XBALANQUE‘S MARRIAGE

A dramatic moment in the story of Sun and Moon, as staged by Q‘eqchi‘

attendants of a course given in Tucurú, Alta Verapaz (photo R. van Akkeren)
 XBALANQUE‘S MARRIAGE
A Commentary on the Q‘eqchi‘ Myth of Sun and Moon

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden,

op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P. F. van der Heijden,
volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen
op woensdag 20 oktober 2010
klokke 15 uur

door

Hyacinthus Edwinus Maria Braakhuis

geboren te Haarlem
in 1952
Promotiecommissie

Promotoren: Prof. Dr. J. Oosten

Prof. Dr. W. van Beek, Universiteit Tilburg
Overige leden: Prof. Dr. N. Grube, Universiteit Bonn
Dr. F. Jara Gómez, Universiteit Utrecht
Dr. J. Jansen

Cover design: Bruno Braakhuis

Printing: Ipskamp Drukkers, Enschede
To the memory of Carlos Roberto Coy Oxom
 vi

CONTENTS

Contents vi

Acknowledgement x

General Introduction 1

1. Introduction to the Q’eqchi’ Sun and Moon Myth 21

Main Sources 21
Tale Structure 24
Main Actors 26
The Hero
The Older Brother
The Old Adoptive Mother
The Father-in-Law
The Maiden
The Maiden‘s Second Husband

2. The Early Life of Sun and His Brother 41

The Old Adoptive Mother and the Age of Cannibalism 43
Cannibalistic Appropriation of Children
Adoption and Denial of Ancestry
The Tapir Connection 50
The Voracious Partner
Killing the Partner
The Myth Mirrored: An Adultery Tale
Confronting and Subduing Old Woman 59
Sexual Antagonism
Warlike Antagonism
Destinies of the Meat
Cannibalism‘s Confinement
 vii

3. Sixteenth-century Sacrificial and Cannibalistic Motifs

in the Adoption Episode 75
Kidnapping Babies: Child Sacrifices 76
Eating the Tapir Lover: A War Ritual 80
Guarding the Trophy Tree: Headhunting 85
Eating Old Adoptive Mother: ‗Cannibalism by Trickery‘ 88

4. Hummingbird as a War Lord and Mountain Mover 93

Xbalanque 93
Pre-Spanish War God
Xbalanque Demonized
Oyew Achi 97
Quiche Uinac in the ‗Rabinal Achi‘
Kaqchikel and Tz‘utujil Intruders in the ‗Quiche Uinac‘ Dances
The Quiche Uinac in the Poqomchi‘ ‗Ma‘Muun‘ Dance
Oyew Achi (Quiche Uinac) in Folklore
Fierce Warrior and Hummingbird Tales Compared 108

5. Hummingbird as a Marriage Candidate 110

The Meaning of the Hummingbird Transformation 111
Petitioning and Bridal Service 116
General Features
Bridal Service in Hummingbird Myth
Hummingbird Myth in Petitioners‘ Speech
Bridal Capture 132
General Features
Bridal Capture in Hummingbird Myth
Syncretism: The Blanca Flor Tales 139
Blanca Flor‘s Generative Powers
Bridal Service and Peonage

6. Transformations of Woman: Game, Fowl, and Honey Bees 149

From Prospective Human Wife to Animal Wife 149
Hunting for a Partner 155
Male Role: Courting the Game
Female Roles: Seducing and Welcoming the Game
The Owner of the Game as a Father-in-Law 163
 viii

The Taboo on Adultery

Sexual Regeneration of the Bones
Role Reversal: The ‗Grandfather among the Deer‘ 169
The Owner of the Game as an Adversary 172
Transference of the Deer‘s Fertility: Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird Myth 174

7. Transformations of Woman: Harmful Animals 184

Origin of Menstruation 185
Terrestrial and Aquatic Filth
Lunar Cycle and Menstrual Cycle
Rhetoric of Soul Loss: ‗Looking for the Blood‘ 192
The Crisis of Gestation 197
Empowering Snakes and Insects 199
Herbal Substitutions 201
The Curing Ritual of a ‗Serpent Master‘ 203
Sorcery and Intrusive Magic 206
‗Biters and Destroyers‘
‗Fever Vessels‘
Another Pregnancy
The ‗Lust of Creation‘ and the Origin of Disease 212

8. Transformations of Woman: Maize Seeds 215

Hummingbird Myth as a Maize Mountain Myth 215
The Storage Chambers of the Earth 216
Between War and Alliance: A Perspective from Cobán 224
The Status of the Tale
The Role of the Mountains
The Expanded Maize Mountain Myth of Cobán
The Parallel Gift of the Mountain
The Farmer‘s Marriage to the Soil and the Maize 234
Human Procreation and Agricultural Ritual
The Watchful Parents-in-Law
Repentance: A Ritual Theme
Parallelism of Hunting and Maize Cultivation 242

9. Transformations of Woman: The Immutable Wife 246

Restoring Immortality to Mankind 246
 ix

Regenerating the Gophers 249

The Death God as an Owner of Animals
Founding an Immortal Patrilineage
Nuxi as a Caretaker of Souls 256
The Violet Hummingbird: Final Comparisons 261

10. The Older Brother as a Renouncer of Woman 265

Xulab and the Origin of the Hunt 266
Xulab and the Initiation into the Hunt 271
Xulab as a Lord of the Woods
The Lord of the Woods as a Tutor
Modalities of the Hunt: Elder and Younger Brother 279

11. Moon’s Love Affairs 286

Moon‘s Adultery with the Older Brother 287
Ritual Harmony Disrupted
Moon‘s Bathing Place
Moon‘s Water Jar
Moon‘s Alliance with the Vultures 294
The Vultures as the Original Owners of Fire
The Vultures as Assistants to the Devil
The Vulture Lord and the New Sun

General Conclusions 308

References Cited 316

Appendices 368
App. A: Synopsis of the Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon Myth 368
App. B: Synopses of Hummingbird Myths 392
App. C: Agriculture and Rain in the Tapir Episode 406
App. D: The Old Adoptive Mother: Aztec Parallels 413
App. E: The Spelling of Mayan Words 418

English and Dutch Summaries 420

Curriculum Vitae 431

 x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Like the myth it is based on, this dissertation evolved over many years. A first version
resulted from my work as a research assistant from 1990 to 1995. In the hospitable
surroundings of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology, Utrecht University, my good
friend Rob de Ridder had the ungrateful task of keeping me on the right track. The
resulting text, despite its unmanageable proportions, still missed data that I felt were
necessary for the interpretation of the core episode of the myth. After a hiatus during
which I took up language teaching, I began to publish articles based on the work
completed at Utrecht. My inspiration to resume work on the dissertation came from
trips to the Alta Verapaz in 2003 and in 2005. During my first trip I was kindly received
by Dr. Mario de la Cruz Torres, the author of several intriguing studies of traditional
Q‘eqchi‘ culture, and guided around the Senahú plantation of his family. Visits to the
Dominican Centro Ak‘ Kutan in Cobán, an unexpected friendship with an elderly
Q‘eqchi‘ catechist, as well as the excellent Q‘eqchi‘ language lessons of my teacher,
Rigoberto B‘aq Q‘a‘al, strengthened my resolve to finish the dissertation.
Reorganizing and rewriting a thesis so many years after its inception, and while
not being fully a part of academic life, is certainly a challenge, and I doubt if I would
have succeeded without the intellectual and moral support of a number of good friends.
Discussions with Ruud van Akkeren and Roswitha Manning, both anthropologists
expert in Mayan culture, kept the fire burning. Ruud in particular was my lifeline to
Guatemala. Addie Johnson and Michael J. Watkins showed extraordinary readiness to
help. Their intellectual rigour and sensitivity to shades of meaning were a great example
to me. What flows in the text, probably stems from them.
I had the good luck of finding a congenial supervisor in the person of Jarich
Oosten, whose cautious approach to the data and incisive comments I soon learned to
value. His tenaciousness enabled me to transform a voluminous exposition into a
doctoral dissertation. Wouter van Beek, who already in my period at the
Anthropological Institute in Utrecht had shown a lively interest in my research subject,
shared his great knowledge of myth and ritual with me and encouraged me by his
kindness. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my great debt to the person who introduced
me to Mesoamerican ethnohistory and the Nahuatl language, served as supervisor for
the first version of this dissertation, and most importantly, gave me the vivid and never
forgotten experience of being able to penetrate the marrow of an archaic culture and
think and feel within its categories, Rudolf van Zantwijk. I consider myself privileged to
have been one of his students.
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This thesis presents a comparative study of a myth, originally called the

‗Legend of Sun and Moon‘, that stems from the Q‘eqchi‘s, a Mayan population
living in Guatemala and Belize. The main protagonist of the tale is what has
been called a ‗culture hero‘ (Thompson 1970: 355), a character whose daring
transforms the world by introducing new and indispensable elements. The
Legend‘s hero displays, at the same time, a trickster-like deceit. Although even
in its earliest version, the myth dates back only to the turn of the twentieth
century (1909), many of its themes and motifs reach back into the pre-Spanish
past. It is an important myth, if only for its detail and complexity. Mainly
because its principal actors finally change into Sun, Moon, and Venus, it has
been called a ‗creation myth‘ (Thompson), which assigns it to the same class as
the Aztec myth of the Fifth Sun (made famous through the so-called ‗Calendar
Stone‘), and, more importantly perhaps, puts it on a par with the Twin myth of
the 16th-century K‘iche‘s (part of the ‗Popol Vuh‘), whose protagonists also
change into Sun and Moon.
In the introduction to a recent narratological and grammatical analysis
of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth (and its core episode in particular), it has been suggested
that the text, in its 1909 redaction, ―is for the Q‘eqchi‘ what the Popol Vuh is
for the Quiche, or Genesis for Judeo-Christians – an ur-text – and so warrants
not only careful analysis, but multiple analyses‖ (Kockelman 2007: 309). The
use of the term ‗ur-text‘ may be debatable, but the quotation justly underlines
the text‘s importance as the earliest testimony of Q‘eqchi‘ oral tradition. A key
issue in the present thesis is the relation between the Q‘eqchi‘ myth and the
Twin myth of the Popol Vuh, which is the only extensive Mayan myth known
from the early colonial period, and which has demonstrable roots in the Classic
period of Mayan culture. Whereas the Twin myth has been the object of a long
series of scholarly editions and commentaries, the Sun and Moon myth of the
Q‘eqchi‘s has for various reasons drawn relatively little attention. Notably, as a
written document, the K‘iche‘ myth is the product of a literate elite still situated
within the tradition of pre-Spanish high culture, whereas the Q‘eqchi‘ myth was
not reported until the early twentieth century, and is usually regarded as a
peasant ‗folk tale‘. Moreover, the Q‘eqchi‘ myth is sometimes taken as
 2

derivative of – and thus also, theoretically, reducible to – the K‘iche‘ Twin

myth (e.g., Graulich 1987: 155-159; 1997b: 157, 174-175). The case for a
derivative nature of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth may have been fostered by the use in its
older variants of ‗Xbalanque‘ for its hero, since this is also the name of one of
the K‘iche‘ Hero Twins. In the course of this study, I will argue for the
significance of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth as representative of a distinctive
tradition existing side by side with the K‘iche‘ Twin myth.
This thesis builds on previous work (Braakhuis 1987, 2001, 2005,
2009a), and constitutes the first extended commentary on the ‗Legend of Sun
and Moon‘ in its entirety. Apart from being a contribution to the study of
Mesoamerican mythology, and of culture heroes in particular, the pivotal role
played by the myth‘s female actors will be of particular value for those
interested in the gender ideology of Mesoamerican societies (cf. Joyce 2001).
Also, some chapters are relevant to anthropological discussions of the
conceptualization of animals in what – harking back to Tylor – have been called
‗animistic‘ cultures (cf. Viveiros de Castro 1998, Pedersen 2001), while other
chapters trace the myth‘s relation to curing and black sorcery, and thereby relate
both to medical anthropology, and to the study of ‗dark shamans‘ – a field
recently invigorated by Amazonian studies (cf. Whitehead and Wright 2004).

Since this investigation concerns a myth that is a treasure of traditional

Q‘eqchi‘ culture – a culture now transformed to a considerable degree – it could
prove of value to those most directly concerned: Mayan scholars and
investigators, and also Q‘eqchi‘s and other Mayas interested in their own roots.
The transcultural communication sought is necessary despite its pitfalls.
Anthropological discourse should accommodate a small but significant new
class of western-educated, Maya-speaking Guatemalans who strongly identify
with their own people. The emancipatory ‗Maya Movement‘, known as ‗Maya
revivalism‘, ‗Maya revitalization movement‘, among other names, is sustained
by the National Academy of Mayan Languages (founded in 1986). It is also
supported by a network of local Mayan agencies that capitalize on considerable
international aid and anthropological attention to organize workshops, courses,
and conferences (see Fischer and McKenna Brown 1996, Warren 1998). Core
issues are the promotion of education in the vernacular (e.g., Garzón et al.
1998), the correction of a distorted national historiography, and the redefining
of the relation between ancestral ritualism and Christianity. It also seeks to stem
 3

the tide of acculturation by promoting a ‗cultural reconstruction‘ and preserving

a traditional Mayan culture impoverished by an extended period of state terror.
The movement‘s main representatives hold a variety of viewpoints, but
in general they serve as eloquent yet critical Mayan interlocutors, and often take
exception to past anthropology. Admittedly, there is a marked asymmetry in the
exchange of data and scholarly ideas, and a preponderance of western scholarly
‗decision-making‘ with regard to what is, or is not, relevant and representative
of the state of the art. The difference in viewpoints has found its way into the
identity debate. In particular, it has been noted (Fischer and McKenna Brown
1996: 3) that, ―as Maya scholars have turned to essentialism, North American
and European academics have begun to reject this traditional analytic style,
striving instead for more fluid paradigms that focus attention on the ambiguity
and the many layers of contested meanings that underlie cultural data and its
collection.‖ This observation is to the point, even though ‗essentialism‘ (the
search for what is essentially Mayan) is only a specific instance of a
generalizing discourse that, as such, is hardly restricted to Mayan scholars. No
less importantly, within the dynamic culture area of Mesoamerica, Mayan
identity has always been negotiated.
Infused with ideals of self-definition and self-determination (see Warren
1998: 18-21, 160-162), Mayan scholars often resist what they perceive as a
hegemonic imposition of ‗western‘ categories, as for example the word ‗god‘ to
describe powerful non-human agencies (e.g., Montejo 2005: 47-49). The
assignment by an outsider of a particular meaning to a traditional Mayan tale
may be taken as a claim to a superior sort of understanding, and thus as
unacceptable intellectual appropriation. Given the strongly politicized
environment in which the Maya Movement of necessity operates, tensions
between Mayan and non-Mayan intellectuals are probably unavoidable. They
need not, however, preclude a mutually beneficial scholarly exchange.
The position taken by Mayan intellectuals (modern urban Mayan
scholars, professionals and activists) is in some sense ambiguous. Their critical
attitude derives in part from their tendency to view themselves as the
spokesmen and defenders of traditional Mayan culture. In search of a new
Mayan identity, some of them have turned to the lessons of the elders of the
mountain villages and their ‗Maya ways of knowing‘ (Montejo 2005: 139-157).
The elders, however, sometimes referred to as ‗traditionalists‘, primarily define
themselves in terms of their ritual activities. Their definition of Mayanness is
thus a pragmatic one, not readily interpreted in terms of the urban life of Mayan
 4

intellectuals. For a Q‘eqchi‘ ‗traditionalist‘, for example, the cult of the

mountain spirits – as expressed in the sacrificial rites (mayejak) and the
pilgrimages to the ‗Thirteen Tzuultaq‘a‘, or sacred mountains – constitute the
core of his identity. As one of these elders argued (in Preuss 2000: 14):

―Many say that we are polytheistic because we believe in different

gods, for example, in the mountains. Nevertheless, we are not
polytheistic, but it is just that we respect and venerate all that God
has created, and in this case we are in constant communication
with the mountains, because the mountains exist. They are tall and
they see us from there, and our daily activities, all that we do, they
are seeing our lives. Thus, for that reason we always maintain
communication with them.‖

It is a definition of Mayan identity like this, so hard to incorporate into a

modern way of living, which – as will soon become clear – constitutes the
background of the oral traditions that will here be investigated.
In writing this thesis, I have taken account of recent Q‘eqchi‘
publications and have been guided by an awareness of the crucial importance of
native exegeses – the participants‘ points of view – and of the inevitable
limitations of explanations imposed from the outside. In some respects, this
thesis relates to important issues of contemporary Mayan activism. Although in
the Maya Movement, a certain preponderance of the K‘iche‘ and Kaqchikel
Mayas is noticeable, the idea of a pan-Mayan identity could be taken to imply
that, the advantages of an indigenous lingua franca notwithstanding, no
language group should hold precedence over any other (cf. Warren 1998: 58-
59). The myth treated here, and its central episode in particular, is exemplary in
this respect, since it occurs in different renderings all over the Mayan area, and
– unlike the Popol Vuh – cannot be considered the intellectual property of a
single group. Another issue is the sacredness of the earth and its products, a
recurrent theme in contemporary Mayan ‗self-representations‘ (e.g., Warren
1998: 152-153, Montejo 2005: 67-68). In this regard, the Q‘eqchi‘ myth,
together with its other Mayan versions, provides access to a complex way of
thinking about man‘s relation to the earth that transcends the simplistic
discourse about ‗Mother Earth‘ and ‗Mother Nature‘ that sometimes occurs
within the Maya Movement (e.g., Montejo 2005: 153; Raxche‘ Rodríguez
Guaján, in Fischer and McKenna 1996: 76). It is likely that ideas similar to
 5

those underlying the Q‘eqchi‘ myth were once an integral part of pre-Hispanic
K‘iche‘ culture, too, even though they are not treated by the Popol Vuh.

Map: The Q‘eqchi‘ Heartland

Before setting out the main lines of this study and considering some
matters of methodology, I will attempt a sketch of Q‘eqchi‘ culture and history.1
Q‘eqchi‘ is both the name of an indigenous language and an ethnic designation.
As a language, it belongs to the eastern, K‘iche‘ branch of Mayan languages
(K‘iche‘ proper being also the language of the Popol Vuh). The more than half a
million Q‘eqchi‘ speakers (estimates tend to vary considerably) are widely
spread over the adjacent Guatemalan departments of the Alta Verapaz, Izabal
and the Petén, as well as the southern Toledo district of Belize (formerly British
Honduras). The Q‘eqchi‘ heartland is the rugged Alta Verapaz, an area

1
For the following paragraphs, I have chiefly drawn upon Wilson (1995), Siebers
(1996), and Kahn (2006), as well as on the encyclopedic articles by an anonymous
contributor to the Handbook of Middle American Indians (in Vogt ed., 1969: 237-243)
and by Schackt (2001: 48-50).
 6

measuring up to ninety kilometers north to south by a hundred and forty east to

west, and occupying approximately one-twelfth of the Guatemalan territory.
The Q‘eqchi‘s living here constitute the bulk of the population. To the south lies
the smaller department of the Baja Verapaz, with K‘iche‘-speaking Rabinal as
one its main towns. Until 1877, the Alta and Baja Verapaz together constituted
the Verapaz department. In the southern part of the Alta Verapaz as well as in
the Baja Verapaz, various communities speak Poqomchi‘, a language related to
K‘iche‘ and Q‘eqchi‘. To the north, the mountainous Alta Verapaz gives way to
the Petén lowlands, which until the tenth century were occupied by indigenous
kingdoms in which still another Mayan language (related to present-day Ch‘ol
and Ch‘orti‘) was spoken. From early days, the provincial capital of the Alta
Verapaz, Cobán, has a sizeable Q‘eqchi‘-speaking population represented in a
variety of professions outside agriculture. One of the Q‘eqchi‘ tales to be
studied here was collected and written down by a Cobán headmaster, Tiburcio
Caal. Bilingual Q‘eqchi‘ speakers nowadays play a role in national life. For the
greater part, however, the Q‘eqchi‘s are maize cultivators like their ancestors,
living in hamlets and small towns (the latter numbering fifteen in the Alta
Verapaz alone).

Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth belongs to an ancient culture that,

particularly over the last three decades, has undergone rapid and significant
transformations. Little is known about the Q‘eqchi‘ people and their history
prior to the Spanish conquest. The Verapaz in its entirety, including Q‘eqchi‘,
Poqomchi‘, and Achi‘ Mayas, was known as Tezulutlan. As early as 1530, the
K‘iche‘ and Kaqchikel kingdoms of the Central Highlands had been conquered
(although the pacification took more time), but the Q‘eqchi‘-speaking
chiefdoms of the northern mountain regions were still holding out. On the
instigation of Bartolomé de las Casas, the region was put under the tutelage of
the Dominican Order (1537), and was pacified by Dominican missionaries
instead of the military – hence the name Verapaz ‗True Peace‘ that the Spanish
King bestowed upon the region. In 1543, the most powerful Q‘eqchi‘ leader, Aj
Pop Batz (or Matalbatz), accepted baptism, and in this and the following year,
the three settlements that were to constitute the core of the Q‘eqchi‘ area,
namely Cobán, Chamelco, and Carchá, were founded. The friars‘ effort to
concentrate a population that ranged over the mountains into a few towns was
only partially successful. Both within and beyond the Verapaz, Ch‘ol-speaking
Mayas were still offering resistance. Once subdued, they were settled in
 7

Q‘eqchi‘-speaking places, notably Cahabón, Lanquin, and Cobán. For about

three centuries, the Dominican Order succeeded in preventing secular
encroachment on their domain, while at the same time controlling labor for
small-scale plantations and industries and collecting tribute in the name of the
Spanish king. Therefore, although the local Mesoamerican religion had to
accommodate to Catholicism, the Alta Verapaz retained a strong indigenous,
Mayan character.
This situation of protection persisted until the nineteenth century. In
1821, Spain lost control over Guatemala, which, about twenty years later,
became an independent state. The Dominican Order lost its jurisdiction over the
Verapaz. For the Q‘eqchi‘ population, the advent of economic liberalism (1871)
with the presidency of Barrios was a major turning-point. The Dominicans were
expelled and new legislation, backed up by coercion and brutal force, put
indigenous communal landholdings and Q‘eqchi‘ labor at the disposal of the
coffee plantations that were being established, principally by German
immigrants. In 1877, forced labor was reintroduced; in 1894, debt peonage was
legalized. The nineteenth century saw various Q‘eqchi‘ revolts, and the
beginning of Q‘eqchi‘ migration into the Petén and what was then British
Honduras. In part, the early Q‘eqchi‘ migration into the latter region was an
escape from the Guatemalan forced labor laws; for another part, Q‘eqchi‘
laborers were brought in to work on a local German plantation. Emigration,
especially into the Petén department, has continued until the present.
In 1943, anti-Nazi policies resulted in the expropriation of German-
owned plantations in the Alta Verapaz; the landholdings were partly converted
into cooperatives supervised by the national government. At the national level, a
military coup the following year brought hope to many, but it also signaled the
beginning of a long period of social instability and violence. Between 1945 and
1954, reform-minded presidents tried to introduce social and agrarian change,
but ethnic conflict and violence increased. In 1954, the reform policies were
reversed in the wake of another military coup. From 1960 until the
reinstatement of civilian rule in 1985, there was a slow rise of guerrilla warfare
and of ruthless counterinsurgency policies that, in the early 1980‘s, assumed the
dimensions of genocide and ethnocide. Not until 1996 was a peace treaty
between the national government and the guerrilla organizations signed and this
‗period of violence‘ formally ended.
The Alta Verapaz, particularly its western half, was greatly affected by
the violence. State terror led to the assassination of hundreds of Q‘eqchi‘
 8

leaders (especially Roman Catholic catechists), destruction of about a hundred

hamlets, and large-scale flight from the land to the wooded mountains. New
communities under strict supervision of the army were established, and their
inhabitants brainwashed in a deliberate attempt to eradicate any sense of
cultural and ethnic identity. The polarizing strategy of the army caused enduring
rifts and divisions within the indigenous population. Moreover, the geographical
displacements brought about a general ‗cultural dislocation‘ (Wilson). One
consequence was a partial suspension and lasting degradation of agricultural
ritual, particularly at community level.2
Among Q‘eqchi‘s with some formal education, the horrors of the
1980‘s fueled a strong revivalist trend, fostered chiefly by catechists at the
service of the Cobán diocese. Wilson has shown how their ‗re-invention of
tradition‘ focused on ‗Mountain-Valley‘ (Tzuultaq’a), the collective
representation of the landscape and paramount agricultural deity. Q‘eqchi‘
peasants had sometimes conceived ‗Mountain-Valley‘ as having the outward
appearance of a German plantation owner. Conscious of this, the army had
presented itself as the true ‗Mountain-Valley‘, against whom every resistance
was bound to fail. Now, educated Q‘eqchi‘s reclaimed this ancestral icon of
native power. The image of this deity in traditional Q‘eqchi‘ culture and its role
in narrative will figure importantly in this thesis.
Ethnic identity remained an issue of great urgency after the 1996 peace
treaty. The local branch of the National Academy of Mayan Languages
promotes the production of dictionaries, grammars, and school books in
Q‘eqchi‘, and legislation now allows school education in the vernacular. There
are various projects for salvaging ancestral traditions and the results published
in Q‘eqchi‘. The idea of being Q‘eqchi‘, rather than belonging to a specific,
Q‘eqchi‘-speaking community, is thus receiving strong incentives. In this
context, it deserves mention that an adaptation of not only the Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and
Moon myth (Cu Cab 2003), but also the Popol Vuh (B‘aq Q‘a‘al 1995), a text
originally written in another Mayan language, has recently been made available
to the Q‘eqchi‘-reading public. Whereas only relatively recently could it be
argued that a ‗Mayan‘ awareness did not exist among the Q‘eqchi‘s (Siebers

2
A recent treatment of this period from the viewpoint of the victims will be found in
Alfonso Huet‘s ―Nos salvñ la sagrada selva: La memoria de Veinte Comunidades
Q‘eqchi‘es que sobrevivieron al Genocidio‖ (Coban: ADICI Wakliiqo, 2008).
 9

1996: 58), such an argument could hardly be made today, even though the
awareness is probably restricted to a relatively small educated elite.

The traditional way of life of the Q‘eqchi‘s inhabiting the mountains is

still in many respects similar to that of other highland Mayan peoples, and some
of its salient features should be outlined here. One should be aware, however,
that there is considerable local variation (see especially Siebers 1996), and that
change has accelerated since the upheavals of the eighties. Q‘eqchi‘ homesteads
are usually well spaced, even when grouped in a hamlet. Some of the
homesteads and hamlets are established on coffee or cardamom plantations,
their inhabitants (formerly referred to as mozos colonos, ‗resident laborers‘)
living like peons in nearly complete dependence on their owners, and holding
only small pieces of land in usufruct. Some of the myth‘s earlier versions stem
from such a ‗semi-feudal‘ context. Other Q‘eqchi‘s live on the land of the
cooperatives that originated when plantations were confiscated. Most peasants
rent their land; some are smallholders. There is a certain amount of cash
cropping, but many have to migrate to the plantations to supplement their
income. Spread over the Alta Verapaz are townships (such as Santa María
Cahabón, San Juan Chamelco, San Pedro Carchá) in which one finds Q‘eqchi‘
traders, and in which a small number of Ladinos also make their homes.
Mayan peasant households are generally headed by a father and the
eldest son, whereas the youngest son is likely to succeed the father as the owner
of the house. The land of a neolocal Q‘eqchi‘ family is often inherited from the
husband‘s parents (Siebers 1996: 54). The land is worked on a fallow-rotational
base, with maize and beans as the principal crops. Turkeys, chicken, and pigs
are commonly raised, but cattle (only known since the Spanish conquest) are
rare, especially in the Alta Verapaz itself. The diet is sometimes supplemented
by the hunting of deer, where they can still be found, and of smaller mammals.
The role of the hunt in narrative is, however, particularly in the Sun and Moon
myth, ideological rather than reflective of its actual economic importance.
With regard to the social structure of the Q‘eqchi‘ community, kinship
networks (bilateral, with a patrilineal bias) have limited significance, and
lineages with corporate features are non-existent. This may have been different
in the past. Exogamous lineages and clans with distinct social functions have
been argued to have existed in ancient Yucatan, among the Tzotziles and
Tzeltales of Chiapas, and also in the pre-Spanish K‘iche‘ kingdom (see
Gillespie 2000 and Watanabe 2004). However this may once have been, many
 10

traditional Q‘eqchi‘ communities are nowadays structured by a double

hierarchy of communal and religious offices, the latter chiefly existing within
the brotherhoods responsible for the cult of the saints, first of all the village‘s
patron saint, and rotating amongst the households. Those who passed through
the highest ranks constitute the influential group of elders.

A number of publications of varying scope have been devoted to

Q‘eqchi‘ culture and society, but anthropological coverage has on the whole
been limited and uneven. This is especially true for the Alta Verapaz. Isolated
aspects of the early-twentieth century culture of the Alta Verapaz Q‘eqchi‘s
have been described in articles written by a German geographer-explorer and
member of a planter family (K. Sapper) and by the dominant German plantation
owner of the entire region (E. Dieseldorff). Much later, an amateur historian
(Estrada Monroy) devoted two books to Q‘eqchi‘ culture, one (1979) a
collection of historical documents, or paraphrases thereof, the other (1990) an
amalgam of folklore, customs, prayer, and myth, and a medical doctor and local
politician (Cruz Torres) collected and published a series of Q‘eqchi‘ tales,
including an important variant of the myth concerning us here.
There are a few books of a more anthropological nature that afford
insight into traditional Q‘eqchi‘ culture and worldview. They cover only the last
decades of the twentieth century; several of them were written from a ‗pastoral‘
perspective by Catholic priests. The most important and original of these was by
the Jesuit priest, C. R. Cabarrús (1975), who did fieldwork among the Alta
Verapaz Q‘eqchi‘s in the early 1970‘s in an effort to come to grips with the
moral dimension of their worldview (‗cosmovisiñn‘). Whereas the book
contains rather abstract discussions of general themes (such as the concepts of
‗guilt‘ and sorcery), it also frequently descends to the micro-level, which is so
indispensable for interpreting myth. In a separately published chapter of his
theological thesis, the Dominican Parra Novo (1993) reported on the customary
practices of Cahabón. And two books similar to Parra Novo‘s in their rather
old-fashioned design were published by the Salesian priest, L. Pacheco (1984,
1988).
Only one book relevant to the aim of this study entirely belongs to
modern (rather than post-modern) anthropological discourse: ―Maya
Resurgence in Guatemala‖, by the British social anthropologist, R. Wilson.
Based on fieldwork carried out in the years 1987-1991, it has become a standard
work on Q‘eqchi‘ culture. With a focus on the changes brought about by the
 11

‗period of violence‘ and their consequences for Q‘eqchi‘ identity, the book
includes chapters setting out and discussing the concepts governing agricultural
and healing ritual, as well as an insightful analysis of the changing
conceptualization of the mountains (the ‗tzuultaq‘a‘s‘). By contrast, the author‘s
treatment of the Sun and Moon myth (1995: 104-105) is disappointingly short,
and vitiated by a one-sided view of the tale as a cosmogonic myth: The hero and
his wife are exclusively treated as celestial bodies within the narrow context of
an agricultural ritual, while the deeper significance of their interactions with the
Tzuultaq‘a is not discussed.3
With regard to the traditional culture of the north-eastern, Belizean
Q‘eqchi‘s, one of the main sources for the Q‘eqchi‘ myth studied here is to be
found in a comprehensive, factual 1930 monograph on the Mayas of southern
and central British Honduras (now Belize), written by the British archaeologist
and ethnohistorian, J.E.S. Thompson. The book pays considerable attention to
oral tradition and focuses on two Yucatec Mayan and Mopan Mayan villages,
one of which (San Antonio) included a significant number of Guatemalan
Q‘eqchi‘ immigrants, who probably brought the myth of Sun and Moon with
them. The American anthropologist and activist, Liza Grandia, recently (2004)
published a small collection of Q‘eqchi‘ tales from southern Belize, including
variants of Sun and Moon myth, that shows how much can still be gained by
cooperating with local communities, even in times of increasing
‗globalization‘.4

My approach to mythology can be characterized as eclectic (on

eclecticism in anthropology, see Rapport and Overing 2007: 278-283). I do not
commit to the assumptions of any specific school of thought. Thus, rather than

3
Two other anthropological works should be mentioned. Siebers‘s (1996) valuable
systematic investigation into the different degrees of ‗modernization‘ in Guatemalan
Q‘eqchi‘ communities includes a treatment of several broad groups of ‗customary
practices‘, but does not add significantly to already existing knowledge of Q‘eqchi‘
ritual. Kahn‘s recent (2006) monograph on the Q‘eqchi‘s of Livingston, Guatemala,
while containing a useful historical account and some interesting discussions, is
obfuscated by post-modernist jargon.
4
Other major publications on the Belize Q‘eqchi‘s focus on social structure, in
particular the cargo system and religious diversification (Schackt 1983), and on land use
and agriculture (Wilk 1991).
 12

determined by a single conceptual framework, my choice of concepts often

depends on the issue at hand. The study of Mesoamerican mythology has been
influenced by many schools of thought. Apart from earlier schools that focused
on deities narrowly defined as ‗personifications‘ of natural phenomena (Preuss,
Seler) and that are ancestral to present-day ethnoastronomical interpretations of
myth (Milbrath, Schele, Aveni), these include: formalist, narrative syntax
(Colby); Lévi-Straussian structuralism (Mayén); a much more restricted and
sociologically oriented structuralism (Van Zantwijk); the phenomenology of
Eliade (López Austin); and a more functionalist approach (Taggart). To this list
might be added the esoteric, neo-shamanist currents represented by Prechtel
and, lately, Barbara Tedlock. My own approach, while fitting within the
weakly-defined field of symbolic anthropology, makes use of certain
elementary structuralist notions, though hardly of Lévi-Straussian rules of
transformation (from one myth or mythological complex into another). It is also
functionalist in the broad sense that the myths under scrutiny are assumed to
have a message that is somehow relevant to the ongoing concerns of social life,
whether expressed in ritual forms or not.

