# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The White God

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THE WHITE GOD
WHOEVER he was, whatever he was, or whatever it was, the white god of Mexico made possible the conquest of the Aztecs. Nothing but a belief that Cortez might be this Messiah admitted his little army into the heart of a land of haughty, suspicious, if not hostile people who outnumbered his force a thousand to one. Much is due to the craft and diplomacy of the invader, much to his downright courage, much to the awe created by his horses and his thundering arms; but these alone did not conquer the subjects of Montezuma. The Aztecs were victims of false hopes.
In the year 1121 Bishop Eric left Iceland for America, which Leif the Lucky had found over a hundred years before, and never was Eric heard of afterward. May it not be that, repelled by the desolate aspect of the northern lands, or driven by lasting winds, or misled by vague reports as to the new continent, or lured along by the increasing ​warmth and fertility as his vessel coasted south-ward, Eric reached Mexico, and, finding its people tractable and intelligent, began teaching the doctrines in whose earnest promulgation he had found his life-work and won his bishopric? One myth sets forth that a white man with a hooded robe and long beard, carrying a cross, landed at Tehuantepec, on the Pacific side of Mexico, and urged the Indians to perform penance for their sins, make confession, and take vows of chastity. In another version he carries a sickle, condemns all sacrifices except of fruit and flowers, teaches arts, including gem-cutting and metal-casting, invents letters and a calendar, and when there is talk of war puts his fingers into his ears. The Christian faith, or something like it, was taught to these people long before the arrival of the Spaniards, and some of their arts may have had their rise in the instructions of the Norsemen. For the southern tribes were expert in many ways. They had phonogrammic writing, as well as pictographs, they knew the metals, they made splendid cloaks of feathers, they adorned their helmets with precious stones, they wove cotton and dyed it gorgeously, quilting it, too, for armor. Something like a mail and express service was furnished by a corps of royal messengers, who carried picture-writings and goods, running at top speed along the fair roads, and relieving each other of messages and burdens at post-houses. By this means the emperor kept in touch ​with all parts of his kingdom, and enjoyed many luxuries that we are used to think of as modern. He ate fish at his dinners that twenty-four hours before had been swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the arts and benefits of Aztec civilization were the probable inventions of the people, however. They did not know the use of steel, which Eric would have taught them, but employed obsidian, or volcanic glass, for their knives, weapons, and utensils. It is said by the Indians of the Andes that they once had the art of softening gold by steeping it in some liquid, so that they were able to work it into any desired form, after which it would harden; and, curiously, among the gold ornaments found in graves and ruins some bear finger-prints. More of the metal was wrought with hammers and chisels, and the great golden shield, worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, that Montezuma sent to Cortez,—a shield like a cart-wheel,—was richly ornamented with carvings. Precious metals were abundant. The skeleton of an Inca found in Chili in 1854 was wrapped in a sheet of gold. Much that might have been learned of this strange people is hopelessly lost, for nearly all the picture-manuscripts of their schools were destroyed by the Spaniards, who believed that they were compacts with the devil and would work magic.
Thinking how long a time elapsed between the voyages of Eric and Cortez, it appears likely that ​many of the arts and beliefs which may have been taught by the former suffered a change, and that his personality should have been merged in that of Quetzalcoatl, the god of the air, one of the thirteen principal gods of the nation. There were over two hundred others. In his temple at Cholula were two elders, one wearing for his totem a tiger, the other an eagle, and here also was a monastery, the inmates being bound to the duty of praying before the statue of this god for rain, health, and peace. The novices wore black capes for four years, then one of black and red for other four, then for the same term a black one with red border, again the black and red, then black, and in their age, red. They were allowed to visit their wives until midnight, when they were summoned to return by blasts of a trumpet. The same instrument sounded for prayers at daybreak and at sunset.
