Eugène Beauvois
1897
translated by Jason Colavito
2016
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NOTE |
Eugène Beauvois (1835-1912), a French diffusionist writer of what we would today call fringe history, produced dozens of articles claiming to find connections between medieval Europe and the ancient Americas. In an earlier piece, he argued from passages in Plutarch and the Spanish missionaries that the Celts had colonized Mexico from Antiquity and in the early Middle Ages evangelized Christianity among native Mexicans. He built upon this claim in a more influential, but quite racist, 1897 article entitled “Traces d'influence Européenne dans les langues, les sciences et l'industrie précolumbienne du Mexique et de l’Amérique centrale,” which the Journal of American Folk-Lore declared “of doubtful value.” Nevertheless, it encapsulated many of the arguments for a European presence in pre-Columbian Mexico still used by fringe history writers today. Beauvois, however, is at least honest when he shrugs his shoulders at one point and admits that the details of his claims were unimportant since any solution would still attribute Mexican culture to Europe, which was his professed and racist goal.
This translation provides the text of Beauvois’s article but omits the voluminous footnotes, which are nearly as long at the text itself. Interested readers can download the French edition below to consult the notes for Beauvois’s sources. I have provided notes of my own, however, to identify places where Beauvois mistranslated or misunderstood his sources, ironic since so much of his argument rests on linguistic coincidences that his own mistranslations prove he was not qualified to make. 
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TRACES OF EUROPEAN INFLUENCE
IN THE PRECOLUMBIAN LANGUAGES, SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY
OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
I. WRITING AND VOCABULARY
The missionaries did not seek to impose their own language upon the people they evangelized: They found it easier to learn those of the natives, and to this end, they began to compose grammars and dictionaries, both for their own use and for that of their imitators and successors. These pretended ignorant were the most zealous linguists in the universe. Though they taught Latin, French, Spanish, and English to a few acolytes or catechists of the country, they did not transform the local language by submitting it to the rules of their grammar; for all their trouble they introduced only a few long or rare elements of their own vocabulary, such as some theological terms or untranslatable words. We must therefore not expect to find in pre-Columbian Mexico many remnants of Latin and Gaelic, especially since we do not possess a complete dictionary of ancient Nahuatl. However, we can point to some words that our examination will show arose from distortions they underwent in order to be pronounced or transcribed.
Missionaries often modified the Greek, Latin or Semitic characters; they even invented new ones to fit the phonemes of foreign languages, as did, for example, Mesrob for Armenian and Georgian, Ulfilas for Middle Gothic, St. Cyril for the old Slavonic, Thórodd Runameistaré and Aré Frodé for Old Norse. Among the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the priest who dressed in white, came by water, and evangelized the country before the arrival of Europeans brought a prayer book written in ornamental characters where each character represented a word. More recently the Franciscans, in order to be understood by the neophytes of New Spain, were not limited to representing biblical scenes in tableaux and to illustrating the catechisms with figures that they showed the Indians; they also invented a type of writing approximating characters, whose invention is attributed to Quetzalcoatl. To make, for example, the words Pater Noster, they drew a flag (pantlé), a stone or rather a pebble (tetl), a nopal cactus (nochtli), and another stone; by removing the endings, as was the rule in the words forming the first part of a compound, these were pan-te-noch-te without the final r, since this letter does not exist in Nahuatl. It was not just for the Nahuatl-speaking peoples that they wrote prayers and catechisms in iconophones (sounds represented by images): other books of this kind have been preserved, which once again were in use among some of the Otomi. It was the same, it seems, among the Maya of the Yucatan, judging by the alphabet reproduced in the relation of Father Diego de Landa, and it is probably the one that was used by the first missionaries to transcribe that language, with the letters written on paper serving as a modification of those from antiquity found engraved on a large number of monuments.
What the missionaries of the sixteenth century had to do in Mexico to reach the natives, at a time when the Spaniards were more numerous than the Pre-Columbian Celts ever were and where European influence would be more effective as a result of the continual influx of clerics, soldiers, sailors, and settlers – that is what had already been done in the ninth century when the Toltecs remained in New Spain after the departure of their chief for the Eastern region where they had originated. He had taken the pictures [books], according to which he governed his subjects; but he had left behind, according to the Fathers B. Sahagun and B. de las Casas, four wise men corresponding perhaps to the four disciples that Brother Juan de Torquemada says founded the hierocratic tetrarchy of Cholula; or according to Father Geronimo de Mendieta, just three wise men including Quetzalcoatl, who was neither the ancient god, nor even a man deified in his absence, but the namesake high priest of one or the other. These wise men, whatever might be their number, could not reproduce from memory all the characters of the books that had been taken away, but they invented twenty signs, each of which represented a day of the month, and also used letters. This legend, of which the meaning is quite clear, indicates that, according to the conception of the Native people, the icons of the master were not identical with those of the disciples, so there is little hope of finding in the paintings and sculptures of pre-Columbian Mexico inscriptions in European characters.
The Celtic evangelizers felt no more need than the Spanish missionaries to impose Latin and Gaelic letters on the natives, for they were dealing with men who were only somewhat educated. They did what is done in the capital of the Yucatan, in Merida, where few people can read and where the street names are designated, not by signs, but by pictures: an elephant, a bull, a flamingo, etc.; they did as we continue to do in the backward parts of our own country where the sign of the innkeeper, the tool maker, or the cobbler, consists only of a figure of a horse, bottle, sickle, or shoe: They employed symbols, and they were even more willing to adopt iconophones, for they brought from their European homeland the notion of a fairly developed symbolic writing. In the Celtic countries, in fact, we see on tombstones from the Middle Ages many images whose constant repetition suggests that these are symbols—not just those that are common to the Christian people, like the monogram of Christ, the tau, the swastika, the alpha and omega, fish, lamb, bird perched atop the cross, the hand directed from above towards the head of Christ, the skull and bones of the dead, but also some more specialized emblems: the sword and scissors respectively designate man and woman, fibulas in the shape of a horseshoe, a “Z” more or less festooned between two plates.
According to the old Scottish chronicler Hector Boethius [1], King Reutha, whom he places two centuries before the Christian era, was “the first who found the way to preserve the memory of the courage of noble warriors ... by engraving on their tombs images of dragons, wolves and other beasts, before the invention of writing.”
He added that “in all their secret business they are accustomed not to write with common letters used among other people, but to engrave symbols and figures of animals in the manner of letters, as their epitaphs and inscriptions above their sepulchers show. Nonetheless, this crafty manner of writing is, by what neglect I cannot say, perished: they have certain letters proper among themselves that were once common and widespread.” [2]
Without doubt, it was from the inspiration of these examples, and perhaps also by imitating a kind of notation previously used among the natives, that the followers of Quetzalcoatl created the iconophones whose use continued until the sixteenth century. Imperfect as was this type of writing, the Mexicans used it with great ingenuity to note, with the pronunciation of certain words, the characteristic feature of the person, thing, or idea they designated. Torquemada quotes a curious example. Formerly, he said, the quecholli or flamingo was called teoquecholli (the divine flamingo), both because of its beauty and because it was dedicated to the gods. But as the name implied a reminiscence of idolatry, the neophytes changed it to tlauhquechol (red flamingo), thus giving it a perfectly appropriate epithet for its plumage and simultaneously approximating the first syllable with the sound (tlauh = teo). They worked to change the sound as little as possible; that is what made with equal success the tlacuilos, or iconophonographs [3], sent by Montezuma to depict the ships and the camp of Cortés. Having to make the form and name of capacete, as helmets are called in Spanish, they formed a compound of two Nahuatl words, whose sound, while approximating many of the foreign terms, described the object almost as well as did their drawings (probably of a head wearing a pot). This is indeed what is expressed, in a truncated form, by the compound cuaapaz which Tezozomoc gave and which the scholar Orozco y Berra explained by cuaitl (head) and apaztli (pot, vase). The ending is regularly removed from the first word, because it sits in between, but it is retained in the second, where it has the form te, as the Spaniards sometimes wrote it, or in the normal form tli. Cuaapazte therefore is as close as possible to capacete and depicts at the same time the head covering of foreign warriors.
Missionaries often modified the Greek, Latin or Semitic characters; they even invented new ones to fit the phonemes of foreign languages, as did, for example, Mesrob for Armenian and Georgian, Ulfilas for Middle Gothic, St. Cyril for the old Slavonic, Thórodd Runameistaré and Aré Frodé for Old Norse. Among the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the priest who dressed in white, came by water, and evangelized the country before the arrival of Europeans brought a prayer book written in ornamental characters where each character represented a word. More recently the Franciscans, in order to be understood by the neophytes of New Spain, were not limited to representing biblical scenes in tableaux and to illustrating the catechisms with figures that they showed the Indians; they also invented a type of writing approximating characters, whose invention is attributed to Quetzalcoatl. To make, for example, the words Pater Noster, they drew a flag (pantlé), a stone or rather a pebble (tetl), a nopal cactus (nochtli), and another stone; by removing the endings, as was the rule in the words forming the first part of a compound, these were pan-te-noch-te without the final r, since this letter does not exist in Nahuatl. It was not just for the Nahuatl-speaking peoples that they wrote prayers and catechisms in iconophones (sounds represented by images): other books of this kind have been preserved, which once again were in use among some of the Otomi. It was the same, it seems, among the Maya of the Yucatan, judging by the alphabet reproduced in the relation of Father Diego de Landa, and it is probably the one that was used by the first missionaries to transcribe that language, with the letters written on paper serving as a modification of those from antiquity found engraved on a large number of monuments.