The present thesis is first of all a comparative analysis of texts based on

an inventory of existing versions of a Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth in its various
episodes. These tales have often been published in Spanish or English
renderings, which means that they are likely to have lost shades of meaning, or
even part of their message. The other data used in this study are heterogeneous,
and include ritual texts such as incantations and prayers, dance scripts, all sorts
of ethnographical observations, as well as data taken from historical documents
from the sixteenth century.
Three major problems in interpretation have been the absence of
detailed early ethnographies; the lack of information regarding narrative
contexts (perhaps implying that telling the tale was not restricted to special
occasions); and the dearth of explicit native exegesis in the sources for the tale.
Research in the field, whether by Q‘eqchi‘ investigators or others, may yet help
resolve some of these problems, but for the time being they engender the risk of
reducing the richness and complexity of the tales and their interpretive
possibilities by the imposition of analytical categories of questionable
relevance. To obviate this risk and to obtain a realistic idea of the possible
meanings of the mythological events for the participants at any given moment,
two main heuristic approaches have been adopted.
 13

First, the episodes of Q‘eqchi myth will not only be compared with
parallel episodes among other Mayan and, occasionally, non-Mayan peoples,
but will also be situated within a wider range of tales. In each case, the new
narrative environment thus constituted affords fresh possibilities of
interpretation. Examples of this procedure are the various sorts of cannibal and
adultery tales to be discussed in the second and third chapters, the legendary
tales about the ‗Fierce Warrior‘ together with the syncretic bridal service tales
in the fourth and fifth chapters, the hunting tales in the sixth chapter, and the
tales about the lord of the forest in the tenth chapter. Second, an effort will be
made to find connections between the mythological themes at hand and ritual
practices, particularly in the fields of (pre-Spanish) cannibalism, curing,
courtship and marriage, hunting, maize cultivation, and, to a lesser extent,
initiation. In this way, I attempt to do what according to Mary Douglas (1967:
65) is a vital part of the anthropologist‘s task, namely ―to understand enough of
the background of the myth to be able to construct its range of reference for its
native hearers.‖ This is not really very different from what symbolic
anthropology and Geertzian ‗thick description‘ were shortly thereafter trying to
put into practice.
The two heuristic approaches outlined above entail comparisons in
space and time, and make use of early colonial sources on the Q‘eqchi‘s, other
Mayan groups, as well as Aztecs and Pipiles. Such comparisons can be justified
in various ways, geographically as well as historically. Geographically, the
Q‘eqchi‘s belong to the same culture area as the other Mayas and as the Aztecs,
an area baptized ‗Mesoamerica‘ by P. Kirchhoff (1943). Kirchhoff, who was the
first to define this cultural area, resorted to a mixture of traits taken from the
fields of archaeology (e.g., ball game courts) and ethnology (e.g., the divinatory
calendar). Belonging to the Mesoamerican culture area is not just a matter of
sharing isolated features, however, but more importantly, of using basic
concepts and following trains of thought that are sufficiently similar to permit
cultural translation in an area characterized by a great diversity of local
expressions. The concept of a Mesoamerican culture area, as it is commonly
held nowadays, is akin to the view of Indonesia as a ‗field of anthropological
study‘, a field in which the constituent cultures are considered to be
interconnected by structural transformations (Josselin de Jong 1980; cf. López
Austin 1993: 12-15, on Mesoamerica).
Apart from constituting one culture area, contemporary Mesoamerican
cultures, insofar as they can still be called traditional, often show a remarkable
 14

continuity over time, despite the drastic changes that have occurred during the
centuries following the Spanish conquest, and despite selective adaptations of
native religion and mythology to Christianity. This continuity (always in
varying degrees, and in specific areas) is not a romantic fiction. Understood as a
dynamic process of reaffirmation, selection, and adjustment, rather than as a
more or less automatic transmission, the concept of continuity informs much of
modern scholarship regarding present-day indigenous cultures of Mexico and
Guatemala. With respect to oral tradition, widespread contemporary tales (such
as those of the origin of sun and moon and the provenance of the maize seeds)
are but variants of those found in early colonial sources (see López Austin
1993: 16-20). Even the name of the early-20th century hero of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and
Moon myth can, as noted above, be traced back to the 16th century. This same
continuity, in general worldview as well as on more specific points, made it
possible to use contemporary Mesoamerican tales, rituals, and concepts to reach
even further back in time, and decode parts of pre-Spanish pictorial manuscripts
(see for example Loo 1987, 1989).5 For the above reasons, Mesoamerican tales
from different periods may in principle legitimately be compared; and,
wherever their cohesion with more recent material appears to justify doing so,
my interpretive arguments shall include data from early written sources.

As a prelude to an analysis of the Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth,

consideration should be given to the important issue of myth‘s relation to reality
(in its social, historical, and ritual dimensions) and to the choice of descriptive
categories. Basically, myth is here viewed as a model, or mental structure, with
a high degree of autonomy, and which, in the narrative process, is continually
searching for new expressions, yet continues to exist without important
modifications as long as it serves its narrators and their public in penetrating
experienced reality more deeply than would be possible with normal discourse.
For this same reason, the most important mythological genre of Tzotzil oral
tradition is called ‗true ancient narrative‘ (batz’í antivo k’op; emphasis added)
(Gossen 1974: 140ff, 298ff). Instead of reflecting social reality directly, myth
rather operates dialectically. If, for example, the tale stages sexual interactions

5
For methodological reasons, comparisons involving Mayan and Mesoamerican
iconography have been excluded from this thesis, thus largely precluding an extension
of the argument to the pre-Hispanic period.
 15

with animals, this is very likely to stand in a marked contrast to the taboo on
bestiality governing actual behavior; yet, through this very contrast, it can evoke
an ideology according to which the hunt is eroticized. Myth infringes upon the
normal order of things by putting before one‘s eyes excessive, or even
impossible behavioral modes; often, such excesses occurring in a mythical past
turn out to be creative, in that they give origin to new phenomena. In
Mesoamerican hero myths, this finds expression in the murderous behavior of
the heroes‘ aged adoptive mother which, in many tales, leads to the origin of the
steam bath. It is also evident in the excessive behavior of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero‘s
older brother, which induces the origin of wild animals, and in the behavior of
his father-in-law, which leads to the establishment of curative ritual.
In the interpretation of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth, historical analogies will play
a certain role, as will be especially apparent in the Chapters Three and Four.
This poses the question of the relation between myth and history. Just as myth
does not intend to reflect social reality, it is not reducible to historical discourse
– if for no other reason than because it is usually told without the primary intent
of rendering historical events. This point notwithstanding, mythological
narratives will at times contain historical references, and a given pattern of
mythical events may lend itself to a historical ‗reading‘ by the culture‘s
participants. As an example, sixteenth-century tales connected to Mixcoatl (the
father of Quetzalcoatl) that picture him as a nomadic deity of the hunt and that
draw upon stereotypical hunting tales, appear to have some basis in historical
processes through which peripheral populations of the northwest (the so-called
Chichimecs) rose to importance in Central Mexico (see Davies 1987: 423-440).
Indigenous sources stereotypically cast these peoples in the mold of bands of
migrating hunter-gatherers, or savage ‗tribes‘, penetrating into established
realms, and eventually marrying-in and assimilating.6 In reality, the Chichimec
invasions may in some respects have been comparable to those of the migrating
Germanic ‗tribes‘ assimilating within the Roman Empire, or of Attila‘s Huns in
Central Europe.7

6
On the role of the Chichimecs in early-Mexican legend and the imagery connected to
them, see León-Portilla (1967) and Zantwijk (1985: 37ff, and 1992). The unassimilated
peoples living in the far North were more specifically designated as Teochichimecah
‗true Chichimecs‘.
7
R.A.M. van Zantwijk kindly called my attention to these historical parallels.
 16

The early history of the K‘iche‘ ancestors, as described in the Popol

Vuh, invokes an imagery similar to those of the indigenous sources just
mentioned. It may, therefore, be significant that the hero of the Mayan myth to
be discussed in this thesis is another hunter penetrating into foreign territory,
and one who (as will be shown later) can bear the name of a pre-Spanish war
deity (Xbalanque), or assume an ancient military title (Oyew Achi ‗Fierce
Warrior‘), a title associated with the expansion of the K‘iche‘ kingdom into
other polities. However, such instances should not be taken to imply that it is
history that shapes the tale. Rather, history tends to be cast in the mold of
certain myths, which is the main reason why (as will appear on various places in
this thesis) topics from the myth of Sun and Moon recur in Mesoamerican
historical narratives.8
The relation between myth and ritual is a classic and long-standing
problem of religious anthropology, from Tylor and Frazer up to Burkert and
René Girard. The forms that ritual can take are manifold, ranging from highly
formalistic and apparently meaningless arrangements to mimetic performances
directly expressive of mythical events. Wherever a connection with myth is
plausible, ritual can, perhaps, be reasonably assumed to imply its own particular
interpretation of the myth. Considering that the rituals themselves also tend to
attract and accumulate diverse interpretations, the connection should be made
with considerable caution. It will be shown that in several ritual (or ritualized)
contexts, references are made to the actions of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero, or his Mayan
counterparts elsewhere, whereas, conversely, certain narrative moments will be
suggested to refer to ritual actions. Due to the dearth of knowledge of the
traditional Q‘eqchi‘ society of the past, some intended connections are probably
no longer discernible. At times, I offer my speculative thoughts about the
possible implications of narrative and ritual events, a considered view being
more conducive to scholarly discussion than silence. An example of this is a
pre-Spanish Kaqchikel ritual arguably giving expression to an episode that the
Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth shares with those of the Ch‘orti‘s and Pipiles.

8
A possible ethnohistorical dimension of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth has been explored
elsewhere (Akkeren 2000); in this thesis, reconstructions of ancient history will only
marginally be touched upon.
 17

The transition from a mythological discourse of a particular culture to

the culture of academic discourse inevitably poses the problem of translation
and the choice of descriptive categories. In the arguments to be presented here,
the actors of a given myth will at times be referred to as ‗gods‘ or ‗deities‘,
terms that usually are not translations of a native word, but that have their
usefulness within our own intellectual tradition. There is no ready equivalent of
the category ‗god‘ in Q‘eqchi‘: Bible translations use ‗Dios‘ or Qajaw ‗Our
Father‘ instead, and in Mayan narratives such terms as ‗owners‘ (Sp. dueños;
Q‘eqchi‘ aj eechal) or even ‗saints‘ (the Mopan Sun hero is called ‗Santo K‘in‘)
are more common. Although ‗god‘ does translate into other Mayan languages
(such as K‘iche‘ and Yucatec), the semantic reach of such Mayan terms is likely
to be more in line with that of Aztec teotl than with that of ‗deity‘ in its
traditional Western usage. It has been suggested (Monaghan 2000: 27) that the
Mesoamerican notion of ‗deity‘ should be viewed as being ‗pantheistic‘ rather
than ‗polytheistic‘, meaning that deities are like the emanations of a central life
force that can easily merge and separate.
In using certain terms, the precedence of structure over its constituent
elements in generating meaning must be respected, and undue identifications
between elements precluded. At times, a deity will, perhaps, be stated to
‗personify‘ the earth or some force of nature. This is a way of speaking,
common enough in Mesoamericanist scholarship, which should not be
misunderstood. The same holds true for a predication like ‗god of X‘ (which I
have generally tried to avoid). Such terms should not be taken as implying a
one-to-one relationship between the deity and the phenomenon concerned (even
less any vision of a fixed ‗pantheon‘), nor should any further qualification of a
deity be assumed to reflect an essentialist assumption of homogeneity. Often,
‗personification' is equivalent to ‗being the person-like transformation‘ of
something that in principle could assume an indefinite number of shapes. More
generally, when I state that ‗A represents (or is representative of) B‘ – say, the
earth – then I usually intend to indicate that A and B are intimately connected
rather than identical.
As with deities, animals often have a considerable semantic complexity,
and the above remarks apply equally to their predication. In Q‘eqchi‘ myth,
many episodes have their characteristic animals. If, within the framework of a
specific episode, I were to highlight a certain aspect of the tapir by calling it a
‗phallic animal‘, this should not preclude entirely different connotations in other
contexts.
 18

Similarly, in comparing mythological characters from different tales, a

formula such as ‗A is the counterpart of B‘, or ‗A corresponds to B‘, is
intended, not to imply full identity, but rather to establish comparability. The
characters concerned are assumed to occupy comparable structural positions
within a narrative frame and to share a number of basic qualities (say, of age or
social function) without being identical. The purpose of such comparisons may
be that of assessing the degree of variability within a given narrative structure.

With these preliminaries in mind, we may now turn to the Q‘eqchi‘ tale
of Sun and Moon itself. The tale owes its restricted familiarity to J.E.S.
Thompson (1898-1975), the leading figure of Mayan studies well into the
1960‘s. As already stated, in 1930, he published one of the myth‘s most
important variants, to which he returned in two studies, respectively nine and
forty years later. His 1939 study, ‗The Moon Goddess in Middle America‘, is an
analysis of the various functions of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth‘s main female
protagonist, ‗functions‘ in the loose sense of spheres of action (such as sex and
procreation, water and earth, weaving), which include connections with various
animals. These ‗functions‘ of the Q‘eqchi‘ ‘Moon Goddess‘ are compared to
those of goddesses chiefly stemming from Yucatec, Lacandon, and K‘iche‘
Mayan groups, as well as from the Aztecs. Several of the specific parallels
indicated are now outdated, but Thompson‘s conclusion that the Q‘eqchi‘
goddess has not only Tlazolteotl, but also the ‗love goddess‘ Xochiquetzal for
an Aztec counterpart is still relevant.
Much later, in his 1970 essay entitled ‗Maya Creation Myths‘ (a chapter
of his book ‗Maya History and Religion‘), Thompson embedded his favorite
tale in a wider context of Mesoamerican myths, focusing on episodes and
narrative motifs rather than on the protagonists‘ functions. Of the study‘s forty
pages or so, by far the largest part is devoted to tales dealing with the creation
and destruction of worlds and the discovery of maize; the remainder concerns
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, while summarizing parallel episodes among other Mayan and
Mesoamerican (especially Oaxacan) groups. The Popol Vuh Twin myth is
relatively unimportant here, except for the fact that its heroes end up by
becoming sun and moon. In a final commentary (final also in the sense that
Thompson died five years after the book‘s appearance, without having returned
to the issue), a series of ‗dominant motifs‘ in the tales are signaled and briefly
discussed. The degree of abstraction in Thompson‘s discussion is meager, and
many urgent questions are left unasked.
 19

The tale‘s narrative motifs and the functions of its main characters are,
of course, important, and they will receive due attention in the following pages.
But the focus of the present comparative analysis of Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth is on
what, compared to other Mayan and Mesoamerican Sun and Moon myths,
stands out as the tale‘s most salient characteristic: Rather than as siblings or as a
son and his mother, Sun and Moon are staged as marriage partners, with a
pivotal role being assigned to the father-in-law and to a bridal capture that in
other versions gives way to an extended bridal service. The tale‘s overriding
concern is apparently the establishment of alliance. This notion of alliance
appears to include nature, since the hero‘s wife is changed into certain animals
before becoming the moon. One might therefore question whether the Q‘eqchi‘
tale can be called a ‗creation myth‘, that is, a cosmogonic narrative; for if these
designations are to make sense, they should refer to the intention with which the
tale is being told and possibly also to certain formal qualities of the text. It is, in
any case, noteworthy that the solar and lunar transformations of the protagonists
are absent from the Kaqchikel version mentioned by Thompson, as from most
other versions to be discussed here, which rather suggests that these specific
transformations are secondary relative to the main thrust of the tale.
The myth thus appears to focus on what is a key metaphor in Mayan
and Mesoamerican thinking about the relation of man to the world surrounding
him, a metaphor that can be generalized to such diverse things as the ‗marriage‘
of the shaman to the female spirit initiating him (Tedlock 1992: 48-49); the
diviner to his divining crystals (ibid.), or to the calendar (Nachtigall 1978: 251-
252); the musician to his instrument (Navarrete Pellicer 2001: 71-76); and the
farmer to his chopper (Monaghan 1996: 60) or, as shall be discussed in more
detail in one of the following chapters, to the soil. The alliance theme is at its
most prominent in the main episode of the Q‘eqchi‘ ‗Legend of Sun and Moon‘,
an episode that represents a tale type equally found among other Mayan groups.
I refer to this tale type as ‗Hummingbird myth‘, the hummingbird being the
shape assumed by its principal actor in approaching the woman he is courting.
This actor is typically a deer hunter and, as Thompson has remarked, the motif
of the deer and the deer hunt recurs in all episodes of the Q‘eqchi‘ ‗Legend‘. An
important question will therefore be the extent to which the hunt is portrayed
from the predominant perspective of alliance.

The thesis is organized into eleven chapters. Chapter One introduces the
Q‘eqchi‘ narrative by way of its structure, sources, and principal actors. Chapter
 20

Two analyzes the initial episode, dubbed ‗Deception and Death of Old Woman‘
by Thompson. This part of the tale draws an image of alliance that is the
antithesis of the alliance of Sun and Moon itself. It describes the love affair of
the hero‘s aged adoptive mother, cast in terms of cannibalism and sexual
consummation, and its brutal ending. In Chapter Three, the discussion of some
of the cannibalism-related topics present in the initial episode is extended to the
pre-Spanish period, with consideration of specific ritual and narrative
connections. Whereas Thompson tends to present cannibalism as just one of
several formal ‗motifs‘, the argument here fully takes into account the highly
sensitive and controversial nature of the cannibalism theme, which directly
touches upon our conception of the Other.
Chapters Four and Five introduce the Hummingbird myths. They
document two contrastive approaches to the hero found in narrative tradition,
with the hero being viewed either as a military adventurer or as a marriage
candidate. The chapters provide a sociological sketch of the two principal
marriage arrangements found in the Hummingbird tales and they analyze their
narrative modulations. The main versions of Hummingbird myth are
successively treated in Chapters Six through to Nine. They are focused on the
various transformations of the hero‘s wife resulting from her mating with the
hero; on the social meanings of these transformations; and on their distinctive
ritual connections. Chapters Six and Seven offer an interpretation of the
principal Q‘eqchi‘ version itself.
The final two chapters consider the remaining episodes. Chapter Ten
deals with the Q‘eqchi‘ episode that focuses on the hero‘s older brother, and
more particularly on a deity connected to the hunt called Xulab. The theme of
alliance remains important, but it now assumes the negative form of the older
brother‘s failed marriage. The chapter also considers the significance of the
distinction between the older and younger brothers and its possible relevance to
the organization of the ‗Legend‘ as a whole. Chapter Eleven concludes the
exposition of the Q‘eqchi‘ ‘Legend of Sun and Moon‘. The final part,
culminating in the transformation of the hero and his wife into Sun and Moon,
focuses on the hero‘s wife and deals with the menaces to alliance, or,
formulated more neutrally, with certain shifts in alliance that turn out to have
highly specific consequences.
 21

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE Q‘EQCHI‘ SUN AND MOON MYTH

As is indicated by the sheer number of its variants (appendix A lists about

twenty of them), the Q‘eqchi‘ myth of Sun and Moon is popular in the Q‘eqchi‘
areas: the Alta Verapaz homeland, Belize, and settlements in the Petén. It
consists of a series of episodes, some of which are sometimes told as separate
tales. This is particularly the case with the Hummingbird episode, which relates
the abduction of a daughter of the earth god by a man transformed into a
hummingbird. The variants can be grouped into a small number of versions that
are defined in terms of their constituent themes, such as adoption (in the
narrative‘s first episode), disease and healing, the hunt, and maize agriculture.

Main Sources

Among my sources, the Thompson and Cruz Torres tales stand out for
their completeness (they include all of the episodes listed below) and amount of
detail. But perhaps even more important is the variant recorded in 1909 by Paul
( Pablo) Wirsing from Halicar, Alta Verapaz, and published by Quirín (1966,
1967), which constitutes the earliest known modern source and the most
extensive one to include the original Q‘eqchi‘ text. The adoption episode is
absent from the published text, but occasional references in Haeserijn‘s
Q‘eqchi‘ dictionary (1979) suggest that it formed part of Wirsing‘s original text.
As Quirín states (1967: 175), ―the Kekchí used in this translation is classical
and without mystifications; it contains certain words which, for being seldom
used, have almost been forgotten by the very natives.‖ The noted absence of
‗mystifications‘ (which I take to mean esoteric language) should probably be
understood by way of contrast with the allusive and elaborate style of ritual and
shamanic texts and prayers; yet, as we shall see, the myth precisely serves to
underpin such ‗mystifications‘.9

9
This will especially become apparent when discussing the ceremonial language of
asking for a bride (Chapter Five) and the chant of a healing ritual (Chapter Seven).
 22

Together with two other relatively early sources, those of E.P.

Dieseldorff (1926), a German plantation owner, and W. Drück (in Termer
1930), the Wirsing text stems from the context of the German-owned coffee
plantations in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala.10 The stern German regime,
initiated around 1860, was fostered by the ruthlessly ‗modernizing‘
administration of Rufino Barrios (1873 – 1885), and by the 1930‘s exercised
virtually complete control over the entire Alta Verapaz. The indigenous
population was reduced to a state approaching serfdom (see Wilk and Mac
Chapin 1992: 159-161). In view of the semi-colonial relations prevalent in the
Alta Verapaz and the inhibitions at work in the interaction of Germans and
Q‘eqchi‘s, it is important to make two points concerning the text‘s reliability.
First, Wirsing‘s informant, a Q‘eqchi‘ flutist and drummer, told the tale for the
pleasure of his fellow plantation workers, and, still using the vernacular,
dictated it to Wirsing only afterwards.11 Second, Wirsing had a thorough
command of the native language, and strongly identified with the Q‘eqchi‘s to
the point of adopting their customs (cf. Quirín 1966: 175; Estrada 1990: 107
and 107 n. 182).
The second important variant is that collected by Thompson in Belize.
In his ethnography, Thompson (1930: 135) refers to the two variants published
by Gordon in 1915, which he later assumed to stem from Burkitt (1970: 343),
but which – as recent research by Elin Danien has shown (Danien 2005: 6-7) –
were in fact collected by Mary Owen. Yet, it is not to the Owen variants that his
own tale shows greatest affinity, but to the even earlier Wirsing tale that
surfaces only in Thompson‘s later publications. A close comparison of the
English text of Thompson and the Q‘eqchi‘ text of Wirsing shows that many
passages are nearly identical. Discarding the possibilities that the Wirsing text
has served Thompson as the base for his own 1930 exposition, or that
Thompson has happened to come upon the very informant who dictated Wir-
sing‘s text twenty years before, the most likely assumption is that narrative had
settled into a relatively stable form. For that same reason, the text of the 1986

10
Kockelman (2007: 308) states that the myth was told on Wirsing‘s own plantation.
11
It is curious to observe that the Wirsing variant contains no reference to music,
whereas in other variants, the hero is staged both as a dancer and as a ritual musician at
the 'court' of the King of Vultures (see the Synopsis in Appendix A).
 23

Schackt variant from Crique Sarco, Belize, still remains fairly close to the
Thompson one.
The text of the Thompson myth is from San Antonio, Toledo district,
southern Belize. The village was founded in 1883 by Mopan Mayan refugees
from San Luís Petén (where the Ulrichs collected their variant), a settlement
that already included Q‘eqchi‘ immigrants. Once founded, San Antonio also
took up a number of Q‘eqchi‘s. Q‘eqchi‘ immigrants in southern Belize came
mainly from Cahabón, some others from Carchá, and a few from Cobán
(Thompson 1930: 36-40). The text is a composite of tales told by four infor-
mants: two Q‘eqchi‘s by birth, one of Q‘eqchi‘ descent (though speaking
Mopan), and a fourth (who probably also spoke Mopan) having what Thompson
deemed to be Q‘eqchi‘ features. Thompson (1930: 136) stated that ―the four
versions show on the whole a marked uniformity.‖ Thus, even though the
various episodes (or ‗incidents‘) were also told as independent stories (id.: 138-
139), the four versions seem to have had more or less the same ordering of the
episodes. However, the redacting process of the composite text remains opaque,
notwithstanding Thompson‘s indication of the main points of divergence (id.:
135-140).
In 1970, Thompson returned to the myth he collected early in his career.
The Q‘eqchi‘ sources he excerpted for his overview of Q‘eqchi‘ myth in his
book ‗Maya History and Religion‘ – in the comparative chapter on ‗Maya
Creation Myths‘ (1970: 342-369) – are those of Wirsing (through the
intermediary of E. McDougall), Owen (signed by Gordon and wrongly assumed
by Thompson to derive from Burkitt), E.P. Dieseldorff, and Goubaud, in
addition to the narrative he published himself.
Equal in importance to the Thompson and Wirsing variants, the Cruz
Torres variant from the plantation Rubelpec in the municipality of Senahú, Alta
Verapaz, is part of a collection of Q‘eqchi‘ tales (1965) published by an Alta
Verapaz folklorist (and later medical doctor, provincial representative, and
ambassador) steeped in traditional Q‘eqchi‘ culture. Although the publication
takes the form of a shoddy booklet with a naïve and discursive style
characteristic of certain Guatemalan ‗costumbrista‘ novels and contains
illustrations rather befitting a second-rate children‘s book, there are enough
reasons for believing that the Sun and Moon myth is reliable. ―Usually they do
not know it [the myth] completely and add many passages according to the
season they happen to be in [según la época que esté pasando]. The
recompilation took much of my time, I tried to complete it as well as I could.
 24

Without any doubt there must be passages which have disappeared already‖
(1965: 341). The text explains obscure points in other variants,12 and is most
complete on one essential point, namely the origin of disease. Other
publications of Mario de la Cruz Torres have also proven to be valuable, and
shall be cited in due course.

Tale Structure

The narrative material can be divided into episodes, or semantic units of

discourse defined by a specific arrangement of actors and a distinctive focus or
theme. These episodes are as follows:

A. Destiny of the Hero.

B. Adoption by an Old Woman.
C. Marriage of the Older Brother.
D. Encounter with the Mother.
E. Abduction of the Mountain God‘s Daughter.
F. Wife‘s Adultery with the Elder Brother.
G. Wife‘s Elopement and Marriage with the Devil.
H. Installation of Sun and Moon.

The narrative appears to have included other episodes as well, two of

which are mentioned by Estrada Monroy (1990: 140): (a) ‗The voyage of
Balamk‘e to look at his sowings and the intrigues of the girl-friends of Kana‘
Po‘ ; (b) ‗The origin of the female servants and of the Patrñn of Kana‘ Po‘. I
shall now first sketch the bare outlines of each of the eight episodes (all present
in the 1930 Thompson variant) and briefly comment on their position within
Mesoamerican narrative tradition.13
A. The first episode is really a preamble. The hero is appointed to
become the successor of a previous Sun.

12
E.g., the stone fountain in which Sun empties the thirteen jars (Owen) and the lizard
running between Xkitza‘s legs (Thompson).
13
A synopsis of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth in its entirety will be found in Appendix A. It will
give the reader an easy access to the mythological material discussed and a grasp of the
existing variation, thus enabling him to make his own judgments about the choices
made in the course of the various arguments.
 25

B. The first true episode relates the birth of the two brothers, the
separation from their mother, and the adoption by an old woman who later starts
to deprive them of their food, which she gives to her lover. Both adoptive
parents are killed.
C. The Older Brother marries, but favors his animals over his wife. The
marriage falls apart, and the Older Brother rejoins his escaping animals.
D. The Younger Brother sets out to find a wife, but first meets his
mother. His mother wants him to stay, but he takes leave of her.14
E. The hero (the Younger Brother) assumes the shape of a
hummingbird, and abducts the daughter of the god of Mountain and Valley. The
woman is killed by her father, changed into snakes and insects, but recovers her
original shape. In some variants she is then transformed into the moon, just as
her husband is transformed into the sun.15 In other variants (see G), this
transformation is postponed.
F. Moon commits adultery with her brother-in-law. Both are punished.
G. Moon flees to the vultures and marries their king (the Devil). The hero
defeats the king and regains his wife. In the main variants, the hero and his wife are
then transformed into sun and moon.
H. The final episode takes the form of an epilogue. At first, Sun and
Moon cannot move, and Moon‘s light is too bright. These shortcomings are
remedied.
It goes almost without saying, that most of the above episodes show
similarities to other Mesoamerican narratives. Such parallels, when relevant,
will be discussed in due course; here a brief mentioning must suffice. The
notion of a previous sun is particularly prominent in Aztec mythology, as well
as, in a more restricted form, in contemporary Chiapas Maya mythology. The
illegitimate (or, at least, peculiar) birth of the brothers, their adoption, the
struggle with their old adoptive mother, and the hero‘s encounter with the lost
mother recur in some form in other hero myths as well, both within and beyond
the Mayan area. This is less commonly the case with the hero‘s marriage in

14
This brief episode will be discussed together with the preceding one in Chapter Ten.
15
Kockelman (2007: 337-338 and table 6) suggests that events within this episode have
been distributed over exactly twenty days, an important structural number. This
suggestion would, however, seem to be insufficiently supported by temporal markers
within the narrative text, and to disregard the distinction between a text written to be
read and one recording an oral performance.
 26

Q‘eqchi‘ myth and its main Mayan versions; however, important tales do exist
in which an ancestor marries the daughter(s) of a deity, usually one connected to
the soil and the rain. As will be noted, some of these marriage tales are clearly
syncretic (Blanca Flor). Within Mesoamerica, the adultery episode and the
expedition to the town of the vultures seem to be represented only in Q‘eqchi‘
myth. In the final sections of the narrative, the actions of the hero and his wife
become much more restricted: They have changed into as yet defective astral
bodies, and insofar as they still act, the actions serve only to correct existing
deficiencies. Here, Mesoamerican narratives offer many variations, depending
in part on the precise agnatic relationship assumed to exist between sun and
moon.
The episode of the hero‘s transformation into a hummingbird and his
abduction of a daughter of the mountain deity is often told as a separate tale. In
his ‗Mayan Creation Myths‘ mentioned above, Thompson included several
versions current among other Mayan groups. These various Hummingbird tales,
their coherence, and their distinctive messages will form a large part of this
study.16

Main Actors

To facilitate the discussion of the various episodes, which will entail

comparisons with myths of other Mayan and non-Mayan peoples, as well as for
ease of reference, the main actors of Q‘eqchi‘ myth will first be considered in
their order of appearance: the principal hero, his elder brother, his old adoptive
mother, his prospective father-in-law, his bride and wife, and his wife‘s second
husband (with whom his wife elopes). These ‗actors‘ coincide with the roles to
be played, which are assigned to specific ‗characters‘. As has been explained in
the general introduction, the qualification of these characters as ‗gods‘,
‗goddesses‘, or ‗deities‘ does not reflect an essentialist stance. It tends to qualify
the characters so denoted as potential objects of cultic behavior.

