohistorian Camilla Townsend titled “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico” published in 2003. However, both adherents and critics of this hypothesis often forget about the key point for analysis of any historical evidence – language, in particular, its lexical part and the specific vocabulary applied to the description of past events. Even more surprsingly, they also forget to put this vocabulary into the context of Mexica cosmovision and their knowledge of the world around them, for every language is nothing but a reflection of a particular world concept.

Now let me explain by what I mean by concrete data in this case. I start with the key word which in Early Colonial Nahuatl texts is often applied to Spaniards in both single and plural form – teōtl. In the comprehensive dictionary of Classical Nahuatl compiled by the Franciscan monk Alonso de Molina in 1571 we find the translation “dios”, that is “god” (Molina 1571: f. 211r. - pic 2). The famous Mexican linguist Karen Dakin associated the etymology of the word teōtl with a Proto-Uto-Aztecan root meaning heat and shining (Karen Dakin, personal communication). In fact even after the Conquest, the Mexica often applied this word to the Sun, and the Nahuatl adverb teōtlac literally means “at sunset” (Simeon 1999:490). However, the root teo was also used for a significant number of words just to show that the objects they designate are extraordinary, quite special in both positive and negative senses. For instance, teōtlalli is a vast plain, the sea is teōatl, and turquiose of fine quality is teōxihuitl (Simeon 1999:483, 490, 492). At the same time, the tribes of huntsmen who lived primitive nomadic lives were called teochichimeca which means “complete savages” (de todo bárbaros) (Sahagun 1961:171). In the Florentine Codex composed by Sahagun and his Mexica students we also find such terms as apizteōtl – “glutton”, with an obvious negative sense (Sahagun 1961:28,39). In the words of Sahagun himself, the term teōtl was applied to everything which exceeds ordinary objects in a positive or negative sense (Sahagun 1980:3: s.n).

In 1953 the Danish scholar Arild Hvidfeldt used Sahagun’s testimony and some lexical examples to prove his theory that teōtl in fact designated a sort of impersonal sacred force, similar to the concept of mana - the sacred life energy of the native peoples of Oceania. In his opinion the Mexica perceived teōtl as an invisible, dynamic power which could enter both inanimate objects and animate beings including humans, and became its incarnation teixiptla. Spanish colonial missionaries mistakenly took these incarnations of teōtl for the images of “gods” (Hvidtfeldt 1958: 98, 100). However, the entire set of Hvidfeldt’s conclusions was based exclusively on the hypothesis of his teacher Dr. Svend Pallis, Professor of the History of Religions. A. Hvidtfeldt based his approach to Pre-Hispanic Mexica religion on the unproven assumption that myths have their origin in rituals and, therefore, they are nothing more than reflections or remnants of particular rites practiced in the distant past. The Danish scholar was convinced of the cultural and technical backwardness of the Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilizations in comparison with the ancient state societies of the Mediterranean region and the Near East. In his opinion, the level achieved by Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican complex societies including the Aztecs corresponded to:-
“The stage which is characterized by agriculture and an incipient urbanization without, however, it being possible so far to talk about city states of the same type as that found in the Near East and the Mediterranean countries of Antiquity. It is difficult to indicate the differences with a brief formulation, so we shall content ourselves by declaring that the pre-Columbian Mexican communities make a more primitive impression than the city states of the ancient world”. (Hvidtfeldt, 1958:70).

Thus, Mexica and other Mesoamerican peoples did not have the concept of “god”, which appeared only among societies that reached the stage of city-states. Therefore, they could in no way take Hernan Cortes and his army for returning gods of any kind. The impact of A. Hvidtfeldt’s conclusions on the following generations of specialists in Nahuatl culture and religion can hardly be underestimated. In fact, the subsequent interpretations of teōtl as a kind of energy are derived from his dissertation. In 1979 the American art historian Richard Townsend explicitly likened mana and teōtl in his article “State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan” stating that: “Teotl expresses the notion of sacred quality, but with the idea that it could be physically manifested in some specific presence – a rainstorm, a mirage, a lake, or a majestic mountain. It was if the world was perceived as being magically charged, inherently alive in greater or lesser degrees with this vital force” (Townsend 1979:28). In the same year Jorge Klor de Alva, Assistant Professor at the San Jose State University in California at that time, even suggested a special term for Pre-Hispanic Aztec religion, namely teoism (Klor de Alva 1979). In 1989 the distinguished art historian Elizabeth Hill Boone in her work Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe wrote that: “…Arild Hvidtfeldt has admirably demonstrated its actual meaning is something close to the Polynesian idea of mana, a sacred and impersonal force or a concentration of power.” (Boone 1989:4).

