1 Reed

The protagonist of this investigation, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the son of Iztacmixcoatl and Chimalma, was born — for the well-being and great good of men — in the high plateau of central Mexico in the year 843 or 895 or 935 or 1156 ... but then again, was he ever really born? The truth of the matter eludes us, for on the basis of a scrupulous examination of the sources, it is possible on the one hand to deny that he actually existed while affirming on the other that he died in Uxmal, on the Pirámide del Adivino (Pyramid of the Magician, or Soothsayer), on the fourth day of April, 1208, at six o'clock in the afternoon, Yucatán time.

Moreover, the problem does not date, as might be conjectured, to when the Spanish conquerors — commanding not just the battlefield of war but of historical narrative as well — added fragments of the indigenous tradition to the histories they wrote of the people they had defeated and subdued. Add such fragments, to a greater or lesser degree, they certainly did; yet the elusive nature of Mesoamerica's most compelling historical personage had proclaimed itself centuries before the fateful encounter between America and Europe. Those writing later, during the post-conquest period, were also influenced — in some cases, powerfully so — by the tales and legends surrounding this bearded priest-king. As he oscillated in the telling between the credible and the imaginary, Ce Acatl edged dangerously close to the brink where distortions and inaccuracies tend to cause historians to lose interest.

The indigenous sources — and here, if one insists on using the term precisely, is where the first taxonomic problem will be encountered — seemingly were contrived out of a perverse pleasure in the prospect of confusing future historians: many of these sources not only make reference to Ce Acatl but do so in a way that is richly detailed; and again, not only are they numerous and filled with details, they are also shot through with contradictions. The name by which he is known changes, variously, from Ce Acatl to Nacxitl, Tepeuhqui, Meconetzin, Ahpop, Guatezuma, Kukulcan, Ru Ralcan ... His life is split into two, so that we come upon him twice, under two names, the protagonist of two histories, in two separate epochs and in different pueblos, within the pages of a single author's work. Elsewhere he is mistaken for another, being given the name Topiltzin, while his mortal enemy is assigned another of his names, Quetzalcoatl. By turns, he is identified as being tolteca, chichimeca, or tenochca. In Spanish sources, he is mentioned as early as 1526, and different versions of his miraculous life have been pieced together — for example, in the indigenous communities of Coatepec de los Costales, in the present-day state of Guerrero, by Pedro Carrasco Pizana (1943) and in Jáltipan, in the state of Veracruz, by Antonio García de León (1966). Surprisingly, in the historical source where his appearance as a king or priest would be most expected, no such reference to him is made. On the other hand, the beautiful verses that tell of the destruction of Tollan contain commentaries on his life, as do glosses on the proverbial sayings of the ancient Nahua.

In light of this situation, we can readily grasp that a simple statement of the content of the indigenous sources would equal the length of this book, or more. The need for any such review of the literature has been obviated, however, by the stellar doctoral thesis of H. B. Nicholson. What is needed now is an investigation of the possible causes of this apparent confusion, a state of affairs that cannot, obviously, be ascribed to any deliberate, perverse intent to confuse and misdirect. If historian after historian, for more than four and a half centuries, has confronted the same problem, then providing a brief overview of the history of this biography would seem to be a useful starting point.

It was Alfonso Caso who logically divided the problem of Tollan and the Toltecs into three phases, the first of which he labeled "naïve" because it tried to explain miracles on the basis of miracles themselves. The second phase was termed "the skeptical" because it denied the existence of Quetzalcoatl. And the third he called "the critical" because — across the full complex of material — it sought to isolate and distinguish the mythical from the historical. Alfred Tozzer identified and added a fourth phase to this scheme, which he denoted as "the perplexing," or "the elusive," in that it maintained an unsatisfactory separation between the figures of the priest-king and the culture hero. For my part, I have found it helpful to use the classification adopted by Caso but to alter it slightly in two ways. First, by replacing the term phase with focus since, although a distinct temporal sequence is discernible, the lines separating these phases blend into each other; and second, by substituting the category "initial and of foreign origin" in place of "naïve." As for the characterization of perplexing, or baffling, that Tozzer adds, it really applies more to the entire history of the biography than to a particular phase or stage within that history.

In treating the history of the biography of Quetzalcoatl, my approach within each focus is chronological, and while all of the opinions and ideas I discuss have their place in the story, some are important because they have empirical value, some because of the influence they have exercised, others because they represent the thinking of a large cadre of scholars, and still others — a not insignificant number — because they are patently nonsensical or outrageous.

Finally, in setting the framework for this study, I cannot think of a comment more to the point than one made by Paul Kirchhoff to us, his students, when there seemed to be no way to clarify or sort out some confusing and conflicting information in the sources. "I failed to understand Mexico's pre-Hispanic history," he remarked, "until I discovered that each figure was his own grandmother." Kirchhoff said this in jest, yet I have had to recall his words all too often.

The Initial Focus of Foreign Origin

According to the early fifteenth-century chronicler Peter Martyr, the first instance in which the Spanish learned of Quetzalcoatl occurred in March 1517, when the conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba led an expedition into Yucatán. In Martyr's words, "[The Spaniards] saw that they [the indigenous inhabitants of Yucatán] had crosses, and in asking — through an interpreter — about their origins, were told by some...