Before leaving the country to which he had brought prosperity, this god, who was white, bearded, and unlike an Aztec, promised to return with his children. He had incurred the anger of a brother god, and Mexico was no longer a pleasant land to him; so he walked to the sea, carving crosses on the rocks as he went, entered his magic boat of snake-skin, and floated away to his own cool country of Tlapalan, leaving his people mournful. Some of them reported that he had died, that his ashes had been carried to heaven by brilliant birds, ​and that his heart became the morning star. This luminary descended into hell for four days, then reappeared, more brilliant than ever, as the seat of the departed god. The Aztecs soon forgot his gentler teachings, at all events, for they restored human sacrifice, even at his altar, cutting out the heart of their victim, holding it to the sun, then throwing it before the image of the god or spirit that was the tutelary genius of the temple. After this they ate the corpse. At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli in 1486 about seventy thousand captives were slain to appease the deities. Is it any wonder that the consciences of the people were troubled? that they asked one another if the white god would praise them, when he came back, for turning their temples into shambles? Signs and wonders made them doubt afresh at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Eight years before the arrival of Cortez the lake arose, without rain or earthquake, flooding the city of Mexico, sweeping away houses and drowning many people. Next year a tower of the temple took fire, without visible cause, and none could put it out. Three comets were seen, and a vast pyramid of light stood in the east. Voices were heard grieving and whining in the air. A royal princess died, and came out of her grave to prophesy ruin. An Indian was snatched from his field work by an eagle, and carried to a cave where a spirit told him of coming doom, after which the bird flew back with him ​and delivered him safely to the earth where the church of San Hipolito now stands. The king of Tezcuco, who was an astrologer, was asked to give comfort, but could find no promise of it in the stars. No wonder, then, that when Cortez landed, in panoply and with ceremony, the people kissed the boats that brought him, believing that the white god was come again; while others thought upon the prophecies, and feared that here was a white devil.
According to Father Sahagun, the white king-god had of old a temple in Tula, and his image was placed there, lying extended under blankets. His worshippers were expert mechanics and masons: they carved the green stone chalchiuite, and had foundries for metals. In his honor they built houses of silver, chalchiuite, turquoise, sea-shells, and wood, and covered them with feathers. On the mount of Tzatzitepetl the god spoke to his people through a stentorian prophet whose voice was heard three hundred miles away in Anahuac. He never spoke save wisely, and by obeying him the people thrived. They had maize in abundance, an ear of it being all that a man could carry, pumpkins were two feet thick, cotton-bolls opened in a dozen colors, and the birds repaid kind treatment by filling Tula's streets with color and music. Still, Quetzalcoatl had his bad hours, and he did penance for his weaknesses by drawing blood from his legs with maguey spines. Once, when he was ill, the evil god Tezcatlipoca presented himself as ​an elderly man who had a cure for his pain of body and heaviness of spirit, a water of eternal life, and, tasting the mixture, Quetzalcoatl was so pleased that he drained it all, and thereupon became drunk, for this cure was wine that stole the sense and weakened the will, so that in the end the mischief-lover gained his wish. Quetzalcoatl quickly grew old, and set off for Tlapalan, weeping bitterly, after burying or destroying his treasures. His people followed him, playing on flutes, till within six miles of the site of Mexico city, where he rested on a stone, leaving handprints and tear-marks on it that may still be seen. He threw his jewels into the fountain of Coaapan, and rested from the persecution of his enemies for twenty years at Cholula. In crossing the mountains on his way to the sea his dwarfed and hump-backed servants died of cold, but four lads of noble birth followed him to Coatzacoalco, where he parted with them, after making his prophecy of the coming of the new race, and sailed for Tlapalan.
The wondrous success of Cortez's march to the capital made it seem to the subject tribes more certain that it was the god who had returned. He sent his soldiers into the temples and to the tops of the pyramids, to throw down, the statues of the gods that stood there, and this he did, they argued, because those gods had wronged him before he went away. As the great figures came tumbling down the slopes and stairs the people fell ​and cried in fear, lest the wrath of the deities who looked out of the clouds and saw this insult to their images should be visited on the multitude. Cortez placed wooden virgins and saints on the pedestals thus vacated, and the Indians never entreated these new divinities so rudely. At Tlascala the people refused to destroy their idols, as they were called, but were willing to add those of the Christians to their number. A cross was erected in one of their squares, where the invaders were allowed to celebrate mass without interference, and all night a cloud hovered over this cross, shedding light upon it,—a phenomenon that decided the Indians to be converted. At last, in Mexico, Montezuma, once the splendid emperor, now the stricken captive, affected to believe that the men who had repaid his thousand favors with imprisonment, pillage, and indignity were children of the white god, and he asked his people to befriend them. As Cortez sat beneath the Tree of Dismal Night and wept in the time of his besetment, did he think it worth while to pose longer as a god? And when they picked their way among the gory corpses of their friends and children, did the Mexicans believe that any god could be like Cortez?