Therefore, her own vision of Huitzilopochtli as the key figure in Aztec religion was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Danish scholar, although she also assumed that “one can see that the teōtl can be also defined - as the ‘god’ as we think of him can be created - through the formation of the teixiptla” (Boone 1989:9). Finally in 2013 James Maffie in his voluminous book Aztec Philosophy: Understanding World in Motion argued that “At the heart of Aztec metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists just one thing: continually dynamic, vivifying, self-generating, and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Aztecs referred to this energy as teōtl” (Maffie 2013:21-22). Like A. Hvidtfeldt, he even compared teōtl with electricity (Maffie 2013:23). Maffie also cited A. Hvidtfeldt as “the first and foremost” scholar whose observations helped him to create this monistic vision of Aztec religion and philosophy, disregarding his general opinion about the cultural backwardness of Mesoamerican peoples (Maffie 2013:31).

Curiously, none of these influential scholars noticed the weakest point of Hvidtfeldt’s argumentation - the linguistic evidence. First of all, teōtl has a plural form, teteo. In Classical Nahuatl - the official language of the Mexica “empire”, only the terms for objects conceived as animated individualized beings, for example humans and animals, have plural forms (Simeon 1999:40, Launey 2011:21). If teōtl was really considered to be impersonal sacred energy it would not have a plural form at all. Second, the word teīxiptla is the possessive form of īxīptlatl – “representative, delegate” (Simeon 1999:218). The possessive prefix te means “someone’s”, clearly implying an individual rather than an impersonal force. In Classical Nahuatl there are several categories of words which are always used in the possessive; it is important to note that these words are kinship terms and parts of the human body which do not have any relation to abstract energy or vital substance. Moreover, the verb “to kill” in Classical Nahuatl is temictia, literally “causing someone to die”, again with the same possessive prefix explicitly indicating an individual animated being. If teīxiptla was really considered to be a recipient of sacred impersonal force, it would not have the possessive prefix with the meaning “someone’s”. Thus, there is no reason to speak about a thing or an animated being possessed by abstract force. Quite the contrary, the linguistic data indicate that the teīxiptla is the object possessed by an individual being.

Considering the available historical evidence about the meaning of the word teōtl in the light of comparative religious studies, the most precise translation of this word is “spirit” including “the spirit of a dead ancestor”. I base this statement on the definition of “spirits” as a specific category of supernatural beings given by the influential Russian linguist and cultural anthropologist Vyacheslav Ivanov (pic 7):-
Spirits are mythological beings usually associated with man, his body and environment including nature. As distinct from gods, spirits belong to lower levels of mythological systems: they are in a state of constant interaction with man, every hour determining the peculiarities of his mental and psychic condition. Spirits related with man are classified as his own spirit protectors who usually live even after his death, transforming into the spirits of the dead or ghosts, the spirits of his lineage: The Old Germanic kynfylgja – “lineage’s spirit” as distinct from mannsfylgja – “man’s spirit”, the soul of lineage of Evenks [one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North], etc. (Иванов 1980:1:413/Ivanov 1980:1:413).

