According to an author intimately familiar with the Mexican nagualists, the art they claimed to possess of transforming themselves into the lower animals was taught their predecessors by a woman, a native Circe, a mighty enchantress, whose usual name was Quilaztli (the etymology of which is unknown), but who bore also four others, representing her four metamorphoses, Cohuacihuatl, the Serpent Woman; Quauhcihuatl, the Eagle Woman; Yaocihuatl, the Warrior Woman; and Tzitzimecihuatl, the Specter Woman.[74]
The powers of these queens of magic extended widely among their sex. We read in the chronicles of ancient Mexico that when Nezahualpilli, the king, oppressed the tribes of the coast, the tierra caliente, they sent against him, not their warriors, but their witches. These cast upon him their fatal spells, so that when he walked forth from his palace, blood burst from his mouth, and he fell prone and dead.[75]
In Guatemala, as in ancient Delphos, the gods were believed to speak through the mouths of these inspired seeresses, and at the celebration of victories they enjoyed a privilege so strange and horrible that I quote it from the old manuscript before me without venturing a translation:
"....Despues de sacrificar los antiguos algua hombre, deapedaçndolo, si era de los que avian cogido en guerra, dicen que gunrdaban el miembro genital y los testiculos del tal sacrificado, y se les daban à una vieja que tenian por profeta, para que los comiese, y le pedian rogasse à su idolo les diesse mas captivos."[76]
When Captain Pedro de Alvarado, in the year 1524, was marching upon Quetzaltanango, in Guatemala, just such a fearful old witch took her stand at the summit of the pass, with her familiar in the shape of a dog, and "by spells and nagualistic incantations" undertook to prevent his approach.[77]
As
in the earliest, so in the latest accounts. The last revolt of the Indians
of Chiapas occurred among the Zotzils in
1869. The cause of it was the seizure and imprisonment by the Spanish
authorities of a "mystical woman," known to the whites as
Santa Rosa, who, together with one of their ahaus
or chieftains, had been suspected of fomenting sedition. The natives
marched thousands strong against the city of San Cristobal, where the
prisoners were, and secured their liberation; but their leader, Ignacio
Galindo, was entrapped and shot by the Spaniards,
and the mutiny was soon quelled.[78]
22. But perhaps the most striking instance is that recorded in the history of the insurrection of the Tzentals of Chiapas, in l713. They were led by an Indian girl, a native Joan of Arc, fired by like enthusiasm to drive from her country the hated foreign oppressors, and to destroy every vestige of their presence. She was scarcely twenty years old, and was known to the Spaniards as Maria Candelaria. She was the leader of what most historians call a religious sect, but what Ordoñez y Agujar, himself a native of Chiapas, recognizes as the powerful secret association of Nagualism, determined on the extirpation of the white race. He estimates that in Chiapas alone there were nearly seventy thousand natives under her orders—doubtless an exaggeration—and
[74] Jacinto de la Serna, Manual de Ministros, p. 138. Sahagun identifies Quilaztli with Tonantzin, the common mother of mankind and goddess of child-birth (Hist. de Nueva España, Lib. i, cap. 6, Lib. vi, cap, 27). Further particulars of her are related by Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. ii, cap. 2. The tzitzime were mysterious elemental powers, who, the Nahuas believed, were destined finally to destroy the present world (Sahagun, 1. c., Lib. vi, cap. 8). The word means "flying haired" (Serna ).
[75] Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. ii, cap. 62.
[76] Fr. Thomas Coto, Diccionario de la Lengua Cakchiquel, MS., s. v. Sacrificar; in the Library of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia.
[77] "Trataron de valerse del arte de los encantos y naguales" are the words of the author, Fuentes y Guzman, in his Recordacion Florida, Tom. i, p. 50. In the account of Bernal Diaz, it reads as if this witch and her dog had both been sacrificed; but Fuentes is clear in his statement, and had other documents at hand.
[78] Teobert Maler, "Mémoire sur l'Etat de Chiapas," in the Révue d' Ethnographie, Tom. iii, pp. 309-311. This writer also gives some valuable facts about the Indian insurrection in the Sierra de Alicia, in 1878.
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