16
In Appendices A and B, the variants of Hummingbird myth have been listed and the
main versions summarized. The abbreviations of author names between parentheses as
used in this chapter refer to Appendix A.
 27

The Hero
The term ‗hero‘ will be used here both in the sense of (a) culture heroes,
i.e., intermediaries who help to make natural products available and useful for
mankind, and who introduce important features of civilized life, and (b) war
heroes and monster slayers, who defy Earth Owners and fight the
representatives of primordial cannibalism, the god of black sorcery, snakes and
eagles, etc. Unlike the Popol Vuh, which couples Xbalanque to Hunahpu,
Q‘eqchi‘ myth has only one true male hero, originally called Xbalanque. It
starts as a tale about the feats of Xbalanque and his elder brother, but after its
initial episodes, only Xbalanque remains. Xbalanque‘s brother is then replaced
by a wife, and instead of Xbalanque and a male companion (Hunahpu or the
Elder Brother), we are left with Xbalanque and a female companion.
The predominant hero brother of Q‘eqchi‘ myth is either called ‗(Lord)
Balam Que‘ (Wirsing, in Quirín) and ‗Xbalamké‘ (E.P. Dieseldorff), or ‗(Lord)
Sacqué‘ (Wirsing), with its parallel in Mopan (Lord) K‘in ‗Sun‘ (Thompson,
Verbeeck). Transposed to modern spelling, Saq‘e, that is, Sakq’e (meaning
‗Benevolent [or Shining] Sun‘), alternates with (X)B‘alamq‘e – the q’e element,
with its basic meaning of ‗day, sun‘, being common to both names. (The
alternative would be to take the final syllable as ke ‗cold‘, but this makes little
sense).17 (X)B‘alamq‘e is a name dating from the Classic Period. In early
colonial sources it is spelled Exbalanquen (as in Fuentes y Guzmán and Las
Casas) or Xbalanque (as in the Popol Vuh).18 There are good reasons to put trust
in the sources that give Xb‘alamq‘e (as it will be spelled in this section) as the
name of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero. Neither Wirsing nor E.P. Dieseldorff has a
reputation for playing loose with data. If the intention had been to cast the
Q‘eqchi‘ myth of Sun and Moon as a rival to the Popol Vuh, there would have
been no point in using the name Xb‘alamq‘e in narrative fragments unconnected
to the Sun and Moon myth (see Chapter Four), or in transmitting the anecdote

17
Haeserijn gives under k’e (old spelling): ‗propitious time, divination‘; aj k’e ‗diviner‘;
nink’e ‗feast‘. Sak’e ‗sun‘ is a separate entry, as is que ‗cold‘. In Chapter Seven, the
name xbalamke will recur in the context of an early-twentieth century Q‘eqchi‘ curing
ritual.
18
The initial sound – which in Q‘eqchi‘ need not be present – probably stems from yax
‗precious‘, since in Classic Mayan, a hieroglyphic element of this meaning precedes the
pictogram of the hero.
 28

about a Q‘eqchi‘ plantation worker who, on being accused of the theft of a

tobacco pipe, pointed to the sun and swore an oath on Xb‘alamq‘e (Dieseldorff
1926: 35).19
In addition to these considerations, the name (X)b‘alamq‘e itself
appears to be Q‘eqchi‘ rather than K‘iche‘, since the last element q’e (‗sun,
daytime‘) would require k’ih in K‘iche‘. B’alam can mean ‗jaguar‘, as in
c’ambolay baalam (Haeserijn 1979: 71 s.v. bolay); but in Q‘eqchi‘, the word
commonly used for ‗jaguar‘ is hix. 20 These words for jaguar can be combined,
however, as in sakbalam hix (id.: s.v. tigre). Moreover, Wirsing says about
Xb‘alamq‘e: ―The nocturnal Sun goes like a jaguar towards the East‖ (quoted
by Haeserijn, 1979 s.v. balamk’e). Dieseldorff (1926: 35), however,
emphatically states that, ―in Kekchi, the middlemost sound [of the name
Xbalamké] refers to the puma, but to the jaguar in other Mayan dialects,‖ and
suggests a contrast between the jaguar as a nocturnal, and the puma as a diurnal
hunter. A puma interpretation cannot be derived from the term b’alam alone,
since ‗puma‘ is normally kaqkoj. However, a complementary opposition of
jaguar and puma, and formerly also of jaguar and puma war leaders, is part of
Mayan culture (Braakhuis 1987: 247-248; cf. Milbrath 1999: 95-96), and might
conceivably have served to distinguish the nocturnal and diurnal aspects of the
hero. Within the jaguar – puma opposition, the puma (as well as the puma war
leader) is sometimes considered to be the more powerful (Braakhuis ibid.);
among the Q‘eqchi‘s, the animal is also referred to as xyucwa’il xul ‗venerable
father of the game‘ (Haeserijn 1979: 448 s.v. león).21
Alternatively, Xb‘alamq‘e (and perhaps, b’alam ‗jaguar‘ as well) could
be derived from the Q‘eqchi‘ stem b’al-, meaning ‗to hide‘, as in, for instance,
xbalam be ‗side of the road where one can hide‘ (Haeserijn 1979). B’alamq’e
would then signify ‗Hidden Sun‘, in meaningful contrast to Sakq’e ‗Shining
Sun‘. In that case, the War Twin of the Popol Vuh, Xbalanque, might
correspond to the Moon – conceivably the Full Moon, or ‗Nocturnal Sun‘,

19
It is tempting to assume that the belief in Xbalamq‘e‘s triumph over the Underworld,
prevalent in pre-Hispanic times, may still have informed this utterance.
20
Cf.: sacbolay hix, c’ambolay hix, caki hix (Haeserijn s.v. tigre, jaguar). The
fourteenth day is everywhere among the Mayas called (H)ix, only the Q‘eqchi‘s having
preserved the word as a common denomination of the jaguar (Thompson 1966: 82).
21
The puma‘s title seems to imply a hierarchy of masters and guardians of the game not
unlike that of the Honduran Tolupan-Jicaques (Chapman).
 29

considered to be male by present-day K‘iche‘s (B. Tedlock 1992: 183-184)22 –

and Hunahpu to the Sun. It may well be significant, however, that the Popol
Vuh is not more specific on this issue. The beginning of a new era, rather than
the origin of two celestial bodies, seems to be the key point.
The name Xb‘alamq‘e is the principal name of the hero in colonial
sources that refer to the Verapaz, as well as in the texts collected earlier in the
20th century by P.Wirsing and E.P. Dieseldorff. Yet, even in these last two
sources, the name is inextricably linked to Sakq‘e, the hero‘s name in the short
Drück variant and in later sources. This linkage becomes apparent from various
places in the Wirsing text. Thus, (a) in the abduction episode: (i) When the hero
has disappeared in the depths of the water, it is stated that, ―The sun (sacqué)
was extinguished, darkness descended over the surface of the earth‖, and (ii)
when Xb‘alamq‘e has created Woman and ascended into the sky, cavuá Balam
Que changes to cavuá Sac Que; and (b) in the adultery episode, (iii) when the
hinds of the brocket are left unprotected and are burnt by Xb‘alamq‘e, it is
stated that, ―Very white (sac’sac’) was the speculum of the brocket which sun
(que) and daylight had left‖, and (iv) when the black feathers of the vulture are
burnt by Xb‘alamq‘e, it is stated, that ―[They] remained very white (sac’sac’)
due to the solar burn (c’atóm sac’qué).‖ In contrast to the Popol Vuh,
Xb‘alamq‘e is not the future Moon who accompanies the future Sun (Hunahpu),
or vice versa, but rather the Sun of below, which changes into the Sun of above.
In the above quotations (nos. a-ii and b), Xb‘alamq‘e is at times equated with
Sakq‘e in anticipation of his ascent; conversely, Sakq‘e may have become
Xb‘alamq‘e in anticipation of his descent.
Finally, it is important to keep in mind that, although the solar
association of Xb‘alamq‘e runs through the entire tale, it is merely the narrative
plot‘s outcome. In the Hummingbird episode, the hero first appears on the scene
as a hunter whose hunting dogs are sometimes said to be jaguar and puma
(Curley García 1980: 86), and who is thus hinted to be a war leader. Although
my primary concern is Q‘eqchi‘ myth in its more recent forms, together with its
parallels among other Mayan groups, it should be noted that in the 16th-century
Alta Verapaz, Xb‘alamq‘e (henceforth to be rendered as Xbalanque) was a war
god. Since his name still occurs in certain tales from the beginning of the 20th

22
For the Zoques of Chiapas (Báez-Jorge 1983: 388), too, the ‗strong moon‘ is
associated with the masculine, just as the ‗tender moon‘ is associated with the feminine.
 30

century, we are invited to consider contemporary Q‘eqchi‘ myth, at least

partially, from a war perspective, too.23

The Older Brother

The Q‘eqchi‘ hero is not only a son, adoptive son, son-in-law, husband,
and (at least in principle) a father, but also a brother. The hero and his elder
brother cooperate in the Old Adoptive Mother episode as if they were Twins; in
a later episode, the elder brother‘s adultery opposes him to the hero, and leads to
his transformation and disappearance from the tale. In three variants, the elder
brother is the one who is to become the rain deity, i.e., Choc(l) ‗Cloud‘; two of
these variants (Wirsing and Cruz Torres) are from the Q‘eqchi‘ Alta Verapaz
heartland. The Thompson variant, however, substitutes a deity of wild nature
and the hunt associated with the Morning Star, Xulab, for the rain deity, and
connects a tale that is specific to Xulab to the main tale of the younger brother,
‗Sun‘; this variant is from Belize, and comes from a mixed Mopan-Q‘eqchi‘
area. The two brothers are contrasted with the true children of their adoptive
mother. In comparable tales of the Tz‘utujil Mayas (to be discussed in the next
chapter), the two hero brothers are Sun and Moon rather than Sun and Venus, or
Sun and Rain, and they have many true brothers associated with different
natural phenomena.

The Old Adoptive Mother

The Old Adoptive Mother dominates the myth‘s first episode (given
only by a few sources), which I intend to argue is about the ‗prehistory‘ of the
hunt and of war. She is called either Xkitza (Thompson) or Shan Ni (Cruz
Torres), shan (xan) probably corresponding to xaan or xa’an ‗old woman‘.24
There is no evidence outside of the myth concerning the name Xkitza; about
Shan Ni, we have only the tantalizing tidbit that she was ―of great significance

23
It has repeatedly been noted that among the more recent Q‘eqchi‘s, the sun appears to
be a relatively unimportant deity. Assuming that Sun has not in another sense become a
‗hidden Sun‘, and somehow been syncretized, there could be a historical reason to this
phenomenon: With the establishment of Spanish power, the formation and extension of
indigenous political territories by means of warfare came to a stand-still.
24
Alternatively, xan(il) is defined as the dried rushes or palm-leaves that serve to thatch
a house (Haeserijn).
 31

to the curers [brujos y curanderos], because when they cure a patient suffering
from Fright [susto], or from disease caused by Fright, it is her they invoke‖
(Cruz Torres 1965: 372). A comparison with the Old Adoptive Mother of
Oaxaca Sun and Moon myth suggests some connection with the patroness of the
steam bath and of curing (see Chapter Two, ‗Cannibalism‘s Confinement‘).
The possibility is worth considering that the name Xkitza derives from
the name of a mountain in the Alta Verapaz that is called either Kitzan
(Thompson 1930: 59, 141) or Itzam, ―the softly-modeled mountain range to the
north of Lanquín, which the Kekchi Indians call Xan Itzam or Caná Itzam‖, and
where the Cancuen River rises (Dieseldorff 1926: 21). Various Q‘eqchi‘ tales
show that mythological actors can be projected onto the mountainous landscape.
Although every mountain has a male and a female aspect, Itzam – ‗the old one‘
(Cruz Torres 1965: 282) – is considered to be the only female deity among the
ideal-typical number of thirteen great mountains (Cruz Torres 1967: 282;
Schackt 1984: 20).25 Thus, if a mountain deity is conceived to be married, he is
likely to have Itzam for a spouse.26 In the Adoption (Tapir Lover) episode (Cruz
Torres), the name of the old woman‘s lover, Chisjal, may be that of another
mountain,27 for he visits the Old Adoptive Mother in the shape of a ‗glowing
coal [flying] very high‘, like the fireball transformations (nahuallis) of Xan
Itzam‘s husbands.28 I will now further develop my hypothesis of a relation

25
The name (Xan) Itzam is intriguing. Already in the early Pokoman dictionaries of
Zuñiga and Morán, Itzam occurs as the name of a deity. It is, however, combined with
another name, and written as a single term: IxchelItzam, or Xchelitzam (Miles 1957:
748). Ixchel is the name of the aged Yucatec goddess (a ‗grandmother‘) of midwifery
and curing (cf.Taube about the aged Goddess O, 1992: 105; Manning 1993: 174-175);
to the Lacandons, she is the creator goddess in her birth-giving capacity (Tozzer 1907:
95). The composite name Xchelitzam could suggest that in the rugged Alta Verapaz,
‗Grandmother‘ Ix Chel was connected to the one female mountain, ‗Old Woman‘ Itzam.
26
According to some, the mountain Xucaneb has procreated the other mountains of the
area with Xan Itzam (Carlson and Eachus 1978: 42; Dieseldorff 1926: 21). C‘ana Itzam
is the mother of the other twelve mountains (Cruz Torres 1965: 358). Alternatively, Xan
Itzam is said to be married to the male mountain Cojaj (Coha) (Thompson 1930: 59),
‗Lord of the Pocolá Mountains‘ to the north of those surrounding Xucaneb (Dieseldorff
1926: 21); or to Xecabioc near Xelajú (Haeserijn, s.v. itzam); ‗Siete Orejas‘ towards the
Pacific Coast (Burkitt 1918: 283 n. 1; cf. Thompson 1970: 273); or to Siyab
(Siab/Sillab) in the area of Lanquín and Cajabón (Curley García 1980: 93-94).
27
Cf. Cruz Torres 1965: 104, mountain Chijaal.
28
When Xucaneb visits Xan Itzam, he assumes the shape of a fireball (Estrada 1990:
298). In the maize version, mountain Siyab visits Xan Itzam in this form (Curley
 32

between the Old Adoptive Mother and Itzam Mountain. The correspondences
involve the related notions of hunting, cannibalism, animal transformation, and
warfare.
(1) Xkitza is connected to the hunt, in that she receives the meat of the
game hunted by her adoptive children, and has a game animal (a tapir) for a
lover. Xan Itzam is strongly associated with the hunt: ―In the case of a hunter, if
he is to mention any of the mountains according to the site where the ritual [for
asking permission to hunt] takes place, the most common [...] are Cojaj and
C‘ana Itzam‖ (Cruz Torres 1967: 282).29 And like Xkitza, Xan Itzam is
dangerous. In a Belize tale, her ‗brother‘ Cojaj warns a hunter: ―This old lady
does not have any patience with anybody‖ (Schackt 1986: 181).
(2) Xkitza is a cannibal who attempts to devour her adoptive sons, and
is made to eat the meat of her slaughtered lover, before she is slaughtered and
eaten herself. Xan Itzam is also a cannibal. In the tale from Belize just referred
to (Schackt 1986: 180), she intends to cook a maize farmer who had hunted on
her preserves, and to add his meat to maize previously ground and roasted, i.e.,
to convert him into maize tamales.30 Also, ―tradition has it that she used to eat
people until dissuaded from that distressing habit by her far-off husband [Siete
Orejas Mountain]‖ (Thompson 1970: 273).
(3) Xkitza has the ability to assume the form of an animal. Specifically,
she changes to a beast of prey to avenge herself on the hero brothers. Xan Itzam
nurses such transformers: For a child to grow into a fighter in possession of a
powerful animal companion it should be put for some days in the cave of Xan
Itzam and be suckled by her (Cruz Torres 1967: 281; Cabarrús 1979: 51; cf.
Thompson 1930: 153-154). As babies, the hero brothers of Q‘eqchi‘ myth had

García); and Xan Ni‘ is visited by a lover resembling ‗una brasa incandescente y
altísima‘ (Cruz Torres 1965: 22). Sending off meteors (‗estrellas fugaces‘) to other
mountains is said to be a normal way of communication for Mountain-Valley
(Carlson/Eachus 1978: 42). In Chajul (Ixil), all mountain deities are believed to visit
each other in the shape of fireballs (Polanco 1991: 112).
29
Like any mountain deity, Xan Itzam is the Owner of the animals in her resort, but it
appears that her relation to the game and the hunt is a special one. In one story from
Belize, she occurs as Kitzan in her male aspect and is thereby made into the fourth, most
powerful ‗Grandfather‘, instructing a poor hunter in proper ritual petitioning (Thompson
1930: 141).
30
The motif of the meat tamales will be shown (Chapter Two) to be characteristic of the
folklore surrounding the Old Adoptive Mother.
 33

been adopted by Xkitza as if she were their true mother, and it is during their
stay with her that they learned to transform themselves into animals and to wage
war (Cruz Torres).
(4) In the next chapters, I will argue that Xkitza‘s associations with
hunting, slaughter, cannibalism, and jaguar transformation are sometimes
expressive of warfare. Xan Itzam, for her part, is distinctly warlike. In a tale
about the Q‘eqchi‘s fighting for the liberty of the Alta Verapaz, she is a true war
goddess, fighting with her loom sticks (Cruz Torres 1965: 99-106); in the
Senahú myth of the opening of the Maize Mountain, it is Xan Itzam who
instigates Thunderstorm to turn his violence against the resisting ‗stronghold‘
(id.: 91).
A final, more tenuous correspondence concerns the death of Xkitza. She
is killed, and parts of her body together with her cloth are buried. In the burying
of her cloth, an idea of vegetal rebirth could conceivably be implied, for in
Mesoamerica the female cloth can be a symbol for the vegetal texture of the
earth (e.g., Braakhuis 1990: 128). Concerning the mountain Xan Itzam, ―it is
said that formerly she died every seven years and with her died all creation,
coming to life again after a short interval‖ (Thompson 1930: 59). This short
statement suggests Xan Itzam to be intimately bound up with the life of the
earth, and with its cycle of death and rebirth.
In short, there are several strands of evidence supportive of a hypothesis
connecting the mythological character Xkitza and the one female mountain Xan
Itzam. Though tenuous, they are suggestive and will occasionally find
expression in what follows.

The Father-in-Law
The hero‘s father-in-law is called a mamá ‗old man, ancestor,
grandfather‘ (Wirsing, Búcaro), Tzul-takaj ‗mountain-valley‘ (Wirsing,
Dieseldorff, Wilson), and ‗King‘ (King, Wilson). He is also called T‘actani
(Thompson) and C’aguá Aatán (Cruz Torres) ‘Our Lord Aatán‘.
Whereas, in late variants, this paternal figure is called ‗King‘, mamá
‗old man‘ is already in itself a way to refer to the King, as among the Quichés
(PV 8378; Rabinal Achi, passim). In rendering dynastic progression, the Popol
Vuh uses mam - qahav ‗Paternal Grandfather - Father‘ in the same sense (PV
8367-8368). On the other hand, the Grandfather‘s name, Tzul-takaj ‗Mountain-
Valley‘, can refer not only to the ancestral land (tzulul-tak’aal, Haeserijn 1979:
 34

346), but also to its rulers. In Kaqchikel and K‘iche‘, highland languages related
to Q‘eqchi‘, tzuultaq’a (the modern spelling of this name) corresponds to
juyubtaq’aj; and in Alonso‘s dictionary of early colonial Kaqchikel (fol. 207, in
Breton 1994: 389, 418), one finds ah huyu ah tacah defined as ‗provincial de
una provincia‘, whereas in the Rabinal Achi (fols. 10, 14, in Breton 1994: 59),
ajaw k’iche’ j[u]yub ajaw k’iche’ taq’aj is the ‗king of the K‘iche‘ land‘.
The maiden‘s father, said to live in a mountain (TH) or a cave (WR),
thus appears to be none other than the ‗Grandfather of the Land‘, that is, the
King ruling over his mountains and valleys. As we shall presently see, he is
strongly connected to the realm‘s predominant mountain. It has been noted,
however, that this symbol of an authority equally respected and feared, ―has
been constructed out of pre-Columbian, colonial, and postcolonial experiences‖
(Wilson 1995: 58). Consequently, the Tzuultaq‘a‘s have become assimilated to
the German landowners who became masters of the Alta Verapaz in the
nineteenth century, and some of whose descendants continue to run plantations.
Tzuultaq‘a (as I will spell the name henceforth) is the paramount figure
of the Q‘eqchi‘ worldview. Wilson (1995: 50-53) variously refers to him as an
‗earth god‘, ‗tellurian deity‘, and, most often, ‗mountain spirit‘. He is both the
‗owner‘ of a specific mountain, and its personification: ―The mountain is also
the physical body of a tzuultaq‘a‖ (Wilson 1995: 53), and is thus imagined as a
living, sentient person. As Grandfather Earth (‗Mundo‘), i.e. the mountain and
all that belongs to it, he is ipso facto the primary Owner of life. Vicariously
represented by the King or his representatives in the past, he owns the maize
crops, the animals within in his mountain recesses (fishes, hunting animals, but
also snakes), and mankind itself. The powers of more specialized Owners are
subsumed in his. He warrants the moral life of the community, instructs its
leaders (Carlson and Eachus 1978: 43), often through dreams, and if necessary
applies sanctions.31
T‘actani recurs as the father‘s name in Ixil and Kaqchikel versions of
the Hummingbird episode, preceded by the reverential Ma-.32 Although I have

31
For the various aspects of Tzuultaq‘a, cf. Sapper 1897: 271 -272, 281-282;
Dieseldorff 1926: 16-17 and passim; Schackt 1984: 18-23; Thompson 1930: 59 ff, and
1970: 272-276; and Wilson 1995: 51ff.
32
In Tz‘utujil-speaking Santiago Atitlán, the name seems to recur in Rey Matekateni,
one of twelve manifestations of ‗Martín‘, the general Earth Owner or Mundo
(Mendelson 1965: 89).
 35

found neither a Q‘eqchi‘ meaning for this name nor an eponymous mountain, it
is certainly suggestive that matactani is defined by an early colonial Kaqchikel
dictionary (Smailus 1989) as ‗vallena‘, i.e. ‗whale‘, whereas the ‗Tesoro‘ of
Ximénez (1985: 377), which encompasses Kaqchikel, K‘iche‘, and Tz‘utujil,
lists matactam(i) as ‗el peje espada o ballena‘, i.e. ‗swordfish or whale‘.33 In the
sense of ‗ballena‘, colonial Kaqchikel matactani corresponds to Yucatec itzam
cab ain (Cordemex Dictionary), mentioned in a cosmological passage of the
Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Roys 1965: 101, MS p. 44 C). ‗T‘actani‘,
the alternative name of the Grandfather (or Mountain-Valley), thus seems to
refer once more to the crust of the earth, which in Mesoamerica was
traditionally imagined as the back of a large fish, a crocodile, a turtle, or even a
toad.
Aatán, a name used by the Cruz Torres variant, could be a Q‘eqchi‘
form of the Spanish ‗Adán‘ (see Cruz Torres 1972: 394 ff). The Thompson
variant of Sun and Moon myth (1930: 119) is preceded by a fragment that casts
the ‗old grandfather‘, Adam, as the father of the First and defective Sun. When
a ‗messenger‘ draws his attention to the problems caused by his son, Adam
suggests one of the two adoptive sons of the ‗old grandmother‘, Xkitza, as a
successor. The boy‘s powers are tested and proven to be entirely satisfactory.
This connection between Adam and the New Sun may have influenced the
substitution of Aatán for T‘actani.
For a more differentiated picture of Tzuultaq‘a and his realm, the
Q‘eqchi‘ representation of the mountains should now be considered in more
detail. In a curing text to be considered in Chapter Seven, Tzuultaq‘a
‗Mountain-Valley‘ is alternatingly invoked as ‗One‘ and ‗Thirteen‘. Conceived
as One, as in most of the variants of Sun and Moon myth, Tzuultaq‘a is a
central and predominant earthly power; conceived as Thirteen, it is the
completeness and totality of the landscape that is expressed.34 Of the thirteen

33
In the K‘iche‘ version of Vico‘s Theologia Indorum (1605), one reads in the first
chapter: ―Completed was the creation of the crocodile [ain], completed was the creation
of the matactani-fish by him‖, i.e., by God (Zimmermann and Riese 1980: 613).
34
If thirteen mountains are listed, one should also take into account that ―these thirteen
superior deities have minor representatives in each community; at times, they [the minor
representatives] bear the same name, but commonly, they acquire another one‖ (Cruz
Torres 1967: 282). Thus, everything depends on where one lives, in the core area, or
removed from it.
 36

mountains, one can again be singled out as paramount, though the choice of
mountain can vary from one region to another. This is most clearly seen in
certain versions of Q‘eqchi‘ maize mythology (see Chapter Eight), where the
dominant mountain is either Xucaneb – the highest mountain of the Alta
Verapaz – or Siyab, depending on whether one lives in the core area of Cobán
or in the eastern area of Cahabón and Lanquín. This supreme mountain, whether
Xucaneb or Siyab, commands the others, especially the four directional
mountains with their lightnings. These four directional mountains may also
serve to represent the entire mountain landscape, although the choice of these
mountains seems again to vary across regions. Moreover, even where there is
agreement on the choice of the four mountains, there may be disagreement on
the one designated as paramount. For example, in southern Belize, lying well to
the north-east of the Q‘eqchi‘ core area, the four directional mountains (or
‗Mams‘) are said to be Yaluk, Coha, Itzan/Kitzan, and Xucaneb, and one finds
that either Yaluk or Itzam/Kitzan (conceived in its male aspect) is considered to
be the dominant one, with mighty Xucaneb receding to a secondary position (cf.
Thompson 1930: 59 and 140-141).35
As is suggested by the tale about the theft of Xucaneb‘s daughter, which
is a version of the Q‘eqchi‘ maize myth (see Chapter Eight), these mountains
can represent different mythological entities. One is thus faced with a ritual
topography that recalls the ancient Mixtec system preserved in the Vienna
Codex, while being connected to varying mythological roles. In this case,
however, the ritual topography is no longer mapped calendrically as well, and
complicated by geographical shifts.36 At the same time, these mountains,

35
The location of three of the four directional mountains is given by Schackt (1984: 26
n. 1) as follows: Xucaneb close to San Juan Chamelco; Coha (or Cojaj) not far from San
Pedro Carcha (Dieseldorff 1926 p. 21: Lord of the Pocolá heights, to the north of
Carcha); Itzam between Cahabón and Lanquin (Dieseldorff 1926 p. 21: to the north of
Lanquin). According to Thompson (1930: 59), the directions are: Xucaneb - N, Coha -
S, Itzam - E, Yaluk - W. Indeed, Itzam is easternmost. The real location of Xucaneb and
Coha respective of each other is just the reverse, Coha being to the north of Xucaneb.
The explanation may lie in the fact that during the cold season, Coha substitutes for the
absent Mam Xucaneb (Dieseldorff 1926: 21). Coha is the ‗lord of the seas‘ (and
conceivably, connected to the sea by way of the Cahabñn river). Yaluk‘s location is
unknown; conceivably, it might be the mountain Yalihux in the Carcha district (id.: 22).
36
In this, the Q‘eqchi‘s are not alone among the Mayas; the ethnographic material
concerning Tzotziles and Mames shows a similar ritual and mythological
‗specialization‘ of mountains.
 37

represented in myth as powerful characters, interact as if together, they

represent a complex of shifting political alliances.
The mountains are closely associated with a series of meteorological
phenomena, which are ascribed either to specialized mountain deities, or to
Tzuultaq‘a as an all-encompassing concept. The meteorological cycle is born of
an interaction among these phenomena. Cast this way, this cycle seems to imply
an equation of sleep with the cold season and diminished precipitation, of
awakening with the onset of the rainy season, and of frantic activity (feasting)
with the full heat of the rainy season (see also Appendix C, ‗Agriculture and
Rain in the Tapir Episode‘).The dramatic effects associated with the mountains
are as follows.
(1) Subterranean rumblings. The ‗explosive rumblings from the earth‘
heard at the beginning of the rainy season, in June and July, signify that ‗the
Mam‘ is angered because his bed has got wet (Dieseldorff 1926: 28, 1922: 51).
According to Dieseldorff, ‗the Mam‘ represents a distinct, and frightening
figure. In contrast, the 16th-century Pokoman dictionary of Zuñiga (in Miles
1957: 749) defines the subterranean rumblings (‗trueno gordo [...] de bajo de la
tierra‘) as ‗the Mam who dreams‘ and – though not without reservations –
identifies this Mam as the Mountain Xucaneb. The Mam is stated to possess a
very powerful blowgun (Haeserijn 1979: 219 s.v. Mam);37 in Sun and Moon
myth, a blowgun (sometimes of giant proportions) is also a salient feature of the
Tzuultaq‘a.
(2) Thunder and lightning. Thunder (Kaaq) is visualized as an angry old
man living everywhere in the mountains. Lightning is the effect of sunlight
reflected by the silvery scales of a large fish (xrepom caak ‗flashing of
Thunder‘; Haeserijn 1979 s.v. repoc), which provokes the irritation of Old
Thunder and makes him roar, causing the earth to tremble and rain to fall; then,
the old man falls asleep (Gordon 1915: 108).38 Alternatively, lightning is called
‗the tongue of Thunder‘ (rak’ caak; Haeserijn s.v. ak’) – an image shared with

37
According to Haeserijn, the Q‘eqchi‘s view certain ‗minerals‘ found in the earth as
the stone projectiles of the Mam‘s blowing-gun (xnak’ puub Mam). These same stones
(ru na3 ru pub cakola hay; Coto 1983: 479 s.v. relámpago) were ascribed to lightning
by the Kaqchikeles.
38
Thunder god angered by fish, cf. the Ch‘orti rain deities (‗Workers‘) punishing an
aquatic serpent, or Chicchan, with lightning (Wisdom 1940: 396); the female Chicchan
is partly fish (id.: 393).
 38

Gulf Coast peoples, who add that the tongue had once been cut from the throat
of an alligator (cf. Braakhuis 2009b: 14).
The association of Tzuultaq‘a and Thunder is particularly strong;
according to Burkitt (1918: 285 n. 1), the mountain deities are equally referred
to as ‗Thunders‘. A thunderstorm is explained as strife among the Tzuultaq‘as
(Dieseldorff 1926: 17), and lightning is produced when the Tzuultaq‘as strike a
tree with their stone axes (Sapper 1897: 282). Similarly, the four directional
mountain deities (Mams) referred to above split the Maize Mountain with their
lightning bolts. In Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, Thunder (or, once, a volcano
replacing Thunder) is usually a distinct figure hurling his lightning on bequest
of Mountain-Valley. However, this is not always the case. Thus, in one variant
(DR), the angry Mountain-Valley personally hurls his lightning bolt.
(3) Rain. The rain-bringing clouds are personified in Choc(l) ‗Cloud‘.
His tears are rain drops; from his clouds, the rivers originate (CT). In one
version of the myth (TH), Choc(l) – under the name of his Yucatec counterpart,
Chac – substitutes for Old Thunder as an ally to the Mountain-Valley. In Belize,
the four Mams, including Xucaneb, are said to ―shake themselves in June and
thereby cause the rain‖ (Thompson 1930: 59).
(4) Floods. Floods are a sign that the Tzultaq‘a‘s hold their feasts in the
interior of the earth (Sapper 1897: 282).
In sum, although Tzuultaq‘a is a Sammelfigur (‗collective image‘) for
all mountains, and can assume the aspects of more specialized mountain-related
deities, Q‘eqchi‘ myth has set apart as a single figure Mountain-Valley
(Tzuultaq‘a / Ma-T‘actani), and usually distinguishes the Old Thunder (Kaaq)
and the rain god (Chocl) as separate entities.

