Sacred Geography, Personified Geography
The gods pictured on the obverse of Codex Vienna interacted with a living, personified geography: the very landscape itself was alive and named accordingly. Codex Zouche-Nuttall pictures Pregnant Hill, Bird Hill, and the Place Where the Sky Was. It is no surprise to find named places in the codices that can still be found in the modern Mixtec landscape. One such is the Hill (yucu) of the (nu) rain god (Dzahui): Yucuñudahui (see Pohl’s introduction to this volume and figure I.4).
This place in the northeastern Mixteca is prominent in both Zouche-Nuttall obverse and Vienna obverse. However, the old manuscripts depict this geographical feature in an unusual category; it seems from the pictograms that the hill itself is the rain god, Dzahui. This implication, reinforced by the fact that Dzahui himself seldom appears in the narratives in human form, is obvious. In most codex representations Dzahui is the hill with rain god characteristics: goggle eyes, fanged teeth, black body paint, and so on. Rain god substations, so to speak, display this facial effigy, which is in such representations as a carved stone, wood, or large decorated ceramic head (ZN page 37) and is the subject of ceremonial dramatic presentations.
The Rain God Hill is, itself, a mnemonic device, like codex tableaux, intended to jog the memories of living humans and instruct them in the vast complexities of history and religious ideology. Byron Hamann makes this very point brilliantly:
The social lives of objects and places cannot be separated from the social lives of humans, and one aspect of this cohabitation is the role of objects and places in human pedagogy. . . . In explicit pedagogy, objects and places are used as “mnemonic pegs,” prompts for telling stories that explain the relevance of the past for present social life. . . . Meaning-coded things also impact human cognition as implicit, silent (if physically structuring) backgrounds, for day-to-day existence. (2002:352–354)
Yucuñudahui is the prominent feature of an actual bifurcated landscape. The community of Chachoapan has been located at the base of the mountain at least since Postclassic times. An arroyo divides it. The ceremonial center ruins atop the mountain are at least Classic era constructions and, as my recovered chronology demonstrates, Late Classic and Epiclassic as well. Zouche-Nuttall, page 2, shows Yucuñudahui as the subject of an ordering ritual conducted by the fire-drilling Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints. The duration of this elaborated performance is seventeen years, from Year 3 Reed to Year 7 Flint. The tableau also shows several fabricated constructions—temples, buildings, ballcourts—situated at the foot of the mountain. Similar ordering rituals occur in the pages of Codex Vienna, nine (perhaps ten) in all. Virtually all of the rituals show unnamed tertiary actors measuring stone for building purposes. Of these Vienna rituals, all display building activities as an integrated part of the rituals themselves. The conclusion is that during the time of our protagonist, Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints, not only was Yucuñudahui ordered by fire-drilling ritual, but he either constructed or incorporated the community at the foot of it as well.
The point will be made later that Yucuñudahui itself was a political resource and important enough to be fought over. It was the center of the religious focus of the original non-Mixtec inhabitants (Stone Men) of the Nochixtlan Valley, and it was the “source” of rain itself, courtesy of the god Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl (Vienna 47b), who held water and sky above it in previous times. Zouche-Nuttall makes the point (as we will see later) that Lord Eight Wind himself was an important resource in this place and subsequently in other places as well. The scribes tell us also that Yucuñudahui supplied something else of extreme importance: the sacred plants.
Codex Vienna and its sister manuscript, Zouche-Nuttall, are treasure troves for ethnobotanists. Important plants are everywhere within the elaborately painted pages. Ceremonial tobacco-pouring is present in both codices and also in folk history as an important component in rituals of rulership (Furst 1978a:65). A maize ceremony with warriors featured on Vienna page 26a may reflect ancient rites associated with the god of spring fertility, Xipe Totec (Furst 1978a:200). Pulche, a fermentation from the maguey plant, is ritualized on Vienna page 25a, and the goddess associated with it is prominently featured in the terminal tableaux of ZN obverse pages 3 and 4. Communication with nonhuman beings and transformation of elite humans was an integral part of Mesoamerican religions—and at least partially induced by the consumption of certain plants. One such ritual involving sacred mushrooms is pictured on Vienna page 24, and similar rituals survive in modern Oaxaca (Furst 1978a:203).