What the missionaries of the sixteenth century had to do in Mexico to reach the natives, at a time when the Spaniards were more numerous than the Pre-Columbian Celts ever were and where European influence would be more effective as a result of the continual influx of clerics, soldiers, sailors, and settlers – that is what had already been done in the ninth century when the Toltecs remained in New Spain after the departure of their chief for the Eastern region where they had originated. He had taken the pictures [books], according to which he governed his subjects; but he had left behind, according to the Fathers B. Sahagun and B. de las Casas, four wise men corresponding perhaps to the four disciples that Brother Juan de Torquemada says founded the hierocratic tetrarchy of Cholula; or according to Father Geronimo de Mendieta, just three wise men including Quetzalcoatl, who was neither the ancient god, nor even a man deified in his absence, but the namesake high priest of one or the other. These wise men, whatever might be their number, could not reproduce from memory all the characters of the books that had been taken away, but they invented twenty signs, each of which represented a day of the month, and also used letters. This legend, of which the meaning is quite clear, indicates that, according to the conception of the Native people, the icons of the master were not identical with those of the disciples, so there is little hope of finding in the paintings and sculptures of pre-Columbian Mexico inscriptions in European characters.
The Celtic evangelizers felt no more need than the Spanish missionaries to impose Latin and Gaelic letters on the natives, for they were dealing with men who were only somewhat educated. They did what is done in the capital of the Yucatan, in Merida, where few people can read and where the street names are designated, not by signs, but by pictures: an elephant, a bull, a flamingo, etc.; they did as we continue to do in the backward parts of our own country where the sign of the innkeeper, the tool maker, or the cobbler, consists only of a figure of a horse, bottle, sickle, or shoe: They employed symbols, and they were even more willing to adopt iconophones, for they brought from their European homeland the notion of a fairly developed symbolic writing. In the Celtic countries, in fact, we see on tombstones from the Middle Ages many images whose constant repetition suggests that these are symbols—not just those that are common to the Christian people, like the monogram of Christ, the tau, the swastika, the alpha and omega, fish, lamb, bird perched atop the cross, the hand directed from above towards the head of Christ, the skull and bones of the dead, but also some more specialized emblems: the sword and scissors respectively designate man and woman, fibulas in the shape of a horseshoe, a “Z” more or less festooned between two plates.
According to the old Scottish chronicler Hector Boethius [1], King Reutha, whom he places two centuries before the Christian era, was “the first who found the way to preserve the memory of the courage of noble warriors ... by engraving on their tombs images of dragons, wolves and other beasts, before the invention of writing.”
He added that “in all their secret business they are accustomed not to write with common letters used among other people, but to engrave symbols and figures of animals in the manner of letters, as their epitaphs and inscriptions above their sepulchers show. Nonetheless, this crafty manner of writing is, by what neglect I cannot say, perished: they have certain letters proper among themselves that were once common and widespread.” [2]
Without doubt, it was from the inspiration of these examples, and perhaps also by imitating a kind of notation previously used among the natives, that the followers of Quetzalcoatl created the iconophones whose use continued until the sixteenth century. Imperfect as was this type of writing, the Mexicans used it with great ingenuity to note, with the pronunciation of certain words, the characteristic feature of the person, thing, or idea they designated. Torquemada quotes a curious example. Formerly, he said, the quecholli or flamingo was called teoquecholli (the divine flamingo), both because of its beauty and because it was dedicated to the gods. But as the name implied a reminiscence of idolatry, the neophytes changed it to tlauhquechol (red flamingo), thus giving it a perfectly appropriate epithet for its plumage and simultaneously approximating the first syllable with the sound (tlauh = teo). They worked to change the sound as little as possible; that is what made with equal success the tlacuilos, or iconophonographs [3], sent by Montezuma to depict the ships and the camp of Cortés. Having to make the form and name of capacete, as helmets are called in Spanish, they formed a compound of two Nahuatl words, whose sound, while approximating many of the foreign terms, described the object almost as well as did their drawings (probably of a head wearing a pot). This is indeed what is expressed, in a truncated form, by the compound cuaapaz which Tezozomoc gave and which the scholar Orozco y Berra explained by cuaitl (head) and apaztli (pot, vase). The ending is regularly removed from the first word, because it sits in between, but it is retained in the second, where it has the form te, as the Spaniards sometimes wrote it, or in the normal form tli. Cuaapazte therefore is as close as possible to capacete and depicts at the same time the head covering of foreign warriors.
II. NAHUATL WORDS OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN
Allowing ourselves some examples, we will try to explain two Nahuatl words applying to some parts of the costume of the followers of Quetzalcoatl: “They wore,” said Father D. Duran, “long dresses that came down to the feet and which the Indians called xicolli.” If we review the plate in the Album [4] representing these dresses, we see that they were sleeveless and matched the cuculla, which is especially used by the Irish and our own religious in the Middle Ages, and which is also called the casula. Papias even claims that cuculla is a diminutive of the casula. Although this etymology is not correct, synonymy cannot be challenged, and this perhaps explains the form of the corresponding Nahuatl word. Following a confusion of two terms which have the same meaning, the Mexican followers of Quetzalcoatl took the first syllable of one (chasuble in French) and the rest of the other (coule in old French); and made a hybrid, caculla (which was pronounced chacoule), from which their successors made xicolli (pronounced chicolli). This derivation is quite debatable, and it is based primarily on a fact that is quite general and well known: A people, in adopting a garment or a foreign object, also borrow the original name.
Let us continue our review of European terms that appear in Nahuatl. The natives of Cholula, one of the main residences of Quetzalcoatl, designated the cross as colotzin, a reverential term comprised of the radical colotl or culutl, which comes from coloa or culua, “to bend.” This term is related to that of Culua or Culhua, the “bearer of the cross” or “of the crucifix.” But as the scorpion is also called colotl, the sound-image, taken as an iconophone could designate the cross, and this circumstance explains why the Toltecs, followers of Quetzalcoatl (who, with the example of our religion, treated each other as brothers), wore coats on which scorpions were drawn in blue while their chief had a red cross so embroidered. These two kinds of the figures stood for one another: the former being an iconophone, the latter the image of the object. It is probable that, in order to escape the religious persecution to which they were subjected, the Toltecs substituted for the cross an emblem that was not understood by the common man but whose mystical meaning did not escape the initiates.
We should also mention among the Nahuatl words that seem to be borrowed from European languages: teotl or teutl (god, or the Latin deus—the d does not exist in Nahuatl had to be replaced by the nearest dental sound); metztli (moon, month from the Latin mensis or mis in Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton); chilchil in the Nahuatl idiom of Nicaragua, chililitli (bell tower, from chililico, from the Latin chillæ or schillæ, bells); maitl (hand, from the Gaelic math, rather than the Welsh man or Latin manus); camitl (dress, shirt, among Totonacs), obviously coming from Latin camisus, camix, camisia, (or camisole), which passed into Welsh or Gaelic in the forms camse, caimis. After the conquest, the Spanish camisa was adopted without change by Nahuatl, and it is certainly not the word from which it derived camitl. In the Huastec language, spoken by the Totonacs the chrism with which the priests anointed their pope or newly elected sovereign pontiff was called oles, probably from the Latin oleum, which is used in Christianity for consecrations; the Mayan than (language) is not very far from teanga in Gaelic; in the Mayan language of Izas, from the Yucatan, books related to prophecies and their fulfillment, as well as stories written in ancient characters and figures painted on tree bark, are called analte, a word whose meaning and shape is reminiscent of the Latin annales, which we do not hesitate to derive either directly or through the Gaelic anal, from which analach (chronicle) and analachd, chronology.
Let us continue our review of European terms that appear in Nahuatl. The natives of Cholula, one of the main residences of Quetzalcoatl, designated the cross as colotzin, a reverential term comprised of the radical colotl or culutl, which comes from coloa or culua, “to bend.” This term is related to that of Culua or Culhua, the “bearer of the cross” or “of the crucifix.” But as the scorpion is also called colotl, the sound-image, taken as an iconophone could designate the cross, and this circumstance explains why the Toltecs, followers of Quetzalcoatl (who, with the example of our religion, treated each other as brothers), wore coats on which scorpions were drawn in blue while their chief had a red cross so embroidered. These two kinds of the figures stood for one another: the former being an iconophone, the latter the image of the object. It is probable that, in order to escape the religious persecution to which they were subjected, the Toltecs substituted for the cross an emblem that was not understood by the common man but whose mystical meaning did not escape the initiates.
