Digging for Quetzalcoatl's Christian Roots

The Sources of the Quetzalcoatl Legend

			Because the Quetzalcoatl textual material is complex, this paper cannot do justice to all issues related to it. Rather, this paper specifically analyzes those parts of the Quetzalcoatl tradition which have been used to associate Quetzalcoatl with a figure who preached Christianity to the Indians long before the Conquest. Ironically, the complexity of the legendary material flows from a relatively small number of important sources. The following presentation of the sources is by no means exhaustive, but it includes the major sources which provide details of the myth cycle from which the Christian elements have been extracted.(1) This list is organized by the presumed date of composition, and contains information on both the ethnicity of the author (or presumed author in some cases) and the language in which it was written. The language spoken by the people Cortés conquered in Tenochtitlan was Nahuatl. As an ethnic identifier, I will use the term Nahua (rather than Aztec) to refer to the set of people who spoke that language and shared in a common cultural background.(2) Author/Work Presumed date of composition Ethnicity of author Original Language "Juan Cano Relations" (two sources relying upon a single original): Origen de los Mexicanos Relación de la Genealogía c. 1532 Spanish Spanish Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas c. 1535 Spanish Spanish Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinía. Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España and Memoriales c. 1536-43 Spanish Spanish Histoyre du Mechique c. 1543 Spanish French, from a Spanish original Casas, Bartolomé de las. Apologética Historia Sumaria. c. 1555-7 Spanish Spanish Leyenda de los Soles c.1558 Nahua Nahuatl Anales de Cuauhtitlan c. 1570 Nahua Nahuatl Codex Telleriano-Remensis (very similar to Codex Ríos) c. 1562-63 Nahua/ Spanish Picture book with Spanish glosses Codex Ríos (very similar to Codex Telleriano-Remensis) c. 1566-89 Nahua/ Spanish Picture book with Spanish glosses Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc. Crónica Mexicana. C.1578 Nahua Spanish Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España c. 1575-80 Spanish Spanish, based on Nahuatl source material Bernardindo de Sahagún. Florentine Codex c. 1559-75 Nahua Nahuatl Diego Durán. Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme. c. 1579-81 Spanish Spanish Gerónimo de Mendieta. Historia Eclesiástica Indiana c. 1596 Spanish Spanish Torquemada, Juan de. Monarquía Indiana. 1615 Spanish Spanish Deigo Muñoz Camargo. Historia de Tlaxcala late 16th century Nahua Spanish Domingo Francisco de San Anton Muñon Chilmalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin. Relaciónes Originales de Chalco Amaquemecan. c. 1606-31 Nahua Nahuatl Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Relaciónes and Historia Chichimeca c. 1600-1640 Nahua Spanish Each of these sources has a differing amount of Quetzalcoatl material, and the information presented also varies in quality. The next important question to be asked is which are the best and most accurate sources of the Pre-Columbian myth? There are generally two criteria which may be applied to these sources to make a first cut generalization as to the value of each for a reconstruction. It is presumed that earlier documents should more accurately portray the pre-conquest material than later texts. It is also presumed that texts in Nahuatl should be more accurate. While these assumptions might seem logical, and are a generally productive rule of thumb, they are not reliable. There are no pre-Hispanic texts relating to Quetzalcoatl. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the oral tradition was supplemented with painted codices, but these were only keys to the oral tradition, not texts as the Western world understands the term. Because all written texts postdate the Conquest, and are written with Roman script, it is obvious that there has not only been cultural contact, but some acculturation in the texts themselves. Before any serious reconstruction of the Quetzalcoatl material can be attempted, it is imperative that we understand the ways in which that contact or acculturation might affect the material we are studying. The general answer to that question is that the impact ranges from the minor to the profound. There is no simple nor easy way to determine all of the influences on a given text. There were two general processes, however, which explain a significant number of the changes wrought upon native mythology by the cultural impact of the conquest. The distortions of the native material were effected by both interpretation and selection. 1. The most comprehensive listing of sources for the Quetzalcoatl tale is Henry B. Nicholson, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan: A Problem in Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, (Dissertation: Harvard, 1957). David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 11-62, provides an excellent discussion of sources. 2. "Aztec" has become an ambiguous term, at times designating only the Mexica, who ruled in Tenochtitlan, and at times it including all polities who spoke Nahuatl. The term Nahua is used to describe the cultural grouping, without specific regard to the political divisions which were nevertheless quite real and important.
			by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998