The ritual use of plants as integrated with human lifeways occupies a substantial part of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall obverse symbolism associated with Lord Eight Wind Eagle Flints. Further, Codex Vienna obverse establishes that certain plants, specifically three combined together into a white-wrapped bundle, were used in the “ordering” or sanctification of the Mixtec geography and its man-made features. Of particular interest is the fact that one of the lineage rivers at Apoala is a source of these three plants, as is Yucuñudahui, and that Lord Eight Wind is himself closely identified with them. As will be elaborated later, it would appear that Eight Wind’s ordering of Yucuñudahui represents him as being the sacred plants intrinsically. The important fire-drilling apparatus and an associated ceremonial bundle also emerge from one of the Apoala lineage rivers. Thus these three mysterious plants emerge from the Apoala River (Vienna 24b), the same one from which Lord Eight Wind emerges (ZN page 1), and from which the necessary fire-drilling apparatus does also (ZN page 18b)—and ZN page 2 implies that Eight Wind is the plants.
Trees in Mesoamerican religions generally have extreme prominence because of their identification with the world tree, or axis mundi: a cosmic device that transcends the planes of existence. A world tree has its roots in the underworld, its trunk and branches in the middle world, and its crown in the sky. From Olmec times, rulers have been identified with and considered to be world trees, which can be represented in Mesoamerica as maize plants. At times, lineage clans can be represented as plants or trees (ZN page 20a–b).
The Mixtecs give us a literal view of this important ideology when they tell us how their kings and queens came to be. Ethnography records that lineage founders were born from trees at Apoala and Achiutla. Lord Eight Wind was first an earth-born noble (ZN page 1), but by being present at the Tree Birth ceremony at either Apoala or Achiutla, he was granted twice-born status and was thereafter a tree-born noble (Vienna 35a). He subsequently founded his lineage at Suchixtlan (ZN page 5).
In the Codex Vienna page 37 tableau the gods Lord Seven Rain and Lord Seven Eagle carve the trunk of the great birth tree. Seven Eagle engraves female spindle whorls on one side, while Seven Rain engraves male atlatl darts on the other; therefore, the birth tree is capable of bringing forth both sexes. The tree itself is a goddess, the Lady Nine Reed (Furst 1978a:136), but wears a male attribute: a blue tubular earplug. Furst (1978a:133) notes that this earplug is otherwise an exclusively male ornament and is worn by no other female actor on Vienna obverse. This combination of male/female attributes is reflected (as Furst comments) in the carvings on the trunk itself.
In AD 1593, seventy-two years after Pedro de Alvarado entered Oaxaca, Fray Antonio de los Reyes noted that the Mixtecs had folktales about how the nobles came out of, and were cut off from, trees that grew by the river yuta tnoho at Apoala (yuta tnuhu) (de los Reyes 1976 [1593], cited in Furst 1978a:134). By showing us that Lord Eight Wind emerges from this same river (ZN page 1), the codex makes the attribution plain: although born from the earth, he is also born from the great lineage river Yuta Tñoho.
Fray Francisco de Burgoa recorded a later version of this folklore in the seventeenth century (1934 [1674]:I, 274, cited in Furst 1978a:135). According to this version, the Mixtec nobles were born from two trees growing on the riverbank at Apoala. This legend mentions that the trees were nourished by the underground water that produced the rivers. In retrieving the sacred plants from beneath Apoala (Vienna 24b), Lord Seven Wind goes into a cave in the river there—the same river cave from which Lord Eight Wind emerges on ZN page 1 and from which the fire-drilling bundle emerges on ZN page 18b. We can see that this ethnography recorded by the Spanish friars preserves an integrated ideology that is perhaps illustrated in the codices under discussion. Yet, in post-Conquest times, Apoala was not a grand place. Citing colonial sources, Jansen (1988:99–100) writes that in the sixteenth century Apoala was not an important town but, rather, was controlled by Yanhuitlan. In that era Apoala had perhaps 352 houses among 700 married couples, 314 unmarried people, and 537 children—all of whom paid annual tribute amounting to sixty pesos of gold dust along with thirteen hens, an amount of salt, beans, bead works, and balls of yarn.