We should also mention among the Nahuatl words that seem to be borrowed from European languages: teotl or teutl (god, or the Latin deus—the d does not exist in Nahuatl had to be replaced by the nearest dental sound); metztli (moon, month from the Latin mensis or mis in Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton); chilchil in the Nahuatl idiom of Nicaragua, chililitli (bell tower, from chililico, from the Latin chillæ or schillæ, bells); maitl (hand, from the Gaelic math, rather than the Welsh man or Latin manus); camitl (dress, shirt, among Totonacs), obviously coming from Latin camisus, camix, camisia, (or camisole), which passed into Welsh or Gaelic in the forms camse, caimis. After the conquest, the Spanish camisa was adopted without change by Nahuatl, and it is certainly not the word from which it derived camitl. In the Huastec language, spoken by the Totonacs the chrism with which the priests anointed their pope or newly elected sovereign pontiff was called oles, probably from the Latin oleum, which is used in Christianity for consecrations; the Mayan than (language) is not very far from teanga in Gaelic; in the Mayan language of Izas, from the Yucatan, books related to prophecies and their fulfillment, as well as stories written in ancient characters and figures painted on tree bark, are called analte, a word whose meaning and shape is reminiscent of the Latin annales, which we do not hesitate to derive either directly or through the Gaelic anal, from which analach (chronicle) and analachd, chronology.
III. BOOKS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES
The prelates who had carried their books to Iceland and even into Escotiland [5] on the banks of the St. Lawrence, did not cease to be bibliophiles in passing on to Mexico. The one who arrived in 1384 presented himself with a book in hand, and the prophecy of Tlaxcala about men from the East announced that the future conquerors had to be “white, bearded, and governed by small books.” [6]
Among the Totonacs, the two venerable monks specially attached to the temple of the great goddess spoke on an intercession by which their Messiah was to descend to Earth to abolish human sacrifice—and the Father G. de Mendieta does not hesitate to identify her with the mother of the Savior, “They write their histories with figures (iconophones) and transmit them to their pope or sovereign pontiff, who, in turn, communicated them to the people in his speeches.”
Since we need not draw a complete picture of pre-Columbian civilization, we can leave aside the interesting details that the Spaniards of the sixteenth century give us about ancient Mexican paintings as well as studies by later writers on the fragments and copies that remain of these. We must confine ourselves here to speak of historical scenes that are closely connected. our subject. “An old Indian,” said the Father D. Duran, “told me that the Papa [i.e. Quetzalcoatl], passing through Ocuituco, had left them a large book in which certain letters were four fingers tall. Eager to see this manuscript, I went to this locality and, with all the humility of the world, I begged the Indians to show it to me. They swore that they had burned it six years ago because they did not manage to decipher the characters that were not like ours. They feared it might attract unpleasantness for them, so they had thrown into the fire. I was pained because it might have confirmed that which I suspected, that it was the Holy Gospel in Hebrew letters. I cursed those who had destroyed it.” [7]
The same writer tells us that the drawing representing the disciples of the Papa is copied from a very old painting of an Indian from Chiauhtla, from whom he had all his notions about the Papa. “Wanting to assure myself,” he added, “whether it was the truth, I inquired from a very old Indian who died of old age. He was a native of Coatepec, and he appeared to me well versed in the religion of his ancestors. I asked him what he could convey to me about the painting and the writing in question. And since they were not able to give that information from the book of their village, he went to look at his home for a painting that rather seemed to me to be a grimoire. The whole life of the Papa and his disciples was there encrypted in unintelligible characters. This Indian told me about it in the same terms as had done the other, and even better, and I was not unhappy.” [8] These sincere confessions reveal to us what sources used by Father D. Duran, who is one of our main authorities.
In the Yucatan, where there remain many vestiges of European influence, during the reign of Philip II there was discovered, near Merida, buildings so old that the villagers of the country did not know their origin; these were “thirty stone buildings on platforms, wrought with iron and not totally ruined, on which the St. Catherine Wheel was painted. We were in awe,” says the author of the Anonymous Relation, from which we derive this information; “that is why we believe that the builders of these monuments were civilized and Christian; some of the curious thought that it was the Carthaginians who colonized many lands.”
The Mixtec, from the coast of New Spain, who had been converted by followers of Papa Quetzalcoatl, preserved until the middle of sixteenth century wide rolls of smoked leather, covered with ancient paintings, three or four of which were related to the Christian faith. These, reproduced on paper by the Dominican convent of Nexapa, were described by the Franciscans, Fathers Gomez and Alonso de Escalona, who passed through the Mixtec lands returning from Guatemala, either in 1560 or in 1568. They saw Our Lady, accompanied by her mother and two sisters, whom they also held as saints. Her hair was gathered and attached to the Indian way, but in the bun in the back of her head was a little cross to designate her as the most venerable (of the three) and indicate that, while remaining a virgin, she was to give birth to a great prophet from heaven, whose compatriots would be persecuted and who would die on a cross. The crucifixion was also painted, the feet and hands affixed to the cross without nails. They also saw his resurrection and ascension.
The Zapotec, neighbors of the Mixtec and evangelized like them at the end of first century, also had a historical bible, about which the Dominican Gregorio Garcia gives us the following information: “Another religious man of my order, he said, though I do not remember the name, but who was vicar of the convent of Vera Cruz, gave me the following relation written in his own hand: ‘When the monks of the order of St. Dominic entered the Zapotec lands to convert the Indians and preach the Holy Gospel, they found in the house of the cacique of Quic Chapa, a Bible exclusively composed of images whose meaning, transmitted by tradition, was explained by the Indians. In this Bible were represented many of our beliefs: The Flood, the Tower of Babel, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the Annunciation were depicted there, as was Our Lady dressed in the Indian manner (with skirt and blouse), sitting and weaving in the Indian manner, above her head, at some distance, we could see a kind of haloed dove. To the questions of the religious men about the meaning of this scene, the Indians replied that it was a virgin, the mother of the son of God, and that the light rays, called by them Xipijbitao were intended to signify God’s Spirit. At the sight of these characters and figures, the religious men exclaimed: “What you see represented and you do not understand, this is what we teach.” They converted them by gradually exposing them to the mysteries of our redemption and the articles of faith.’ One of the priests who took part in this conversion, and who dealt with most of the Indians of this province, was Father Domingo Guigelmo, a holy man, well versed in the Zapotec language and the first who told Indians: ‘Children, your paintings are consistent with our preaching.’ By removing some apocryphal scenes mixed with truths, the religious corrected this bible, which contributed much to the conversion. The same holy old man, Father D. Guigelmo has related this to me many times.” Here ends the relation of the vicar of Vera Cruz. [9]
“Another religious man who still lives,” said Mendieta, “Father Diego Mercado, a venerable Father, who was the Definitor of the province of the Holy Gospel and one of the most exemplary penitents of our time, told me orally and gave me in writing signed with his name, the following story: ‘An old Otomi, aged over seventy years, with whom he once spoke about our religion, said his the oldest of his compatriots possessed a book transmitted from father to son, which were the people in charge of keeping and interpreting it. The doctrine was written there on every page into two columns, between which was painted Christ on the cross with an irritated air, as they called him the angry God. They reverently turned the pages, not with the hand, but with a stick used for that purpose and kept with the book. Asked about the doctrine expounded in this book, the Indian could not relate it point by point, but he said that if this book were not lost, having rotted in the ground where it had been hidden at the arrival of Spanish, the missionaries would see that its doctrines were consistent with those they taught and preached. He said however that his ancestors had a memory of the Flood and the Ark which had rescued only seven people with animals that were kept there; all other creatures perished. They also knew that an angel was sent to Our Lady, and they expressed this by saying that a very white thing, like a feather, fell from heaven, a virgin bent down to pick it up and, having put in her womb, she became pregnant, but did not know what happened or to what she had given birth. He also reported that the Flood was also attested by the Achis of Guatemala, claiming they had a painting on this subject, among other antiquities that the Brothers, in their zeal and desire to extirpate idolatry, burned, regarding it as suspicious.’” [10]
It would take a book to address all of the striking similarities between the decorative motifs of Europe and those from Mexico and Central America. This is not a subject for us to linger on, for this discussion is rather historical and archaeological; suffice it to cite a few examples: the scale of the curious bas-reliefs of Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, long unknown to the natives of Guatemala; the ruins of a building that, at the time of the expedition of Juan de Grijalva, still existed in the Island of Sacrifices (San Juan de Ulua) and resembled an ancient arch of the city of Merida in Spain; the serpent that appears on Toltec columns, head down, tail up, resembles the reptile that wraps the base of the pilaster forming the jamb of a door of one of the seven churches of Rahin (Ireland); the idol placed atop a temple in Campeche and having with him two beasts who are devouring him seems to represent Daniel in the den of lions; the same subject decorates a bronze medal the size of a dollar found at Palenque (State of Chiapas) or in Guatemala, whose archaic style denotes a European or Asian origin; it carries on one side the image of a bearded man, on his knees, legs tied, placed between two wild beasts; although they hardly resemble the king of beasts, one need only look at the same scene depicted on the upright of the Cross of Saints Patrick and Columba in Kells to convince oneself that it relates the test of the last of the four great prophets, especially as we also see both on the cross of Kells and on the other side of the Palenque coin a snake wrapped around the Tree of Life. In truth, the medal has the apple and the tempting reptile, and if the corresponding scenes are quite different from the group from Kells, they are very similar to that of a capital from Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, which is nearly identical to that of the Church of Logierait in Perthshire. Finally, the terracotta or wooden groups of two men, one lying on the back of the other, in which the Spaniards saw obscene subjects, were probably imitations of our gargoyles of the Middle Ages.
