The War from Heaven, Part One
Figure 7.1. Codex Zouche-Nuttall page 3 (British Museum folio no. 3), the War from Heaven, part 1. (© Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum Company, Ltd.)
Page 3 (figure 7.1) has six tableaux and two sequential year dates. The first tableau occurs in Year 3 Reed (AD 963) Day 6 Dog, the next four occur in Year 5 House (AD 965) on various days, and the last is an undated, chronologically ambiguous ceremony related to the last two tableaux on page 4. The day sequences for the Year 5 House events are not in chronological order but are listed in a proposed order in appendix II.
Tableau 3 displays three year dates spanning the remainder of the war, from Year 5 House (AD 965), to Year 12 Flint (AD 972), and Year 5(6) Reed (AD 979). This is appropriate because the chief actor is Lord Seven Motion, who also participates in the War with the Striped Men on page 4. Therefore he is a dominant actor. His tableau and tableau 2 are larger than the others on page 3 and have a visual precedence not related to order of presentation.
The first tableau tells us that the war began at Yucuñudahui in Year 3 Reed on Day 6 Dog, or 132 days after Lord Eight Wind arrived there, as indicated on page 2 for Year 3 Reed Day 4 Flint. There are two days 6 Dog (#30 and #290) in Year 3 Reed, and only one day 4 Flint (#158), so it is possible that the war began 108 days before Lord Eight Wind arrived at Yucuñudahui.
A curious pair of related pictograms begins tableau 1. An unnamed male, assumed to be Lord Eight Wind because of his characteristic face paint (yellow mask, red mouth area), is shown going into a cave at one place and observing the war at Yucuñudahui from a cave opening at another place. Since Lord Eight Wind is seen previously as one who travels through caves, and since his granddaughter, Lady Six Monkey of Jaltepec, is seen doing the same thing (Codex Selden 6-III), Lord Eight Wind can be identified by a preponderance of narrative continuity rather than by an inscribed name. On the two pages devoted to the War from Heaven in this first saga (it is also told in this codex in saga 2, pages 20b–c and 21a) Lord Eight Wind is not a combatant (Furst 1978b:6b–7b); in fact, the text implies that he avoided the war entirely. He is invisible because he is a part of the landscape.
Tableau 1. This tableau has two parts. The first, described above, shows Lord Eight Wind “going underground.” The second has the date, Year 3 Reed Day 6 Dog, and shows Lady Eight Monkey at Yucuñudahui captured by one of two attacking Stone Men. Lady Eight Monkey appears again in the terminal scene of page 4.
Tableau 2. In year 5 House Day 7 Snake (AD 965), Lady Six Eagle, the god Lord Seven Snake, and an insect signifying the polity of Sayultepec defend Yucuita against the Stone Men. The war has spread! Size makes this a dominant tableau.
Tableau 3. This second dominant tableau displays Lord Seven Motion and three year signs in a district consisting of two hills. He sacrifices a Stone Man. As mentioned previously, the years are 5 House, 12 Flint, and 5(6) Reed.
Tableau 4. This tableau is chronologically complex because it has four day signs. The day sign associated by size with the year sign for 5 House is 4 Dog. Two day signs associated with the Lord Seven Wind captures are the first Day 4 Wind and Day 8 Wind. The next Day 4 Wind is directly above Lady Eight Deer’s capture. Lord Seven Wind and Lady Eight Deer both capture Stone Men. Also, the Year 5 House Day 4 Dog is drawn close to this and the following tableau.
Tableau 5. The Year 5 House is assumed. Lord Seven Wind appears clothed in full eagle attire at an unknown place, as though perambulating. It may be that his full-body eagle costume tells us that he has transformed into his spirit animal, functioning as a yaha yahui priest. Because of this and his face paint, this male identified as Seven Wind more closely resembles our protagonist, Lord Eight Wind. Directly above him Lords Seven and Six Dog capture a Stone Man.
Tableau 6. There is no associated date for this depiction of a maguey goddess ceremony. Although Furst (1978a:233) notes these ceremonies, she does not discuss them in reference to this Zouche-Nuttall tableau; therefore, the complex associations involved with the maguey goddess displayed in this context merit discussion.
The tableau exists in three parts. On the viewer’s right are two places, one above the other; the day name 11 Alligator is associated with them in this tableau and connects to the final tableau of page 4 (figure 8.1). The uppermost place is a building in which an opossum holds two cups overflowing with red liquid and topped by sacrificial flint knives. A decapitated female is directly below the opossum house, standing on a ballcourt at a hill and holding the same overflowing cups and flint knives. This same ballcourt appears in the final part of the last tableau on page 4.
On the hilltop, next to the decapitated female, is a round, woven, green grass mat of the kind associated with bird decapitation sacrifice. A sinuous ropelike object with six numeral circles issues from the mat. The third part of this tableau is figured at the viewer’s left and consists of three females equally spaced from top to bottom of the scene and named Eleven Snake, Seven, and Five (“Snake” is assumed as day names for these two women).
The full-to-overflowing cups of blood may signify the blood of the goddess since pulche is made from the heart of the very plant she represents: the maguey (Vienna 25, institution of the pulche ritual). In fact, pulche and blood are synonymous, and pulche may even represent the human body (Monaghan 1990:567).
Maguey, maguey ceremonies, the maguey goddess, and personified maguey with associated personnel are frequently displayed in Codex Vienna (table 7.1). In those scenes featuring the decapitated goddess and opossum, both hold cups overflowing with red liquid and topped by sacrificial flint knives, as in this Zouche-Nuttall tableau, but the female named Eleven Snake does not appear. In this respect the Zouche-Nuttall page 3 tableau is unique.
