74 BUREAU OF AMKRICAN ETHNOLOGY [buil.^s 



note there was a golden beak upon the front. Since we do not know 

 how this was applied, or whether it covered the entire width of tlie 

 front or not, all inquiry as to the possibility of its having been bound 

 around the head is useless and really proves nothing. Von Hochstetter 

 has further established that the back of the ornament was covered 

 with feathers, which, like those on the front, were fastened to a line 

 netting. This is intelligible if the ornament is tlat. In a crown bound 

 upon the head it would have been, to say the least, superfluous; but in 

 this case we would, above all, expect to find a contrivance of some sort 

 on the back of the net to regulate the folding while it is being bound 

 about the head. The absence of this contravenes Mrs NuttalTs theor3\ 



I have not mentioned one piece which is seen on the sheet from the 

 Cozcatzin codex (figure 0), that is, the large wheel-shaped ornament at 

 the left on the back of the Axayacatl figure. I hold this ornament to 

 be of exotic origin, an ornament adopted with the Xipe costume. We 

 are confronted with the question as to how this ornament should be 

 worn, whether in a perpendicular position fastened to a pole, like a kind 

 of movable comb, or whether we should imagine it as a huge horizontal 

 collar falling over the back. I am inclined to accept the latter theory, 

 for similar horizontal collar-shaped feather ornaments were common 

 in the tierra caliente, and were worn especially in the Pacific tierra 

 caliente (see J, figure 12 from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, which 

 represents a member of the unconquered tribes of Jalisco, against 

 whom Pedro de Alvarado took the field). At Oaxaca I saw a pair of 

 clay figures (man and woman), coming from the district of Zimat- 

 l.m, which combined with a huge aureole-shaped feather headdress 

 another feather ornament worn across the back of the loins like a 

 collar (see <?, figure 12). I am the more inclined to use these figures for 

 purposes of comparison, because both wore a mask on the middle of 

 the girdle, and this is a peculiar feature found in the Xolotl(?) with 

 the macpallo chimalli (/», figure 8), already used Iw me for comparison, 

 as well as in all the other male and female figures on this sheet. 



The question of feather ornaments is a very complicated one and their 

 meaning not easily explained, ))ecause these insignia and the whole 

 politico-hierarchic S3^stem of the Mexicans are connected with their 

 religious ideas and their cult, resulting from man}^ centuries of 

 development, amid perpetual contact and interchange with kindred 

 and foreign cultures. The basis for the Mexican territory, taken in the 

 strictest sense, must always be the Sahagun chapter, from which I 

 quoted in my previous treatise its most essential pictorial and other 

 contents. I have thus far found little to alter in what I stated then. 

 Our field of vision would be greatly broadened if equally reliable and 

 equally complete sources in regard to the same conditions existed con- 

 cerning the other nations of Mexico. Unfortunately it is hardly to be 

 expected that these will ever be found. 



