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| Quetzalcoatl's Preaching of the One God |
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They were very devout. Only one was their god; the showed all attention to, they called upon, they prayed to one by the name of Quetzalcoatl. The name of one who was their minister, their priest [was] also Quetzalcoatl. This one was very devout. That which the priest of Quetzalcoatl required of them, they did well. They did not err, for he said to them, he admonished them: "There is only one god" [he is] Quetzalcoatl. He requireth nothing...( Sahagún, 1950-75,10:160). While the passage is originally in Nahuatl, and coming from one of the best extant sources, it is still likely that it is the result of a distortion by selection. This time, the natives are selecting from their corpus the information the Spaniards wanted to hear. This passage would not be so much in question if it did not follow an earlier list (in that very same text) of the gods worshiped at Tula, the capital of the Toltecs. That previous list is a direct contradiction of the statement of belief in only one god. The Anales de Cuauhtitlan concurs that there were more than one god at Tula. Speaking of Quetzalcoatl himself' "it is told that, idolatrizing, he prayed in the heavens and that he invoked Citlalyncue, Citlallatonac, Tonacacihuatl, Tonacatecutli, Tecolliquenqui, Yeztlaquenqui, Tlallamanac, and Tlallichcatl." ("Anales de Cuauhtitlan". In Codice Chimalpopoca, edited Primo Feliciano Velázques, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1975, 8. ) The overwhelming evidence of a large pantheon of deities through all of Mesoamerica at all time periods, as well as the contradictory evidence within the same document (as well as others) shows this aspect of the Quetzalcoatl material to be a Spanish accretion to the tale. In this case, it is just as likely that the Spaniards were accurately recording what they were being told. It was simply expedient for the natives to supply certain elements which they knew were of importance to the friars. Serge Gruzinski analyzed various native documents produced after the Conquest (known as the Relaciónes geográphicas) and noted a similar process where the interests of the natives were best served by altering their tradition for the benefit of the Spaniards. In one case, It was in fact convenient to consign to an already distant past, more than 50 years old, all that could have to do with idolatry, with 'rituals and ceremonies that they practiced and did of old in the time of the infidelity', which made it possible at the same time to dismiss the somewhat thorny question of the retention of paganism. Thus the spotless present of the Christianization followed upon the long pastime of the idols. ( Serge Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico, translated by Eileen Corrigan, Polity Press, 1993, 78-9.) The texts extolling Quetzalcoatl's belief in the one god fall into this category. This element in the Quetzalcoatl tales shows the evidence of a distortion by selection, in this case the selection being done by the natives themselves. Even coming from native sources, it is nonetheless a distortion of the pre-Hispanic lore. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
Judeo-Christian
monotheism came into sharp conflict with the extensive pantheon of the Nahua. For the Spaniards, one of the most
attractive traits of Quetzalcoatl was his putative opposition to this proliferation of deities, and his insistence
upon one god. The evidence for this "doctrine" preached by Quetzalcoatl does have support among Sahagún's
native informants, men who knew their culture, but were nevertheless schooled by the Spanish and well-versed in
Catholic religion. These natives write of an earlier Toltec society, headed by Quetzalcoatl, which believed in
only one god:
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