All of the Vienna scenes listed above are ceremonial in nature. Lady Eleven Snake on Vienna page 33d is in conference with several other gods headed by the brother gods, Lords Four and Seven Snake. Other personnel of interest to us are mentioned in this scene (Vienna pages 33–32), including Lord Two Dog (ZN page 4, tableau 6), Lords Four Motion and Seven Flower (ZN 4, tableau 4), Lord Seven Wind (ZN 3, tableau 5, shown in full eagle attire), and Lady Eight Deer (ZN 3, tableau 4).
Eleven Snake appears with Lady Eight Deer again on Vienna page 25d, which illustrates an ear perforation ceremony with many participants, including Lord Two Dog and Lords Four Motion and Seven Flower. On page 25a the maguey plants and goddess head-in-vat are associated with Lord Two Dog. Page 22a associates the decapitated goddess, opossum, and maguey plants with Lord Two Dog, and page 20a associates them with Lord Four Motion. The scene on 13a associates them with Lord Eleven Alligator, whose name qualifies a place in this tableau as well as in the final tableau on page 4. On page 18a the maguey plants are associated with Lord Seven Flower. In short, in virtually every appearance of the decapitated maguey goddess and opossum, the Lady Eleven Snake in Codex Vienna has associated personnel found in Codex Zouche-Nuttall on pages 3 and, significantly, 4.
Table 7.1. Depictions of Maguey in Codex Vienna
These first three Zouche-Nuttall pages reveal a society in dramatic, conflictive change from the Late Classic era, to the Epiclassic period, to early Post-classic times. Yucuñudahui, the location of Lord Eight Wind’s ceremony on ZN page 2, is also the territory of the original inhabitants of the Mixteca: the Ñuu, or Stone Men. Significantly, Lord Eight Wind is an earth-born noble. Antonio de los Reyes (1976 [1593]:i–ii) recorded from folklore that the Mixtec conquered the original inhabitants, indigenes called Tey Ñuu who came from the center of the earth. This is one subject of Codex Zouche-Nuttall pages 3 and 4, as well as the Tree Birth ceremony told by Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I obverse (36–35a).
These people, called simply “Ñuu,” are well represented in Mixtec art and myth, and are identified as Stone Men. In codices they wear colored diagonal bands of body paint resembling the exposed strata of colored rock, and they often have prominent fanged teeth and large, round eyes. Small, legless, spirit-like creatures that emerge from the earth and go back into it are associated with Stone Men and called Ñuu as well. John Monaghan (1990) writes that the rain god, Dzahui, was their chief lord. Mary Elizabeth Smith (1973, cited in Byland and Pohl 1994:11) suggests that the Reyes myth was a direct reference to the War from Heaven, and my interpretation of the final tableau of ZN page 4 supports her conclusion. We have noted that Codex Zouche-Nuttall tells us the war itself began at Yucuñudahui (Rain God Hill) shortly after Lord Eight Wind arrived there in AD 963.
The Zouche-Nuttall manuscript begins with an account of this struggle between the Mixtecs and the original inhabitants of the northern Nochixtlan Valley. It also tells us that one of the Stone Men nobles, Lord Five Flower, participated with Lord Eight Wind in the ordering ceremony at Yucuñudahui and survived the war itself, and that the conquering Mixtecs made their peace with him and his rain god lord (ZN page 4, tableau 6). Thus, the Mixtecs themselves became People of the Rain, and their territory the Land of the Rain God (Jansen and Jimenez 2005:12b–13a).
The Stone Men thus avoided extermination, and this is why we see them honorably remembered in later text with the Mixtecs, notably on page 23a, where Lord Ten House and Lady One Grass, who founded the first dynasty of Tilantongo, ruled at Stone Man River. Still later, when Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw usurps rulership at Tilantongo and establishes his state with 112 nobles and their districts in the Mixteca, a Stone Man named Lord Ten Alligator is among them (ZN page 66b).
Lord Eight Wind’s relationship to Yucuñudahui and the Stone Men is also highlighted. Page 2 shows Eight Wind peacefully interacting with Stone Men at Yucuñudahui and indicates that he was there for seventeen years, leaving for Apoala one year after the war and just before the institution of the Tree Born lineage there. Page 4 indicates a peaceful resolution between the Stone Men and the new Apoala lords of the Mixteca. Jill Furst (1978b:7b) writes that Lord Eight Wind “is therefore described as an original Mixtec who may be entitled to his territories by right of first possession. It also suggests that Eight Wind is on the losing side of the war between the stone men and the victorious Mixtec-speakers, and yet manages to keep his lands. Perhaps he is a noble ambassador between the conflicting parties. The first seven pages of Zouche-Nuttall repeatedly make the point that Eight Wind is earth-born.”
Codex Vienna records three conferences immediately attending the Apoala Tree Birth ceremony (pages 37a–35a). Lord Eight Wind has “Twenty” added to his name and is seen in the third conference held between the Ladies Five and Seven Flint, the Lords Five and Seven Vulture, Lord One Flower and Lady Seven Flower, and the Lords Seven and Eight Flower, Five and Nine Wind, Seven Deer, and the Lords Seven Vulture #2 and Four Reed. Significantly, a qualifying Ñuu spirit (Stone Man) figure appears in the section displaying Lords Eight Wind Twenty, Seven Vulture #2, and Four Reed in Year 13 Rabbit Day 2 Deer. This conference with Eight Wind and his delegation, qualified by the Ñuu figure, is likely the Stone Man delegation or, at least, the Yucuñudahui contingent.