Among the Totonacs, the two venerable monks specially attached to the temple of the great goddess spoke on an intercession by which their Messiah was to descend to Earth to abolish human sacrifice—and the Father G. de Mendieta does not hesitate to identify her with the mother of the Savior, “They write their histories with figures (iconophones) and transmit them to their pope or sovereign pontiff, who, in turn, communicated them to the people in his speeches.”
Since we need not draw a complete picture of pre-Columbian civilization, we can leave aside the interesting details that the Spaniards of the sixteenth century give us about ancient Mexican paintings as well as studies by later writers on the fragments and copies that remain of these. We must confine ourselves here to speak of historical scenes that are closely connected. our subject. “An old Indian,” said the Father D. Duran, “told me that the Papa [i.e. Quetzalcoatl], passing through Ocuituco, had left them a large book in which certain letters were four fingers tall. Eager to see this manuscript, I went to this locality and, with all the humility of the world, I begged the Indians to show it to me. They swore that they had burned it six years ago because they did not manage to decipher the characters that were not like ours. They feared it might attract unpleasantness for them, so they had thrown into the fire. I was pained because it might have confirmed that which I suspected, that it was the Holy Gospel in Hebrew letters. I cursed those who had destroyed it.” [7]
The same writer tells us that the drawing representing the disciples of the Papa is copied from a very old painting of an Indian from Chiauhtla, from whom he had all his notions about the Papa. “Wanting to assure myself,” he added, “whether it was the truth, I inquired from a very old Indian who died of old age. He was a native of Coatepec, and he appeared to me well versed in the religion of his ancestors. I asked him what he could convey to me about the painting and the writing in question. And since they were not able to give that information from the book of their village, he went to look at his home for a painting that rather seemed to me to be a grimoire. The whole life of the Papa and his disciples was there encrypted in unintelligible characters. This Indian told me about it in the same terms as had done the other, and even better, and I was not unhappy.” [8] These sincere confessions reveal to us what sources used by Father D. Duran, who is one of our main authorities.
In the Yucatan, where there remain many vestiges of European influence, during the reign of Philip II there was discovered, near Merida, buildings so old that the villagers of the country did not know their origin; these were “thirty stone buildings on platforms, wrought with iron and not totally ruined, on which the St. Catherine Wheel was painted. We were in awe,” says the author of the Anonymous Relation, from which we derive this information; “that is why we believe that the builders of these monuments were civilized and Christian; some of the curious thought that it was the Carthaginians who colonized many lands.”
The Mixtec, from the coast of New Spain, who had been converted by followers of Papa Quetzalcoatl, preserved until the middle of sixteenth century wide rolls of smoked leather, covered with ancient paintings, three or four of which were related to the Christian faith. These, reproduced on paper by the Dominican convent of Nexapa, were described by the Franciscans, Fathers Gomez and Alonso de Escalona, who passed through the Mixtec lands returning from Guatemala, either in 1560 or in 1568. They saw Our Lady, accompanied by her mother and two sisters, whom they also held as saints. Her hair was gathered and attached to the Indian way, but in the bun in the back of her head was a little cross to designate her as the most venerable (of the three) and indicate that, while remaining a virgin, she was to give birth to a great prophet from heaven, whose compatriots would be persecuted and who would die on a cross. The crucifixion was also painted, the feet and hands affixed to the cross without nails. They also saw his resurrection and ascension.
The Zapotec, neighbors of the Mixtec and evangelized like them at the end of first century, also had a historical bible, about which the Dominican Gregorio Garcia gives us the following information: “Another religious man of my order, he said, though I do not remember the name, but who was vicar of the convent of Vera Cruz, gave me the following relation written in his own hand: ‘When the monks of the order of St. Dominic entered the Zapotec lands to convert the Indians and preach the Holy Gospel, they found in the house of the cacique of Quic Chapa, a Bible exclusively composed of images whose meaning, transmitted by tradition, was explained by the Indians. In this Bible were represented many of our beliefs: The Flood, the Tower of Babel, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the Annunciation were depicted there, as was Our Lady dressed in the Indian manner (with skirt and blouse), sitting and weaving in the Indian manner, above her head, at some distance, we could see a kind of haloed dove. To the questions of the religious men about the meaning of this scene, the Indians replied that it was a virgin, the mother of the son of God, and that the light rays, called by them Xipijbitao were intended to signify God’s Spirit. At the sight of these characters and figures, the religious men exclaimed: “What you see represented and you do not understand, this is what we teach.” They converted them by gradually exposing them to the mysteries of our redemption and the articles of faith.’ One of the priests who took part in this conversion, and who dealt with most of the Indians of this province, was Father Domingo Guigelmo, a holy man, well versed in the Zapotec language and the first who told Indians: ‘Children, your paintings are consistent with our preaching.’ By removing some apocryphal scenes mixed with truths, the religious corrected this bible, which contributed much to the conversion. The same holy old man, Father D. Guigelmo has related this to me many times.” Here ends the relation of the vicar of Vera Cruz. [9]
“Another religious man who still lives,” said Mendieta, “Father Diego Mercado, a venerable Father, who was the Definitor of the province of the Holy Gospel and one of the most exemplary penitents of our time, told me orally and gave me in writing signed with his name, the following story: ‘An old Otomi, aged over seventy years, with whom he once spoke about our religion, said his the oldest of his compatriots possessed a book transmitted from father to son, which were the people in charge of keeping and interpreting it. The doctrine was written there on every page into two columns, between which was painted Christ on the cross with an irritated air, as they called him the angry God. They reverently turned the pages, not with the hand, but with a stick used for that purpose and kept with the book. Asked about the doctrine expounded in this book, the Indian could not relate it point by point, but he said that if this book were not lost, having rotted in the ground where it had been hidden at the arrival of Spanish, the missionaries would see that its doctrines were consistent with those they taught and preached. He said however that his ancestors had a memory of the Flood and the Ark which had rescued only seven people with animals that were kept there; all other creatures perished. They also knew that an angel was sent to Our Lady, and they expressed this by saying that a very white thing, like a feather, fell from heaven, a virgin bent down to pick it up and, having put in her womb, she became pregnant, but did not know what happened or to what she had given birth. He also reported that the Flood was also attested by the Achis of Guatemala, claiming they had a painting on this subject, among other antiquities that the Brothers, in their zeal and desire to extirpate idolatry, burned, regarding it as suspicious.’” [10]
It would take a book to address all of the striking similarities between the decorative motifs of Europe and those from Mexico and Central America. This is not a subject for us to linger on, for this discussion is rather historical and archaeological; suffice it to cite a few examples: the scale of the curious bas-reliefs of Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, long unknown to the natives of Guatemala; the ruins of a building that, at the time of the expedition of Juan de Grijalva, still existed in the Island of Sacrifices (San Juan de Ulua) and resembled an ancient arch of the city of Merida in Spain; the serpent that appears on Toltec columns, head down, tail up, resembles the reptile that wraps the base of the pilaster forming the jamb of a door of one of the seven churches of Rahin (Ireland); the idol placed atop a temple in Campeche and having with him two beasts who are devouring him seems to represent Daniel in the den of lions; the same subject decorates a bronze medal the size of a dollar found at Palenque (State of Chiapas) or in Guatemala, whose archaic style denotes a European or Asian origin; it carries on one side the image of a bearded man, on his knees, legs tied, placed between two wild beasts; although they hardly resemble the king of beasts, one need only look at the same scene depicted on the upright of the Cross of Saints Patrick and Columba in Kells to convince oneself that it relates the test of the last of the four great prophets, especially as we also see both on the cross of Kells and on the other side of the Palenque coin a snake wrapped around the Tree of Life. In truth, the medal has the apple and the tempting reptile, and if the corresponding scenes are quite different from the group from Kells, they are very similar to that of a capital from Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, which is nearly identical to that of the Church of Logierait in Perthshire. Finally, the terracotta or wooden groups of two men, one lying on the back of the other, in which the Spaniards saw obscene subjects, were probably imitations of our gargoyles of the Middle Ages.
IV. THE ASTRONOMICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEM
Although the aforementioned images painted, carved in relief, or engraved were doubtless highly disfigured copies of those which had been left by the Papas, they sufficiently demonstrate that European influence was felt in countries evangelized by them. This influence can be shown not only in graphic art and sculpture, in the arts and industry, but also in some sciences, especially in the astronomical and the computational systems of the peoples of New Spain. According to Father Diego de Landa, the Yucatec had, together with the year of eighteen months with twenty days each used among Mexicans, “a perfect year like ours, of three hundred sixty-five days, composed of twelve months, plus five days and six hours; this month, appointed U, signifying the moon, was counted from its renewal until its demise.” Among a neighboring people, the Chiapanec, or people of Chiapas, there as reported a reminiscence of the week, seven black children painted in the calendar for divination.
The inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Tenochs, represented, on the other hand, the thirteenth heaven as the seat of Tonacatecuhtli, the supreme god, and the goddess Tonacaciuatl, as Torquemada called Citlalatonac and Citlalicue respectively, and which were enthroned in a glorious city located above the eleven heavens, that is to say, in the twelfth heaven. According to Sahagun, the Toltecs claimed the existence of twelve heavens, the highest was the abode of the Supreme Lord, Ometecuhtli (Two-Lord) and his wife, Omecíhuatl (Two-Lady), but the context indicates these Toltecs were not primitive Papas, but their successors, who invented astrology. The Tenochs had adopted the beliefs of these people, but their pantheon, like the Romans, being open to all kinds of gods, they also had in their great temple a building dedicated to Chiconauecatl (ninth atmosphere) and called by a characteristic name: chililico, where the chililitli (bell) is.
Prior to unification with the peoples of the Culua confederation, whether by imposing their rites and laws or borrowing them, the Tenochs, in order not to be absorbed by neighboring tribes, while still too weak to assimilate, had held on to their differences as much as possible. This might well explain the contradictions observed in their beliefs and concepts, particularly in cosmography, as we have just seen. But the hybridization and alterations must also be due to the impotence and ignorance in which the opponents of Quetzalcoatl found themselves after his disappearance. Curious legends preserved by Sahagun indicate that the ancient Mexicans enjoyed the sciences, arts, and crafts of European civilization. Even while expelling Quetzalcoatl, they beseeched him to leave them “the art of working with silver, of working with stone and wood, of painting and weaving, and many other trades.”
Instead of lending this to them, he hid all he could, and experts from his company went back with him to the East, taking with them the pictures of their rites and their industries. With the immigrants, four wise men stayed: Oxomoco, Cipactonal, Tlaltetecuin, and Xochicauaca, probably the four disciples administering Cholula, as discussed in other legends. These were hard-pressed to govern during the absence of the outlaws, or to restore the old order of things. They had to reconstruct from memory the lost civilization, and it is expressly said they invented a grimoire. Such was the force of habit that they continued to call, although improperly, the lunar month (metztli), that period of twenty days which constituted the calendar month, of which there were eighteen, besides five additional days in the year of 365 days. This false month was itself composed of four groups of five days, a subdivision that is also found among the ancient Scandinavians. However, the presence in the Nahuatl vocabulary of the word metztli, borrowed from the Latin mensis or Celtic mis, to designate the moon, proves sufficiently that the ancient Mexicans had the notion of the lunar month. As for the ritual year, it included twenty periods of thirteen days, which was only 260 days. One can admit with Father Toribio de Benavente, better known by the nickname Motolinia, this period coincides with the number of days that Lucifer or Venus is visible on the horizon of Mexico; but the other divisions are not based on an observation of nature, and must be purely arbitrary.
The Otomi, in whose land was located Tula Anahuac, the residents of Tlaxcala, and those of Tezcuco, divided the sky into nine zones, as did the Celts, the Welsh, and the Scandinavians, but not the Latin writers. The Annals of Cuauhtitlan reported that Quetzalcoatl had assembled a new concept of heaven, that is to say, superimposed. The Codex Tellerianus, which deifies that personage, has him raised into the ninth atmosphere; the same Muñoz Camargo, following the traditions of Tlaxcaltecs, who had been converted by followers of Quetzalcoatl, said they knew of nine heavens called chicuhnauhnepaniuhcan ilhuica, where there is perpetual peace. Finally, Father D. Duran, placed in the mouth of King Nezahualcoyotl, who had kept so many memories of white men and Christianity, an allusion to the nine doubles of heaven. [11]
To try to explain this, let us suppose that the Mexicans, while reproducing the old figures of European calendars have not applied them as we would have to agree with the course of the stars. On the one hand, thirteen phases of the moon are one of our seasons or a quarter of the solar year, and thirteen revolutions of our satellite were the year of the Ural-Finnish people, so assuming that each month was regularly composed of four weeks yields only 28 days. On the other hand, four groups of thirteen years were a cycle of 52 years, which could be doubled for a century of 104 years; 52 years of 365 days are 18,980 days, equivalent to 73 times of 260 days, or 73 pentads of 365 days, which include 52 hebdomads or weeks, as the period of 260 days consists of 52 pentads. With us the numbers 52, 13, 12, 7, and 4, are perfectly justified, since they apply, respectively, the first and second number to the weeks in the year or the season; the third, the number of moons (months) in the year; the fourth, to the number of days of the week; the last, to the number of seasons. The Mexicans have selected three of these figures: 52 years for the cycle; 13 days for each of the 20 divisions of the period of 260 days; finally, 4 pentads in each period of 20 days, of which there were 18, plus 5 extra days, in the solar year. As we see, these figures correspond to nothing real: Borrowed from calendars where they were in their place, they lost, in passing to another, their rational meaning and appear now quite arbitrary.
One can also observe this same inconsistency in the use that the Mexicans made of one of those numbers, in substituting a cycle, that is to say, fifty-two years, for one year, that is to say, fifty-two weeks. The first of November each year, falling almost at the end of the summer, the pagan Celts celebrated the festival of Samhuin, by extinguishing all the lights the day before in order to relight them the next day by teine eigin, or the force of fire produced by the friction of two sticks, also called the teine Tlachdga, or “fire of Tlachdga,” which was the main temple of the god Samhuin. Their successors, after being evangelized, had, like other Christians, a similar ceremony, but on a different date. It was now Holy Saturday, at six, when the lights in all the houses would be extinguished, only to be rekindled at nine through blessed candles; February 2, Candlemas Day, was limited to lighting blessed candles and carrying them in procession without there being any preceding extinguishing.
The Mexicans had a similar ceremony, not at the beginning of each year, but at the beginning of each cycle. Sahagun asserts that the Indians interviewed by him placed in on February 2, the beginning of the Mexican year; other writers speak of either February 26 or March 1, or March 20, or even April 10; the initial day perhaps varied from one tribe to another. Nevertheless, every 52 years, sometime between February 2 and Easter, the Mexicans celebrated or toxiuhilpilia or toxiuhmolpila (the “binding” or “node” of the years). Commencing the day before, they extinguished all the lights after cleansing the temples and cleaning the houses. When the day came, a priest made a flame from two pieces of wood rubbed against each other; runners hastened to light torches from it to bring the new fire into the temples, and such was their speed that in one day they reached the most remote areas of the Culua confederation. A similar custom was in use in canton Værend (Sweden) until the end of the eighteenth century. The gnideld (fire from friction) was very quickly carried from house to house by messengers, on the arrival of which all other lights were to be put out.
There are many analogies between these singular practices of the Mexicans and those of various European peoples that make it possible for us to assign them to a common origin; but we should also consider whether it was the superstitious among the Christians Celts or the pagan Scandinavians who propagated these practices in the New World. With either alternative, the source will always be European.
The inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Tenochs, represented, on the other hand, the thirteenth heaven as the seat of Tonacatecuhtli, the supreme god, and the goddess Tonacaciuatl, as Torquemada called Citlalatonac and Citlalicue respectively, and which were enthroned in a glorious city located above the eleven heavens, that is to say, in the twelfth heaven. According to Sahagun, the Toltecs claimed the existence of twelve heavens, the highest was the abode of the Supreme Lord, Ometecuhtli (Two-Lord) and his wife, Omecíhuatl (Two-Lady), but the context indicates these Toltecs were not primitive Papas, but their successors, who invented astrology. The Tenochs had adopted the beliefs of these people, but their pantheon, like the Romans, being open to all kinds of gods, they also had in their great temple a building dedicated to Chiconauecatl (ninth atmosphere) and called by a characteristic name: chililico, where the chililitli (bell) is.
Prior to unification with the peoples of the Culua confederation, whether by imposing their rites and laws or borrowing them, the Tenochs, in order not to be absorbed by neighboring tribes, while still too weak to assimilate, had held on to their differences as much as possible. This might well explain the contradictions observed in their beliefs and concepts, particularly in cosmography, as we have just seen. But the hybridization and alterations must also be due to the impotence and ignorance in which the opponents of Quetzalcoatl found themselves after his disappearance. Curious legends preserved by Sahagun indicate that the ancient Mexicans enjoyed the sciences, arts, and crafts of European civilization. Even while expelling Quetzalcoatl, they beseeched him to leave them “the art of working with silver, of working with stone and wood, of painting and weaving, and many other trades.”
Instead of lending this to them, he hid all he could, and experts from his company went back with him to the East, taking with them the pictures of their rites and their industries. With the immigrants, four wise men stayed: Oxomoco, Cipactonal, Tlaltetecuin, and Xochicauaca, probably the four disciples administering Cholula, as discussed in other legends. These were hard-pressed to govern during the absence of the outlaws, or to restore the old order of things. They had to reconstruct from memory the lost civilization, and it is expressly said they invented a grimoire. Such was the force of habit that they continued to call, although improperly, the lunar month (metztli), that period of twenty days which constituted the calendar month, of which there were eighteen, besides five additional days in the year of 365 days. This false month was itself composed of four groups of five days, a subdivision that is also found among the ancient Scandinavians. However, the presence in the Nahuatl vocabulary of the word metztli, borrowed from the Latin mensis or Celtic mis, to designate the moon, proves sufficiently that the ancient Mexicans had the notion of the lunar month. As for the ritual year, it included twenty periods of thirteen days, which was only 260 days. One can admit with Father Toribio de Benavente, better known by the nickname Motolinia, this period coincides with the number of days that Lucifer or Venus is visible on the horizon of Mexico; but the other divisions are not based on an observation of nature, and must be purely arbitrary.
