Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs

433 Pages·2001·2.92 MB·English

by  Henry B. Nicholson

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TOPILTZIN
QUETZALCOATL
Carvings on lid of the “Box of Hackmack,” Late Aztec style. Museum für Völkerkunde,
Hamburg, Germany. The feathered serpent, flying downward, is flanked by the two dates
most closely associated with both Ehecatl and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, One and Seven
Acatl (Reed). Photo courtesy of the museum.
TOPILTZIN
QUETZALCOATL

THE ONCE AND FUTURE LORD

OFTHETOLTECS
by H. B. Nicholson
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO
Copyright © 2001 by the University Press of Colorado
Published by the University Press of Colorado
5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C
Boulder, Colorado 80303
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part,
by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College,
Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern
Colorado, University of Southern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicholson, H. B. (Henry B.)
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl : the once and future lord of the Toltecs / H. B. Nicholson
p. cm. — (Mesoamerican worlds)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87081-547-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-87081-554-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Quetzalcoatl (Aztec deity) 2. Aztec mythology. 3. Aztecs—History—Sources. 4. Toltec
mythology. 5. Toltecs—History—Sources. 6. Manuscripts, Mexican (Pre-Columbian)—
History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series.
F1219.76.R45 .N53 2001
972'.01—dc21
2001000483
Cover design by Laura Furney
Text design by Daniel Pratt
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of those native, mestizo, and Spanish chroniclers
who labored to preserve—often in the face of many obstacles—
our knowledge of the most advanced civilization of the indigenous
New World and its historical traditions—including the
extraordinary tale that is the subject of this book.
ALSO IN THE SERIES
M W
ESOAMERICAN ORLDS
FROM THE OLMECS TO THE DANZANTES
General Editors, Davíd Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma
Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan,
Philip P. Arnold
In the Realm of Nachan Kan: Postclassic Maya Archaeology
at Laguna de On, Belize, Marilyn A. Masson
Life and Death in the Templo Mayor,
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma
Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage: Teotihuacan to the Aztecs,
Davíd Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions
Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist,
Alfredo López Austin
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs,
H. B. Nicholson
Twin City Tales: A Hermeneutical Reassessment of Tula and Chichén Itzá,
Lindsay Jones
Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization,
1520–1569, Georges Baudot
E ’ N
DITORS OTE
n his enjoyable essay “Why Read the Classics,” Italo Calvino lists
Iamong his definitions of a classic the following two. First, a classic is a
book that exerts “a peculiar influence” because it refuses to be eradicated
from the mind and conceals itself in “the folds of memory.” Second, a classic
is a book that never finishes saying what it has to say. We are honored to
present a classic of Mesoamerican scholarship with this publication of H. B.
Nicholson’s Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs in
our series Mesoamerican Worlds. Many elements of Nicholson’s work make
it exceptional, influential, and long lasting. Yet it is ironic that his work is
already a classic even though it has not been published until now. Let me
explain.
Works that rise to the status of “classic” typically do so as the result of
years of public critical reading and appreciation. Nicholson completed this
project as his dissertation, “Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan: A Problem in
Mesoamerican Ethnohistory,” at Harvard University in 1957. It was quickly
recognized by the handful of scholars who read it as the most thorough and
insightful analysis of a large part of the Mesoamerican ensemble of primary
sources ever done in a single volume. What made his work even more pow-
erful was the sustained focus on a key problem in Mesoamerican studies, i.e.,
the problem of understanding the role of the Toltec kingdom and especially
its legendary priest-king Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl in the history of Postclassic
Mesoamerican society and in the encounters between Spaniards and natives
in Tenochtitlan. But the dissertation was never published. Nicholson had
completed it while on the move from Harvard to several early archaeological
VIII EDITORS’ NOTE
projects and on to his first and only job at UCLA, and moved on to many
other important projects and essays.
Even though it was often referred to in footnotes and text, it was read by
relatively few and never critically evaluated in journals. Those of us who dug
into the Harvard archives, or cajoled a copy of the thesis from Nicholson or
someone who had it, found ourselves working within a manuscript that was
at once a tour de force of focused and creative readings of evidence and a
royal guide to the conundrum of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. As time passed, this
unpublished manuscript influenced, sometimes in a profound way, an array
of interpretations of the Toltec and Quetzalcoatl traditions. Scholars such as
Alfredo López Austin, Nigel Davies, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Eloise
Quiñones Keber, Davíd Carrasco, and others depended in significant ways
on Nicholson’s stunning and eye-exhausting achievement. Either we fol-
lowed his lead or struggled hard to develop alternative readings of parts of
the primary evidence he had mastered. In a way, we stood on Nicholson’s
shoulders (or at least his research) but without the attendant claim that we
could see farther. Rereading the manuscript today I am still tremendously
impressed by Nicholson’s rigorous contextualization of the evidence and dis-
tillation of the Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl material from over seventy sources,
including pre-Hispanic pictorials, Sahagún’s encyclopedia, colonial histo-
ries, Spanish chronicles, and archaeology. Like Eduard Georg Seler, Nicholson
has set a standard of description and evaluation that will continue to guide
us for decades to come.
For over ten years Luther Wilson, who was at that time the director of
the University Press of Colorado, and I tried to persuade Nicholson to re-
view the thesis and publish it in the Mesoamerican Worlds series. Other
members of the Mesoamerican Archive’s working group supported this effort
to bring Nicholson’s work to public light. Fortunately Alfredo López Austin
lent his encouragement and Nicholson agreed to work with us and prepare
the manuscript for publication. With the assistance of Scott Sessions,
Nicholson went over the dissertation with a fine-tooth comb, greatly en-
hanced the bibliography, and prepared a new introduction.
Remembering Calvino, we can say forty-four years after its completion
at Harvard, Nicholson’s previously unpublished classic is coming out of the
“folds of memory” and we can discover just how much more it has to say to us
about Mesoamerican history and religion than even H. B. Nicholson and his
Ph.D. committee could have imagined.
—Davíd Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma
IX
C
ONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
FOREWORD by Gordon Willey xv
PROLOGUE by Alfredo López Austin xvii
PREFACE xxi
1957 INTRODUCTION xxv
2001 INTRODUCTION xxix
MAP: POSTCLASSIC MESOAMERICA lxii–lxiii
NOTE ON ORGANIZATION lxiv
I. CENTRAL MEXICO: NAHUATL 1
A. EARLIEST ACCOUNTS OF THE BASIC TOPILTZIN QUETZALCOATL 3
OF TOLLAN TALE
1. The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas 4
2. The Juan Caño Relaciones 8
3. The Histoyre du Mechique 12
4. The Leyenda de los soles 18
5. The Historia general (universal) de las cosas de (la) Nueva 23
España of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún
6. The Anales de Cuauhtitlan 39
B. IMPORTANT SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS OF THE BASIC 49
TOPILTZIN QUETZALCOATL OF TOLLAN TALE
1. Motolinía 49
2. A Toltec Elegy 53
3. Fray Andrés de Olmos 55
4. The Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticanus A 60
5. The Crónica X 73
6. The Historia de Tlaxcala of Diego Muñoz Camargo 81