The Maiden
The marriageable girl, who is to play a pivotal role in all but the first episode
of the myth, lives in the house of Tzuultaq‘a, loosely called her father. She bears the
name of her father, Matactin or Mat‘actani, with or without the feminine prefix: X-
t‘actani (TH) or Ma-tactin (O-b). In the versions of Hummingbird myth as a whole,
both among the Q‘eqchi‘s and elsewhere, her connection to the earth is amply borne
out by the transformation of her mortal remains into all sorts of animals, desirable
 39

and undesirable, and into the maize.39 Whereas the father is intimately associated
with the mountains and valleys, and is believed to guard their treasures in his caves,
the daughter appears to be a manifestation of these treasures on the earth‘s surface.
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the daughter of Tzuultaq‘a is usually transformed
into the moon, the aged mountain spirit thus becoming father to the moon. This
transformation is anticipated in that the name Xt‘actani alternates with K’ana
Po ‗Lady Moon‘, or Li Po ‗The Moon‘. In most versions, the lunar
transformation is relegated to the very end of the narrative. The influence of the
phases of the moon upon growth is a well-established Mesoamerican concept.
Although, in this respect, the lunar transformation of Tzuultaq‘a‘s daughter
concurs with her association with animal and crop fertility, it also parallels her
husband‘s transformation into the sun, which can be read as a metaphor for
political supremacy. Once the daughter of Mountain-Valley has been
definitively transformed into the moon, she enters upon her cycle of aging and
rejuvenation. Then she can also be referred to as ‗grandmother‘ Po, and be
imagined as playing with her grandchildren (Haeserijn 1979 s.v. se’).
In Sun and Moon myth, Xt‘actani entertains successive relations with a
deer, Xbalanque, Chocl, Xulab, and the ‗Evil One‘. While this appears to
illustrate the sexual looseness and infidelity traditionally ascribed to the moon
goddess, to take such a view is to risk reducing the goddess‘s relationships with
various important deities to mere anecdotes. I will suggest that her ‗infidelity‘
demonstrates primarily the erotic attraction exercised by a nubile woman whose
fertility is sought after by a series of non-human agencies.
Thompson (1939) signaled parallels between Xt‘actani and the Aztec
goddess Xochiquetzal, and these have a bearing on the status of the Q‘eqchi‘
myth within Mesoamerica, as well as on its historic reach. For all that we know
– and notwithstanding Thompson‘s argument to the contrary – Xochiquetzal
was not a moon goddess.40 However, as noted above, Xt‘actani‘s celestial

39
I have refrained from using the term ‗earth goddess‘. Although terms like ‗earth
deity‘ or ‗tellurian deity‘ reflect common scholarly usage, a generalized ‗earth‘ aspect is
usually not expressly formulated by contemporary hero myths; instead, one finds more
specific attributions.
40
The main reason forwarded by Thompson for considering Xochiquetzal a lunar
goddess is her marriage to Piltzintecuhtli, whom he conceives to be a solar deity, and
assumes to be identical with Ppizlimtec, an ancient Yucatec Hummingbird hero (1939:
129, cf. 138, 140-141). See also Chapter Five, section ‗The Meaning of the
Hummingbird Transformation‘.
 40

transformation stands side by side with other transformations of a terrestrial

nature. Xochiquetzal will play an important role in the arguments relating to the
role of Hummingbird‘s wife in the hunt.

The Maiden’s Second Husband

The concluding episode of the myth introduces the maiden‘s husband-
to-be, with whom she has children. The prospective husband‘s role is played by
the Devil, or King of the vultures. The Devil is referred to as Ma-us or Maus-
ajcuink (Cruz Torres), meaning ‗Not-good (Man)‘, or ‗Evil One‘. As will be
discussed in the final chapter, Ma-us is the equivalent of Ahmo-cuali ‗Not-
good‘, the god of evil sorcery among the Nahuas living in the Sierra del Norte
of the state of Puebla, Mexico. Alternatively, the ‗Evil One‘ is called Aj Tzá
‗The Enemy‘ (Wirsing), and is invoked in rituals of black sorcery. The ‗Evil
One‘ is comparable to the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, who was the god of sorcery
as well as ‗The Enemy to both sides‘ (Yaotl Necoc).
 41

CHAPTER 2

THE EARLY LIFE OF SUN AND HIS BROTHER

The Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth as a whole belongs to the ancient world of
hunting, and is focused on the acquisition of meat. The myth‘s first episode
more specifically concerns cannibalism. Two elementary themes are eating
meat and being eaten as meat, not only directly, but also in a metaphorical,
sexual sense. Briefly, the story runs as follows (see also the synopsis in
Appendix A):41 While still babies, Sun (Lord K‘in) and his brother (either Xulab
or the rain deity, Chocl) are found and adopted by an old woman (called Xkitza
or Shan Ni), and they grow up in her household. When they hunt for deer and
carry the meat home, Old Adoptive Mother42 feeds the meat to her sexual
partner, rather than to her adoptive children. In retaliation, the brothers kill and
butcher the voracious intruder and feed his penis to the old woman as if it were
a piece of venison. She then tries to hunt them down, but is killed, butchered,
and eaten herself.
Although the Old Adoptive Mother (best known as Xkitza) is the key to
the entire episode, nearly everything we know about her is in the tale itself.43
Moreover, we have no native Q‘eqchi‘ exegesis of the tale, and little or no
information regarding the setting in which the tale was told; its telling does not
seem to have been restricted to specific contexts. Previous scholarly
commentaries are exceptionally few and rather inconclusive. Thompson (1970:
357-359) called attention to versions of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth told among various
ethnic groups of Oaxaca. These relate how the old woman is imprisoned and
burnt in a steam bath to become the goddess of midwifery. He offered no

41
By comparison with the Hummingbird episode making up the myth‘s main part, the
extant Q‘eqchi‘ sources for the adoption episode are more restricted, even though the
possibilities for comparison within Mesoamerica are vast. I shall make use of texts
provided by Cruz Torres, Freeze, Goubaud, Grandia, and Thompson (see Appendix A).
42
Wherever there is a previous adoption within a group (‗version‘) of coherent variants,
I will use the term ‗Old Adoptive Mother‘. In such cases, I assume the word
‗grandmother‘ to denote an age class rather than a kinship category.
43
The exception being Cruz Torres‘s (1965: 372) tantalizing bit of information that to
the curers, Shan Ni was important since she could cure Fright (susto), i.e., soul loss.
 42

interpretations, however, perhaps because the theme of cannibalism, very

noticeable in the Q‘eqchi‘ version, is quite contrary to the image of Maya
culture he cherished. The main existing interpretation of the antagonism
between the two heroes and their aged adoptive mother is that of Graulich, who
casts the antagonism as an opposition of ‗allochthons‘ and ‗autochthons‘. This
opposition has heuristic value for the historical approach to Aztec myths, but
Graulich extends it to not only the Twin myth of the Popol Vuh, but also,
briefly and aprioristically, to this episode of the Q‘eqchi‘ tale of Sun and
Moon.44 Although I believe Graulich‘s explanatory model to be too narrow, this
is not do deny the existence of parallels between certain episodes of Q‘eqchi‘
myth and passages in ancient indigenous historiography, as both this and the
following three chapters will show.
To explore the features of the Q‘eqchi‘ episode without the constraints
of any specific model, the episode will be placed in a wider comparative
framework, one broad enough to encompass pre-Spanish antecedents. An effort
has been made to discern certain common denominators and tendencies in the
passages of other Mesoamerican hero myths that deal with the conflict between
the hero (or heroes) and their Old Adoptive Mother.45 In the first instance, such
tendencies appear to converge on the female actor‘s possessiveness,
cannibalistically, sexually, and in the field of parenthood. Another, perhaps less
‗essentialist‘ way to view the Mesoamerican Old Adoptive Mother would be to
take her various roles as specific realizations (or transformations) of the theme
of the ‗appropriation of meat/flesh‘ in the areas of adoption, midwifery, sex,
cannibalism, hunting, and war. As regards the Q‘eqchi‘ Old Adoptive Mother,
there is a cognitive dimension to the old woman‘ s behavior as well, in that she

44
Graulich (1997b: 174-175) views the figure of the Old Adoptive Mother (Xkitza) as
being analogous to the Aztec female demon, Itzpapalotl, whom he elsewhere
characterizes thus (1988: 98): ―Itzpapalotl is the Earth, the nativism that wants to devour
the victorious migrants, that attempts to deprive them of their ardor, prevent them from
reaching their goal, and in that way obstruct the appearance of the sun.‖ Torres
Cisneros‘s characterization of the Old Adoptive Mother of Mixe Sun and Moon myth
(2001: 249; cf. also 242, 256) echoes Graulich‘s description of Itzpapalotl.
45
These are chiefly the myths of Kumix (Cume), from the Ch‘orti‘ Mayas; the Jaguar
Slayer (Ohoroxtotil), Tzotzil Mayas; the rain deities, Pipil Nahuas; Sun and Moon,
Oaxacan groups; Sun and Moon, Puebla Nahuas; Morning and Evening Star, Coras;
maize hero (Chicomexochitl, Dhipaak, etc.), Gulf Coast; and other, more legendary and
local heroes (such as Ez, Tepoztecatl, Xigu, Fane Kantsini).
 43

is suggested to confound certain elementary concepts, such as meat and flesh, or

eating and intercourse. The possible connection of the episode with specific
sacrificial and cannibalistic practices of the early 16th century will be
considered in the next chapter.46

The Old Adoptive Mother and the Age of Cannibalism

The Old Adoptive Mother, her animal lover, the children she has with the
animal lover, and her adoptive children (the foundlings) together constitute the
mythical image of a human society surrounded by a world of talking birds and
silent deer. The setting is a primeval world – specifically, the world before the
First Sunrise. The Thompson tale (1930: 119) has a sort of preamble, stemming
from one of Thompsons‘s four informants, that sketches an archaic cycle of
solar ages of seven years, each age being concluded by flood and darkness. One
of the Old Adoptive Mother‘s foundlings is to become a stronger, and more
constant sun. Cruz Torres‘s narration (1965: 21) begins with the words: ―The
world was still dark.‖ In Oaxacan Sun and Moon myth, the triumph over this
powerful woman is usually followed by the First Sunrise. The preamble of the
Thompson tale may lead one to think that the same should be the case in
Q‘eqchi‘ myth. It is a characteristic of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, however, that the First
Sunrise is postponed until not only this ancient ‗Grandmother‘, but also an
ancient ‗Grandfather‘ has been outwitted. Since the Old Adoptive Mother (or
Grandmother) of Mesoamerican hero myth is the primary representative of a
primeval population, various notions – both positive and negative, and not
always mutually consistent – concerning this first age tend to coalesce around
her.47 In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the old woman has sons of her own, but no daughters to
marry off, and the sons have no wives. Alliance and affinity play a very
restricted role in this household.

46
In the anthropological literature, it is not uncommon to find the Old Adoptive Mother
connected to an important Aztec goddess, Cihuacoatl. A systematic comparison will be
found in Appendix D.
47
On the positive side, she can, for example, be credited with the invention of cookery
(Stubblefield and Stubblefield 1969: 47).
 44

Cannibalistic Appropriation of Children

More emphatically than most other Mesoamerican hero myths, the first
episode of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth is about cannibalism. Not only is its
Old Adoptive Mother (Xkitza or Shan Ni) made to eat the meat of her lover, she
also reacts as a cannibal – by planning to slaughter her adoptive children and eat
their flesh cooked in maize wraps (tamales) – and is herself finally eaten by her
sons. A recent Q‘eqchi‘ variant from Belize (Grandia n.d.: 14) says about the
Old Adoptive Mother and her children: ―They are the Ch‘ool Winq of former
days‖ (a’aneb ch’ool winq chaq junxil kutan), the Ch‘ool Winq (or ‗Ch‘ol
People‘) being a race of cannibals with singular powers of animal
transformation (especially into jaguars) and living in the woods as savages.
They represent the unbaptized Ch‘ol-speaking Mayas with whom the converted
Q‘eqchi‘s interacted, both peacefully and otherwise, during the centuries
following the Spanish conquest (Schackt 2004). In other Mesoamerican hero
myths, the Old Adoptive Mother is, often from their very beginning, called by
names suggestive of cannibalism. For example, an episode of Pipil hero myth,
which will be discussed in due course and that is close to the Q‘eqchi‘ episode,
features an Adoptive Mother called Tantèputz (Hartmann 1907:146) or
Tantepuslamat (e.g., Campbell n.d.: 898), meaning ‗Iron-toothed Old
Woman‘.48 The name corresponds to Tepusilam ‗Old Iron Lady‘ among the
Nahuas of Durango (K. Preuss 1982: 87), and also to Jantepusi Ilama (loosely
rendered as ‗Vieja de hierro‘) in early colonial Coapanaguastla, Chiapas (Ruz
1985: 258).49
Alternatively, she is identified as a tzitzimitl, a type of cannibalistic
demon inherited from the Aztec past that was associated both with the dangers
of the primordial darkness prevailing before the first sunrise, and with
eschatological darkness. This tzitzimitl was characterized by teeth like metal
bars (Burkhart 1989: 55, from a sermon by Sahagún; for a detailed discussion,

48
These names derive from tentli ‗tooth‘, tepuztli ‗copper, iron, bronze, metal in
general‘, and ilama ‗old woman‘ (Siméon s.v.). Iron became known only after the
Spanish conquest.
49
Among the 17th-century Zoques of Chiapas (Aramoni 1992: 92), Jantepusi Ilama was
still venerated in a cave, especially by male and female curers. The Q‘eqchi‘ goddess,
Shan Ni, also said to live in a cave, was important to curers as well (Cruz Torres).
 45

see Klein 2000).50 The Old Adoptive Mother of the maize hero, for example,
generally identified as a cannibal, is called Tsitsimi’ilamaj ‗Old Woman
Tzitzimitl‘ among the Gulf Coast Nahuas (González Cruz 1984: 206), or
Tsitsimat among the Gulf Coast Popolucas (Elson 1947: 195), which again
corresponds to the Tzitzimita Old Adoptive Mother of the Ch‘orti‘ Mayan hero
(Dary 1986: 266; Hull 2003: 221-222).
In Gulf Coast maize hero myth, this highly ambiguous woman is
explicitly stated to belong, together with her daughter (the hero‘s mother), to a
stage of endo-cannibalism: In their generation, ―they ate each other‖ (Segre
1990: 324). The Mayas have specific traditions about this endo-cannibalistic
era, of which a Mam tale (Hostnig and Müller 1993:21) provides a concise
model (cf. also Gossen 1974: 331, 342, 346 for the Tzotziles): The primeval
beings lived on their own offspring. They produced children only so as to
slaughter and eat them, sparing two specimens from each new generation to
reproduce incestuously. The very act of copulating and of sexual reproduction
was thus permeated by the idea of slaughter, and a pregnant belly was a belly
full of meat.
The cannibalism of various Old Adoptive Mother characters is
specifically connected to very young children of other people. Thereby, the
endo-cannibalistic infanticide of the Mam and Tzotzil tales seems to have given
way to an exo-cannibalistic one (although it might also be assumed that the old
woman still considers all human children to be hers). The Grandmother of the
Huaxtec maize hero, Thipak, for instance, assumes the shape of an eagle to
kidnap children, which she fattens and devours.51 Alternatively, she offers her
services as a babysitter (Alcorn 1984: 166): Like the Old Adoptive Mother of
the Ch‘orti‘ hero, Kumix (Fought 1985: 141-144), she thereby acquires new-
born children to fill her belly. Their Tepehua counterpart (Williams Garcia
1972: 112) turns the children entrusted to her care into meat tamales which she
subsequently shares with the unsuspecting mother. A different procedure is
followed by the Old Adoptive Mother of the Yucatec hero, Ez: She sells water
in exchange for children, which she then feeds to a large snake (cf. Gutiérrez
Estévez 1988: 71; Helfrich 1973: 63, 128).

50
See Appendic D for a comparison with Aztec data.
51
In Mazatec Sun and Moon myth (Boege 1986: 66), the eagle, although not explicitly
identified with the Old Adoptive Mother, continues to be described as a kidnapper and
devourer of children.
 46

The same atavistic predilection comes to the fore with similar aged
female characters. The Pipil Old Adoptive Mother, Tlentepusilam, shares her
name with the ancient Zoque goddess, Jantepusi Ilama, who is associated with
child sacrifice in a cave (Olivier 2005: 250, quoting Aramoni). On the feast
where she is to perish, her Durango Nahua representative, Tepusilam, is first
treated to a small child (Preuss 1982: 87). Saku – the old woman who acts as a
midwife to the Cora Venus hero (see next section) – is cannibalistic (Preuss
1912: 274) to the point of kidnapping and eating babies (id.: 372).
In kidnapping babies, the midwife goddess, Saku, is like the aged
‗Orphan Parent‘, the main Tz‘utujil Mayan goddess of midwifery, who ―keeps
piles of stolen children at her grieving side‖ (Prechtel 2004: 133). The Old
Adoptive Mother of the Grandia variant of Q‘eqchi‘ myth (n.d.: 14) seems to be
such an ‗orphan parent‘, in that following the statement that she raised Sun, we
are told: ―But from many places, she has twelve small children, just orphans
(…) there is also Lord Sun, different are the names of these children.‖52
Whether these data betray the same cannibalistic intention or represent a more
subdued variant, remains uncertain.
The Ch‘orti‘ and Tepehua babysitting stories, noted above, are
sometimes told in such a way as to refer to the mythical relations between the
Old Adoptive Mother, her adoptive sons, and her true sons – that is, to the
world before the First Sunrise. One of the Ch‘orti‘ mothers visited by the
demon uses the very expedient of the Ch‘orti‘ hero, Kumix, to avoid being
devoured: She wraps up a stone pestle to represent her child so that the old
woman breaks her teeth on it (Fought 1985: 142). One of the otherwise
stereotypical Tepehua horror stories (Williams García 1972: 112) is followed by
the ogre‘s imprisonment in a steam bath and the transformation of her ashes into
stinging insects, thus broadly replicating the structure of Oaxacan and Gulf
Coast hero myth.
The motif of the tamale (steamed or boiled maize dough in a leaf wrapper)
holding human meat can be traced through several historical eras, but it never
separates completely from endo-cannibalistic practices: First, the era before the First
Sunrise in which the endo-cannibalistic ancestors ate tamales stuffed with the meat
of their own children (Gossen 1974: 346, T183); second, the era of the pseudo endo-

52
Ab’an nab’aleb’ sa’ xna’ajeb’, kab’laju eb ’li xkok’al yal xneb’a (…) wan ajwi’ li
qawa’ saq’e, jalanq jalanqeb’ li xk’ab’a li kok’aleb’ a’an.
 47

cannibalistic Old Adoptive Mother who tried to eat tamales stuffed with the meat of
her adoptive children, and then, having herself been converted into tamale stuffing,
was eaten by her own sons; and finally, the contemporary era in which the spook of
the Old Adoptive Mother converts young mothers‘ babies into meat tamales, and,
sharing them with the mothers, makes the latter endo-cannibalistically eat their own
children. Given that endo-cannibalistic reproduction was incestuous, the Old
Adoptive Mother might even be suspected of denying the existence of marital
affinity and alliance.

Adoption and Denial of Ancestry

At the beginning of his life, the protagonist of Mesoamerican hero myth
usually is separated from his parents and then found and adopted. Several of
these adoption stories show a certain mutual coherence in that they stress the
excessive behavior of the old woman on finding the child, or children.
Particularly in cases like those of Ch‘orti‘ and Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the adoption by
the aged woman character could be regarded as a transformation of the specific
kind of cannibalism reviewed above.
Already at the very moment of the hero‘s birth, a cannibalistic old woman
sometimes intervenes. In Cora Venus hero myth (Preuss 1912: 149-151), the old
goddess Saku approaches the ailing mother of the future Morning Star, cuts the
umbilical cord with her sharp nails,53 and throws the baby into ‗the waters of
life‘ (referring here to the Western Ocean). In a more recent variant (Benítez III
1973: 555ff), Saku‘s dangerous, aggressive nature stands out: The old hag first
kills the father, tears the womb of the birthing mother apart with her claws,
pulls the child out, and throws it into a river, from whence it is rescued by a
benevolent heron (a rain goddess). Saku appears to be acting as a fearsome
representative of the midwives in that she delivers the baby and induces its
aquatic re-birth.
In most other cases, however, it is this very sort of goddess that serves
as the hero‘s adoptive mother. The baby, sometimes in the embryonic shape of
an egg, is recovered from the water of a river or a well, and adopted by a

53
Long, sharp nails (―three-inch thumbnails that were sharpened like little claw blades‖)
for cutting the umbilical cords characterized the Tz‘utujil midwives of the past (Prechtel
2004: 128).
 48

cannibalistic old woman.54 Especially in the Oaxacan versions of Sun and Moon
myth, this Old Adoptive Mother typically ends up as the goddess of the steam
bath who is also the patroness of the midwives. From this perspective, the
stereotypical catching of the baby from the water (or from a box carried by the
water) becomes a metaphor for the principal work of the midwife herself.55 But
in other cases, such as that of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the old cannibal woman remains
unchanged to the very end.
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the hero‘s mother ―had been unmarried when she
gave birth to him, and fearing the wrath of her father, had hidden him in a box
close to a stream where he had been found by the old woman, Xkitza‖
(Thompson 1930: 125). This box had probably been carried by the stream; in a
Zapotec Sun and Moon myth (Stubblefield and Stubblefield 1969: 47-48), the
babies are similarly recovered from a box, one which is now explicitly stated to
have been washed ashore by the ocean. Another, quite recent Belizean Q‘eqchi‘
variant (Grandia n.d.: 14) stresses the old woman‘s elation: ―I got a present‖
(wan jun lin matan), a formula echoed in maize hero myth (Elson 1947: 196):
―We found our laughter, our luck.‖ This luck is the unexpected present of a
baby to a woman past menopausal age.
In several cases, the adoption following upon the child‘s retrieval from
the waters of birth is carried to extremes. The old woman suggests to her partner
that she actually gave birth to the foundlings, and, in acting this out theatrically,
seems to be equally set on convincing herself of this.56 In these extreme
adoptions, a strong possessiveness and, implicitly, a jealousy of younger women
appears to be at work. This sort of envy has been reported for the Zapotecs
(Sault 1990: 80), where the possessiveness of older women towards new-born
children is such that it makes young mothers constantly fear the effects of ‗evil
eye‘ on their babies‘ health. The phenomenon is probably a more general one. It

54
For a fuller discussion of aquatic birth and adoption scenes in hero myths, see
Braakhuis 1990 and 2009b.
55
The motif is equally suggestive of the ritual interactions between the midwife and the
water goddess that in Aztec society took place at birth (Sahagún Book 6) and turned on
the theme of aquatic re-birth. Saku demonstrates this in her own way.
56
The figure of the ‗pregnant old woman‘ is not restricted to myth. It is also the subject
of an 18th-century Nahua farce (Bricker 1973: 194; cf. Hunt 1977: 84-86): A stooped
old woman, entirely behaving as if she were pregnant, craves for the thick, white juice
of the agave (a traditional metaphor for semen) so as ―not to have a miscarriage.‖ The
well-known association of pulque with warlike fury seems to be involved.
 49

also characterizes the most powerful of the thirteen goddesses of childbirth and
midwifery recognized by the traditional Tz‘utujil Mayas of Santiago Atitlan.
This ‗Orphan Parent‘ (already mentioned above) is in the habit of kidnapping
children, since, being barren, she ―is extraordinarily jealous of all things female
on the earth who do have young or give birth‖ (Prechtel 2004: 133).
This divine envy of maternal fertility and its concomitant
possessiveness is echoed in hero myth. As soon as she has discovered the
children at the edge of a river, the Zapotec Old Adoptive Mother – significantly
called ‗Childless One‘ (Parsons 1936: 324 n. 26) – cries out to her husband
(Speck 1998: 176): ―Come with my palm girdle, come with my cloth girdle,
because my children have been born‖, the girdles serving to keep air from
entering the womb of a new mother. Even more drastic imagery is used in a
Trique version (Hollenbach 1977: 129, 141): Harboring the Twins in her skirt
(huipil), the Old Adoptive Mother smears her thighs with the red sap of the
crimsonberry, so as to suggest to her husband the blood of delivery.
In Oaxaca, the Old Adoptive Mother usually ends up as the goddess of
the steam bath. That is not always the case, however, and scenes like the just-
mentioned ones are not restricted to Oaxaca. In a Ch‘orti‘ version (Pérez
Martínez 1996: 46), the child hero is first murdered by the Older Brothers
(comparable to the true sons of the Q‘eqchi‘ Old Adoptive Mother), pounded to
pieces, and thrown into a river,57 where he is reborn. The Old Adoptive Mother
(called Ketchuh), believing she hears the bloody foam on the water crying, takes
it to be her own fetus (―my baby just fell‖), and happily retrieves it. The
Ch‘orti‘ idiom ‗my baby just fell‘ refers to miscarriage or abortion.58 The
Ch‘orti‘ Old Adoptive Mother episode is, on the whole, very close to the
Q‘eqchi‘ one.
As is already suggested by scenes like the above, a denial of the
foundlings‘ ancestry is characteristic of the various adoption episodes. When

57
Hull informed me that ―two folks have told it to me where the Ciguanaba [the old
woman] does it, and he comes back to life supernaturally as a baby boy and then she
adopts him‖ (pers.comm. 21-9-2005).
58
The relevant passage runs as follows: ―De repente ella escuchñ que alguien lloraba en
la espuma del rio y corriendo se fue a juntar con la mano y dijo: este puede ser aborto
mio‖ (Pérez Martínez 1996: 46), these last words rendering the Ch‘orti‘ expression ―my
baby just fell [intaka k’axi nich’urkab].‖ The idiom was kindly explained to me by
Kerry Hull.
 50

the children are growing up, they are usually told nothing of their real
progenitors, and are led to believe that their adoptive mother was their birth
mother. Tales about the local hero of Tepoztlan (González Casanova 1928: 18-
19) further elaborate this motif. After her husband has recovered the child from
a box in a river, the old woman behaves exactly like a young woman who just
brought forth a child: She takes the foundling with her to bed and starts to
suckle it. The family pours in to congratulate her and she enters the steam bath
as mothers do upon delivery. The motif is an ancient one, having already been
put to use in a legendary tale about the founder of the Aztec dynasty,
Acamapichtli (cf. Zantwijk 1985: 99-101). Acamapichtli‘s wife, Ilancueitl ‗Old
Woman‘s Skirt‘, is considerably older than her husband. In variants of the tale,
her status ranges from wet nurse and foster mother – the usual roles of the
mythical Old Adoptive Mother – to Acamapichtli‘s aunt or even his mother.
She turns out to be barren. All the children born to the noblewomen of the town
wards (calpolli‘s), however, are made to lie between her legs as if they were her
own, and each time, she is congratulated by everybody as though she had given
birth to a new ‗descendant‘.
In other legends of local heroes, the theme of a fictitious motherhood is
further developed. In Yucatan, the poor and infertile Old Adoptive Mother of
the dwarfish ‗Indian King‘, Ez, walks about begging for alms and is given a
token of fertility in the form of an egg (Gutiérrez Estévez 1988: 105).
Alternatively, she simply comes upon an egg and, after some time, hears a baby
crying (Redfield and Villa 1934: 335). The sequel to this inverts the Tepoztlan
version: Instead of the neighbors pouring in to congratulate the new ‗mother‘,
the old woman goes and visits all her neighbors one by one to find and
congratulate the young mother. She is taken as insane. Finally she discovers the
child, Ez, in a corner of her own room, and adopts it.

The Tapir Connection

In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, as in its counterparts elsewhere, the Old Adoptive

Mother has a partner with whom she had children. To define this partner‘s
identity and function in Q‘eqchi myth and in parallel tales will be the principal
aim of this section. As a rule, the children are male; there are no daughters and
no daughters-in-law. A fragment from a Q‘eqchi‘ variant preserved in
Haeserijn‘s lexicographical material (1979: 325) has twelve brothers eating the
meat of their mother. These are Old Adoptive Mother‘s natural sons, twelve
 51

being a symbolic number which seems to indicate the totality of an

autochthonous population, and which stands in opposition to the twelve
‗orphans‘ adopted by the old woman (Grandia n.d.). Together, the couple and
their sons represent a closed system that excludes the foundlings by tricking
them out of their food. The imagery used is that of cannibalism in its sexual and
culinary modalities.

The Voracious Partner

In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the Old Adoptive Mother has a partner who is her
lover; only in one Belizean variant (Grandia n.d.: 15) is he stated to be her
husband. Although the lover remains silent and distant (living in the
mountains), his presence is predominant. The boys bring home bags full of
birds (Freeze) or loads of venison (Goubaud), but instead of being fed with it, it
all goes to the lover.59 In Q‘eqchi‘ myth (and also in Pipil myth, see Schultze-
Jena 1935: 29), the Old Adoptive Mother smears the fat of the meat on the
boys‘ mouths and under their nails while they are asleep to make them believe
that they have already eaten.
While omitting this specific deceit, other Mesoamerican hero myths
draw a similar portrait of the partner. Three examples make the point: In Mixe
myth (Torres 2001: 242), the ‗grandfather‘ doesn‘t work, he is ‗lazy‘ and has
the twins do the work for him; in Zapotec Sun and Moon myth, the partner eats
thirteen times a day (Stubblefield and Stubblefield 1969: 47), a sort of tribute of
thirteen baskets of tortillas and thirteen jars of food being carried to him each
day (Parsons 1936: 324); and in maize hero myth (Elson 1947: 196), the Old
Adoptive Mother even had to stop her partner from immediately devouring the
egg-shaped embryo of the hero himself, arguing that their cannibalistic meal
should be postponed until the child had grown. In each case, the partner is an
unmistakable caricature of parasitism and greed.
The lover‘s voracity is simultaneously a sexual one, since in exchange
for the meat, he gives the Old Adoptive Mother carnal pleasure, that is,

59
K‘iche‘s (and probably Tz‘utujiles as well) are also familiar with this parasitical
figure (e.g., Petrich and Ochoa 2001a: 27-29), but they seem to have re-interpreted him
as the brother of the heroes, who is finally made to climb a tree, and changed into a
monkey (he thus corresponds to the third brother who, in variants of the Thompson
narrative, remained loyal to Xkitza).
 52

metaphorically, he ‗eats‘ or ‗feeds‘ her.60 A Mazatec Sun and Moon tale

(Inchaústegui 1977: 28) clearly plays on the double meaning of ‗feeding‘ that is
implied: ―The lady did not bring this gentleman his food, but went for
something else, because she went on all fours with her skirt tucked up and said
to that person: ‗Come here, my heart! Come here, my love! I have already
brought you something to eat. Here is your food…‖ .
The unrestrained, unscrupulous voracity of Old Adoptive Mother‘s
partner – who appears to be devoid of human speech – is presented as that of an
animal to be summarily executed. In a Popoluca variant of maize hero myth, the
partner is a fat serpent (Elson 1947: 198), whereas in Oaxacan Sun and Moon
myth, he is usually said, or least intimated, to be a deer. In Thompson‘s
Belizean version of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, some informants identified the partner as a
tapir (Thompson 1930: 120), a large, solitary and nocturnal herbivore.61 This
ethnographic fact has long remained an uncorroborated and therefore somewhat
dubious curiosity. Recently, however, Liza Grandia (2004: 5-7) published
another Q‘eqchi‘ variant from Belize showing the same substitution. Moreover,
the tapir lover recurs in the myth of the Ch‘orti‘ hero, Kumix (Fought 1989:
464), and is also present in Chiapas, as for example in a Mochó Mayan version
of the episode documented by Perla Petrich (in Mondragón et al. 1995: 37).62
Conclusive evidence for the stereotypical role assigned to the tapir in the south-
eastern part of Mesoamerica comes from another story from Chiapas, this time
of the Ch‘ol Mayas (Pérez Chacón 1988: 335-341). In this cautionary tale, a
married woman fulfills the role of the tapir ‗gigolo‘ of Q‘eqchi‘, Ch‘orti‘, and

60
Speaking about the Pipil version, Schultze Jena (1935: 19) gave a more delicate
formulation: ―Der Riese tritt in ein unsauberes Verhältnis zur Pflegemutter der Knaben‖
(―The giant enters upon an inappropriate relationship with the adoptive mother of the
lads‖).
61
One passage in particular indeed suggests a heavy animal: ―About sunset they heard
the earth trembling. It was the noise of the monster coming out of the hill where he
lived‖ (Thompson 1930: 121). According to the Tzeltales of Golonton, the tapir, when
alarmed, stamps the earth with his feet, and thereby announces earthquakes (Navarrete
1987: 242).
62
The Mochó text is in Maya but uses the loanword danta for the tapir. Stemming from
a border area with Guatemala, the Mochó (or Mototzintlec) tale fuses the well-known
Chiapas and northwestern Guatemala myth of Sun and his jealous Elder Brethren with
the tapir-killing of the two hero brothers.
 53

Mochó myth by continually accepting gifts of game in exchange for sex, until
she dies and, in the underworld, is actually changed into a tapir.63
Instead of a tapir, a huge monster (Thompson 1930:120) can assume the
role of Old Adoptive Mother‘s ‗gigolo‘.64 Otherwise, he is the mountain
(Grandia 2004), or the devil, ―with horns and a broad mouth‖ (Cruz Torres
1965: 22), rather like the devils of the syncretic devil dances (who often
personify vices, such as Greed). This devil ―looked like a glowing coal [flying]
very high‖ – i.e., he was the transformation of a sorcerer (the poslob of the
Tzotziles). In the Freeze variant (1976: 25), he is an old man (mama’) who, at
the story‘s conclusion, is identified as li mam, the Mam,65 a term which the
translator rendered as ‗the devil‘. Given his interchangeability with the devil,
also apparent from the Cruz Torres text, the Mam is likely to be the so-called
‗evil Mam‘, a savage deity opposed to human procreation and associated with
cataclysms demanding many human lives, as well as with cannibalism
(Dieseldorff 1922: 50, 1926: 28; Villacorta Vidaúrre 1970: 3; cf. Thompson
1970: 297-299).66 Following Wirsing (in Haeserijn 1979: 219), this Mam can
equally denote the tapir. Like the other lovers, the Mam is killed in a pit full of
sharp stakes, which according to Sahagún (1979: 622, Bk.11 Ch. 1) was, as
early as the 16th century, the way to catch a tapir.67
As an antithesis of sociality, Old Adoptive Mother‘s tapir partner plays
a role, in one variant or another, throughout much of tropical Central and South
America. Loveland (1976: 71), for instance, writing about the Ramas of

63
The circumstance that the gluttonous tapir gigolo is continually being fed with all
sorts of meat may be connected to the fact that some Q‘eqchi‘s call the tapir ‗the beast
of all seven edible kinds of flesh‘ (Atran and Medin 2008: 93), echoing in this the
informants of Sahagún (1979: 622, Bk. 11 Ch. 1), according to whom the tapir
(tlacaxolotl) had ―the meat and the taste thereof of all animals, of birds, and even of
human beings.‖ In the Thompson variant, the herbivorous tapir lover actually eats birds.
64
The very similar Pipil episode has a giant ―with swollen lips‖ (túmak i tenshípal,
Schultze-Jena 1935: 28-29).
65
―…pero xkam chik li mama’. Ut a’an neke’xyeh naq a’an li mam.‖ Unlike other
Mayan languages, mam in Q‘eqchi‘ appears to be used only for the great-grandchild,
and does not mean ‗grandfather‘.
66
As a male personification of the all-devouring earth, this Mam is like Cabracan in the
Popol Vuh (lines 1491ff), or like Tolk‘om in the Annals of the Kaqchikeles (Recinos
and Goetz 1974: 72-75; Maxwell and Hill 2006: 94-95).
67
In Appendix C, ‗Agriculture and Rain in the Tapir Episode‘, other aspects of this
character are considered.
 54

Nicaragua, states that ―the tapir is associated with nature, asociality,

aculturality, and disorder,‖ and represents a ―symbol of unrestrained sexuality
and predation on the crops‖ (id.: 77), the tapir affine here being a parasitical
intruder into the gardens of his human brothers-in-law. In many tales of the
Desana Tukanos of Colombia (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985: 113), ―the tapir is a
wily and distrustful creature, quite unwilling to make any sort of deal with an
outsider and jealously watching over his womenfolk. Tapir is described as a
glutton, an egoist loath to share his property.‖ With regard to the unrestrained
sexuality and the monopolizing of women, the fleshy tapir (in this case, the
Central-American Tapirus bairdi) has the largest penis-to-body ratio of all
mammals; zoo guardians have occasionally watched the excited animal stumble
over its own penis.