The Otomi, in whose land was located Tula Anahuac, the residents of Tlaxcala, and those of Tezcuco, divided the sky into nine zones, as did the Celts, the Welsh, and the Scandinavians, but not the Latin writers. The Annals of Cuauhtitlan reported that Quetzalcoatl had assembled a new concept of heaven, that is to say, superimposed. The Codex Tellerianus, which deifies that personage, has him raised into the ninth atmosphere; the same Muñoz Camargo, following the traditions of Tlaxcaltecs, who had been converted by followers of Quetzalcoatl, said they knew of nine heavens called chicuhnauhnepaniuhcan ilhuica, where there is perpetual peace. Finally, Father D. Duran, placed in the mouth of King Nezahualcoyotl, who had kept so many memories of white men and Christianity, an allusion to the nine doubles of heaven. [11]
To try to explain this, let us suppose that the Mexicans, while reproducing the old figures of European calendars have not applied them as we would have to agree with the course of the stars. On the one hand, thirteen phases of the moon are one of our seasons or a quarter of the solar year, and thirteen revolutions of our satellite were the year of the Ural-Finnish people, so assuming that each month was regularly composed of four weeks yields only 28 days. On the other hand, four groups of thirteen years were a cycle of 52 years, which could be doubled for a century of 104 years; 52 years of 365 days are 18,980 days, equivalent to 73 times of 260 days, or 73 pentads of 365 days, which include 52 hebdomads or weeks, as the period of 260 days consists of 52 pentads. With us the numbers 52, 13, 12, 7, and 4, are perfectly justified, since they apply, respectively, the first and second number to the weeks in the year or the season; the third, the number of moons (months) in the year; the fourth, to the number of days of the week; the last, to the number of seasons. The Mexicans have selected three of these figures: 52 years for the cycle; 13 days for each of the 20 divisions of the period of 260 days; finally, 4 pentads in each period of 20 days, of which there were 18, plus 5 extra days, in the solar year. As we see, these figures correspond to nothing real: Borrowed from calendars where they were in their place, they lost, in passing to another, their rational meaning and appear now quite arbitrary.
One can also observe this same inconsistency in the use that the Mexicans made of one of those numbers, in substituting a cycle, that is to say, fifty-two years, for one year, that is to say, fifty-two weeks. The first of November each year, falling almost at the end of the summer, the pagan Celts celebrated the festival of Samhuin, by extinguishing all the lights the day before in order to relight them the next day by teine eigin, or the force of fire produced by the friction of two sticks, also called the teine Tlachdga, or “fire of Tlachdga,” which was the main temple of the god Samhuin. Their successors, after being evangelized, had, like other Christians, a similar ceremony, but on a different date. It was now Holy Saturday, at six, when the lights in all the houses would be extinguished, only to be rekindled at nine through blessed candles; February 2, Candlemas Day, was limited to lighting blessed candles and carrying them in procession without there being any preceding extinguishing.
The Mexicans had a similar ceremony, not at the beginning of each year, but at the beginning of each cycle. Sahagun asserts that the Indians interviewed by him placed in on February 2, the beginning of the Mexican year; other writers speak of either February 26 or March 1, or March 20, or even April 10; the initial day perhaps varied from one tribe to another. Nevertheless, every 52 years, sometime between February 2 and Easter, the Mexicans celebrated or toxiuhilpilia or toxiuhmolpila (the “binding” or “node” of the years). Commencing the day before, they extinguished all the lights after cleansing the temples and cleaning the houses. When the day came, a priest made a flame from two pieces of wood rubbed against each other; runners hastened to light torches from it to bring the new fire into the temples, and such was their speed that in one day they reached the most remote areas of the Culua confederation. A similar custom was in use in canton Værend (Sweden) until the end of the eighteenth century. The gnideld (fire from friction) was very quickly carried from house to house by messengers, on the arrival of which all other lights were to be put out.
There are many analogies between these singular practices of the Mexicans and those of various European peoples that make it possible for us to assign them to a common origin; but we should also consider whether it was the superstitious among the Christians Celts or the pagan Scandinavians who propagated these practices in the New World. With either alternative, the source will always be European.
V. ROUND TOWERS AND BELLS
We will not feel the same hesitation about the round towers which were specifically dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, whose temple in the city of Texcoco [12] was in fact circular. They are akin to the ancient round towers that still exist in Celtic lands, and which have been the subject of so much controversy among scholars. These have now been taken for the temples of fire worshipers, for Druidic minarets, or for astronomical observatories; sometimes they have been said to be homes for recluses or columns for stylites, or even images of phalluses, or Buddhist temples; they have been assigned to the Phoenicians and the Normans, but the scientist George Petrie demonstrated, in accordance also with the opinion of many of his predecessors, that they were simply bell towers, serving only incidentally as belfries [13], shelters, and observatories; they were raised by Christian Celts in the fifth through thirteenth centuries; they are therefore many centuries too late for the Phoenician period. Scandinavian invaders can also be left aside, for they were building nothing like these; when they first established themselves in the British Isles in the eighth century, they did not even build stone houses.
But just as in Ireland steeples were not exclusively round, there were in Mexico square ones, like that which the famous Nezahualpilli erected in his capital, Texcoco, largely populated by the Toltec-Tlaylotlac people. According to the beliefs of the Celts and Scandinavians that they shared, he gave it nine floors, in imitation of the nine zones of the sky and called it Chililitli, the first part of whose name was redoubled to make chilchil, which in the Nahuatl language of Nicaragua means “bell.” The meaning is definite if it is permitted to derive these words from Latin terms of the Middle Ages: Scilla, schilla, skella, chilla, and perhaps sichilla, that have at once a similar form and the same meaning. This is another example of borrowings made by the Mexicans from the ritual language of the evangelizers. The chililitli was at once a bell and a bell tower, as one can infer the following assertions of lxtlilxochitl: The king Nezahualcoyotl, having made sacrifices and vainly asked the Mexican gods for the triumph of the Chalcs, said that Huitzilopochtli and the idols were demons who deceived men. He retired to his grove in Texcotzingo (Little Texcoco), where he fasted forty days, citing the unknown God, creator of all things, who sits above the ninth heaven. He addressed prayers to him four times a day, at sunrise and sunset, noon and midnight. Having finally defeated its enemies, [whose rites had become as bloody as those of Mexicans], he raised facing the great temple of Huitzilopochtli a very high tower, resting on four terraces and composed of nine stories alluding to the nine heavens. The top three points [the pinnacles?] were richly decorated within, and dotted with stars on black background without. It was dedicated to the unknown God, who was not represented in any form. The ninth floor contained an instrument called chililitli, which gave its name to the temple and the tower, as well as other things, such as horns, flutes, trumpets, and bowls made from a metal called tetzilacatl. It served as a bell, and when hit with a hammer also of metal, it made almost the same sound as a bell, and not the large drum with which one directs ballets. They rang the instrument, and in particular the chililitli, four times a day, at the times when the king prayed.
No pre-Columbian bell was as well described as those of Dabaiba which, indeed, are a little outside the realm of our studies. We would be remiss to exclude it, however. The Dabaiba temple, located on the river of that name (now the Atrato River), was only forty leagues from Darien, and the chiefs of this isthmus even sent slaves there to be immolated. It was dedicated to the general goddess of the lands, Dabaiba, mother of the creator of heaven, giver of all goods. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, in 1512, the Spaniards, led by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, upriver from Dabaiba, on the banks of which had been reported a temple full of gold, “put the chief of the place to flight and took away 14,000 pesos of gold, and objects of various shapes elegantly worked. There were, among other things, three gold trumpets and as many bells of the metal, the biggest of which weighed 600 pesos. The natives, when questioned on the use of these instruments, replied that the blasts of the trumpets served to excite joy in festivities and games, and the ringing of bells called the people to religious ceremonies. The clappers, made in the style of ours were so white and transparent that at first it looked, but for the length, as though they were pearls or mother-of-pearl, but it was learned that they were made from the bones of fish. It is reported that the mild and pleasant bell sounds flattered the ear, although the ringing of gold is usually dull. The clapper strikes only the extremity of the bell, as do ours. There were also thirteen hundred golden bells that, like our own, resound pleasantly.” [14]
It is not said that the chililitli was of gold, as were the bells of Dabaïba; it could have been of copper, a metal the ancient Mexicans had in abundance; it could be of iron, as some bells of the ancient Celts were, including that of Mac-Gurk, which was said to have belonged to St. Columba. Ixtlilxochitl says that the Toltecs had iron arrowheads, and among the Maya, in a mound at Kantumil, an iron knife was found in its sheath of leather, with arrowheads made of obsidian and shell bearing figures similar to those we see carved on the walls of Chichen Iza. These are not the only iron antiquities that have been reported in countries previously traveled through or inhabited by migrant tribes from Aztlan. They have been found in mounds in Ohio and Illinois, as well in Peyson (Utah), Circleville (Illinois), and in many other areas of North America.