I would like to emphasize that characteristics such as a close relation and constant interaction with man, and a decisive influence on man’s psychic and mental condition are in fact distinctive features of teōtl in Nahuatl mythology. Moreover, we should remember the testimony of Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the Franciscan “Twelve Apostles”, the first missionaries who arrived in Mexico from Spain as early as 1523. Like Bernardino de Sahagún and Alonso de Molina, Motolinia was an expert in the Classical Nahuatl language. Thus, we cannot disregard his statement that Nahuas called every deceased person “teōtl X” (Motolinia 1992:69). Important evidence in this regard is also supplied by a paragraph in Book X of the Florentine Codex: In qujtoque in vevetque: in aquin oonmjc oteut, qujtoaia: ca oonteut, q,n oonmjc. The literal translation of this sentence is “Thus, the old men said, he who died became teteo.” A sentence describing good and bad grandfathers in the first chapter of the same book (X) states: “Tecul, culli; yntecul, chicauac, pipinqui, tzoniztac, quaiztac, otlatziuh, aocquenca yiollo, oteut - that is “One’s grandfather, grandfather, someone’s grandfather, strong, firm, white hair, white head, he becomes impotent, he becomes teōtl” (Sahagún 1979-1981:3:4r). Finally, teteo in general are frequently referred as “inculhuan, in tahhuan” - “the grandfathers, the fathers”, that is ancestors of the particular community to whom the community temple was dedicated (López Austin 1973:57).

Motolinia also noticed that initially the Mexica applied this term to every Spaniard until the Catholic Church prohibited it. I do not see anything untrustworthy in his statement, taking into account the Mexica’s vision of the world’s structure. The Earth and the Sky were conceived as the parts of the body of huge water monster Cipactli who was floating in an infinite cosmic ocean called teōatl, which was identified with the Gulf of Mexico (pic 9). This cosmic ocean connected various levels of the Sky populated by te – the spirits, including the dead whose benevolent or malicious disposition depended on how they had died. Warriors fallen in battle or sacrificed went to the Sky level where the Sun (Tonatiuh) lived. Newly-born babies who died before the ceremony of ritual bath and name giving returned to the highest level of the Sky where the Tree with numerous women’s breasts grew (pic 10). All of them were expected to return to the Earth in a particular calendar period.

The idea of the dead becoming spirits is one of the most common concepts in religions of the world, including Christianity. It should be stressed as well that the simultaneous singularity and plurality of teteo and their respective capacity to manifest themselves in different forms at the same time, which is so contradictory and illogical to the Western mind, is typical of mythological systems worldwide, and not specific to Mesoamerican native peoples. V. Ivanov in his article on spirits notes that ancient mythological systems:-
”are comparable with the conceptions of modern logic about relations between the concept (general notion) and the multitude of particular objects (denotates or referents), between designating and designated aspects of signs. But for mythology as for the grammar of respective languages, the notion of spirits as actively engaging forces is typical. The relationship of spirits with objects is not determined by the laws of logic, but by the rules of mythological thinking, thus, the same spirit can manifest its presence in both man and animals”. (Иванов 1980:1:413/ Ivanov V.V. 1980:1:413).

Thus, in my opinion, strange but anthropomorphic creatures that emerged from the teōatl (the cosmic ocean) could be readily recognized by the Mexica and other Nahuatl-speaking people as teteo — a wide category of diverse supernatural beings whose general characteristics gave reason to label them “spirits”, based on the above quoted definition by Vyachslav Ivanov. The problem which the Mexica and their leader Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin faced with regard to the Spaniards, and which they failed to solve, is formulated in the title of my paper. What kind of teteo were the Spaniards? To be fair, Motecuhzoma and his contemporaries did their best to solve this question.

Let me consider some fragments of well-known and lesser-known historical sources to show this. One of the earliest detailed descriptions of contacts between the Mexica, the local population of the Mexican Gulf Coast, comes from the testimonies of Cortes’s soldier Juan Alvarez, a native of the town Villaraza. In late June-early July of 1521 the former superior of Hernán Cortés, the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, tried to start a judicial investigation against his rebellious subordinate Hernán Cortés and Juan Alvarez was one of the prosecution’s witnesses. Concerning Cortés’s arrival at the river San Juan de Ulua, where one year earlier another captain sent by Diego Velázquez, namely Juan de Grijalva, had traded with the native population, Juan Alvarez declared:-
”And so they went to the River of San Juan where the said captain Hernan Cortes disembarked and where one Indian chieftain tecle came in the company of many Indians, who brought many food for all Christians and in two or three days the same tecle came with many Indians and brought to the said captain Hernando Cortes a gold dragon-like head with a rich plumage on top and certain gold adornments and a body and wings of rich feathers which the said Indians esteemed much and many gemstones and all these things they put on the said captain Hernan Cortes...”