Killing the Partner

When, in the Q‘eqchi‘ tales, the hero brothers realize that they are being
deprived of their meat, and have found out the culprit, they lure him into a
pitfall. Q‘eqchi‘ myth clearly describes the lover as an animal; but the
possibility of a metaphorical meaning is suggested by the fact that a pitfall with
sharp stakes, covered with branches and leaves, was used to kill not only large
mammals, but also hostile warriors, as the Kakchiqueles regularly did against
the Spaniards (Asselbergs 2004: 123 and figs. 21, 22). In the next chapter, this
point will be further considered. In versions from Oaxaca (and, to a lesser
extent, also the Gulf Coast), the motive for the killing is the discovery that the
so-called (grand)father is in reality an animal taking their food. Again, however,
the discovery of (grand)father‘s animal nature does not preclude a metaphorical
intention: It may be his unrestrained, greedy behavior that makes him an animal
and marks him as game.
Given that the tapir and the deer are game animals, the old woman, in
her sexual relationship, is making common cause with animals whose destiny it
is to be killed, confounding ‗meat‘ and ‗flesh‘. Through a travesty, the heroes of
a Puebla Nahua Sun and Moon tale (Barlow 1962: 57) modify this undesirable,
enduring relationship into the transitory one of a once-common hunting ritual
(for this, see Chapter Six): The junior, lunar brother (generally classified as
female) puts on the clothes of his ‗mother‘, attracts the game animal, and takes
hold of its hands; the senior, solar brother draws near and cuts the deer‘s throat
 55

– an act that, while recalling the action of the bat in maize hero myth, is also
suggestive of killing a domestic animal.
In other cases, the killing of Old Adoptive Mother‘s partner refers, in a
last instance, to that of human enemies. In a Mazatec version of Sun and Moon
myth, the Twins‘ victim is a black sorcerer (corresponding to the devil in certain
Q‘eqchi‘ variants), the very one who killed their father, and whose deer shape is
but one of his potential transformations (Benítez III 1973: 112). The heroes‘
victim can also be referred to metaphorically as a deer ex post facto, after he has
been slaughtered (e.g., Pipil, Campbell 1985: 909; Mixe, Hoogshagen 1971:
342). In another case, he is a giant (or ‗Sesimite‘) living in a mountain, and can
be killed only in an armed confrontation (Dary 1986: 300; cf. Pipil, Schultze
Jena).68 In the maize hero myth of the Gulf Coast, Old Adoptive Mother‘s
partner is usually not stated to be an animal (or a lover). His killing can be
staged in such a way that it evokes a human sacrifice: Once the pseudo-father‘s
cannibalistic intentions have become manifest, the hero orders a bat to cut his
throat. In pre-Spanish times, the bat symbolized sacrifice by decapitation.69
Falsely assuming that it is her ‗child‘ who has finally been slaughtered, the Old
Adoptive Mother delights in drinking her partner‘s blood trickling down from
the loft (e.g., Elson 1947: 200; Law 1957: 351; González Cruz 1984: 217).70
After the killing, the tapir or deer victim is slaughtered. The heroes take
out the heart (Zapotec, Parsons 1936: 325; Stubblefield and Stubblefield 1969:
50) and liver (Chatino, Cortes Serrano 1979: 49), and sever the testicles (Mixe,
Miller 1956: 90; Q‘eqchi‘, Grandia 2004: 6) and penis (Q‘eqchi‘, Thompson
1930: 121; Pipil, Schultze Jena 1935: 29). The meat is prepared and served to
the Old Adoptive Mother. The son of the Old Adoptive Mother and her lover
joins in and eats from the meat of his father (Goubaud); both mother and son
like the taste. The Q‘eqchi‘, Pipil, and Mixe heroes roast the genitals and
pretend they came from a deer they had shot (but not been allowed to eat),

68
The fact that in Ch‘orti‘ and in Pipil hero myth (Schultze Jena 1935: 27) the old
woman‘s lover is a male tzitzimitl, can bring to mind the tzitzimitl costume of one of the
two Aztec supreme military commanders, the tlacochcalcatl (cf. Davies 1987: 161).
69
The bat is shown as a sacrificer in several Mexican codices (see Blaffer 1972: 57-60).
In the Popol Vuh (lines 3971-3972), it is also a bat that decapitates Hunahpu.
70
The well-known concept of deities drinking the blood of sacrificial animals thus
receives a distinctly cannibalistic twist.
 56

whereupon the Old Woman consumes the choice morsels (Thompson 1930:
121; Schultze Jena 1935: 29-30; Miller 1956: 90).
In spite of the considerable variation, the tale of the Old Adoptive
Mother and her animal lover is in essential respects reminiscent of a myth from
North America‘s North-west coast, which, as Lévi-Strauss (1971: 148) notes,
―constantly plays on the ambiguity of the notion of eating [consommation].‖
The old woman involved – ‗la grand-mère libertine‘ – is as fond of intercourse
with her neighbor as with any other ‗meat‘. Lévi-Strauss (id.: 148-149)
illustrates this lack of discrimination by a scene from a Chinook tale, in which,
following a hunt, the hero and his grandmother are seen to carry the meat home:
―Grandmother only wanted to carry the hind part, on which, as soon as she was
alone, she seated herself in order to copulate.‖ The hero‘s indignant reaction,
―That is meant to be eaten, not to be married!,‖ could equally have been that of
the Q‘eqchi‘ heroes on witnessing their adoptive mother mating with a tapir.
The Chinook tale, however, takes another step: The grandmother expresses her
desire to have intercourse with the hero, too, who responds with an ambiguous,
―I am hungry.‖ There are hints of a similar extension in some of the
Mesoamerican versions that will be considered under the heading ‗Confronting
and Subduing the Old Woman‘. First, however, the moral dimension of what
could otherwise seem to be a somewhat scurrilous episode should be considered
in greater depth.

The Myth Mirrored: An Adultery Tale

The mythological tale of sexual voracity and castration we have just
been considering must have held a particular fascination, for, as Robert
Laughlin (1977: 288) has noted, it is – divested of its mythological trappings –
still widely spread among the Q‘eqchi‘s and other Mayas as a cautionary tale
about female adultery.71 Laughlin (id.: 278-287) published an elaborate Tzotzil
variant of this cautionary tale from Zinacantán, the particular relevance of
which resides in its setting, that of the deer hunt.72 Briefly, a man hunting for

71
For references, see Laughlin 1977: 288. For a Q‘eqchi‘ variant of this story, see
Cabarrús 1979: 160-162.
72
A Tzotzil variant from Chenalhó (Guiteras) has the same setting. The importance of
the motif of the deer hunt in this tale type is also shown by a Ch‘orti‘ variant (Fought
 57

deer finds he is unable to make the kill. The deer make fun of him and, in a
variant from Chenalhó (Guiteras 1961: 261), his hunting dogs refuse to go after
the game. The reason is that in the meantime, back at home, the mother of his
children is feeding meat to another man in return for sex. When the hunter has
avenged himself by severing his rival‘s penis, and thereby killing him, he puts
the penis in his bag as a sort of talisman, and finds that the deer are again
willing to surrender themselves. A stag – another rival – is killed and castrated
like his wife‘s lover. Back home, he feeds the stag‘s penis to the two eldest
children, who had shared in the meat given to the lover and were thus
implicated in their mother‘s crime. His rival‘s member, roasted and strongly
seasoned (salted, in the Guiteras variant), is fed to the adulterous wife as if it
were venison. As a result, she starts to drink water but is unable to stop, until
finally, her belly explodes.
This specific ending seems to correspond to the old woman‘s drowning
(that is, a death provoked by an excess of water) in the Goubaud variant of the
Q‘eqchi‘ episode, but it is reflected more closely by a Pipil version (Schultze
Jena 1935: 31). In this latter rendering, the roasted penis is too tough to eat, and
has to be roasted again. The boys advise their adoptive mother to add salt.
Apparently as a consequence of having eaten the salty penis, the old woman
orders her adoptive children – rain deities in this case – to haul water. Although
she is not stated to drink the water, she evacuates water in the course of a
playful rain-making contest (see next section).73
Referring to the protagonist of the Zinacantec tale, Laughlin justly
observed (1977: 288) that ―the man‘s failure as a hunter is mysteriously linked
to his failure as a husband.‖ The nature of this failure as a husband is made
abundantly clear in a Ch‘orti‘ variant (Fought 1972: 251). The husband never
demonstrates anger, and is consequently humiliated by his wife: ―They say that
his hand was pressed down on the griddle by his wife…and he made tortillas,‖
and when the lover arrived to sleep with his wife, ―he [the husband] was

1972: 252), in which it suddenly crops up when the dried penis is to be presented to the
adulterous woman.
73
In conjunction with the drowning and the bursting belly full of water, this water-
hauling and urination could be taken to mean that the Old Adoptive Mother can also
function as a pluvial goddess (cf. Torres Cisneros 244 n. 323); see Appendix C,
‗Agriculture and Rain in the Tapir Episode‘.
 58

ordered to lie on the floor of the house.‖ As a result of his lack of courage, the
husband in the Tzotzil tale is not only humiliated by his wife, but also ridiculed
by the deer. In Chapter Six, the parallelism and moral equivalence between the
alliance of the hunter with his human father-in-law and the alliance with the
otherworldly Owner of the game will be discussed. From this moral equivalence
springs the hunting taboo on adultery that was violated by the hunter‘s wife, a
taboo that has, as a corollary, the husband‘s responsibility for his wife‘s
behavior, a responsibility that the husband of the tale evidently failed to meet.
The initial female predominance over the male in various adultery tales
has a parallel in the first episode of Q‘eqchi‘ myth. Assuming that the Q‘eqchi‘
version of this episode is the prototype of the Tzotzil cautionary tale, it could be
hypothesized that a married woman satisfying her sexual drive without
restriction and feeding her lovers instead of tending to the needs of her children
was originally considered to represent the mythical adoptive mother. On this
hypothesis, her associate, the asocial lover who accepted meat, in both senses,
from his mistress while brutally taking it away from the hunter and his children
became identified with the insatiable, egocentric, cannibalistic tapir set on
monopolizing all female ‗meat‘. Reference has already been made to a version
of the cautionary tale current amongst the Ch‘oles, in which the adulterous wife
is finally changed into a tapir, too, and thus put on a par with the lover of the
corresponding myth.
Such a reading of the myth bridges the distance between the Mayas and
the Sharanahuas of Amazonia. With regard to one of their more important
myths, Janet Siskind (1973: 104) writes: ―The central theme describes a love-
affair between a tapir and a woman. The husband eventually discovers his wife
and her tapir-lover, kills the tapir, and, in many versions, forces his wife to eat
or copulate with the tapir‘s penis after which she dies.‖ In real life, a hunter
returning empty-handed from the forest is likely to be mocked by the women
with such expressions as, ―There‘s no meat, let‘s eat penises‖ (id.: 105). They
thereby threaten to leave a bad hunter for what Siskind calls a ‗tapir-lover‘, i.e.,
a successful rival who will be able to fill his women with his meat, in both
senses of the term. Thus, when Laughlin (1977: 288) laments that
―unfortunately we cannot even guess the religious significance that this tale [the
episode of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth] might have had‖, it could be
countered that its referents are sociological rather than religious.
 59

Confronting and Subduing Old Woman

The genital preoccupation of the adultery tales, arising from what is

basically a contest between male antagonists, is paralleled in the antagonism
between Old Woman and the heroes. Time and again this antagonism is
expressed in images of ‗sexual eating‘ that, whether playful or violent, always
betray a latent aggression. These images could be regarded as capturing the
imagery of primeval endo-cannibalism in a contentious sexual mode: ―They ate
each other.‖ The latent cannibalistic aggression of Old Woman‘s desire
becomes explicit in tales that treat her as a jaguar or coyote woman, and that
transpose her sexual aggression to the sphere of warfare. The same aggression
leads to her being slaughtered and consumed in a cannibal feast or else burnt in
a steam bath. A brief consideration of the notion of feasting will serve to bring
out the general moral dimension of the tapir episode. In the final section of this
chapter, it will be hypothesized that the alternative transformation of Old
Adoptive Mother into a goddess of the steam bath amounts to a decisive
transformation of her cannibalism.

Sexual Antagonism
The hidden aggressiveness of Old Stepmother‘s cannibalistic sexual
appetite would appear to be reflected in the Q‘eqchi‘ heroes‘ countermeasure,
evocative of the atrocities of war: feeding her with her lover‘s penis. The
traumatic event of having been led to eat her own lover adds to Old Adoptive
Mother‘s craving for maternal fertility and to her sexual preoccupation with her
tapir partner another, and dynamic motive: her sexual vengefulness. Here, the
tale of the Popoloca hero, Xi-gu, is revealing. According to some Popolocas
(Jäcklein 1974: 279, cf. 277), it was this hero‘s slaying of her deer husband and
his subsequent violation of the old woman herself that caused Old Adoptive
Mother to change into a demonic ‗Female Ensnarer‘ (Nahuatl matlaccihuatl,
Yucatec xtabay), and that provoked her henceforth to seduce young deer
hunters, make love to them, and madden or kill them.74 The Ch‘orti‘ Old

74
Among the Cuicatecs (Hunt 1977: 102-105), for example, this female demon makes
her lovers pregnant of excrement and has them deliver their inedible ‗offspring‘
themselves.
 60

Adoptive Mother (Dary 1986: 266; Hull 2003: 221-222; Pérez Martínez 1996:
46) can change into the same sort of demon (the ‗siguanaba‘), as can the
cannibalistic old woman corresponding to the Old Adoptive Mother among the
southern Tepehuas of Durango, the Chul (Hobgood 1970: 407).75
After the castration of her lover, the tale remains focused on the genital
organs, playing on the imminent threat of castration. Old Adoptive Mother is
now squarely set on killing her adoptive children. In Q‘eqchi‘ (Thompson 1930:
122) as well as in Ch‘orti‘ myth (Dary 1986: 266), she sharpens her sprouting
claws – alternatively, her fangs (Girard 1966: 276) – at the edge of the water.
The Q‘eqchi brothers send a lizard to find out what is going on, and the creature
―ran between the old woman‘s feet‖, thereby angering her. This, at least, is how
J.E.S. Thompson (1930: 122) presents the Q‘eqchi‘ incident, which, as it stands,
is pointless. It gains meaning only from a sexual perspective.
Grandia (n.d.: 17) has the brothers instruct a certain lizard, pak’mal, to
frighten Old Woman by putting itself on her leg. Pak’maal is defined as
‗camaleñn‘ (Sedat 1955: 118); and according to Cruz Torres (1978: 119), it
refers to the cutete – a lizard (Corytophanes cristatus) that is indeed similar to a
chameleon, but with the crest of the much larger iguana of the Thompson
variant. Talking about this cutete, Cruz Torres (1978: 119) tells us that ―the
native uses this small animal to conquer a nice girl; they collect and use it as a
talisman for attracting women.‖76 Even if occasionally another lizard species
may be substituted,77 the use of the cutete in love magic can explain what
happens next in the Cruz Torres rendering of the episode. While the old hag
(Shan Ni) is sitting on her heels, she feels the lizard‘s head brushing past her

75
An anecdotic Huave story (Ramírez Castaneda 1987: 194) about a mad old woman
playing with a dildo modeled from beeswax, and talking to it as if it were her living
lover, may relate to this transformation of the Old Adoptive Mother.
76
The lizard is a traditional Mesoamerican symbol for the genitals. For the Huaxteca
Otomis (Galinier 1990: 637), it is a symbol of the vagina, while in a number of ancient
Mexican ‗corporeal almanacs‘, it is associated with the penis (Hill Boone 2007: 110).
But for the sexual innuendo, the lizard (or iguana) episode is also present in one of the
Pipil variants (Campbell 1985: 910).
77
In his own tale, Cruz Torres (1965: 27) has a seelemay, a lizard with a head ‗adorned
by a skin protuberance shaped like a crest‘ (id.: 371), a description that might again
refer to the cutete. A Ch‘orti‘ rendering of the same episode, as part of the Kumix hero
myth, substitutes a long spined horned lizard (Phrynosoma asio), with its armor of large
keeled ventral scales, for the cutete (Kerry Hull, presentation on the 12th European
Maya Conference, Geneva 2007).
 61

clitoris. Angrily, she throws a stone at the animal‘s head, the shredded skin of
which is treated by the brothers who transform it into the lizard‘s crest. Since
the lizard is a sexual agent of the brothers, the episode‘s message appears to be
crudely virile, meaning: ―You, woman, want to eat us? We shall ‗eat‘ you
instead!‖78 That the brothers subsequently substitute a bunch of bananas for
their sleeping bodies (Cruz Torres 1965: 28; Grandia n.d.) needs no further
comment. In Ch‘orti‘ hero myth, it is the stone cylinder for grinding the maize
that can serve as a substitute (Dary 1986: 300), with Old Woman breaking her
terrible teeth on the stone when she tries to bite the hero. Taking the pestle as a
male symbol and the grinding stone as a female one,79 her action would come
close at castration, mirroring the eating of her lover‘s roasted member.
In Mesoamerican hero myths, and particularly in Sun and Moon myth,
the underlying themes of cannibalism and sexual hunger give rise to other,
strongly sexualized images that oppose the goddess‘ menacing mouth and
vagina to the invincible virility of the heroes. When the Old Adoptive Mother of
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, Xkitza, is on the point of being killed, she has the answer to the
concluding question in a riddle contest entirely consisting of alternating,
gendered metaphors (Thompson 1930: 123). The riddles turn on the physical
characteristics and role division of the sexes and use the metaphors listed in
Table 1.

78
The brothers‘ use of the crested lizard as a sexual agent stands in marked contrast to
Sun‘s use of a hummingbird as a sexual agent in the main other episode of the myth.
79
Old Adoptive Mother‘s counterpart in Tz‘utujil myth, B‘atzb‘al, is closely associated
with the grinding stone, an archetypical image of the female sexual organs (Tarn and
Prechtel 1986: 177), and expressive of the vagina dentata; the pestle is consequently a
phallic symbol.
 62

Table 1: Riddle Contest

RESPONDENT: RESPONDENT:
QUESTIONER RIDDLE WRONG CORRECT
ANSWER80 ANSWER
stick from which
Sun water liana Xkitza: penis
water flows
water flowing Sun: female
Xkitza
between two hills urine
moving object
Xkitza: spindle Sun: throwing-
Sun sounding ‗trump
and whorl top (hurled)
trump‘
Sun: three
three hills with
Xkitza hearthstones and
something flat on top
griddle
object flying in a Sun: arrow
Sun
curve (shot)

Old Adoptive Mother fails to answer the last riddle: ―What is it that
goes into the air, travels along, and drops down again?‖ The answer is given by
actually shooting Old Adoptive Mother with an arrow. Since the arrow is that of
a hunting hero, the reference seems to be to the role of sexuality within the hunt.
Given the gendered context, the execution is probably intended to demonstrate
the brothers‘ superior, phallic power. A phallic value of the arrow is also
suggested by the parallel Pipil version (Campbell 1985: 910; cf. Schultze Jena
1935: 31). By having the antagonists act out another of the Q‘eqchi‘ riddles, the
Pipil version converts the Q‘eqchi‘ riddle game (and more particularly its first
two questions) into what to all intents and purposes should be called a ‗pissing
contest‘: The one with the most powerful squirt lives, and the Old Woman dies.

80
The wrong answers are not always spelled out in the text, as in the second and fourth
examples. Xkitza gives the wrong answer in the third example and gives no answer in
the final example.
 63

The male urine jet has been substituted for the phallic arrow, as befits the rain
deity status of the youthful heroes of the Pipil tale.
In Trique Twin myths (Hollenbach 1977: 143-144, cf.131-132), the Old
Adoptive Mother (‗Grandmother Ca‘aj‘) seeks refuge in the house of the Twins
and is given a strong soporific. Her deep slumber makes it is too late to catch up
with the Twins in their celestial ascent. During her sleep, she is cruelly violated:
One of the Twins has a knife fastened to his penis, the other a pestle for
crushing peppers.81 As in the lizard episode of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the old
woman‘s sexual voracity (which occasionally gives rise to the vagina dentata
motif)82 may form the background. This voracity is entirely explicit in the
Popoluca episode mentioned above, in which the Old Adoptive Mother turns
into a seductive demon (a ‗Female Ensnarer‘) upon being violated by the hero
Xi-gu. In the Trique episode, the sexual abuse results in profuse bleeding.
Although this bleeding probably constitutes a multilayered symbol (see the next
section), it can be viewed as a brutal parody of the Old Adoptive Mother‘s
desire to become a mother, a status that would naturally bring menstrual
bleeding.83 In a Mixe version of the episode (Loo 1987: 142), the lunar brother,
who loves all women, sleeps with an old woman who had sought refuge in the
Twins‘ house 84 and cuts off her pubic hairs with two stones. When she tries to
get hold of the Twins in their celestial ascent, she fails and in desperation
throws her own pubic hairs into the sky, where they turn into the Pleiades.
When, in the maize hero myth of the Isthmian Popolucas and Nahuas
(Münch 1983: 166), the Old Adoptive Mother is finally burnt in the fields,
attention is once more drawn towards her genitals. The hero ‗sows‘ the ashes
from her vulva, and from the earth thus fertilized, calabashes and a species of

81
The grinding stone is traditionally associated with the female genitals.
82
In a Zoque tale (Báez-Jorge 1988: 291ff), the cannibalistic ‗earth goddess‘,
Piowachwe, frightens her lover with her toothed vagina, and, despised, retires into a
volcano. Piowachwe used to demand child sacrifices (299), and once kidnapped and
killed a baby. Báez-Jorge (1988: 321) identifies her with Cihuacoatl Quilaztli and with
Coatlicue. See also Appendix D.
83
In view of the woman‘s age, it seems strange that her violation would signify – as
Van der Loo (1987: 147-150) assumes – the origin of menstruation and thus, of female
fertility. Another meaning is, in any case, explicit: The violation provokes the goddess
to curse Sun‘s progeny (mankind), and thereby introduces suffering (in a general sense)
into the world (Hollenbach 1977: 144, 170).
84
In this Mixe version, the Old Adoptive Mother and the present old woman occur
consecutively; in other versions, they are not distinguished (Loo 1987: 149).
 64

cucumber (chayote, Sechium edule) sprout. The Tz‘utujiles (Tarn and Prechtel
1986: 178) and Kaqchikeles share this tradition, but situate the event inside a
steam bath. According to the Kaqchikeles of San Antonio Palopó (Redfield
1946: 254), the Twins burnt their grandparents there. Next, ―in the anus of the
grandmother they put a cane, and they cut off her vulva […] They planted her
vulva and up came the guisguil [Sechium edule, EB] which has this form.‖85
Once the plant has grown, the old woman is desperate, for ―now everywhere in
the world I shall see my body [probably ‗flesh‘ sensu stricto, EB] and I shall be
ashamed.‖ Thus, apart from the agricultural and fertility symbolism involved,
the episode also carries an element of humiliation.

Warlike Antagonism
In various Sun and Moon myths from Oaxaca, the cannibalistic and
covertly sexual aggressiveness of the Old Adoptive Mother assumes, from the
moment her partner has been killed, a form more reminiscent of open warfare
by pre-Spanish jaguar and eagle warriors. In hunting down the Twins, the old
woman may now seek the help of certain animals that are sometimes presented
as ‗kin‘, such as a snake ‗godfather‘ (Zapotec, Stubblefield and Stubblefield
1969: 58-59), a bicephalic eagle ‗aunt‘ (Cuicatec, Molinari et al. 1977: 58-59),
and a jaguar ‗uncle‘ (id.). Like the snake, the bicephalic eagle can recur in a
later episode of the tale as a demonic kidnapper and man-eater; it is sometimes
stated to be especially intent on hunting down young children (e.g., Mazatec,
Boege 1986: 66). It has already been noted that the Grandmother of Huaxtec
maize hero myth can change into an eagle in order to devour children.
Therefore, as Torres Cisneros (2001: 246) has suggested, the eagle and snake
antagonists should probably be considered as transformations of the Old
Adoptive Mother in her tzitzimitl (or Cihuacoatl) aspect.86 They are akin to the

85
The identification is a common one, e.g. Q‘eqchi‘ ch’ima ‗guisquil, ñrgano sexual
femenino‘ (Sam Juarez et al. 1997: 68).
86
In Oaxacan Sun and Moon myth, the lights of sun and moon were taken from the
defeated representatives of the cannibalistic age: a bicephalic eagle (Chinantec,
Weitlaner 1952: 171), the deer lover (Cuicatec, Molinari et al. 1977: 56), or, more
commonly, a giant snake. Since all of these animals can refer to the Old Adoptive
Mother, the ‗balls of light‘ can also be stated originally to have been in the latter‘s
possession (Mazatec, Inchaústegui 1977: 27; cf. Benítez III 1973: 116).
 65

jaguar and coyote manifestations of Old Adoptive Mother‘s counterpart among

the Tzotziles and Tzeltales, in their tale of the Jaguar Slayer.
Instead of invoking the help of her eagle or jaguar familiars, the Old
Adoptive Mother can also transform herself into a beast of prey (probably a
jaguar) and attempt to kill the heroes in their sleep. She is deceived, and plunges
her claws and fangs into dummies substituted for their bodies, while the
brothers watch from the rafters. The Ch‘orti‘ rendering of this incident has her
break her teeth by biting a stone dummy, viz., a grinding platform (metate) for
processing maize kernels (Girard 1966: 276), or the stone cylinder (pestle) that
goes with it (Dary 1986: 300). Finally, the old woman is defeated and killed.
This episode, including the stone-biting, is characteristic of hero tales that may
also include accounts of legendary wars, such as the tale of Fane Kantsini, the
‗Indian King‘ of the Oaxaca Chontales (Barabas and Bartolomé 2000: 231). The
conflict between the Old Adoptive Mother and the hero could thereby be
viewed as symbolic of historic conflicts between established and invading
powers (see Chapter Three, ‗Cannibalism by Trickery‘).
In a myth known from the Tzotziles (Guiteras 1961: 182-183, 262), the
heroic confrontation with the Old Woman is on a par with the ordeal the hero
must undergo in his encounter with the jaguars.87 In the distant past, ―there were
many jaguars that ate the people (…) They had their seats. The jaguars would
come out when they smelled people‖ (id.: 182). The hero (Ohoroxtotil ‗God the
Father‘) exposes himself to the danger of being devoured by having the jaguars
sit on a circle of stone seats and lying down in their midst; through his powerful
magic, the jaguars are stuck to their seats and can thus be killed.
In some sources (Guiteras 1961: ibid.; Gossen 1974: 326; Arias 1990:
27-33), this episode – which often occurs as a separate tale – is paralleled by
one in which the hero stays in the home of the Old Woman. The primeval threat
of the jaguars is now explicitly treated as a counterpart to the cannibalism of an
aged goddess that narrators identify with the jaguar (Navarrete 1966: 424) or the
wolf-like coyote (Gossen 1974: 326), two animals that traditionally go together.
The old woman lures travellers into her house or cave to devour them when they
sleep.88 One of her names is given by Guiteras as K‘uxbakme‘el, which, read as

87
In this case, the hero is not an adoptive son, but a refugee in the goddess‘s house. The
Tzotzil Jaguar Slayer myth is more amply discussed in Braakhuis 2009a.
88
The deceit inherent in her offer of hospitality also comes to the fore in the baby-
sitting practice of the Huaxtec Grandmother of the maize hero.
 66

Jk’uxbakme’el, means ‗Old Woman Bone-cruncher‘.89 The emphasis on her

terrible teeth already betrays her closeness to the Chiapanec Nahua goddess,
Jantepusi Ilama ‗Iron-toothed Old Woman‘,90 and also to her Pipil namesake,
Tentepusilama.
Before her onslaught, the goddess files her teeth with a sharp stone
(Guiteras 1961: 183), as in Ch‘orti‘ hero myth (Girard 1966: 276; Dary 1986:
266) and maize hero myth (Elson 1947: 198-199); in the Q‘eqchi‘ variants, she
files her nails, although in the Goubaud variant (1949: 128) two sharpened
knives are substituted. In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the hero brothers watch from the
rafters their ‗doubles‘, consisting of banana bunches, wooden trunks, and
calabashes. In the corresponding episode of Ch‘orti‘ myth, the double has
become a stony grinding platform or its stone cylinder; and in Tzotzil-Tzeltal
variants of the Jaguar Slayer episode, the grinding platform is replaced by rocks,
including basalt (from which the metate is sometimes made), or by a hearth
stone (for a head).91
These stones are symbols of destruction. Since there is an obvious
metaphorical connection between extremely hard teeth for crushing bones and
basaltic grinding platforms or grinding cylinders for crushing kernels, the hero
is turning a destructive female instrument against its user. When she tries to bite
the stone, the goddess breaks her menacing fangs. In other renderings of the
tale, the ‗stone double‘ is an object into which the hero transforms himself
(Guiteras 1961: 183; Navarrete 1966: 424).92 Transformed into a grinding
platform, the hero crushes his opponent‘s teeth as if they were maize kernels or
as if he were breaking the very stone cylinder that goes with the platform; or
transformed into this stone cylinder, he again crushes her teeth. Transformations

89
―K’uxbakme’el: A word translated as ‗Mother of toothache‖, according to Guiteras
(1961: 337). The Tzotzil variant of Arias (1990: 30-31) gives Jk‘uxbakme‘el and
translates as I have done. Following Laughlin‘s Tzotzil dictionary (1975), me’el is ‗old
woman‘. K’ux is (1) ‗crunch, gnaw (bones)‘, e.g. jk’ux-bak ‗bone-eater (dog)‘, and (2)
painful, e.g. k’ux-hol ‗headache‘. The goddess‘s Tzeltal counterpart is called Hk’ux Hol
Me’el ‗Headache Woman‘ (Stross 1978: 19-20), but probably, in view of the
agentive,‗Old Woman Head-cruncher‘.
90
Jantepusi Ilama appears to have had a precursor in a guardian figure that manifested
itself as a coyote (Aramoni 1992: 92).
91
Basalt, Arias 1990: 31-32; rocks, Laughlin 1977: 146-147, Tale 41; hearthstone, in
Laughlin 1977: 147, quoting Gossen.
92
The stone transformation is on a par with a fire ball transformation (Stross1978: 20).
 67

of this sort represent feats of sorcery traditionally ascribed to Mesoamerican

warriors, and may well lie behind the more static images of Q‘eqchi‘ myth.
A seemingly incongruous detail of a Tzeltal variant of the tale deserves
mention: The cannibalistic old goddess is viewed as a distant ancestress
(?antiwo hmam hme?chuntike) whose teeth started to ache: ―We are copying
[our ancestors] nowadays in that our teeth ache. (…) In the olden days our teeth
were very strong. We could eat bones with our teeth [a reference to the
goddess‘s name, EB]. Our teeth didn‘t break‖ (Stross 1978: 20). Thus, the
storyteller not only sympathizes with the tale‘s hero, but also identifies with
what could be called the ‗Jaguar Grandmother‘, representative of an earlier age.
This ambiguity also comes to the fore in Ch‘orti‘ myth, when the hero, having
just broken the teeth of his cannibalistic pseudo-mother, takes leave by thanking
her for the gift of his life (Dary 1986: 301).
Given the value placed on her powerful bite and her role as an adoptive
mother in related hero narratives, the goddess should perhaps be connected to
certain goddesses of specific mountains who adopt male children upon birth and
nurse them with their milk, thereby conveying the gifts of animal
transformation and invincibility as warriors. It is said that, originally, all
members of the Q‘eqchi‘ community went to the cave of such a mountain
goddess to be nursed by her (Cabarrús 1979: 51), just as the babies of the first
Aztec calpollis were nursed by that other old woman, Ilancueitl. Amongst the
mountain nurses is Xan ‗Old Lady‘ Itzam (Thompson 1930: 153-154; Cruz
Torres 1967: 28), also called Kitzan (Thompson 1930: 59, cf. 141).93 As we saw
in Chapter One, a case can be made for identifying this warlike Q‘eqchi‘
mountain goddess with the Q‘eqchi‘ Old Adoptive Mother, Xkitza.

