sturtevant's notes on edible plants 609 



strength, giving unto man flesh and stature. Such were the deeds of the begetter and 

 giver of being, Tepeuh, Gucumatz. Thereupon they began to speak of creating our first 

 mother and our first father. Only yellow maize and white maize entered into their flesh 

 and these alone formed the legs and arms of man; and these were our first fathers, the four 

 men who were formed, into whose flesh this food entered." 



This Paxil, or Cayala, is suggested by Bancroft to have been the region of the 

 Usimiacinta River, in what is now the Mexican province of Tabasco. In a Nahua record, 

 written in Aetec with Spanish letters by an anonymous native author, referring to the 

 Pre-Toltec period, it is said: " At that time Azcatl, the ant, going to Tonacatepetl, mount 

 of our subsistence, for maize, was met by Quetzalcoatl, who said ' where hast thou been 

 to obtain that thing? Tell me.' At first the ant woidd not tell but the Plumed Serpent 

 insisted and repeated, ' whither shall I go? ' They went there together, Quetzalcoatl meta- 

 morphosing himself into a black ant. Tlattlauhqui Azcati, the yellow ant, accompanied 

 Quetzalocoatl respectfully, as they went to seek maize and brought it to Tamoanchan. 

 Then the gods began to eat and put some of the maize in our mouths that we might become 

 strong." 



Another tradition of the Pre-Toltec period is also given by Bancroft * in which an 

 old man and old woman pulled out the broken teeth of precious stones from the jaw of 

 Vucub Caldx, in which he took great pride, and substituted grains of maize. In the golden 

 age of Mexico, during the reign of Quetzalocoatl, tradition says, maize was abundant, 

 and a head of it was as much as a man could carry clasped in his arms. During the reign 

 of Nopaltzin, King of the Chichimecs, which Humboldt '^ ascribes to 1250 A. D., the 

 cvdture of maize and the art of making bread, long neglected and in danger of being lost, 

 was revived by a Toltec named Xinhtlato. In Mexico, Centeotl was goddess of maize 

 and had various appellations, such as Tonacajohua, " she who sustains us," Tzinteotl, 

 "original goddess," and during her festival a sort of porridge made of maize, called 

 mazamorra, was given to the youths, who walked through the maize fields, carrying stalks 

 of maize and other herbs called mecoatl with which they afterwards strewed the image 

 of the god of cereals that every one had in his house. 



At harvest time in Quegolani, the priests of the maize god, ceremonially visited the 

 com fields, sought the fairest and best-filled ear, which, after worshipping, they wrapped 

 in cloth and at next seedtime, with processions and solemn rites, buried, wrapped in a 

 deer skin, in a hole lined with stems in the midst of the fields. When another harvest 

 came, if it were a fruitful one, the earth was dug up and the decayed remains dis- 

 tributed in small parcels to the happy populace as talismans against all kinds of evil. The 

 Mexican god Tlaloc is represented with a stalk of maize in the one hand and in the other 

 an instrument with which he is digging the ground. This sanguinary deity seems to 

 have required the sacrifice of a boy in April, whose dead body was put in the granaries 

 or the fields. In the great temple at Mexico, there was a chapel dedicated to the god 

 Cinteutl, called Cinteupan, the god of maize and of bread. In 1880, Charnay' found 



' Bancroft, H. H. Native Races s:iy 3. 1886. 

 ' Pickering, C. Chron. Hist. Pis. 741. 1879. 

 Charnay No. Amer. Rev. 306. 1880. 

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