Some American Corn Gods 263 



Chicomenecoatl was also sometimes called "Seven Ser- 

 pents," doubtless in reference to the rattles which were used 

 in the rain-making ceremonies. Her brother was Tlaloc, the 

 rain-god. This is literally "He Who Makes Things Sprout." 

 The brother and sister lived in Tlalocan, called in the Popol 

 Vuh "The Place of the Division of the Waters." It was that 

 happy isle in the west which figures in the myths of so many 

 peoples, and which always holds the sum of all their desires. 



The rain-god was aided in his work by moon fairies and by 

 numberless little dwarfs who carried jars of water to the 

 fields. Clay figures of these "tlaloques," grinning, and holding 

 tiny water jugs, are still made by the Indian potters in our 

 southwest and are offered for sale at the Albuquerque railroad 

 station. I bought one of them there several years ago and set 

 it in a corner of my garden. Whether thanks to the "tlaloque" 

 or to the saint on whom the Pilgrim Fathers pinned their 

 hopes I do not know, but that summer there was no drought 

 in the Hudson River Valley. 



The rain-gods had their own feasts when the women baked 

 little cakes of maize paste in the form of serpents and of 

 mountains, and offered these on the altars. At the conclusion 

 of the ceremony, the priests broke the cakes and gave them 

 to the people to eat. Thus, it was believed, they would receive 

 in their bodies the good which the rain did to the fields. 



A Mexican manuscript in the Bodleian Library pictures 

 the proper education of a girl. In her thirteenth year that 

 is, when she has reached puberty she is to be instructed in 

 the use of the rnetate-stone. Her entrance upon womanhood is 

 marked by her admission to the ranks of the meal-grinders. 

 From her mother and grandmother she is commanded to 

 learn the ritual for grinding corn for the tortillas for family 

 consumption, and for the little butterfly-shaped cakes to be 

 laid on crossroads altars as offerings to the Haunting Mothers 

 the spirits of women who have died in childbed. 



It seems probable that Chicomenecoatl was a maize and 

 moon deity of the Toltecs who lived in the Valley of Mexico 



