172 



BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[bull. 28 



Between divisions 13 and 14 in onr mannscript there is a lesser 

 stream of water, which, as I have said, leads straight across the 

 page, from the path on tlie right to the water on the left. Then fol- 

 lows above, in division 14, a head with hair hanging straight down, in 

 the explanatory note of which some of the letters are destroyed and 

 made unintelligible by a dark stain; but the hieroglyph behind the 

 head informs us that the note must be read Itz})otoncatzin ; that is, 

 '• He who is stuck over with obsidian knives instead of with feathers". 

 The hieroglyph shows us a stone knife (iztli,.'' knife '\ " obsidian ") 

 with tufts of down sticking to it (potonqui, " stuck over with feath- 

 ers"). Feathers fastened to the hair and naked skin were part of 

 the holiday dress. Young girls adorned themselves for a festival l)y 



I 



Fig. 30. Symbols from Mexican codices. 



sticking red feathers to their arms and legs, and because this stick- 

 ing on of feathers was part of the holiday dress the victim of sacrifice 

 was similarly adorned, except that wdiite feathers were used, to show 

 that he was doomed to death. Those intended for the sacrificio gla- 

 diatorio, in particular, were smeared with white infusorial earth 

 (tizatl) and stuck over with white down (iuitl) a, figure 39. To 

 send tizatl and iuitl was therefore a declaration of war. The oppo- 

 nent was thus symbolically doomed to a sacrificial death. Hence in 

 Codex Telleriano-Remensis the conquest of a city is invariably rep- 

 resented by the picture of a man painted white, with dots, and cov- 

 ered with tufts of down ( h, figure 39) , and in the Mendoza codex, page 

 47, we see the declaration of war against an insubordinate cacique 