Destinies of the Meat

The destinies of the Old Adoptive Mother vary, and the possible
meanings of this character‘s particular ending in Q‘eqchi‘ myth will be the
concern of this and the following section. In Ch‘orti‘ and Pipil hero myth, Old
Adoptive Mother‘s death is (at least in the tales at my disposal) not mentioned.
In various other hero myths, however, Old Adoptive Mother dies, or is

93
In San Juan Chamelco oral tradition, the local hero Aj Pop Batz ―is said to be a direct
descendant of Qana Iitzam‖ (Adams 2001: 219). See also Chapter 4, section ‗Oyew
Achi in Folklore‘.
 68

transformed, through the effect of fire. Typically, in Oaxacan Sun and Moon
myth, she absorbs the poison of stinging insects, enters a steam bath, is burnt or
suffocated and transformed into the goddess of midwifery; in maize hero myth,
she is, inversely, burnt on the field or in the steam bath and transformed into
stinging insects – that is, into other blood-drinkers. And in Q‘eqchi‘ myth, she
is again transformed by fire: She becomes cooked or roasted meat, and this in
the context of what Thompson, rather casually, calls ‗a party‘.
Old Adoptive Mother‘s fate in Q‘eqchi‘ myth is emblematic of the
destiny of the body in the era of cannibalism. The motif of the preparation of
meat tamales – so intimately tied up with Old Adoptive Mother‘s predilection
for baby meat – recurs, but with the roles reversed. Her adoptive children chop
up her flesh, cook it, and serve it to her close kin as venison. In the Cruz Torres
tale, the hero brothers cut off the head and breasts of Shan Ni, and put them in a
pot on the fire; the remainder of the body is wrapped in tamales and placed on
top of the head and breasts. The peculiar sound of a certain bird leads the three
sons of Old Adoptive Mother to believe that their mother, wheezing from
exhaustion, is at the well to haul water and will not be back in time for the meal.
While eating from the meat of their mother, a dove warns them with its call:
Chib-chib-ná chiu-chiu-sá ―Mama meat-meat, from it eat-eat.‖ The sons,
alarmed, find the cooked head and breasts, whereupon they change into owls,
hawks, and gophers to flee the place of their crime, the transformation being a
consequence of their transgression.
Thompson‘s main text (1930: 123) has Xkitza buried, but the
cannibalistic cookery recurs in a variant (id.: 137) that has the heroes
themselves taste from the broth with Old Adoptive Mother‘s head in it. This is
inconsistent with the rest of the plot and seems to confound the two hero
brothers with their cannibalistic step-brethren. In the Grandia (n.d.) variant, the
preparation of the meat tamales (tibel wa’) runs through the entire story, and the
horrifying discovery of the head at the bottom of the cooking pot recurs; but in
this case, it is the husband – who had already been buried in the pitfall – who
now seems to return to eat the tamales stuffed with his wife‘s flesh.
Haeserijn‘s dictionary (1979: 325 s.v. ti’oc) refers to yet another variant
of this episode, probably taken from Wirsing‘s lexicographical materials. A bird
 69

again warns the sons, now twelve in number,94 with the call: Xintiu-in-na ―I ate
my mother.‖95 In the Goubaud variant, from the goddess‘s failed attack on the
hero brothers onwards, the story unfolds with, as a sinister counterpoint, another
repeated bird call: ―Has died, has died.‖ Old Adoptive Mother throws herself
into a well near where the brothers had in the meantime established themselves,
and drowns. Her head and cloth are buried, and her arms and legs and ribs
roasted. The brothers carry the meat to the house of Old Adoptive Mother's son
as if it were venison, and organize a cannibalistic feast: ―They threw a party,
they danced‖ – seemingly to celebrate their arrival in their new home, in reality
because ―they had done with the grandmother.‖
The killing and the festive, ‗incestuous‘ eating of the aged cannibal
goddess to the accompaniment of ominous bird calls is by no means restricted
to the Q‘eqchi‘s. The goddess‘s counterpart among the Nahuas of Durango,
called Tepusilam, is treated in similar fashion (Preuss 1982: 87-91 [cf. 1998:
350-351], 91-111). She used to eat children and her own kin (one gets the
impression that she considered everybody as ‗kin‘), and for the purpose of
undoing her, her kinsmen invited her to a feast. When she had been made drunk
and had fallen unconscious, she was burnt and made into a stew as if she were
venison, and fed to her husband. Again, there is a bird warning: ―You ate your
wife.‖ When the husband sung an incantation over one of her remaining bones,
―she started to roar inside the earth. Then she became alive again and
resurrected‖, determined to avenge herself and devour her kin. This concluding
passage is important, in that is shows that the killing and eating of the goddess
does not necessarily imply that her end is really final.
In portraying Old Adoptive Mother as a cannibal, I have already
mentioned the role of the aged goddess, Saku, in Cora Morning Star myth. In a
variant of this tale (Benítez III 1973: 554-559), she is tracked down by the hero
(Hátzikan, the Morning Star) because she had, before his birth, killed and eaten
his father. In the last of a series of contests, the hero allows himself to be

94
Old Adoptive Mother‘s sons were later punished and transformed (Cruz Torres), like
the twelve sons of the Panajachel Grandmother of the Steam bath (Tax 1951: 2541, T7).
Compare also the twelve sons of the Verapaz midwife goddess, Xchel, most of whom
were punished as well (Las Casas 1967: 505, Bk. III Ch. CCXXXV).
95
At least in the Q‘eqchi‘ tales, the running commentary by the birds appears to be
connected to the fact that the two heroes are initially youthful bird hunters.
 70

repeatedly thrown into her cooking pot, but each time miraculously reappears;96
finally, the roles are reversed, and the cannibal goddess is cooked into a stew.
Her husband tastes from the broth, until he is warned by a crow calling ruj-
racuá, ruj-racuá ―he is eating his wife.‖
These tales about sons eating their parents, husbands eating their wives,
and wives eating their husbands, all appear to allude to the prehistoric stage in
which it was still normal that people ate each other, and in which an incestuous
human procreation only served the production of meat. In such a situation, the
meat of the game has no real purpose, whereas the tenor of the myth is precisely
to establish such a purpose, and to make the meat – the ‗four deer and three
brockets‘ (Goubaud) carried home in vain by the hero brothers – serve human
conviviality. It is probably for the same reason that the festive sharing of food
occupies such a central place in the cannibal stories above. In most cases, the
Old Adoptive Mother is boiled or roasted in preparation for a banquet. In
historical parallels of this episode (see Chapter Three), there is an even stronger
focus on feasting. Furthermore, the Zapotec motif of thirteen baskets of tortillas
carried to the lover reminds one of the baskets of tortillas that, in the villages of
the Mixteca Alta, are carried to the sponsor of a feast by his kindred (Monaghan
1990: 759). In the Grandia Q‘eqchi‘ variant, the motif of meat wrapped in
tamales is conspicuous, meat tamales being a dish typical of festive occasions
(the same motif plays a conspicuous role in the folklore surrounding the Old
Adoptive Mother).
There are two aspects of the Mesoamerican feast that may be recalled
here. A feast generally implies sharing of food and drink. Meat is important,
preferably of venison and other game. In the case of the head of a household,
the quarry should first of all feed the household‘s members, so as to serve its
existence and procreation, and then also the neighbors; in the case of a larger
community, the same rule of ‗communitas‘ prevails. On a community level,
feasting also implies reciprocity. The guests of a feast will themselves take turn
as hosts in future feasts. It appears to be significant that the tortilla baskets
mentioned above constitute a basic element in the gift exchanges of a fiesta
network (Monaghan 1990: 761).

96
This is another wide-spread cannibalistic motif. In a similar way, the Huaxtec maize
hero allows himself to be cooked by his Grandmother, miraculously changing the
prehistoric nixtamal into maize nixtamal (Alcorn 1984: 392).
 71

The behavior of the Old Adoptive Mother and her partner sharply
contrasts with the ideals of communality and reciprocity expressed through the
celebration of a feast. The old woman – the ‗grand-mère libertine‘ (Lévi-
Strauss) – had not been distributing the meat of the game, either to affirm
kinship ties with her adoptive children, or to sustain a wider social network, but
had been using it for her own relief instead, to buy sexual services. Her tapir
lover had remained a solitary figure. Rather than joining the family to share
their food, he ate in the mountains, alone, consuming enormous quantities of
food without ever reciprocating. Once killed, the tapir body remained in the pit
and the two boys did not partake from its meat.
This last circumstance can also serve to highlight the mythological
destiny of the tapir lover as a negative image of the quarry. Anticipating the
discussion of the ideology of the hunt in Chapter Six (section ‗Welcoming the
Game Husband‘), the entrance of a quarry – particularly that of a deer – into the
home of the hunter is traditionally a festive occasion. The animal ‗guest‘,
adorned with flower garlands, is invited to share the food with the family before
finally becoming food himself, so as to be shared by others. By contrast, the
tapir quarry has been stripped of any social personhood.
In a negative mode, therefore, the episode of the Old Adoptive Mother
and her tapir lover appears to clarify the codes of sociability proper of the
hunting life. These codes are not only those governing consumption and sexual
consummation. Through the killing and slaughtering of the tapir lover and his
mistress, both representing extreme cases of unsociability, the fundamental
notions of sharing and reciprocating are dramatically instituted, and put before
one‘s eyes as inviolable laws.

Cannibalism’s Confinement
In the preceding sections, the Old Adoptive Mother of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun
and Moon myth has repeatedly been compared with her counterpart in Oaxacan
Sun and Moon myth. There remains the question of why, despite their many and
detailed similarities, the two myths conclude so differently. There appear to be
two main tale types, depending on the female protagonist‘s ultimate fate. In the
first type, she is eaten and plays no further role in the myth. In the second one,
she is eventually imprisoned inside the steam bath, where her spirit resides
thereafter as the goddess of medicine and midwifery. It may be noted, however,
that this distinction, represented by Xkitza and the Oaxacan steam bath goddess
 72

respectively, is hardly rigid.97 Even an outspoken tzitzimitl (female demon) or

Tepusilam type can, under certain circumstances, become a steam bath goddess.
Variants of maize hero myth (e.g., Segre 1990: 325-326) have the aged
tzitzimitl end up in a steam bath, rather than being burnt in a field. Another case
in point is the Sun and Moon tale as it is current amongst the Tz‘utujiles,
Kaqchikeles and Quichés.98 Here, Sun and Moon belong to a wider group of
brothers living with their grandmother. One Tz‘utujil variant in particular (Tarn
and Prechtel 1986: 174 and 183 n. 10) resembles Q‘eqchi‘ myth in that the
third, and youngest brother (corresponding to the third brother in the Thompson
variant, the one who did not want to kill Xkitza) is also the grandmother‘s lover,
and is here again castrated.99 The grandmother herself (B’atzb’al ‗Thread-
maker, Spindle‘), associated with witchcraft, death, and the grinding stone (id.:
177), is finally killed in a steam bath.100
Perhaps the most illuminating examples of a Xkitza type ending up as a
steam bath goddess are the Tzotzil and Tzeltal tales concerning the Tzotzil
jaguar goddess, K‘uxbakme‘el ‗Old Mother Bone-cruncher‘. Her mythological
role, as we have seen, parallels that of Xkitza in Q‘eqchi‘ myth. In a Tzotzil
variant from Chamula (Gossen 1974: 326), the goddess is burnt inside the steam
bath, which turns into a mouthless cave.101 In another tale, the hero arrives at the
house of the goddess and is immediately given the steam bath for a sleeping
quarter: ―We shall build a nice fire inside‖ (Guiteras 1972: 183) – a fire
intended to burn the hero. Small wonder that, in still another variant (Stross

97
Here, as elsewhere, I refer to two ‗types‘ of goddesses, as resulting from their
divergent fates; however, it should be kept in mind that this distinction is an artificial
one not necessarily reflecting the conceptions of the narrators.
98
Redfield 1946: 252-254; Orellana 1975: 854-855 (nearly identical to Butler, in Shaw
1971: 239); Preuss 2006: 74-75 (youngest brother changed into monkey).
99
This third, and youngest brother becomes the Lord of the Hills, echoing the mountain
lover in one of the Grandia Q‘eqchi‘ variants. A K‘iche‘ tale (Petrich and Ochoa 2001a:
27-29), too, assigns an oppressive brother to the Sun and Moon brothers who devours
all the meat they gave to their grandmother; he is made to climb a tree and is changed
into a monkey.
100
The ulterior motive for this killing may have been that she had undone the magic of
her sons‘ hoes, thus forcing them to relate to the earth and to work it. See also Appendix
C (‗Agriculture and Rain‘) and Appendix D (section ‗Agricultural Labor‘).
101
As a matter of fact, within the municipal territory of Tzotzil Chamula, there are two
small caves called ‗Steam bath Cave‘ (pus [should probably be pur] ch’en), the first of
which is believed to belong to the ancestors (Groark 1997: 23 n. 22).
 73

1978: 19-21), the hero is instead assigned the kitchen (a separate structure, like
the steam bath). The murderous steam bath with its glowing stones and the
cannibalistic kitchen with its three hot stones appear to be transformations of
each other, like the curative steam bath and the non-cannibalistic kitchen. This
suggests that the two fates of Old Adoptive Mother are but alternative effects of
the forces that process and recycle the human body: The energies of water and
fire active in cooking meat are also those active in curing the human flesh,
servicing in one case the ‗cannibalistic kitchen‘ and in the other the steam bath.
Old Adoptive Mother‘s craving for human meat appears to represent a
terrifying energy that can be remolded into an equally formidable power of
healing and rebirth. Her final imprisonment and transformation can then be
viewed as not only the domestication of primeval cannibalism but also its
socialization. Entering and becoming one with the womb of the steam bath102
implies the realization of Old Adoptive Mother‘s most ardent desire: She
becomes a sort of mother, not by appropriating the children engendered by
others, but by bearing and delivering them herself. In terms of the cannibalistic
kitchen, she is now no longer obliged to eat her children in order to get
‗pregnant‘; instead, her ‗children‘ will enter her belly without coercion, so as to
be ‗cooked‘ there into ripeness, and finally ‗re-birthed‘. Within the framework
of this thesis, these explanations for the divergent endings of otherwise
remarkably similar episodes must remain tentative.
The key similarities and contrasts between the two Old Adoptive
Mothers of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun hero myth and of Oaxaca Twin myth have been
summarized in Table 2 below.

102
For a discussion of the steam bath as a womb and the imagery associated with it, see
the important study of Kevin Groark (1997, especially pp. 20-27) about the role of the
steam bath in Highland Mayan ethnomedicine.
 74

Table 2: Two Types of Old Adoptive Mother

Q‘EQCHI‘ SUN HERO MYTH OAXACA SUN AND MOON MYTH

(ORIGINAL CANNIBALISM) (TRANSFORMED CANNIBALISM)
OAM slaughtered and boiled or OAM imprisoned and suffocated or
roasted burnt
cannibalistic kitchen curative steam bath
human meat in belly human flesh in steam bath interior
freely given babies temporarily
stolen babies devoured
adopted
aborted fetus (of human mother) growing fetus (of human mother)
human meat boiled and roasted patients ‗cooked‘ by steam
no delivery ‗delivery‘
CORRELATIONS CORRELATIONS
deranged sexuality / incestuous ordered sexuality / fostering
procreation / obstructing procreation procreation
intercourse as meat production intercourse as procreation
OAM=Old Adoptive Mother

The spirit of the steam bath goddess has been described as ‗irritable
‗and ‗very jealous‘ (Moedano 1977: 15). This is of particular interest, because it
suggests that, even in her new role, an envy of pregnant human women is still
smoldering. This irritable disposition of the ‗reformed‘ goddess is reminiscent
of the barren Tz‘utujil midwife goddess, who (as we have already seen) has
been stated to be ―extraordinarily jealous of all things female on the earth who
do have young or give birth‖ (Prechtel 2004: 133), and seems to refer us back to
the Trique adoption scene, in which the aged woman smears her thighs with the
surrogate of the birth blood of a fertile mother.103

103
Given the importance of the steam bath goddess to the midwives, it should also be
noted that the Tz‘utujil midwife goddesses receiving the new-born child ―are very much
feared‖ and can, under circumstances, kill the mother (Tarn and Prechtel 1986: 179).
 75

CHAPTER 3

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SACRIFICIAL AND CANNIBALISTIC MOTIFS

IN THE ADOPTION EPISODE

The figure of the old cannibal woman is not confined to Mesoamerica, but also
occurs in the traditions of South America (e.g., the ‗Mama Huaca‘ of the
Quechua‘s), the North-western part of North America (e.g., the ‗Grizzly
Woman‘ of the Chinook, Dzonoqua of the Kwakiutl),104 as well as in traditions
beyond the New World. The sacrificial and cannibalistic acts of these archetypal
old women should in principle be treated as collective phantasies, rather than as
descriptions of real events. On the other hand, human sacrifice, and also, albeit
to a far lesser extent, anthropophagy, once were realities within the
Mesoamerican culture area. It may be asked, therefore, in what way, and to
what extent, the narrative topics of the Mesoamerican Old Adoptive Mother
mythology may once have related to these historical realities and their
expressions in contemporaneous tales. More particularly, the possibility will be
considered that the narrative motifs of the kidnapping and eating of children, as
well as of the eating of the tapir, were once associated with specific ritual
practices. Furthermore, it will be argued that the historical motifs of
headhunting and trophy tree can still be recognized in a version of the adoption
episode stemming from the Pipiles. Often, however, it is difficult to distinguish
discourse from actual practice. In the case of the mythical consumption of Old
Adoptive Mother‘s meat, this cannibalistic act can be shown to be a particular
instance of a topic in 16th-century Nahua historical narrative, one that has been
aptly termed ‗cannibalism by trickery‘.
Human sacrifice and cannibalism are controversial issues, and
cannibalism is by far the most sensitive of these. It does not seem to have been
common among the Mayas. While acknowledging the existence of a native
tradition of human sacrifice, the ethno-historian of the Yucatec Mayas, Grant

104
Various representatives of the old cannibal woman from America‘s North-west coast
have been discussed by Lévi-Strauss under the heading ‗La grand-mère libertine‘, in
―L‘Homme Nu‖ (1971: 143-159).
 76

Jones, states about possible Mayan cannibalism, particularly among the 17th-
century Itza‘s105 (1998: 334): ―To my knowledge there is no incontrovertible
evidence for it. Accusations of cannibalism were nearly always made by
enemies, detractors, or conquerors and appear in most cases to serve as a means
of decrying that group‘s savagery and inhumanity. Despite ‗admissions‘ that
members of the Itza ruling nobility did practice the consumption of human
flesh, we must remember that no interrogated Itza admitted to doing so
himself.‖ Klaus Helfrich (1973: 159-165) thoroughly investigated the matter of
Mayan human sacrifice and cannibalism and reached a similar conclusion. He
found that the early colonial Spanish sources on these issues are frequently
contradictory and that in native sources the issue is hardly ever brought up.
Even Yucatec inquisitional reports dealing with child sacrifice, based on
confessions made under torture, make no allegations of cannibalism.
Nonetheless, within Mesoamerica as a whole, ritual cannibalism was
not unknown, and is generally accepted to have been practiced by the Aztecs.
With regard to the Mayas, there is a specific description of ritual cannibalism by
Landa (1941: 120) in his treatise on the culture of the Yucatec Mayas, and the
practice is referred to in various statements of the Dominican priest Las Casas
concerning the Highland Mayas, particularly those of the Baja and Alta Verapaz
(quoted in Helfrich 1973: 163). Las Casas, it might be noted, was a man intent
on defending indigenous culture rather than on fabricating excuses for military
conquest. A tentative conclusion that could be drawn for the pre-Spanish Maya
of the contact period is that, if ritual cannibalism did occur, it was rare.
However this may be, the cannibalistic motifs characteristic of the first episode
of Q‘eqchi‘ myth can be seen as an extreme form of the ‗alimentary idiom‘ that
also informs the Mesoamerican pacts between humans and deities and that is
―broadly used to describe a stronger person dominating a weaker‖ (Monaghan
2000: 39).

Kidnapping Babies: Child Sacrifices

In oral tradition, the topic of child-hunting and child-eating is

commonly associated with the cannibalistic demon (tzitzimitl) who plays the

105
The Itza‘s constituted the last Mayan petty state to be conquered (1698); it was
centered around a lake in the forested southern part of the Yucatan peninsula.
 77

role of Old Adoptive Mother in hero myth, and who, according to the Huaxtecs,
could transform herself into a child-eating eagle. Commenting on an episode in
Chinantec Sun and Moon myth in which an eagle kidnapping and devouring
children is killed by the heroes, and on analogous Mazatec tales, Eckart Boege
(1988: 111, 121-124) suggested that the eagle kidnapper is an image for an
outside world conceived as menacing (‗el afuera amenazador‘), and that it gives
expression to an historical experience of being conquered, exploited, and
‗eaten‘: ‗A cannibalistic oral phantasy for characterizing domination or non-
alliance‘ (‗una fantasía oral canibalesca para caracterizar el poder o la no
alianza‘, id.: 124).106 This interpretation would apply with equal force to the
image of the Old Adoptive Mother in hero myth.
Interestingly, some tales radically change perspective and attribute the
eagle-kidnapping to the hero instead of to the Old Adoptive Mother. In the
legendary tale of the Chontal hero, Fane Kantsini (Barabas and Bartolomé 2000:
232), the Old Adoptive Mother was thwarted by the hero when she tried to eat
him. The hero went on to defeat his adversaries and established himself as a
king, but problems arose with a Zapotec town: ―Therefore, Fane Kantsini
decided to eradicate this community. To that end he changed into an eagle and
went to rob young children in the hostile community.‖ Thus, the eagle-
transformation of the Huaxtec Old Adoptive Mother and the kidnapping of
children are here attributed to the very hero who defeated the Old Adoptive
Mother, and the latter thereby stands out as a mythological projection of
practices traditionally associated with war and subjugation.
This being so, it remains possible that these metaphors of domination,
and of kidnapping and child-eating in particular, may once have corresponded
to the practice of child sacrifice. Mesoamerican child sacrifices – which
continue to be attested archaeologically – were customarily directed to the rain
deities. In the case of the Aztecs, infants (‗niðos de teta‘) are reported to have
been bought from their mothers, sacrificed to the rain deities, and according to
Sahagún (1979: 98-100) cooked and eaten afterwards. In pre-Hispanic Yucatan,
child sacrifices were often performed at the large water holes, or cenotes, where
the rain deities were believed to dwell (Helfrich 1973: 63; cf. Clendinnen 1987:
224 n. 16). The case of the early colonial Yucatec Mayas (which does not

106
The metaphor of ‗eating ‗and ‗being eaten‘ is also dominant in black sorcery, see
Chapter Seven (‗Biters and Destroyers‘).
 78

involve anthropophagy) is more uncertain. It rests for the most part on a large-
scale, multi-year inquisitional investigation by the Franciscans begun in the year
1562. The investigation resulted in many confessions of child sacrifice (Helfrich
1973: 63-68; cf. Tozzer 1941: 117 n. 535), but the political circumstances that
occasioned the investigations, as well as the general application of torture, call
into question the validity of the confessions, notwithstanding their often
remarkable detail (Helfrich 1973: 25-26; Clendinnen 1987: 89ff, 165-189).
While some competent researchers, such as Tozzer (1941), appear to accept
them as valid,107 Clendinnen (1987: 165-169), who systematically studied the
original records, is more cautious. She concedes (id.: 181-182), however, that
―some human killings persisted into the post-conquest period‖, including ―the
reported presentation by one lord to another of six small children for ritual
killing.‖
On the assumption that the Old Adoptive Mother‘s predilection for
eating babies could tell of a former custom of child sacrifice, the mythological
stories should be reviewed and certain parallels be pointed out. The baby found
and adopted by the Old Adoptive Mother (see Chapter 2, section ‗Adoption and
Denial of Ancestry‘) is as a rule illegitimate. Its father is unknown (e.g.,
Thompson 1930) and so, in the absence of a male provider, the child cannot be
fed and is rejected (Münch 1983: 163). It is a sort of orphan, who, in a variant of
Q‘eqchi‘ myth (Grandia n.d.), is on a par with twelve other orphans. According
to the inquisition reports, illegitimacy and orphanage had been among the very
circumstances qualifying a child to become a sacrificial victim (Helfrich 1973:
64-66). Sometimes, such a child was raised to be sacrificed later (id.: 67), a
circumstance that recurs in Popoluca maize hero myth (Elson 1947: 196): When
the old woman shows the foundling to her partner, a fat serpent, the latter wants
to eat the infant, and is admonished to wait until later.
Following the inquisitional reports, sacrificial children were commonly
bought and sold (Helfrich 1973: 65-66). As Helfrich (id.: 63) has pointed out,
this practice seems to be reflected in a Yucatec tale popularly known as the
‗Dwarf of Uxmal‘, already referred to in discussing the adoption theme in hero
myth. Its protagonist, Ez, is a local hero born from an egg (like the maize hero
and several heroes from Oaxaca), adopted by an old woman, and raised by her
to defy an oppressive king and become the ‗Indian King‘ (an ending

107
See Tozzer 1941: 115 n. 533; 117 n. 535; 80-81 n. 344.
 79

corresponding to the hero‘s solar transformation in Q‘eqchi‘ myth). After burial,

this Old Adoptive Mother was popularly believed to reside in a sinkhole inside
Yucatan‘s karstic crust and to sell water in exchange for infants, which she fed
to a large snake.
While mythological snakes play an important role in ethnometeorology
and are believed to cause rain as well as drought,108 they can also become part
of the imagery of domination. As Helfrich comments (1973: 63), ―the snake [in
the tale of Ez] reminds one of the terrifying snake deity Hapai-can, which in
times of great drought devoured many sacrificial children in Chichen Itzá.‖
According to some of the Books of Chilam Balam, these children were
demanded in tribute from lesser towns (id.: 128). In the great well of Chichen
Itza, skeletal remains of a significant number of children have indeed been
found (id.: 63). The anthropophagous, fat snake partner of the Old Adoptive
Mother mentioned in Popoluca myth should perhaps be compared to the Hapai-
can snake.
Finally, there is reason to return to the eagle woman. Apart from the
possibility of buying sacrificial children, there reportedly existed an
institutionalized practice of kidnapping children and of raising them for
sacrifice (Helfrich 1973: 68; also Clendinnen 1987: 90). That is precisely what
the Huaxtec Old Adoptive Mother (the K‘olenak) is stated to have done when
she still ruled the world: Seated on the central pillar of the sky, she descended in
the shape of an eagle to claim a first-born offered to her (Alcorn 1984: 82) and
to kill and eat other children. She also engaged in fattening up children before
eating them in a public ceremony (id.: 166).
To conclude, the various parallels identified above give some support to
the theory that the kidnappings and killings attributed to the Old Adoptive
Mother may once have had a connection to pre-Spanish sacrificial practices.
Doubts must remain, however. Perhaps more important than an interpretation in
terms of historical reminiscences merged with the corresponding images of
mythical discourse, is the fact that the terrifying forays of the female demon
(tzitzimitl) are a narrative topic that can give expression to the more general
experience of being dominated and ‗eaten‘ by more powerful groups.

