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| Quetzalcoatl as a White Man |
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I can offer only one possible source for the theme. Quetzalcoatl is associated with the west, which in the Aztec symbol system was white. Thus Quetzalcoatl is white as an indication of the west, just as other deities were red, blue, and black when associated with other compass directions. While this does tie that color to Quetzalcoatl, it certainly has nothing to do with his skin color. It is also important to note the color symbology in Mesoamerican is much more Eastern than Western. Rather than represent purity, white appears to represent death, as it does in many Asian cultures, so any theoretical linkage to Quetzalcoatl based upon his 'purity' would also be a spurious argument. It could be argued that the elevation of Cortés to the status of the returning Quetzalcoatl was a tacit recognition of Quetzalcoatl as a "white" European. However, the evidence does not support this conclusion. Sahagún's informants state: And thus had Moctezuma provided for he thought them gods; he took them for gods; he paid them reverence as gods. For they were called and named "gods came from the heavens." And the Black ones were said to be black gods.(1) The ascription of godhood to the Spaniards is clear in this passage, but it does not appear to be due to the skin color, as the blacks with them were also considered to be gods, or rather "dirty gods", but gods nevertheless. There are very few direct references in Nahuatl writings to the skin color of the Spaniards. One of those is found in the Florentine Codex: And they covered all parts of their bodies. Alone to be seen were their faces - very white. They had eyes like chalk; they had yellow hair, although the hair of some was black. Long were their beards and also yellow; they were yellow bearded. (Sahagún, 1950-75, 12:19.) In this passage the natives describe the Spaniards. Their "very white" skin is no more interesting nor noteworthy than the fact that they covered all parts of their bodies (as amazing to the natives as the natives comparative lack of dress was to the Spaniards) and their long, yellow beards. In fact, the description of "very white" might suggest that "white" might already have been a category that might be linked to skin in the native conception. Indeed that appears to be the case. In the section of the Florentine Codex where the informants give their words for various body parts comes the following catalog of "skin-types": eoatl Skin teoaio Our Skin topaneoaio Our outer skin iztac White tlatlactli Ruddy chichiltic Chili-red iaiactic Swarthy cacatzactic Black teceoac Chalky ( Sahagún, 1950-75, 10:95.) The words describing the skin have more to do with color than skin. White skin is defined as iztac, the word for white. Other colors are similarly descriptive. There is no way of knowing whether or not these categories of white and black skin were pre-Hispanic. A possible indication of the native conception of their own skin color comes from a native description of the Spaniards, reported in Miguel León-Portilla's Visión de los Vencidos, which simply states; "Their skin is very white, more so than ours." (Miguel León-Portilla, Visiónes de los Vencidos, (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972), 12.) That Quetzalcoatl should be so inextricably associated with "white" and that such an association should be so indelibly linked to skin color says much more about our Western conceptions than it does about the native categories. The ascription of a white skin to Quetzalcoatl could only have entered the legend after Quetzalcoatl had become associated with the arrival of the Spaniards. It was not a part of the pre-Hispanic mythic material. Sahagún, 1950-75, 12:21. The phrase is "auh in tlilique teucacatzactic mjtoque". Teucacatzactic more likely means dirty/dark gods. Nahuatl does make a distinction between black (tlil) and dark/dirty (cacatza). |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
The most well known
facet of the Quetzalcoatl cycle is that he is the "white god". In addition to being the most universally
recognized feature of the legend, it is one of the most perplexing. It is very difficult to discover how this element
became attached to the material at all. The idol of the god was always painted black, and only Ixtlilxochitl specifically
mentions a white skin. The late date of his work, and his attempts to accommodate Spanish concepts makes that passage
a questionable indicator of a relationship between white and Quetzalcoatl's skin. (Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,
Obras Históricas, 2 volumes, edited Alfredo Chavero, (Mexico: Editora Nacional, 1952), 1:121.)|
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