“... and having dressed the said captain Cortes in this way, they asked if there were another tecle that is principal among the Christians and the Christians pointed to Pedro de Alvarado whom the said Indians also richly dressed, putting on him many gold and silver things and jewels and gemstones because it is said that this is their custom to dress principals and captains when they come from other places” (Alvarez J.1990: 1:205).
Certainly, this testimony is not an easy text to interpret, for the observer can hardly grasp the meaning of the scene. Putting it into the context of Mexica ritual practice, one can say that a Mexica noble of the high rank with his retinue performed the typical rite of transforming the leaders of strangers into teīxīptlahuan – the living images of certain teteo. The question of what kind of teteo Cortes and Pedro de Alvarado were chosen to represent remains pending.

The Mexican historian Jose Luis Martinez, who published this document, suggested that Cortes received the attributes of Quetzalcoatl, for Juan Alvarez mentions “a gold dragon-like head and rich plumage”. However, the Spanish soldier does not mention the typical duck beak masks which Quetzalcoatl has in most of the relevant illustrations in Prehispanic and Early Colonial manuscripts. Juan Alvarez also said nothing concrete about the attire given to Pedro de Alvarado. The word tecle, twice mentioned in this fragment, is nothing other than the corrupted Nahuatl title teuctli or tecuhtli in the Central Nahuatl dialect - “lord”, which among the Mexica was given to various categories of nobles from rulers of city-states to distinguished warriors who were promoted to the office of judge. Juan Alvarez adds that the entire ceremony of dressing Hernan Cortes and Pedro de Alvarado in rich attire was a local custom to honor foreign leaders. In fact, the Mexica did indeed have a tradition of making rich presents of clothes and jewellery to the chiefs of other polities, even to their enemies. However, they dressed as teīxīptlahuan (the principal mythic personages) only the individuals destined to be sacrificed. I cannot exclude the suggestion that in this case such roles were reserved for the leaders of the Spanish expedition.

Curiously in Book XII of the Florentine Codex Motecuhzoma is reported to have sent to Cortes the complete sets of garments and adornments of three different teteo, namely Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Tlaloc. In the Nahuatl version of the text all the objects usually described as presents to the Spanish leader are designated as izcatqui ic itechamacizque - “everything in which you will dress him” (Sahagun 1980:3: f .6). Nonetheless, the verb amaci, which is hidden in this long phrase, has one more meaning, namely “to wrap in the ritual paper amatl” (Simeon 1999:240). The Mexica dressed or rather wrapped the dead and teīxīptlahuan in amatl before their sacrifice. I should add that the time period between transforming a man, usually a stranger, into a teixiptla (the incarnation of a particular teōtl) by dressing him in ritual clothes and his sacrifice could be at least 20 days, i.e., one Mexica month, and in certain cases even one year.

The Mexica ruler might have suggested that the newly arriving teteo would recognize and choose their own attire. Instead, Cortes and his men took them for presents and sent them to their sovereign Charles V (Diaz del Castillo 1975:196, 198). Therefore, the question about the nature of the strangers remained unresolved. Their mysterious emergence from the cosmic waters teōatl, their unusual appearance, their supernatural devices like metal tubes ejecting fire, and their strange animals indicated that they were really teteo. Possibly they were the resurrected Toltecs who had known and mastered so many extraordinary things. However, the Spaniards’ behavior broke every stereotype regarding teteo in the Mexicas’ mind. For instance, they showed strong revulsion to human sacrifices, and engaged in combat with the local population. Another Nahuatl-speaking group in Central Mexico, the Tlaxcaltecas, the worst enemies of the Mexica, who nevertheless shared their cosmovision, were equally confused by the arrival of the Spanish. One of Cortes’s soldiers Bernal Diaz del Castillo describes how in Tlaxcala Cortes received an embassy from the native military leader Xicotencatl the Younger. They brought to the Spanish camp food, copal resin, parrot feathers and four women, and Bernal Diaz del Castillo made the following comment:-

“Eat if you are teules [corrupted form of teōtl)]… and if you want sacrifices, take these four women to sacrifice and eat their flesh and hearts and because we don’t know how you do this, we haven’t sacrificed them before your eyes and if you are men, eat chicken, bread and fruits and if you are kind teules, here we have copal incense and parrot feathers for you; make your sacrifice with them” (Diaz del Castillo 1975:234).
Finally, the third Letter of Relation written by Hernan Cortes soon after the fall of Tenochtitlan reveals that even during the last stages of the siege of their capital, the Mexica still believed in the supernatural nature of Spaniards. The conquistador stated that the Mexica called him “son of the sun” (Cortés 1866: 261).