Another birth-tree source for nobles is also mentioned in the ethnography: namely, Achiutla or, as it is called, “Hill of the Sun” (Pohl 2005b:116a). The legend of the Achiutla tree birth says, in abstract, that the first man and woman were born from “two beautiful sabino trees” at Achiutla (Castellanos 1910:21–22). In the considered opinion of John Pohl (pers. comm., 2006), this legend corresponds to and confirms the tree-birth scene displayed in Codex Selden, as discussed below.
Codex Selden, the royal document of Jaltepec, was composed in the native style but is a palimpsest written over an older document after the Spanish arrived. On telling the story of Jaltepec’s first dynasty (which failed for unspecified reasons) the god of the Sun, Lord One Death, and the god of Evening Star, One Motion, split the earth, and Lord Eleven Wind was born from it. He married the Lady Seven Eagle at Oracle Head in Cave, and they ruled that place (Selden 1-I). Their child was Lady Ten Eagle, who married Lord Four Eagle from Snake River (the same place where Lord Two Rain’s mummy will be interred in a later story), and their daughter was Lady Eight Rabbit (Selden 1-II). In order to produce a royal husband for Lady Eight Rabbit, two elderly priests, the Lords Ten Lizard and Ten Flint, conduct two ceremonies, the first one at Apoala, whereupon the rulers of that place, Lord Five Wind who lives in the sacred river there (grandson of Lord Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl) and Lady Nine Alligator (daughter of the first two rulers of Apoala), receive gifts (Selden 1-III); the tree then appears at Achiutla and gives birth to the bridegroom, Lord Two Grass (Selden 2-I).
In this Selden version of tree birth, the tree stands above the river on a masonry platform. In the river are three stones which were made in the sky (Vienna 49). Two serpents emerge from the masonry place and entwine the tree: one has vapor or clouds upon its back; the other has water and stars on its back. We remember from Codex Vienna page 47b that Lord Nine Wind Quetzalcoatl first held up sky and water near Yucuñudahui. That same power or those same qualities are called upon for this tree birth. The sky itself is two partial U-bracket shapes above Achiuta in this Selden tableau: sky above, water below, and two snakes entwining the tree, representing both elements called into being at a stone-masonry place by the priests Ten Flint and Ten Lizard.
The first tree birth was engendered by the gods at Apoala, but the second was engendered by two elderly priests at Achiutla. This Selden performance ritual carefully displays the elements the priests used, just as the Vienna ritual displays the gods carving male/female elements into the tree trunk. At the event itself, both priests are displayed to either side of the tree, pouring tobacco from their hands onto two ritual objects topped by grass knots. One object is an earth-spirit stone (ñuu) on top of what appears to be a circular grass mat lying on edge; the other object is a stone with a serpent’s face bleeding onto one of the underwater stones. All three levels of the Mesoamerican world are represented in the tableau: underwater underworld, earth, and sky. On one side of the tableau, in the sky, is the date Year 10 Reed Day 2 Grass, and on the other side is a garment topped by a gold pectoral and displaying a jeweled collar emerging from its lower side. The only remaining Lady Nine Reed personification of the tree is an eye peering from its trunk just beneath the split where Lord Two Grass emerges. It is in this elaborated milieu that the tree gives birth.
The contrast of the Vienna tree birth with that in Selden is a vivid demonstration of the extension of performance ritual outward from one initial source at an earlier time to serve the needs of royalty later in another place. The elements of creation are all present, and the goddess Nine Reed Tree draws from elements of sky, earth, and water to produce nobles to rule the very land, underworld, and sky from which they are born. As with the Maya before them, they are the lords of creation.