page_title: Dogs in Mesoamerican folklore and myth
section_title: The Aztecs and their contemporaries
hierarchical_section_title: Dogs in Mesoamerican folklore and myth / The Aztecs and their contemporaries
context_page_description: Dogs have occupied a powerful place in Mesoamerican folklore and myth since at least the Classic Period right through to modern times. A common belief across the Mesoamerican region is that a dog carries the newly deceased across a body of water in the afterlife. Dogs appear in underworld scenes painted on Maya pottery dating to the Classic Period and even earlier than this, in the Preclassic, the people of Chupícuaro buried dogs with the dead. In the great Classic Period metropolis of Teotihuacan, 14 human bodies were deposited in a cave, most of them children, together with the bodies of three dogs to guide them on their path to the underworld.
  The Xoloitzcuintli is a hairless dog from Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence has been found in the tombs of the Colima, Mayan, Toltec, Zapotec, and Aztec Indians dating the breed to over 3500 years ago. Long regarded as guardians and protectors, the indigenous peoples believed that the Xolo would safeguard the home from evil spirits as well as intruders. In ancient times the Xolos were often sacrificed and then buried with their owners to act as guide to the soul on its journey to the underworld.
context_section_description: In Aztec mythology, the Fourth Sun disappeared in a great flood. A man and a woman survived inside a log and were washed up upon a beach, where they promptly built a fire and roasted some fish. The smoke from the fire upset the stars Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, angering the great god Tezcatlipoca. In his fury, he severed their heads and stitched them onto their rears, creating the first dogs.
  Among the Aztecs, the god Xolotl was a monstrous dog. During the creation of the Fifth Sun, Xolotl was hunted by Death and escaped him by transforming himself first into a sprout of maize, then into maguey leaves and finally as a salamander in a pool of water. The third time that Death found Xolotl, he trapped and killed him. Three important foodstuffs were produced from the body of this mythological dog. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead, had the bones of man in the underworld, kept over from the previous creations. Xolotl descended to the underworld to steal these bones so that man could be reborn in the new creation of the Fifth Sun. Xolotl managed to recover the bones and brought man to life by piercing his penis and bleeding upon them. Xolotl was seen as an incarnation of the planet Venus as the Evening Star (the Morning Star was his twin brother Quetzalcoatl). Xolotl was the canine companion of the Sun, following its path through both the sky and the underworld. Xolotl's strong connection with the underworld, death and the dead is demonstrated by the symbols he bore. In the Codex Borbonicus Xolotl is pictured with a knife in his mouth, a symbol of death, and has black wavy hair like the hair worn by the gods of death.
  The fourteenth 13-day period of the tonalpohualli ritual calendar started with the day ce itzcuintli (1-dog) and people, especially rulers, were fated to be especially lucky if born on this day. The tenth day of the xiuhpohualli 20-day agricultural calendar, itzcuintli (dog), was governed by Mictlantecuhtli, the grim lord of the dead. In the Postclassic, when an Aztec commoner died he had to pass through each of the nine levels of Mictlan, the underworld. Mictlan was only reached after four years of wandering, accompanied by a dog that had been cremated with the deceased. The first level of Mictlan was called Apanoayan (where one crosses the river), this place was also known as Itzcuintlan (the Place of Dogs) because of the many dogs that roamed the near shore. A dog that recognised its former owner would carry him across the river on its back. In some accounts, the dogs on the shore act differently according to their colour, yellow dogs would carry the soul of the deceased across the river, while white dogs refuse because they have just washed themselves and black dogs refuse because either they have just swum the river or because they are dirty.
  In Aztec folklore, the ahuizotl was a dog-like water monster with a hand on the end of its coiled tail. It was said to dwell underwater near river banks and would drag the unwary to a watery death. The victim's soul would be carried off to Tlalocan, one of the three Aztec paradises. A similar belief existed among the neighbouring Purépechas, their dog-god was called Uitzimengari and he saved the souls of drowned people by carrying them across to the Land of the Dead.
caption: Xolotl from the 15th century Codex Fejervary-Mayer
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