108
In Yucatan, for example, one such a serpent embodies the drought and heat of the
canicula (Jong 1999: 156-160). See also Appendix C.
 80

Eating the Tapir Lover: A War Ritual

The killing and castration of the tapir lover constitutes another topic that
may once have related to a specific sacrificial practice. In the preceding chapter,
it has been argued that in Mayan as well as in Central and South-American
traditions, the tapir is often viewed as an embodiment of greed, threatening the
crucial distribution of food and of women that is constitutive of social cohesion.
In the 16th-century Yucatec kingdom of Mani, the pachyderm was apparently
viewed as the paradigm of an enemy: ―The Indians considered it an act of great
bravery to kill them [the tapirs], and the skin or parts of it lasted as a memorial
down to the great-grandsons‖ (Landa, in Tozzer 1941: 203). In the 20th century,
the Lacandons still associated the tapir with weapons, particularly the spear-
thrower.109 The exaggerated virility attributed to the tapir is typical of the way
the Mayas tend to caricature foreign invaders. For instance, the ‗Fierce Warrior‘
(Oyew Achi) – the legendary intruder of the Guatemalan Highlands who
constantly tries to lay hands on the riches and the women of his enemies (see
Chapter Four) – is endowed with giant testicles (Cook 1983: 140, 142).110 This
represents a long-standing tradition in the Mayan area, for in the same manner,
the Mayan kings of the Classic Period had their captives depicted with greatly
exaggerated genitals (Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006: fig. 6.9b, pp. 202ff).111
The final hunting down of the tapir by the hero brothers is tantamount
to warfare. When the Old Adoptive Mother‘s partner is a deer, the two hunters
(one of whom, in the Thompson variant of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, is the deity of the
hunt himself) can be seen to play the same role as that other hunting deity,
Mixcoatl (also called Camaxtli). On Mixcoatl‘s feast in the Aztec month of

109
In Lacandon dream interpretation, ―a spear-thrower (ch’ili’tux) foretells seeing a
tapir, and a gun or firearm (ts’on) represents a tapir‘s teeth‖ (Bruce 1979: 306 s.v. tapir /
tsimin). The erection of a tapir easily evokes the image of a rising spear-thrower.
110
In this, Oyew Achi is not unlike certain heroes from the distant past, the imprints of
whose giant genitals were left in stone (e.g., Köhler 1977: 61 line 789 and n. 57; Gossen
1974: 345: ―Penises were very large and heavy in those days‖).
111
More generally, the historical Mayas seem to have been preoccupied with male
procreative power. There was, for instance, a general practice of publicly drawing blood
from the male member. For the Kaqchikeles, Coto (1983: 289 s.v. idolatrar) mentions
that the incinerated testicles (compañones) of a deceased war captain were worked into
his ‗idol‘, probably an ancestral statue.
 81

Quecholli, captives were sacrificed as if they were deer and deer were sacrificed
as if they were captives, the hunters then being rewarded as if they had made
captives (Sahagún 1979: 141-142, Bk. 2 Ch. 33; Durán 1971: 455-456; cf.
Graulich 1997a: 439).112 Thus, to call the enemy a deer and represent him as
such is to identify him as game to be killed and butchered. The same holds true
for the tapir, and as we have already seen, both the tapir and his human
counterparts were caught in pitfalls filled with sharp stakes.113
The butchering of the mythological deer or tapir lover leads to
cannibalism, with variants of Q‘eqchi‘ myth (just as tales from Mixes and
Pipiles) focusing on the presentation of the slain enemy‘s genitals to the Old
Adoptive Mother.114 From an entry in Coto‘s Spanish-Kaqchikel dictionary
(1983: 502-503 s.v. sacrificar), compiled around the middle of the seventeenth
century, it could be inferred that this same act once prefigured a crucial part of
the rituals following upon war:115

―And the aforementioned Father Varea says that when the ancients
had sacrificed a man and – if he belonged to those captured in war
– dismembered him, they took apart the genital member and
testicles of that victim, and fed them to an old woman whom they
considered a prophetess. And they asked her to implore their idol,
or Qabuvil, to give them more captives. And then they set up a
great banquet and ate the one they had sacrificed.‖116

112
The codices, as well as the San Bartolo murals, show that at times, human heart
sacrifice was performed on deer, as well as on other animals (C. Nuttall 44, C. Madrid
42a1).
113
The leader of the 1761 Yucatec Maya rebellion, Jacinto Uc (better known as Canek),
followed a very similar reasoning. He told his followers to kill all their pigs, which were
judged to have Spanish souls: ―The sacrifice of these animals would permit the Mayas
to kill the Spaniards‖ (Patch 2003: 50).
114
The theme of castration is also known from Mayan folklore. A separate act of the
Ch‘orti‘ Baile de los Gigantes (Girard 1949 I: 379) was devoted to the hero (Gavite, i.e.,
David) castrating his adversary, the ‗Black Giant‘ (Golillo, i.e., Goliath); amidst general
rejoicing, spectators were being chased and menaced with the same treatment. Only in a
later scene was Goliath finally killed and decapitated.
115
In a discussion of the power of ‗sorceresses‘ such as Cihuacoatl Quilaztli, Brinton
(1894: 34-35) already quoted this passage.
116
In this dissertation, quotes from the Spanish or German have been translated by the
present author, unless stated otherwise. My translations from the Q‘eqchi‘ carry the tag
‗(my trans.)‘.
 82

This description has to stand by itself, since it is not corroborated by

other reports. It should be emphasized, however, that Father De Coto was a very
competent lexicographer, not given to private phantasies; his dictionary is
particularly rich in all sorts of sound and detailed ethnographic information.
Father Varea, the author of a Spanish-Kakchiquel dictionary frequently quoted
by Coto, spoke the Kakchiquel language fluently (Acuña, in Coto 1983: xxxix
ff). 117 There is thus no particular reason to assume that the information
contained in the passage was invented, or terribly misrepresented. The
anthropophagy concluding the ritual accords with Las Casas‘s descriptions of
such acts in the Guatemalan Highlands (cf. Helfrich 1973: 163), the ‗great
banquet‘ being more particularly reminiscent of the contemporaneous Aztec
custom of consuming part of the meat of a sacrificed prisoner in a ritual meal.
Of course, ritual is not reducible to myth, and it is only occasionally expressive
of it. But as I will argue, there is a distinct possibility that this particular
sacrificial ritual is informed by a mythical paradigm – just as the captive
sacrifices performed on the platform of the main temple of Tenochtitlan were
informed by the Aztec myth of Huitzilopochtli killing and dismembering his
hostile sister, Coyolxauhqui (e.g., Clendinnen 1991: 199-200).
One more thing should be taken into consideration, however. Referring
to ‗the ancients‘ (‗los antiguos‘) – that is, the unbaptized ancestors – the quoted
passage is cast in the language of realistic description; yet, what comes closest
to it is precisely the mythical episode with which we are here concerned.
Therefore, another way of viewing Varea‘s statement is that it does not
correspond to reality, but merely relates what was traditionally ascribed to the
ancestors, just as the Tzotziles ascribed terrible teeth to their own predecessors,
bone-crushing teeth comparable to those of the aged goddess, ‗Mother Bone-
Cruncher‘. Viewed in such a way, the ritual behavior ascribed to the ancestors
may have been modeled after that of the actors of the myth under discussion,
with no basis in real life.
The status of the ritual cannot be decided here. Nonetheless, the
resemblance of the ancestral Kaqchikel ritual to the killing of the tapir and its
aftermath in Q‘eqchi‘ myth – including the context of a cannibalistic feast – is
sufficiently strong to warrant brief consideration of some of its implications.

117
In the first years of the 17th century, Varea worked as a priest in the south-eastern
Guatemalan region of Zapotitlan (Acuña 1983: xxxix).
 83

From the passage in Coto‘s dictionary quoted above, Guilhem Olivier (2005:
252-253) concluded that the rite reflects a ‗castrating‘ concept of the ‗Earth
goddess‘ (personified by the aged ‗prophetess‘), such as it is known from the
Zoques, Otomis, and Huicholes (id.: 2004: 470). I believe one should be more
specific and interpret the Kaqchikel ritual with reference to the mythological
episode as it is known from the Q‘eqchi‘s (and also Ch‘orti‘s). In such a
heuristic framework, the so-called prophetess would have assumed the role of
the Old Adoptive Mother, and the captured warrior (or war chief) that of her
tapir lover.118 Contrary to what Olivier implies, it is clear that it is not the
goddess who castrates the captive warrior, but her adoptive children.
With regard to the relation of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero brothers and the warrior
class, it is important to recall that in some of the earlier Q‘eqchi‘ variants
(Wirsing, in Quirín 1966, 1967; Dieseldorff 1926: 4-5), the name of the main
‗twin‘ brother is Xbalanque. As will be set out in more detail in Chapter Four,
Xbalanque had been a widely venerated god of war at the time of the Spanish
conquest. Not only did the potency and effectiveness of the weapons depend on
him, he was also, according to Las Casas, the very one credited with the
introduction of human sacrifice. Indeed, in the Popol Vuh he is characterized as
the great sacrificer who completely dismembers his own Twin brother,
Hunahpu. But whereas Hunahpu was restored to life, the dismembered tapir is
distributed and eaten, and thus becomes a prototypical sacrificial victim.
Within the mythological material directly related to the Q‘eqchi‘ tapir
episode, there are two parallels that can strengthen the proposed connection of
the Kaqchikel war ritual to the myth. Firstly, the old ‗prophetess‘ is made to ask
for more captives. In the Tzotzil adultery tale discussed in the preceding chapter
(section ‗The Myth Mirrored‘), acquiring new ‗captives‘, in this case deer, was
precisely the effect of having fed the lover‘s genitals to the adulterous wife. The
deer hunt, often a metaphor for warfare, had come to a standstill because the
hunter had lost control over his wife and thereby also over what Laughlin has
called ‗the mischievous deer‘. The hunt could successfully be resumed only

118
The Kaqchikel ‗tapir‘ may well have been the prototypical Kaqchikel captive,
Tolk‘om (in Maxwell and Hill 2006: 93ff). The latter, said to make the hill tremble, is
called the ‗son of the mud that quivers‘ (Recinos and Goetz), or ‗child of mud, of muck‘
(Maxwell and Hill), a description that would not be unfitting for a tapir. Once
sacrificed, his body parts were thrown into a lake.
 84

when this control had been violently restored.119 In Laughlin‘s elaborate Tzotzil
version, the severed penis of the intrusive lover – corresponding to that of the
tapir lover in myth – is used by the tale‘s protagonist as a sort of talisman.120 It
enables him to shoot the deer that initially had been mocking him for his lack of
manliness, so that his hunt finally succeeds.
Secondly, ritually presenting the old ‗prophetess‘ (who, as I argue, may
have impersonated the Old Adoptive Mother) with the genitals of a ‗tapir‘ war
captain at each new capture, has a parallel in the Chatino custom of ritually
presenting their Old Adoptive Mother (Mac-Kutsú, the goddess of the steam
bath) with the liver of a deer121 at each new childbirth. This liver appears to
represent that of her slaughtered deer lover: ―The liver that was eaten by the old
woman is the food that the generations serve her,‖ at each new birth within the
family (Moedano 1977: 19-20, quoting Pedro Carrasco; cf. Cortés Serrano
1979: 53).122 If offering the lover‘s liver has the purpose of promoting new
births, offering the lover‘s penis may have the purpose of promoting new
captives.

119
A Ch‘orti‘ story about another henpecked husband (Fought 1972: 220-225)
elaborates this point. The husband‘s unmanliness is cured by a brew containing the
venom of ants and scorpions, venoms which had to be collected on Thursdays known as
Holtxan days. The meaning of the word is stated to be obscure. Aggressive manliness
seems to be implied, however. Girard (1949: 330) explains the Ch‘orti‘ term holchan as
a deadly method of black sorcery using one‘s own semen as a magical expedient.
Holchan is also a term for a pre-Spanish war-chief (ancient Q‘eqchi‘ holchan, see
Freeze 1975: 44; ancient Yucatec holcan, see Landa); and both the Ch‘orti‘s and the
Q‘eqchi‘s used the word to denote a man‘s transformation into an animal (Cruz Torres
1967: 281), particularly a serpent (Girard 1949: 330).
120
In Rama myth, the dried testicles of an intrusive tapir lover who had been killed and
castrated, are similarly put to use as a talisman: They can bring luck in fishing
(Loveland 1976: 79 and n. 6).
121
The liver was, for the ancient Nahuas at least, the seat of passion and sexual desire
(López Austin 1980: 210). It was perhaps for that reason that, when the Durango Nahua
Tepusilam was burnt, her liver ‗jumped‘ away first, into the water (Preuss 1982: 87).
122
This parallel also shines through in one of the Mixe variants of the Sun and Moon
tale (Miller 1956: 90), wherein the cooked testicles of the slaughtered deer partner are
presented to the old woman as the liver of a deer.
 85

Guarding the Trophy Tree: Headhunting

A consideration of her role in Pipil mythology suggests that, besides the

Kaqchikel war ritual, there was another connection between the Old Adoptive
Mother and the ritual aftermath of the killing of war prisoners. In the adoption
episode of Pipil hero myth (e.g., Schultze Jena 1935: 27-31), she is the Old
Adoptive Mother of rain children, called tepeua ‗scatterers‘ (id.: 60ff): a group
of brothers of whom the youngest is Nanahuatzin (Campbell). Nanahuatzin is
also the name of the principal rain deity (the ‗old thunder god‘)123 among the
Gulf Coast Nahuas. Although the Pipil episode contains elements that
specifically refer to rain production, it stays remarkably close to its Q‘eqchi‘
counterpart. The substitution of rain deities for Sun and his brother becomes
less unusual if one considers that in important Q‘eqchi‘ variants, Sun‘s brother
is (or rather, becomes) the rain deity, Chocl. In Ch‘orti‘ myth, the hero himself
(Kumix) is called ‗angel‘, a word that normally refers to a rain deity; and
according to Hull (2003: 223), ―the actors in this legend […] are also the
principal figures in rain production.‖
The Old Adoptive Mother of the rain children is the witch124 Tanteputz
(Hartmann 1907: 146), or, more fully, Tantepuslamat ‗Iron-toothed Old
Woman‘ (Campbell 1985: 898 line 45 ff). In the early 16th century, this last
name specifically denoted a witch who could change herself into a flying
fireball (Olivier 2005),125 the same belligerent transformation taken by Shan
Ni‘s lover in Q‘eqchi‘ myth (Cruz Torres), and by the Jaguar Slayer in his
struggle with Tantepuslamat‘s Tzotzil representative, K‘uxbakme‘el ‗Mother

123
In the course of the year, this Old Thunder is again reborn as a child (Alcorn 1984:
58-59), putting him on a par with the Pipil rain boys.
124
In this thesis, the usual distinction between witch and black sorcerer is followed, the
one referring to a person with an innate drive to do harm, the other to a person doing
harm by magical manipulation.
125
As Olivier (2005) has pointed out, a Nahua gloss in the Mixtec Codex Nuttall (page
76) gives Tlantepuzillamatl as the name of a fire serpent showing claws and knives
which is called yahui in Mixtec, a word with the general meaning of ‗transforming
witch‘. More specifically, yahui refers to witches transformed into flying fireballs.
Particularly the female fireball witches are still believed to suck the blood of newborn
children (Jansen 1982: 149).
 86

Bone-Cruncher‘.126 Tantepuslamat‘s uncanny powers of war are well illustrated

by the fact that her Chiapanec Nahua counterpart, Jantepusi Ilama, was credited
with the destruction of the entire town of Copanaguastlan (Ruz 1985: 258).
In one Pipil variant of the present mythological episode, the ‗Iron-
toothed Old Woman‘ does not catch the babies from the water, but from a
calabash tree (Campbell 1985: 908). She plucks a gourd (wahkal) from the tree
and takes it to her house, where the fruit ripens and finally bursts open to give
birth to the hero children, the rain deity Nanahuatzin and his brothers. In two
other variants (Hartmann 1907: 146; Schultze Jena 1935: 27), she does not
witness the birth herself, but adopts the children immediately afterwards.127
Thereafter, the tale stays very close to the Q‘eqchi‘ myth, and develops along
by now familiar lines, including the killing of Tantepuslamat‘s lover (here a
giant demonized as a ‗sesimite‘, i.e., tzitzimitl), who is metaphorically equated
with a deer.
This calabash tree (huacal tree, Crescentia cujete) has, in all three
variants, a witch tale attached to it, of which decapitation is the main theme.
The tree had sprouted from the desiccated head of Tantepuslamat‘s daughter
(Campbell 1985: 908; Hartmann 1907: 146), this daughter being another demon
woman128 showing warlike behavior: She could decapitate herself, and have her
severed head hunt for human victims.129 The head attached itself to the body of
the victim and killed it, the first victim exemplified by the tale being the
husband, the next one the prototypical captive, a deer. When the witch was
finally defeated, her head came off from the deer‘s body and sprouted into a tree
with head-like fruits, or calabashes. Save for the tale‘s conclusion, this is the
Pipil version of a nahualistic witch tale also current among Mayan groups (e.g.,
Laughlin 1977: 301-305, Tale 82) and that, as such, has its own problems of

126
Mixtec yahui corresponds to poslob (poxlon, patzlan) in Tzotzil, also defined as
tzihuitzin (xihuitzin) ‗comet‘ (Brinton 1894: 20; Guiteras 1972: 292-293).
127
Unlike Hartmann and Campbell, Schultze Jena (1935: 27) makes Tantepuslamat into
the mother of a man who had been preyed upon by a female witch (the man‘s own
wife).
128
In a variant of maize hero myth (Segre 1990: 324), too, both the mother and the
mother‘s mother are cannibals.
129
According to Schultze Jena (1935: 23), the limbs would come off as well. The
demon appears to demonstrate on her own body the cannibalistic butchering of a human
victim.
 87

interpretation.130 The question here, however, is why such a tale should have
been used to introduce the Pipil version of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth of Sun and his
brother(s). I believe that the most likely answer is to be found in the
predominant motifs of decapitation, manhunt, and defeat, which made the story
particularly apt to serve as an origin tale of the trophy tree.
Also known to the Aztecs (Miller and Taube 1993: 176 s.v. tzompantli),
the trophy tree has deep historical roots in Highland Guatemala and the
easternmost Mesoamerican areas. Before the Spanish invasion, the Nahuas
(Pipiles) of southern Guatemala and El Salvador, together with the Nahuas
(Nicaraos) of southern Nicaragua, used to live in small, warlike states and
chiefdoms. Human sacrifice (Fowler 1989: 241-246) and cannibalism (id.: 246-
248) were prominent features of their ritual life. Sacrifices of war captives were
specifically performed for the goddess Itzcueye ‗Owner of the Obsidian Skirt‘
(Fowler 1989: 244, cf. 233), obsidian being the stone used for weapons and
sacrificial knives.131 The name is suggestive of the female demon (tzitzimitl)
who, armed with a bow, functions as the Old Adoptive Mother in Zoque-
Popoluca maize hero myth (Blanco 2006: 69): ―Her skirt cuts as if she were
carrying a hatchet, when she walks it can destroy weeds and brushes.‖
The Nicaraos – and probably the Pipiles as well – had the custom of
suspending the severed heads of their war prisoners in small trees surrounding
the precincts of their chiefs (Fowler 1989: 243, 245, quoting Martyr d‘Anghera
and Oviedo). In the Popol Vuh, a trophy tree turns into a calabash tree once the
head of a sacrificial victim has been suspended in it. Since various versions of
Pipil myth make the Old Adoptive Mother into the mother of the female demon
whose head changed into the calabash tree, and since the calabash tree can
justly be called a trophy tree (cf. Miller and Taube 1993: 176), the Old Adoptive
Mother could consequently be considered the (grand)mother of the trophy tree.
When, in the Popol Vuh (PV lines 2169-2182), such a tree is stated to be

130
One of the themes of the nahualistic tale seems to be that of male predominance over
women vs. female predominance over men: Whereas, in the Tzotzil adultery tale, the
husband restores control over his wife by killing her, in the present tale, it is the wife
who, by an innate drive, kills her husband.
131
Following Nicholson (1971: 421), Itzcueye is another name for the female demon,
Itzpapalotl, and belongs to the same group of female deities of which Cihuacoatl, Toci,
and Ilamatecuhtli were also a part. For Cihuacoatl, see Appendix D.
 88

desiccated and to receive new life through the suspension of a trophy head, the
need for headhunting becomes apparent.132

Eating Old Adoptive Mother: ‗Cannibalism by Trickery‘

Once the Old Adoptive Mother has been killed, the hero brothers boil
her meat in a cooking pot, and invite her natural sons – or, in one variant, her
husband – to a banquet to eat from the stew and meat tamales. The sons are
horrified by the discovery of the head and breasts lying at the bottom of the pot.
Among the early 16th-century Mayas, the head belonged to those parts of a
sacrificial victim traditionally set apart for the highest priests and officials
(Helfrich 1973: 163). Historicized versions of the plot recur in several early
colonial, indigenous sources, with the meat typically being from someone
belonging to the eaters‘ in-group, the outcome usually being war and the
subjection of the eaters.
Barry Isaac (working within the critical tradition initiated by Arens‘s
‗The Man-Eating Myth‘) has analyzed various accounts of this type given by
the Nahua historians Tezozomoc, Chimalpahin, Muñoz Camargo, and Durán.
The context is that of Aztec military expansion; those duped by what Isaac calls
‗cannibalism by trickery‘ are resisting local leaders (the rulers of Xochimilco,
Tlatelolco, and a Tlaxcalan war chief respectively). In the case of the
Xochimilcans (Isaac 2005: 2),

―when they began to eat, it [the stew] was very tasty, and,
continuing with their meal, they then found in their bowls heads
like those of children, [and] human hands and feet, and [human]
guts. Shocked and frightened, the Xochimilcas began to shout,
saying ―I have told you, Lords, how bad and perverse these
Mexicas are, that with these very things and others they subdued
the Azcapotzalca Tepanecas and Coyoacan, with these lies and

132
There is basic agreement between Pipil hero myth and K‘iche‘ Twin myth in that the
hero children, albeit in various ways, stem from a trophy tree. In both cases, the
mothers, variously connected to this tree, could be viewed as war demons representative
of the Underworld, whether through decapitation, or the spilling of blood (in the case of
Xquic).
 89

tricks. Let us do our best against them: Prepare and equip

yourselves, Lords of Xochimilco, as the time has come.‖133

With regard to the ‗heads like those of children‘, the cult to the rain
deities brought with it the sacrifice and eating of children; the hands and feet
traditionally belonged to the parts of the sacrificial victim set apart for the
nobles and the priests (Sahagún, in Helfrich 1973: 163).
In the case of the ruler of Tlatelolco, his ambassadors had tried to form
a coalition against the Aztecs, but were captured, killed, and cooked:

―Moquihuix and various other Tlatelolcas [dignitaries] were

invited to a banquet so that they would come and eat their own
ambassadors, not knowing that these had been killed by the
Tenochcas.‖

In the case of another humiliated enemy, the captive Tlaxcalan war

chief, Tlahuicole (Isaac 2005: 4),

―they [the Aztecs, EB] made for him great festivities, dances, and
banquets, and in these banquets they made for him, it is said that
they fed him – a shameful thing that is seldom told – his wife‘s
genitals cooked in a soup.‖

In a retelling by Durán of the trickery wrought upon the Xochimilcans,

the suggestion of realism has diminished, and the cannibalistic event has
acquired an almost visionary quality. The guests were terrified by what Isaac
(2004: 2) calls ―the mysterious transubstantiation of their dinner into a pottage
of recognizable human parts‖, and were told by soothsayers ―that it was an ill
omen for it meant the destruction of the city [of Xochimilco, EB] and the death
of many.‖134 With regard to Tlahuicole, Isaac (2005: 4) observes that two other
indigenous historians relating the fate of the Tlaxcalan warrior completely omit
the cannibalistic feasting. Thus, one gets the strong impression that events

133
It so happens that the patron deity of Xochimilco was Cihuacoatl (Durán 1971: 210),
a goddess comparable to Xkitza (see Appendix D).
134
Here, one is reminded of the destruction of Copanaguastla by Jantepusi Ilama, the
same goddess who plays the role of Old Adoptive Mother in Pipil myth (see next
section).
 90

involving some sort of deceit were cast in the mold of a mythological tale of the
type concerning us here; and this, of course, raises the further question (which
need not now be answered) of whether, on these occasions, any cannibalism
took place at all.135
Still another example of ‗cannibalism by trickery‘ can be found in the
chronicles of a state rivaling that of the Aztecs, the Tarascan or Purépecha
kingdom (Craine and Reindorp 1970: 132-142). The context is that of the
invading Chichimecs led by Tariacuri, the founder of the Tarascan state. The
ruler of Tariara, called Zurumban, tries to create a war coalition against the
invaders. His ambassador is found out by Tariacuri‘s men, shot on a deer hunt,
and sacrificed. The body is handled like a quarry: It is cooked and cut up, and
carefully chosen parts are sent as a present to those involved in the developing
coalition. The recipients of this human ‗deer meat‘ are informed that it was from
a sacrificial slave. At Zurumban‘s court, ―all the principals and the ladies
gathered in the patio and they brought the meat out and placed it before
Zurumban…and everyone ate‖ (id.: 141). When the deceit is discovered,
―Zurumban stayed in the patio vomiting, and his women put their hands in their
mouths trying to vomit the meat, but they could not because it was already
settled in their stomachs and intestines‖ (id.: 142), almost as if they had eaten
their own flesh and blood. The result is, once more, open warfare.

135
Michel Graulich (2005: 332ff), an authority on Aztec ritual, recently reviewed the
material regarding Aztec exocannibalism and reached conclusions contradicting Arens‘s
‗negationist‘ position.
 91

Table 3: Cannibalism by Trickery

CANNIBALISTIC EATERS HUMAN MEAT

Natural Sons of Old Adoptive
MYTH Old Adoptive Mother
Mother and Tapir (or husband)
the lords of Xochimilco the lords‘ own people?
the ruler of Tlatelolco and his
the ruler‘s four ambassadors
lords
HISTORY the captain‘s Tlaxcalan wife
the war captain of Tlaxcala
(her genitals)
the ruler of Tariaran and his
the ruler‘s ambassador
allies

Common to the stories above is a contrast between allochthons and

autochthons. The allochthons are the invading ‗Chichimecs‘, stereotypically
imagined as nomadic deer hunters: The Aztecs and the Tarascans in the
formative phase of their states, with their leaders corresponding in myth to Sun,
or Xbalanque, and his brother (particularly the hunting deity Xulab of the
Thompson variant). The autochthons are the rulers and other lords of
established states, whose role corresponds to that of the sons of Old Adoptive
Mother and of her deer or tapir lover (see Table 3). To the rulers, the native
earth is the mother who gave origin to them, and who fed them. The killing of
Shan Ni with a sacrificial knife (Cruz Torres) seems to be replicated in the
sacrificial killing of her representative, the ambassador of the Tariaran
kingdom.136
The result of the killing and eating of the persons cast in the role of the
Old Adoptive Mother is a flare-up of hostilities. Although this intensification of
warfare may relate to the transformation of Shan Ni‘s sons into birds of prey
(owl and hawk), it appears to be much more dramatically expressed by the tale

136
Like the king Zurumban, the ambassador (called Naca) was a priest of the
preeminent goddess Xaratanga. In view of the latter‘s patronage over the steam bath (cf.
Moedano 1977: 9), there is a possibility that Xaratanga corresponds to the Old Adoptive
Mother. On the other hand, the ambassador‘s equation with a deer also invites
comparison with the tapir lover.
 92

about the eating of Tepusilam, the aged Durango Nahua goddess: When she
returned to life, it was with murderous energy and a fierce determination to kill
all who had deceived her. And yet, in each of the above histories, the outcome
was the subjection of the existing kingdoms and their representatives.
 93

CHAPTER 4

HUMMINGBIRD AS A WAR LORD AND MOUNTAIN MOVER

Two contrasting views of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero are inherent in the myth of Sun and
Moon. In defeating his Old Adoptive Mother, the tapir, and his step-brothers,
the Q‘eqchi‘ hero played the role of a warrior. Following the adoption episode,
however, the focus switches to love and courtship, the hero‘s transformation
into a hummingbird being emblematic for this. This episode of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun
and Moon myth represents a tale type, here referred to as ‗Mayan Hummingbird
myth‘, that is found among several Maya peoples. The lovers in these tales are
typically war lords, whose feats are the subject of another class of tales
discussed below.
The hero of Hummingbird myth may bear such names as Xbalanque
and Oyew Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘, which have a certain notoriety in oral
tradition. These names locate Hummingbird myths within a wider framework of
tales about violent intruders whose ‗domestication‘ by the local population
generally meets with only partial success. The difficult transition of war to
alliance that is the concern of Hummingbird myth is also discernible in the mix
of hostility and accommodation characteristic of formal courtship procedures
everywhere among the Mayas. This and the following chapter provide a
background for a detailed analysis of versions of Hummingbird myth treated in
Chapters Six through Nine. These four chapters will investigate the type of
alliance finally reached by Hummingbird.

Xbalanque

Xbalanque, the hero of Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, carries an ancient

name already existing in the Classic Period (200-900 AD) and attested in early
colonial sources. These sources picture Xbalanque as a war god and military
leader, roles that are key to an understanding of his ambiguous role in early
20th-century Q‘eqchi‘ folklore and also in Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth.
 94

Pre-Spanish War God

As mentioned above, in the Alta Verapaz of the 16th century, Xbalanque
was a god of war. In a largely ignored passage of his ‗Recordación Florida‘,
Fuentes y Guzmán (1969 I: 76 – 77, Bk. I Ch. CVI [insert]) tells us that rituals
were held for this god during the thirty days preceding a campaign to ensure
victory. In case of defeat, Xbalanque‘s pardon was sought and the old weapons
were smashed, ―because they displeased their god Exbalanquén, because they
had sinned and were cursed, and they made other ones that should be blameless
and pleasing to their god.‖ As a war god, Xbalanque was at the same time a god
of human sacrifice. Prisoners of war were sacrificed to him (Fuentes y Guzmán
1932-1933 III: 60); indeed, it was he who introduced human sacrifice (Las
Casas 1967 I: 650, Bk. III Ch. CXXIV).
Xbalanque‘s status as war god explains his role in a myth transmitted
with utmost brevity by Las Casas (ibid.). It has Xbalanque (Exbalanquen)
descend into a cave near Cobán, which, guarded by Xucaneb Mountain, is in the
heart of the Q‘eqchi‘ territory. From there, together with his band of warriors,
he invaded the Underworld and conquered its Lords. The ‗King of the
Underworld‘ implored the hero not to draw him into the light of day,
whereupon ―the conqueror Exbalanquen, with much anger, gave him a kick,
saying: ‗Turn back, and yours be all that is putrid, wasted, and hideous‘.‖137 In
another passage, Las Casas (1967 I: 506, Bk. III Ch. CCXXXV) adds that the
hero sealed the entrance to the Underworld with a heavy boulder.
Whereas the Alta Verapaz myth has only one hero, the Popol Vuh
version of the war against the Underworld adds a second, called Hunahpu. In
this tale, set within the framework of a ball game, Xbalanque repeatedly betrays
his nature of a sacrificer, albeit with sinister playfulness. He violently smashes
the pumpkin head of his partner Hunahpu (PV 4109 ff) and butchers him more
thoroughly than any of the enemies have done: He severs not only the arms and
legs, but also the head, and in addition tears out the heart (PV 4440-4450). Both
heroes had been asked by the Lords of the Underworld to sacrifice each other,
but the god who loves human sacrifice is the one who complies. Hunahpu, on
the other hand, is continually cast as victim: Before being butchered by

137
Vuélvete, y sea para tí todo lo putrido, desechado, y hidiondo.
 95

Xbalanque, a bird demon (Vucub-Caquix) tears off his arm (PV 990-1000) and
a killer bat bites off his head (PV 3971).
Yet, Xbalanque also comes to the rescue of his weaker comrade. After
cutting Hunahpu to pieces, he reassembles him; and it is only with Xbalanque‘s
help that Hunahpu succeeds in retrieving his arm and head after they had been
torn asunder by the bird demon and the killer bat. The bond between the
dominant Xbalanque and the naive Hunahpu is, in its ambivalence,
characteristic of several contemporary war-hero brothers (cf. Pickands 1986).
The relation between Xbalanque and his protégé Hunahpu is replicated in that
prevailing between Xbalanque, now acting as a psychopomp, and a dead king:
Upon the death of the Southern Pokoman ruler, nocturnal sacrifices were
brought to Xbalanque, so that he might accompany the dead king into the
Underworld (Fuentes y Guzmán 1932 I: 266), presumably as a military escort.