By opening the trenches in conducting excavations in America, we are constantly unearthing items whose material, form, and ornamentation betray a European influence, whether they were directly imported from the countries located beyond the Atlantic, or whether they were made in imitation. The examples cited above are sufficient to invite archaeologists to focus their attention in this direction and to undertake comparative studies that will certainly be fruitful.
But just as in Ireland steeples were not exclusively round, there were in Mexico square ones, like that which the famous Nezahualpilli erected in his capital, Texcoco, largely populated by the Toltec-Tlaylotlac people. According to the beliefs of the Celts and Scandinavians that they shared, he gave it nine floors, in imitation of the nine zones of the sky and called it Chililitli, the first part of whose name was redoubled to make chilchil, which in the Nahuatl language of Nicaragua means “bell.” The meaning is definite if it is permitted to derive these words from Latin terms of the Middle Ages: Scilla, schilla, skella, chilla, and perhaps sichilla, that have at once a similar form and the same meaning. This is another example of borrowings made by the Mexicans from the ritual language of the evangelizers. The chililitli was at once a bell and a bell tower, as one can infer the following assertions of lxtlilxochitl: The king Nezahualcoyotl, having made sacrifices and vainly asked the Mexican gods for the triumph of the Chalcs, said that Huitzilopochtli and the idols were demons who deceived men. He retired to his grove in Texcotzingo (Little Texcoco), where he fasted forty days, citing the unknown God, creator of all things, who sits above the ninth heaven. He addressed prayers to him four times a day, at sunrise and sunset, noon and midnight. Having finally defeated its enemies, [whose rites had become as bloody as those of Mexicans], he raised facing the great temple of Huitzilopochtli a very high tower, resting on four terraces and composed of nine stories alluding to the nine heavens. The top three points [the pinnacles?] were richly decorated within, and dotted with stars on black background without. It was dedicated to the unknown God, who was not represented in any form. The ninth floor contained an instrument called chililitli, which gave its name to the temple and the tower, as well as other things, such as horns, flutes, trumpets, and bowls made from a metal called tetzilacatl. It served as a bell, and when hit with a hammer also of metal, it made almost the same sound as a bell, and not the large drum with which one directs ballets. They rang the instrument, and in particular the chililitli, four times a day, at the times when the king prayed.
No pre-Columbian bell was as well described as those of Dabaiba which, indeed, are a little outside the realm of our studies. We would be remiss to exclude it, however. The Dabaiba temple, located on the river of that name (now the Atrato River), was only forty leagues from Darien, and the chiefs of this isthmus even sent slaves there to be immolated. It was dedicated to the general goddess of the lands, Dabaiba, mother of the creator of heaven, giver of all goods. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, in 1512, the Spaniards, led by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, upriver from Dabaiba, on the banks of which had been reported a temple full of gold, “put the chief of the place to flight and took away 14,000 pesos of gold, and objects of various shapes elegantly worked. There were, among other things, three gold trumpets and as many bells of the metal, the biggest of which weighed 600 pesos. The natives, when questioned on the use of these instruments, replied that the blasts of the trumpets served to excite joy in festivities and games, and the ringing of bells called the people to religious ceremonies. The clappers, made in the style of ours were so white and transparent that at first it looked, but for the length, as though they were pearls or mother-of-pearl, but it was learned that they were made from the bones of fish. It is reported that the mild and pleasant bell sounds flattered the ear, although the ringing of gold is usually dull. The clapper strikes only the extremity of the bell, as do ours. There were also thirteen hundred golden bells that, like our own, resound pleasantly.” [14]
It is not said that the chililitli was of gold, as were the bells of Dabaïba; it could have been of copper, a metal the ancient Mexicans had in abundance; it could be of iron, as some bells of the ancient Celts were, including that of Mac-Gurk, which was said to have belonged to St. Columba. Ixtlilxochitl says that the Toltecs had iron arrowheads, and among the Maya, in a mound at Kantumil, an iron knife was found in its sheath of leather, with arrowheads made of obsidian and shell bearing figures similar to those we see carved on the walls of Chichen Iza. These are not the only iron antiquities that have been reported in countries previously traveled through or inhabited by migrant tribes from Aztlan. They have been found in mounds in Ohio and Illinois, as well in Peyson (Utah), Circleville (Illinois), and in many other areas of North America.
By opening the trenches in conducting excavations in America, we are constantly unearthing items whose material, form, and ornamentation betray a European influence, whether they were directly imported from the countries located beyond the Atlantic, or whether they were made in imitation. The examples cited above are sufficient to invite archaeologists to focus their attention in this direction and to undertake comparative studies that will certainly be fruitful.
Notes
[1] Beauvois knows the story secondhand from John Stuart’s Stone Sculptures of Scotland (1856, p. iii), and so wrongly cites this to Croniklis of Scotland 10.10. The text appears in 2.10 of the 1536 vernacular translation of Boece’s Historia Gentis Scotorum by John Bellenden, but the text of the parallel passage at 2.23 of the original Latin edition gives it differently: “In later times the custom arose that the tombs of the most famous and distinguished men were held in veneration like shrines, and men would build cairns of stones and erect large one on which were inscribed the shapes of fish, snakes, and birds (that age used these instead of letters of the alphabet for writing arcane things), to advise passers-by who they were and what fair things they had achieved in life” (trans. Dana F. Sutton).
[2] From the vernacular edition of the Cosmographic prologue to Boece’s History, quoted in Stuart, op. cit. iv. Beauvois gives the text in French translation, and I have provided a modernized version of the vernacular text he adapted, the original of which reads: “In all thair secret besiness they usit not to writ with common letteris usit amang other pepil, but erar with sifars and figuris of bestis maid in maner of letteris; sic as thair epithafis and superscriptioun abone thair sepulturis schawis: nochtheles this crafty maner of writing be quhat sleuth I can not say is perist; and yet they have certane letteris propir amang thaimself quhilkis war sum time vulgar and commoun.” As always, the Latin text is different: “In secret matters they did not use normal letters, but rather figures of animals, as even these days is shown by monuments bearing animal-shaped inscriptions. But because of I know not what neglect, this art has perished. But there still remains special letters where in common use back then among those who employed the old language, expressing aspirations, diphthongs, and Lord knows what barbaric sounds. These are no longer in common employment, but are used by those who live in the countryside when, by royal authority, they create poets in their great ceremonies” (trans. Dana F. Sutton).
[3] This is Beauvois’ Greek-derived neologism, which he defines in his notes as “making sounds by pictures.”
[4] Beauvois is referring to a plate in the 1880 Mendoza (ed.) edition of Duran’s Historia de las Indias (2.1) that he consulted. It does not appear in copies I could locate.
[5] Beauvois is referring to the sixteenth-century hoax relation of the adventures of the brothers Zeno, whose infamous map displayed the fictional land of Estotiland, whose name he has incorrectly given as Escotiland, perhaps thinking of Scotland.
[6] The quotation is from a French translation of sixteenth-century writer Domingo Muñoz Camargo. The Spanish text of his Historia de Tlaxcala 2.3 reads, somewhat differently, that there would come “gentes de la parte de donde sale el sol, y que hemos de ser todos unos, y que han de ser blancos y barbudos, que han de traer celadas en las cabezas por señal de gobierno...”. Beauvois was aware of the discrepancy but chose the translated version anyway.
[7] The Spanish original of Historia de las Indias 79 is a bit different: “…también me dixo un yndio biejo que passando el Papa por Ocuituco les avia dejado un libro grande, de quatro dedos de alto, de unas letras, y yo movido con deseo de aver este libro, fui ó Ocuituco y rogue á los yndios, con toda la omillad del mundo, me lo mostrasen y me juraronque abrá seis años que le quemaron por que no acertavan á ler la letra, ni era comola nuestra y que temiendo no les causase algún mal le quemaron, lo cual me dio pena porque quiça nos diera satisfecho de nuestra duda que podría ser el sagrado evangelio en lengua hebrea, lo qual no poco reprehendí á los que lo mandaron quema.” In English: “Also, an old Indian told me that the Papa, passing through Ocuituco, gave them a large book, of four fingers in height, and containing some kind of letters. And I, moved with desire to see this book, went to Ocuituco and asked of the Indians, with all the humility in the world, if they might show it to me. And they swore to me that it must have been six years since they burned it because they were unable to decipher the letters, nor were these letters like ours. And they feared that they might cause some kind of bad thing, so they burned it, and I was greatly pained, because perhaps it might have satisfied our doubt that this could be the Holy Gospel in the Hebrew language, because of which I had more than a little reprehension for those who consigned this book to the flame.”