It bears emphasizing that in Mexica cosmovision, dead rulers including the Toltec ancestors of the Mexica sovereigns, were made īxīptlahuan - images of sun and moon (Sahagún 1979-1981:3:143r). If we remember that the sky level inhabited by the sun was also believed to be the place for high-ranking warriors fallen in battle or sacrificed without regard to their ethnic origins, there is a possibility that the Mexica could identify the Spaniards with returning Toltecs and their ruler Quetzalcoatl. Not in vain does the Mexica proverb state: “That which existed in old times no longer exists, but one day will appear again as it appeared in old times. Those who live today, one day will live again, will exist again” (Sahagun 1956:235).

References cited:-
• Иванов 1980. и // Мифы народов мира. М., «Советская энциклопедия» Т.1, С.413.Ivanov V.V. Dukhi // Mify narodov mira. T.2, S.679-680.
• Álvarez J. 1990. ‘Algunas respuestas de Juan Álvarez. Cortés y Alvarado reciben los atavios de Quetzalcoatl’ en Martínez J.L. ed. Documentos cortesianos. Mexico: UNAM, Fondo de la Cultura Económica,1990. t.1. vol. 204-206.
• Boone E.H. 1992 ‘Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, V. 79. Part 2, 1989.
• Diaz del Castillo B. 1975 Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España. Barcelona: Ramon Sopena.
• Hvidtfeldt A. 1958 Teotl and ixiptlatli: Some Central Conceptions in Ancient Mexican Religion Ancient Mexican Religion. With a General introduction on Cult and Myth. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
• Klor de Alva J. 1979 ‘Christianity and the Aztecs’. San Jose Studies 5 :7.
• Launey M. 2011 An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Translated and adapted by Christopher Mackay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• López Austin A. 1973 Hombre-dios. Religión y política en el mundo náhuatl. Mexico: UNAM, 1973.
• Maffie J. 2013 Aztec Philosophy: Understanding World in Motion. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. 2013.
• Molina A. 1571 Vocabulario en lengva castellana y mexicana compuesto por el muy reverendo padre Fray Antonio de Molina de la orden de bien venturado nuestro padre sanct Francisco. México: Casa de Antonio de Espinosa.
• Motolinia T. de Benavente 1992 El libro perdido. Ensayo de reconstrucción de la obra histórica extraviada de fray Toribio de Benavente, edición de Edmundo O’ Gorman, México, Porrúa.
• Simeon R. 1999 Diccionario de la lengua nahuatl o mexicana. Mexico: Siglo veinteuno.
• Sahagun B. 1979-1981 Codice Florentino. El manuscrito 218-20 de la colección palatina de la Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Mexico: Fondo de cultura economica. 3 vols.
• Sahagun B. Florentine Codex. 1951 The General History of Things of New Spain. Book 2 The Ceremonies. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
• Sahagun B. 1956 Florentine Codex. The General History of Things of New Spain. Book. 6 Salt Lake City University of Utah Press.
• Sahagun B. 1961 Florentine Codex. The General History of Things of Spain. Book 10 The People. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961.
• Townsend C. 2003 “Burying White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico.” In American Historical Review Vol. 108, Issue 3. pp.659-687.
• Townsend R. F. State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979.

Comments (1)

Montezuma

16th Jun 2024

I actually agree with the misuse of ‘teotl’. This term indeed had plural like ‘Teotihuacan’ means ‘City of gods’. Here the term is of plurality and this plurality shows many personated ‘gods’ who with their will at that city made decision and chose one to become the sun.
The implication of teotl to Aztec and other mesoamerican mythologies is highly contradictory given the will, desires and acts of various deities, humans and demons etc just as other polytheistic religions.

Mexicolore contributor Dr. Anastasia Kalyuta