[8] The Spanish original, from Historia de las Indias 79, is again different: “Queriéndome confirmar en si esto era verdad, pregunte á un yndio biejo que me le bendieron por letrado en su ley natural, de Coatepec,el qual murió desta enfermedad, que me dixese si aquello era assi que alli tenia escrito y pintado; y como no saben dar relación, si no es por el libro de su aldea, fue á su cassa y truxo una pintura, que á mime parecieron se mas hechiços que pinturas. El qual tenia alli cifrada por unos caracteres yn ynteligibles toda la vida del papa y de sus dicipulos y me la relató como el otro, y mejor, de que no poco contento quede…” In English: “Wanting to confirm that this was the truth, I asked of an old Indian from Coatepec, who provided me with the counsel of his wisdom, and who died of infirmity, what he could tell me about that which was painted and written here. And as they are not able to give a relation, unless they consult the book of their village, he returned to his house and brought back a painting, which seemed to me to be more magic spells than pictures. It had encrypted among its almost unintelligible characters the whole life of the Papa and his disciples, and he told me about it as he had the other, and better, from which I remained more than a little contented…”
[9] This passage is surprisingly close to the Spanish original, considering that Beauvois translated it into French from an excerpt in Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico. Beauvois missed a few words in his translation (such as “the Creation” before “the Flood”), however. The text comes from Gregorio Garcia’s Predicación del Evangelio en el Nuevo Mundo 5.7 (1625), though it is better known from a close paraphrase (well, plagiarism) in Ignacio Borunda’s Clave general de jeroglíficos Americanos.
[10] Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia de las Indias 4.41. Beauvois’ French translation is correct, though slightly abridged, especially near the end.
[11] Duran, Historia 52, in which king is made to speak (in Duran’s archaic Spanish) “de los cielos y los nueue dobleses del,” or in English, “of the heavens and the nine folds therein.” Beauvois seems to have taken the word dobleses, an obsolete spelling of dobleces, the plural of doblez (fold), for doble-ses, a nonsensical phrase composed of “double” and a non-existent Spanish word ses, due to the 1867 printing’s hyphenated line break in the middle of dobleses. He might also have misread the word as dobles or “doubles” due to the hyphen. His confusion over the meaning is evident in his choice not to quote the line in French translation.
[12] Beauvois seems to be referring to the round temple of Quetzalcoatl in Tenochtitlan, not the nearby city of Texcoco, located across the former Lake Texcoco from Tenochtitlan.
[13] Beauvois uses two different French words here: clocher (“bell tower”) to describe what the towers are, and beffroi (“belfry”) to describe what they are not. Although both words mean the same in English, they are slightly different in French. He seems to be distinguishing rather literally between the stone tower structure that contains a bell within it and a platform tower that supported a wooden superstructure (literally, in French, the belfry) on which a bell was hung.
[14] Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo 7.10.1. The translation is mostly correct, though it abridges slightly in places and mistook the killing of the chief for putting him to flight. The Latin uses the word inciderunt (“cut to pieces”), which Beauvois gives in French as fuite (“put on the run”).
[2] From the vernacular edition of the Cosmographic prologue to Boece’s History, quoted in Stuart, op. cit. iv. Beauvois gives the text in French translation, and I have provided a modernized version of the vernacular text he adapted, the original of which reads: “In all thair secret besiness they usit not to writ with common letteris usit amang other pepil, but erar with sifars and figuris of bestis maid in maner of letteris; sic as thair epithafis and superscriptioun abone thair sepulturis schawis: nochtheles this crafty maner of writing be quhat sleuth I can not say is perist; and yet they have certane letteris propir amang thaimself quhilkis war sum time vulgar and commoun.” As always, the Latin text is different: “In secret matters they did not use normal letters, but rather figures of animals, as even these days is shown by monuments bearing animal-shaped inscriptions. But because of I know not what neglect, this art has perished. But there still remains special letters where in common use back then among those who employed the old language, expressing aspirations, diphthongs, and Lord knows what barbaric sounds. These are no longer in common employment, but are used by those who live in the countryside when, by royal authority, they create poets in their great ceremonies” (trans. Dana F. Sutton).
[3] This is Beauvois’ Greek-derived neologism, which he defines in his notes as “making sounds by pictures.”
[4] Beauvois is referring to a plate in the 1880 Mendoza (ed.) edition of Duran’s Historia de las Indias (2.1) that he consulted. It does not appear in copies I could locate.
[5] Beauvois is referring to the sixteenth-century hoax relation of the adventures of the brothers Zeno, whose infamous map displayed the fictional land of Estotiland, whose name he has incorrectly given as Escotiland, perhaps thinking of Scotland.
[6] The quotation is from a French translation of sixteenth-century writer Domingo Muñoz Camargo. The Spanish text of his Historia de Tlaxcala 2.3 reads, somewhat differently, that there would come “gentes de la parte de donde sale el sol, y que hemos de ser todos unos, y que han de ser blancos y barbudos, que han de traer celadas en las cabezas por señal de gobierno...”. Beauvois was aware of the discrepancy but chose the translated version anyway.
[7] The Spanish original of Historia de las Indias 79 is a bit different: “…también me dixo un yndio biejo que passando el Papa por Ocuituco les avia dejado un libro grande, de quatro dedos de alto, de unas letras, y yo movido con deseo de aver este libro, fui ó Ocuituco y rogue á los yndios, con toda la omillad del mundo, me lo mostrasen y me juraronque abrá seis años que le quemaron por que no acertavan á ler la letra, ni era comola nuestra y que temiendo no les causase algún mal le quemaron, lo cual me dio pena porque quiça nos diera satisfecho de nuestra duda que podría ser el sagrado evangelio en lengua hebrea, lo qual no poco reprehendí á los que lo mandaron quema.” In English: “Also, an old Indian told me that the Papa, passing through Ocuituco, gave them a large book, of four fingers in height, and containing some kind of letters. And I, moved with desire to see this book, went to Ocuituco and asked of the Indians, with all the humility in the world, if they might show it to me. And they swore to me that it must have been six years since they burned it because they were unable to decipher the letters, nor were these letters like ours. And they feared that they might cause some kind of bad thing, so they burned it, and I was greatly pained, because perhaps it might have satisfied our doubt that this could be the Holy Gospel in the Hebrew language, because of which I had more than a little reprehension for those who consigned this book to the flame.”
[8] The Spanish original, from Historia de las Indias 79, is again different: “Queriéndome confirmar en si esto era verdad, pregunte á un yndio biejo que me le bendieron por letrado en su ley natural, de Coatepec,el qual murió desta enfermedad, que me dixese si aquello era assi que alli tenia escrito y pintado; y como no saben dar relación, si no es por el libro de su aldea, fue á su cassa y truxo una pintura, que á mime parecieron se mas hechiços que pinturas. El qual tenia alli cifrada por unos caracteres yn ynteligibles toda la vida del papa y de sus dicipulos y me la relató como el otro, y mejor, de que no poco contento quede…” In English: “Wanting to confirm that this was the truth, I asked of an old Indian from Coatepec, who provided me with the counsel of his wisdom, and who died of infirmity, what he could tell me about that which was painted and written here. And as they are not able to give a relation, unless they consult the book of their village, he returned to his house and brought back a painting, which seemed to me to be more magic spells than pictures. It had encrypted among its almost unintelligible characters the whole life of the Papa and his disciples, and he told me about it as he had the other, and better, from which I remained more than a little contented…”
[9] This passage is surprisingly close to the Spanish original, considering that Beauvois translated it into French from an excerpt in Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico. Beauvois missed a few words in his translation (such as “the Creation” before “the Flood”), however. The text comes from Gregorio Garcia’s Predicación del Evangelio en el Nuevo Mundo 5.7 (1625), though it is better known from a close paraphrase (well, plagiarism) in Ignacio Borunda’s Clave general de jeroglíficos Americanos.
[10] Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia de las Indias 4.41. Beauvois’ French translation is correct, though slightly abridged, especially near the end.
[11] Duran, Historia 52, in which king is made to speak (in Duran’s archaic Spanish) “de los cielos y los nueue dobleses del,” or in English, “of the heavens and the nine folds therein.” Beauvois seems to have taken the word dobleses, an obsolete spelling of dobleces, the plural of doblez (fold), for doble-ses, a nonsensical phrase composed of “double” and a non-existent Spanish word ses, due to the 1867 printing’s hyphenated line break in the middle of dobleses. He might also have misread the word as dobles or “doubles” due to the hyphen. His confusion over the meaning is evident in his choice not to quote the line in French translation.
[12] Beauvois seems to be referring to the round temple of Quetzalcoatl in Tenochtitlan, not the nearby city of Texcoco, located across the former Lake Texcoco from Tenochtitlan.
[13] Beauvois uses two different French words here: clocher (“bell tower”) to describe what the towers are, and beffroi (“belfry”) to describe what they are not. Although both words mean the same in English, they are slightly different in French. He seems to be distinguishing rather literally between the stone tower structure that contains a bell within it and a platform tower that supported a wooden superstructure (literally, in French, the belfry) on which a bell was hung.
[14] Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo 7.10.1. The translation is mostly correct, though it abridges slightly in places and mistook the killing of the chief for putting him to flight. The Latin uses the word inciderunt (“cut to pieces”), which Beauvois gives in French as fuite (“put on the run”).
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Source: Eugène Beauvois,“Traces d’influence européenne dans les langues, les sciences et l’industrie précolombiennes du Mexique et de l’Amérique centrale,” Revue des Questions Scientifiques (deuxième série) 11 (1897), 496-531.
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