Xbalanque Demonized
The Thompson version of Q‘eqchi‘ myth has a preamble in which the
Sun, or Xbalanque, while still preparing for his final task, made a ‗tour of the
skies‘ and suggested to his father that the present mountains and valleys be
created (Thompson 1930: 119). Often, as among the Mames of Chimaltenango
(Wagley 1949: 51), Christ, or the Christianized Sun, is stated to have actually
formed the landscape, and then to have dimmed the Moon. In the context of
Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, however, forming the landscape is not a mere act
of divine creativity. In all likelihood, Thompson's informants were familiar with
those stories telling of times when mountains could still be removed and stolen,
since darkness reigned and the dawn of a new Sun had not yet fixed them into
the landmarks and barriers of a steadfast realm. The mountains so brutally
removed were alive, and the stories to follow address the relationship between
specific mountains and the peoples of the territories they define (cf. Nahua
altepetl ‗water-mountain‘, i.e., a localized community).
Two isolated Q‘eqchi‘ stories appear to relate to this epoch, in that they
make Xbalanque into an invader displacing mountains. A short tale, using
highly dramatic images, has Xbalanque surprising Xucaneb in his sleep, tying
him up, and attempting to carry him off on his back (Dieseldorff 1926: 21).
Only by stiffening his legs could Xucaneb hold out against Xbalanque. The legs
of the resisting Lord of the Earth molded the landscape and gave origin to the
Xucaneb mountain range, running from San Juan Chamelco to Senahú.
 96

Xucaneb‘s feet may have reached to the location of Puklum Mountain – in the
Q‘eqchi‘ maize myth (see Chapter Eight) his principal counselor – and found
support there. In order to prevent a recurrence of the event, Xucaneb appointed
neighboring Iloman Mountain as his personal guardian.
The same source (Dieseldorff 1926: 21) adds a similar tale, which has
Xbalanque – ‗the sun deity inclined to all sorts of jokes‘ – surprising the
sleeping volcano Xacobyuk and successfully removing him from his location to
the west of Cobán (leaving only a valley there) towards Quetzaltenango, an
important K‘iche‘ town (Xelajú), which lies at the end of a diagonal line
extending from Lake Izabal over Rabinal to the far south-west.
Far from being a ‗joke‘, this second story forces us to reconsider the
role of Xbalanque. The incident is still known in neighboring Poqomchi‘
territory, among the inhabitants of San Cristóbal Verapaz, but with the
significant difference that here, the one who removed the mountain towards
Quetzaltenango is called Sipacna (Polanco 1991: 111), rather than Xbalanque –
Sipakna being a demon also known from the ancient K‘iche‘ Twin myth.
Sipacna surprised ‗Skabyook‘ (Xacobyuk) in his sleep, and when this mountain
deity awoke at his new location, he could not return since it was already past
dawn. There remained only Skabyook‘s sandal, in the shape of the smaller
mountain Pan X‘ot. Another attempt to kidnap a sleeping mountain backfired
when its neighbor sounded the alarm and the besieged mountain, now awake,
threw Sipakna out. The incident is analogous to Xbalanque‘s attempt to abduct
Xucaneb and the latter‘s installation of a mountain guardian. For their part, the
Cubulco Achis ascribe the removal and relocation of Santa María volcano, a
mountain near Quetzaltenango, to Sipac. More generally, they claim that all
great volcanoes now situated far to the south-west of their territory have been
stolen from their Mountain-Valley by the demonic invader (Neuenswander and
Shaw, in Shaw 1971: 48).
Among the Q‘eqchi‘s, Xacobyuk (or Xucubyuk) mountain appears in
stories about riches (Cruz Torres 1967: 282).138 According to the San Cristóbal
Verapaz Poqomchi‘s (Polanco), ―if they wouldn't have taken the mountain
[Xkabyook] away, those of San Cristóbal would live like those of
Quetzaltenango, they would keep sheep and make ponchos.‖ To the south, not

138
Viewed as a lord, Xacobyuk took the initiative to open the Maize Mountain of the
Senahú area, together with mountain Cojaj (Cruz Torres 1965: 85 ff).
 97

far removed from Rabinal, the Cubulco Achis (Neuenswander and Shaw, in
Shaw 1971: 46-47) view Sipac as a demon carrying off the fertile lands to the
coastal plantations to sell them ‗for just one bun‘. Sipac is a devourer of maize
and is defeated by making him break his teeth on maize kernels mixed with
stones, or by being imprisoned under a rock by the three Achi Maize goddesses
themselves (id.: 48-51). This last stratagem, of course, is the very one used by
Xbalanque and Hunahpu to bring Sipacna under control.139 Similarly, a story
from the Tz‘utujiles of Lake Atitlan (Orellana 1975: 854-855) opposes the Sun
and Moon Twins to Sipac, viewed as an anonymous ‗younger brother‘, and has
him suffer the same fate of being imprisoned under a rock.
The above comparisons underscore the significance of perspective. A
war god, or a war lord in his wake, is liable to be demonized as a foreign
intruder and land-robber (or whatever else the goals of his aggression were) and
cast in the role of Sipac(na). The aggressed have their own defenders: the divine
representatives of the threatened maize fields, or warlike saints belonging to
their community. But the data are more specific. The removal towards
Quetzaltenango of Xucubyuc, a mountain equally important to Q‘eqchi‘s and
Poqomchi‘s, would make Xbalanque into an ally, or even representative, of the
K‘iche‘s, and thus make his role coincide with that of Xbalanque of the Popol
Vuh. In the case of Xucaneb – the predominant ‗Mountain-Valley‘ of the
Q‘eqchi‘ core area – military invasion failed; and the Hummingbird myths that
have Xbalanque for their protagonist suggest that another strategy (now
involving love magic) had to be tried out. But even after his bridal capture,
flight, and celestial ascent, the ruling Sun, Xbalanque, was obliged to
reconnoiter at day-break, and to keep watch for the vengefulness of the aged
and traumatized Q‘eqchi‘ King (Estrada Monroy 1990: 141 n. 197).

Oyew Achi

In Ixil myth, the role of Hummingbird is played not by a pre-Spanish war

god, but by a war captain, viz. Oyew Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘. This is one among
several K‘iche‘ military titles including the term achi(h) (cf. Carmack 1973: 327

139
In the Popol Vuh, Sipakna is the son of a primeval would-be Sun, Vucub-Caquix.
Whereas Vucub-Caquix is undone by toothache, and has his silver teeth replaced by
white maize-kernels, the Sipakna of the Cubulco Achis is defeated by maize-kernels
mixed with white stones that make his teeth ache.
 98

n. 118; Carmack 1977: 8). The Poqomchi‘ Hummingbird myth from Santa Cruz
Verapaz replaces it by Quiche Uinac ‗K‘iche‘ Man‘. But whether as ‗Fierce
Warrior‘ or ‗K‘iche‘ Man‘, the actor assumes the same two roles as Xbalanque:
that of an intruding war captain and of a marriage candidate. These roles also
suggest a comparison between the Hummingbird myth and the Rabinal Achi
‗Strong Man of Rabinal‘, the pre-Spanish Highland Mayan dance drama that is
now to be discussed before reviewing the other ‗Fierce Warrior‘ tales.

Quiche Uinac in the ‘Rabinal Achi’

In the ‗Rabinal Achi‘, a dance drama that continues to be staged by
certain Rabinal families, the designations ‗Oyew Achi‘ and ‗Quiche Uinac‘
refer to the male antagonists. The drama‘s text has been expertly edited,
translated, and commented upon by the French scholar, A. Breton (1994), with
whose views I generally concur.140 In a publication that appeared a few years
after that of Breton‘s, a many-stranded and dense ethnohistorical argument was
presented by another of the dance drama‘s leading experts, Van Akkeren (2000:
232ff, 311-312, 410-431). It seeks to establish the Hummingbird myth as the
play‘s ancient core, while suggesting that it stemmed from the Q‘eqchi‘s
originally inhabiting the Rabinal valley. A discussion of these theses is beyond
the scope of this study. For the present exposition, it will be sufficient to show
the affinity between the plot of the myth and that of the play, since that can
explain why the term oyew achi should occur in both.
There are three main figures in the play. King Hob-Toh ‗Five-Water‘ of
the town Kaqyuq‘, the ancient Rabinal capital and ‗navel of the world‘, directs
the action. Enshrined in his palace, he is the Mamá ‗Grandfather‘ of the juyub-
taq’aj ‗mountain-valley‘, i.e., the realm. The main dialogues are given to the
two opposing war captains (q’alel), both being referred to as Oyew Achi ‗Fierce
Warrior‘ throughout the play (cf. Breton 1994: 342-343). One ‗Fierce Warrior‘
is the King‘s son and war captain (q’alel), known as both Rabinal Achi and
Cavuq Rabinal. The other ‗Fierce Warrior‘ is the invader, the Quiche Uinac
‗K‘iche‘ Man‘, also known by his clan name, Cavec Quiche. He specifically
bears the title ‗Lord of the foreigners from Cunen and Chajul‘, two towns that
appear to be Ixil allies under K‘iche‘ command. The Ixil tales collected by

140
The line references are to the Breton edition.
 99

Colby and Palomino come from Chajul, and the Quiche Uinac‘s very title led
Colby to suggest that Hummingbird‘s name oyew achi is a K‘iche‘ one (1981:
310 n. 7; cf. Palomino 1972: 15). 141 It would make the Grandfather of Ixil myth
the likely representative of the Ixiles themselves; and another variant from
Chajul (Klüssmann) simply calls him ‗Our Father‘ (K’ub’aal).
The play‘s cast of characters provides information that cannot be
gleaned from the dialogues themselves. A crucial role falls to the ‗Mother of
Quetzal and Cotinga (i.e., Feathers), the Precious Gems‘ (u chuch quq u chuch
raxon, ri yamanim xtecoh), who is stated to be the wife of the Rabinal Achi (and
thus, the King's daughter-in-law) and to have come from another land. On the
one hand, nu quq nu raxon ‗my quetzal (feather), my cotinga (feather)‘ is a
metaphor for a nubile girl (Breton 1994: 53-55, quoting Varea),142 and the
‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga Feathers‘ could thus be viewed as a source of
young women that can be married off. On the other hand, the title ‗Mother of
Quetzal and Cotinga‘ is suggestive of the jewel and feather tributes given to the
King as a token of submission (cf. PV 8320 ff) and kept in his treasure house
for redistribution. Viewed this way, the valuables received as tribute appear to
be on a par with the women received from abroad, as well as any daughters they
might beget. Both the tributes and the nubile women represent riches that can
serve as gifts for meritorious warriors and allies.143 One potential ally is the
‗Fierce Warrior‘ of the K‘iche‘ king. The ‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga‘ is
essentially a pawn in power politics, and remains mute.
The cast of characters tells us that the ‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga‘
is from Carchá in the Q‘eqchi‘ region. Her presence at the court has been
suggested to refer to an alliance that made the Q‘eqchi‘ town of Cobán – once
dominating the Rabinal area (Akkeren 2000: 76-77, 255)144 – into the preferred

141
On the other hand, Colby‘s theory (1981: 310 n. 7) that the myth itself was borrowed
from the K‘iche‘s is not very probable, considering its wide spread and variation among
Mayan groups far-removed from each other, not to mention the non-Mayan versions.
142
The role of the girl as well as her metaphorical name recall Xochiquetzal ‗Flowery
Quetzal (Feather)‘.
143
Cf. Breton (1994: 257 n. 193): ―The figure of the ‗Mother of the Quetzal Mother of
the Green Feathers‘ is the emblem of alliance […] The woman and the objects of which
she is the possessor […] are of the same nature [consubstantiels].‖
144
In a Sipakna tale from Rabinal (Valey and Valey, in Akkeren 2000: 255-256), the
demon tried to remove and sell the community‘s mountains, but was thwarted in his
 100

‗brother-in-law‘ of Rabinal (Breton 1994: 54-55 and nn. 53, 57). The King of
Rabinal shall attempt to create a similar bond with the K‘iche‘s. Significantly, it
is a female slave of the Rabinal Achi, clothed in Cobán fashion (id.: 56), who is
then to introduce the K‘iche‘ Man to the King's Jaguar Warriors and to the
‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga‘.
The play consists of four acts, with each act consisting of a single
dialogue: Act I, Rabinal Achi and Quiche Uinac; Act II, Hob-Toh and Rabinal
Achi; Act III, Rabinal Achi and Quiche Uinac; and Act IV, Hob-Toh and
Quiche Uinac. Throughout the play, the two ‗Fierce Warriors‘ (Rabinal Achi
and Quiche Uinac) do most of the talking. In the first, and by far the longest act
(lines 45-1351), the background of the Rabinal - K‘iche‘ war is set out in
extensive dialogues between the Rabinal Achi and his captive, the Fierce
Warrior of the K‘iche‘s. It focuses on the treachery of the K‘iche‘s, who had
attempted to manipulate the Poqom enemies of Rabinal. In the short second act
(lines 1353-1662), the King announces to the Rabinal Achi that he shall offer
the Quiche Uinac a peace-treaty. In the even shorter third act (lines 1664-1828),
the Quiche Uinac is introduced to the King and he rejects the peace proposal. In
the final act (lines 1830-2598), elements of the peace-treaty are transformed into
symbols of death, and the prisoner is sacrificed.
For an understanding of Ixil Hummingbird myth and parallel myths, the
second act and its transformation in the fourth act are key. As early as the end of
the first act (1220 ff), the Quiche Uinac suggested that he might be accepted as
an ally to serve (patan) his Rabinal ‗brothers‘, and be left free to return to his
own homeland. The aged king, however, now proposes his submission by way
of his incorporation into the very kinship structure of the polity. The ‗Fierce
Warrior‘ is urged to become not just an ‗elder - younger brother‘ (atz - chaq),
but affinal kin to the king‘s lineage, ‗son-in-law, brother-in-law‘ (hiaxel
baluquixel), which would allow him thence to join (molah) the group of the
twelve military lineage-chiefs of Eagles and Jaguars (the ‗elder and younger
brothers‘) and be seated on a silver throne as their thirteenth member (lines
1486 ff).
To become affinal kin is to accept a woman from the hands of the
dominant group and concomitant obligations, and this is expressed next in three

designs by a woman from Cobán representative of the region‘s original Q‘eqchi‘

inhabitants.
 101

highly ritualized ways. Firstly, Oyew Achi is invited to taste from twelve drinks
(lines 1512 ff), that is to ally himself to his twelve ‗brothers-in-law‘ with twelve
quia - matul ‗licors - poisonous [or hallucinogenic] drinks‘. In Ximénez‘s
‗Tesoro‘ (1985: 485), quia is given as ‗pulque, poison‘, and matul as ‗poison‘;
according to the Relación de Santiago Atitlán (in Garza 1990: 159), matul more
specifically refers to the hallucinogenic Datura (Nahuatl tlapatl). It is not
unlikely that the reference to the sweet drink, or pulque implies the lunar
pulque-vessel and the associated complex of war, captive sacrifice, and
cannibalism (cf. Taube 1993: 2). The hallucinogenic drinks offered to the
Quiche Uinac are referred to by a somewhat obscure compound, Ixtatz’unun
(line 1514), with tz’unun meaning ‗hummingbird‘, and ixta deriving, perhaps,
from ixtan ‗little girl‘.145 This might imply that the Fierce Warrior is to be
equated with an intrusive ‗Hummingbird‘, and it would not contravene Mayan
tradition if the drinks themselves were a metaphor for the gift of a young
woman.146
Following this offer of the twelve drinks, the focus inevitably shifts to
the female sphere; for the Quiche Uinac is now being presented with the double
warp and its ‗food‘, the food consisting of the single woof (laq’an u-q’in -
k’oxaj u-wa’) of the queen-mother‘s loom (lines 1525 ff). This metaphor quite
probably expresses the weaving of the web of alliance.147 Finally and decisively,
the captive warrior is presented with the ‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga‘, a
royal gift, since quetzals were inviolable birds whose feathers could only be

145
Ixtan ‗la muchacha pequeða‘ (Ximénez 1985: 335); Ixtah, one of the women
seducing Tohil in his bath (Popol Vuh), the seductive role being fulfilled by the sweet
drinks in the Rabinal Achi; Ixtaz, the variant found in the Título de los Señores de
Totonicapán. A Nahua derivation seems less likely; iztac ‗white‘ and iztlactli ‗saliva,
poison‘ have been considered (Breton 1994: 254-255). Tz’unun (Edm. Dict.) ‗hu-
mmingbird‘ / tzunun (ibid.) ‗stair, ladder, lance‘; tzunuc (Xim. Dict.) ‗la lanza, la punta,
el gorriñn‘. In a recent translation of the Rabinal Achi, D. Tedlock (2003: 100, cf. 306)
opted for ‗Quick Hummingbird‘.
146
This is specifically suggested by the metaphorical language in the Book of Chilam
Balam of Chumayel, where all sorts of tributes are compared to women brought before
the king, a white calabash cup filled with atole being called a man‘s ‗daughter‘ (Roys
1967: 97, MS p. 40 C), and Mayan wine (i.e., balche) her ‗fresh blood‘ (id.: 95, MS p.
36 C).
147
It seems relevant that in his 17th-century K‘iche‘ dictionary, Ximénez (1985: 93)
defines batz (i.e., batz’) as ‗the thread and the weddings‘, and that in K‘iche‘ divination,
the mnemonics of the day Batz‘ establish a connection between the ideas of spinning
and marrying (Tedlock 1992: 116-117).
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collected by express permission of the local Q‘eqchi‘ and Poqomchi‘ overlords

(Feldman 1985: 90). He is urged to try her for the first time (sawoq) and to
stroke her hairs (mesesej);148 for ―perhaps the Fierce One has arrived to become
a son-in-law, a brother-in-law‖ (lines1531 ff).
In the fourth act, the Quiche Uinac refuses to become a son-in-law to
the King and stoically accepts his sacrificial death (lines 2086 ff). He merely
‗borrows‘ the three gifts, so as to signal his imminent sacrificial death, and then
returns them. Being fierce, he is warned to ‗destroy‘ (lines 2266-2267, cf. line
456) neither the Queen‘s warp and weft (suggestive of the affinal network) nor
the ‗Mother of Quetzal and Cotinga (Feathers)‘, the woman who is the
‗emblematical figure of alliance‘ (Breton 1994: 53). From would-be brothers-in-
law, the twelve warriors revert to devourers: They become sacrificers.149 The
rejected kinship is thereby liable to change into the transcendent kinship
assumed, by a Mexican tradition that may well have been shared by the
Guatemalan Highland Mayas, to exist between a prisoner-of-war and the one
who kills, slaughters, and eats him.

Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil Intruders in the ‘Quiche Uinac’ Dances

The staging of such war plays, or dance dramas, as the ‗Rabinal Achi‘
was common in the warring kingdoms of Guatemala, with the antagonist of one
play sometimes becoming the protagonist of another. The Quiche Uinac, for
example, plays the role of the antagonist in the Rabinal Achi war play, but is the
protagonist of several other war plays bearing his name. Thus, one ‗Quiche
Uinac‘ play staged a war between the ‗Fierce Warrior‘ of the formidable
K‘iche‘ conqueror, Quicab – stereotypically represented as an aged Grandfather
– and the son of the Kaqchikel king of Tecpan-Guatemala (Ximénez‘s Historia,
quoted in Acuña 1975: 138-139). Another ‗Quiche Uinac‘ staged a war between
the K‘iche‘ and Tz‘utujil kingdoms, opposing the war-leader of the K‘iche‘ king
to the king of the Tz‘utujiles (Acuña 1975: 144). As recorded by Fuentes y

148
In the Breton translation: ―It may be that the Fierce One, the Warrior, will use her for
the first time (sawoq), will conduct her (mesesej)‖ (1535-1537). The parallel passage
(2340-2341) replaces mesesej by jikikej, which Breton renders as ‗drag along‘. In both
cases, I have opted for an alternative translation equally supported by Breton's lexical
material.
149
In Yucatec terms taken from Landa (Tozzer 1941: 112-113): The nacom war chief
becomes a nacom human sacrificer.
 103

Guzmán (1969 II: 20-21; cf. Orellana 1984: 43-44), the Tz‘utujil king and his
friend (a representative of the Ilocab K‘iche‘) kidnapped a daughter and a niece
of the Cavec K‘iche‘ king, Balam Acam. Thereupon the K‘iche‘ king sent his
‗Lord Lieutenant‘, Mahucutaj, with an army into Tz‘utujil territory. According
to Fuentes y Guzmán, the Ajtz‘iquinajay (the Tz‘utujil king) was a violent man
who did not restrain his passions, in which case he would clearly deserve the
epithet ‗Fierce Warrior‘.150
The first Tz‘utujil settlement conquered by the K‘iche‘ commander,
Mahucutaj, was Palopó (now San Antonio Palopó) on the eastern shores of
Lake Atitlán. It was retaken by the next Tz‘utujil king and then again conquered
by the Kaqchikel allies of the K‘iche‘s. Whereas in the Rabinal Achi, a king
vainly seeks to resolve the antagonism by offering a bride to the captured
enemy, the Kaqchikeles and Tz‘utujiles in actuality intermarried – as they had
probably done before the war broke out (Orellana 1984: 46-47)151 – and the
Kaqchikel king inaugurated in 1521 had a Kaqchikel father and a Tz‘utujil
mother. Later, however, the two polities again waged war.
Two Hummingbird myths (to be presented and discussed in more detail
in Chapter Five) stem from communities on the north-eastern border of Lake
Atitlan. From Panajachel comes a tale relating the bridal capture of the King‘s
two daughters; a variant that has two daughters but concentrates on one, while
staging an aborted bridal service, is from San Antonio Palopó. Since they were
told in Kaqchikel, i.e., the language of the allies of the K‘iche‘ King whose two
daughters were abducted, it is tempting to assume that the tales (1) take the
perspective of the wronged group, and cast Hummingbird in the role of the
undesirable Tz‘utujil ‗suitor‘; (2) account for the later relations between the two
ethnic groups. The myth thus lends itself to ethnohistorical interpretation: The
recurring Kaqchikel invasions into the territory of the autochthonous Tz‘utujil
population, and the strained relations between the two groups, in which periods
of intermarriage alternated with war (war being but a ‗continuation of affinal
policies by other means‘), and in which intermarriage is likely to have been (at
least to some extent) affected by mistrust and hostility.

150
Acuña (1975: 144-145) suspects that Fuentes y Guzmán modelled the plot after
European chivalry tales, a view that would seem to be slightly ethnocentric.
151
The K‘iche‘ king (Balam Acam) and the antagonistic Tz‘utujil king, for example,
were nephews (Fuentes y Guzmán 1969 II: 20).
 104

The Quiche Uinac in the Poqomchi’ ‘Ma’Muun’ Dance

Another dance connected to Hummingbird myth is a Quiche Uinac dance
that is still performed in the town of Santa Cruz Verapaz, which is in the
Poqomchi‘-speaking area and not far removed from Cobán (see García Escobar
2005: 1-16). It is based on the abduction motif central to Hummingbird myth as
well as to the Fuentes y Guzmán account mentioned in the previous section.
The dance-drama requires six performers: the abductor, Quiché Winak;152 the
abducted girl (Guarchaj);153 her aged father, Ma‘Muun, and his wife; and two
parrot warriors. The plot is simple: The girl is abducted by the Quiché Winak,
but the parents, guided by parrots, retrieve her, and kill and sacrifice the
abductor. According to the elderly Poqomchi‘ lady who presently owns the
dance costumes (id.: 12), an aged couple inhabiting a cave and living from the
hunt returns home to find that their daughter has disappeared. In vain they
search for her in the mountains. The Ma‘Muun dance comes into being when
two parrots suddenly present themselves, and, offering their assistance, start to
dance, turning and turning around while loudly invoking the mountains (i.e., the
mountain spirits). Another variant of the dance tale (id.: 4) resembles more a
folk tale, in that it demonizes the abductor by calling him a savage bogey of the
mountains, specifically a ‗Jicaque‘ sorcerer or a ‗Cholquink‘, in line with the
role of Oyew Achi in contemporary folklore (see below). Significantly, these
dance tales can all be viewed as adaptations of a Hummingbird myth told in the
same municipality of Santa Cruz Verapaz. In this myth (Búcaro Moraga 1991:
70-71), the two parrots are two hawks, and the aged, cave-dwelling deer hunter
Ma‘Muun a powerful Grandfather in pursuit of the fleeing Quiché Winak.
Quiché Winak entrusts his girl to a man from Rabinal before finally changing
into the sun (see also next chapter, ‗Bridal Capture‘, and Chapter Eight).
According to various Santa Cruz informants, the intrusive Quiché Winak of the
Ma‘Muun dance himself originated from Rabinal (García Escobar 2005: 6).

152
The name‘s spelling is García Escobar‘s.
153
Guarchaj appears to refer to Carchá, which the Rabinal Achi gives as the place of
origin of the woman offered to the Quiche Uinac. Nowadays, San Pedro Carchá is
Q‘eqchi‘-speaking.
 105

Oyew Achi (Quiche Uinac) in Folklore

The Oyew Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘ of the K‘iche‘ King still figures in
recent tales distinct from Hummingbird myth, as Alain Breton in his edition of
the Rabinal Achi (1994: 18 – 19) has not failed to notice.154 It is important to
realize that even though feared and kept at a distance, the Fierce Warrior is
admired for his power. Indeed, his legendary route is still taken by
‗traditionalist‘ Momostecan pilgrims travelling to Lake Atitlan (Cook 1983:
145). The ‗K‘iche‘ Man‘ meets the standard of the aggressive Mesoamerican
war-hero and Weltbeweger (‗World Mover‘). He would be an enemy worthy of
a true son-in-law – or, as in the Rabinal Achi dance drama, of a temporary and
ritual son-in-law, ready to be killed and, perhaps, eaten and thereby converted
into one‘s own flesh and blood. The origins of many Mesoamerican heroes
(orphanage, adoption by an Old Adoptive Mother figure) are also those of
Xbalanque in Q‘eqchi‘ myth. Furthermore, the hero is typically credited with
the formation of the landscape, the construction of churches, bridges, etc., and
on his voyages he leaves the imprints of his body in stone.155 In the same way,
the Fierce Warrior is said to have molded the flat world created by the supreme
deity (‗Our Lord‘) into mountains and valleys, and thereby to have introduced
the suffering of the travelers (Weisshaar and Hostnig 1995: 33). Other features
of the Mesoamerican hero are especially noticeable in a tale from
Momostenango (Cook 1983: 141, 145): The wandering Fierce Warrior attempts
to construct a bridge, builds a church, and the imprints of his knees and
impressive testicles are still sought out by Momostecan pilgrims. The removal
of a mountain representing agricultural riches is another feat typical of the
Mesoamerican war hero. In the Leyenda de los Soles (Lehmann 1974: 339),
Quetzalcoatl attempts to carry off the Maize Mountain, which proves too heavy

154
See also Breton 1994: 335 n. 6, 343 n. 13; and Arnauld and Breton 1992: 288-291,
with a correlation of narrative motifs common to the Rabinal Achi dance drama and
Cubulco-Tres Cruces Yew Achi tales.
155
Examples of such heroic stone imprints are those of Xi-gu (Jäcklein 1974: 294),
Kondoy (Miller 1956: 107), and Quetzalcoatl (Sahagún 1979: 202, Bk.III Ch.XIII).
 106

for him; and as we shall now see, not only Xbalanque, but the ‗Fierce Warrior‘
too, is credited with the same sort of endeavor.156
It is not so much the legendary power figure, however, but the obtrusive
would-be ally who should hold our attention. Although demonized in various
ways,157 the Fierce Warrior of the stories to follow is first and foremost a
Mountain Mover who – invading foreign territory so as to kidnap and devour its
‗children‘ – is intent on winning the women of its patron saints, either by
seducing them or in exchange for service or a bridal price. Finally defeated by
the ancestral patron of the besieged community, he withholds the prosperity
that, historically and ideologically, can be granted only by the ‗Grandfather‘ of
the predominant state that the Fierce Warrior represents.
The Achi Mayas of Cubulco provide a historical setting to their Fierce
Warrior tale (Shaw and Neuenswander 1966: 15 and 15 n. 2; id., in Shaw 1971:
55-56). Cubulco was formerly located at the boundary with the K‘iche‘
conquest state, close to where the petty kingdom of Rabinal had been defeated
by the K‘iche‘s. The K‘iche‘ king of Quetzaltenango, called Yew Achi, invaded
the territory of Cubulco, kidnapped and devoured the ‗children‘ (i.e., the
subjects) in his caves,158 and payed for them with ‗oranges, passion fruit,
everything‘. Since the defender of Cubulco, Saint Paul, was a man of great age,
he placed his people under the protection of the king of nearby Rabinal,
Santiago (Saint James). In that way, ―Santiago became the patron here in
Cubulco‖ (Shaw 1971: 55).159 Then, the Fierce Warrior offered Santiago gold
and riches in exchange for his ‗children‘, but Santiago refused, and killed the

156
In stories from San Juan Chamelco, several features of the Mesoamerican hero are
ascribed to the Aj Pop Batz (Adams 2001: 218-219), a figure who at the time of the
Dominican entry into the Alta Verapaz was the most powerful Q‘eqchi‘ leader.
157
In the Cubulco Achi tale (Shaw and Neuenswander 1971: 55), Oyew Achi is ‗all red‘
and naked except for the ‗peacock‘ (i.e., turkey) feathers around head and waist. Redness
often refers to anger and sexual heat. Both Q‘eqchi‘s and Ch‘orti‘s associate the turkey
with territorial fighting.
158
The caves show him to be associated with the wilderness, not unlike the savage
Q‘eqchi‘ cholwinq ‗Ch‘ol men‘.
159
Breton (1994: 330) has established that until recently, the statue of Cubulco‘s
Santiago used to be bathed at the very Bathing-Place where Rabinal‘s King Hob-Toj
had once been kidnapped by the Quiche Uinac, close to the former Cubulco head town
of Tres Cruces.
 107

intruder. As a consequence, riches are withheld by the resurrected Fierce

Warrior and flow to Quetzaltenango instead of Cubulco.160
The same sort of tale is told in K‘iche‘ Momostenango (Cook 1983:
140-141). Since the emphasis, however, is now clearly on extorting the tribute
of a woman (―what he really desires are women, especially the saints or the
Virgins‖), and thus on the theme of a forced alliance, the Fierce Warrior‘s large,
bestial testicles (bestial in that they are compared to those of a billy-goat) come
into view.161 Yegua Achi comes to the defender of Momostenango, again
Santiago, and offers him maize, fertile lands, cattle, and a church in exchange
for ‗the Virgin‘. Santiago rejects the proposal and keeps the Virgin for himself.
The invader reacts by carrying volcanoes to Momostenango in order to bury its
central Paklom hill. However, he is defeated, and Momostenango is stricken
with the curse of poverty. The warrior continues his campaign and in exchange
for another ‗virgin‘, attempts to construct a bridge in one night, aided by wild
animals. He is surprised by daybreak and forced to give up. Finally, in
Esquipulas, he builds the church and manages to seduce the ‗virgins‘ of its
patron saints, only to be killed by the latter.
The first part of this Momostenango tale is also told from the
perspective of bridal service (Tedlock 1983: 317-320). Again, the Fierce
Warrior arrives and offers Santiago fertile lands in exchange for a woman, in
this case his daughter, Saint Isabel. This exchange is explicitly presented as the
token of an unequal alliance. The father demands proof: ―If that is what you
really want, that I should join up with you, then go down and get me one
backpack load of bananas from the coast. Then, when you come back, I‘ll give
you that girl, Isabel‖ (emphasis added). On his way back, the Fierce Warrior
finds his load changed into Santa María volcano, which is stated to face the
coast and thus turn its back on the people of Santiago (id.: 119). The volcano is
located near Quetzaltenango, and separated from Santiago Momostenango by
Guatemala's central massif. In this way, the Fierce Warrior is removed from

160
Very similar Yew Achi tales are told in the hamlet of Tres Cruces, part of the same
municipality of Cubulco, with the basic objective of ―legitimizing the presence in that
place of the Aj Cubul, who had come there in defense of the people of Rabinal and,
taking the latter‘s place, settled down‖ in the surroundings (Arnauld and Breton 1992:
290).
161
He is thus like those miraculously virile kidnappers of women feared and demonized
by the Chiapas Mayas, the ‗Blackmen‘.
 108

Santiago‘s territory and kept at bay by a formidable bulwark. Santiago‘s war

magic prompts him to boast that he is the fiercest one and moreover that even
his girls are fierce because, ―when they are wooed, they just turn their backs.‖
Just as when he was asked to construct a bridge in one night, the obtrusive
suitor has been given an impossible bridal task to fulfill.162
It has already been noted that another ‗Fierce Warrior‘ intent on
marrying a girl, Xbalanque, behaved like the Mountain Mover, Sipac(na). The
Fierce Warrior‘s resemblance to Sipacna has not gone unnoticed (Cook 1983:
141), and it was precisely the corresponding Popol Vuh tale about Sipakna that
caused D. Tedlock‘s informant (A. Iloj) to remark, ―this Zipacna who was
‗backpacking mountains‘: he‘s just like Yewaachi‖ (Tedlock 1983: 317), and
that elicited his story about the Fierce Warrior.163

Fierce Warrior and Hummingbird Tales Compared

The historicizing Oyew Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘ dance dramas – most

importantly, the Rabinal Achi – and the related folk tales concern conflicts
similar to those in the Hummingbird myths. The most obvious basic category of
the Rabinal Achi is the huyubal taqajal ‗Mountain-Valley‘, which Q‘eqchi‘
Hummingbird myth personifies as an otherworldly father-in-law and king. The
dance drama represents the King as a mamá ‗Old Man, Grandfather‘ whose
seclusion and ritual immobility in the world‘s navel (Breton) stands in marked
contrast to the untiring, extroverted activity of his ‗son‘, the Fierce Warrior. In
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the earth‘s riches are associated with the daughter of the
Tzuultaq‘aj, whereas in the Fierce Warrior tales they tend to be represented by
female saints. These treasures can be acquired only by force or under threat of
force: The woman is offered in marriage to a prospective husband who can be
controlled (Rabinal Achi), her ‗father‘ is put under pressure to concede her in

162
There may be a play here on the ancient custom of carrying the bride on the back to
the home of the bridegroom‘s family. It appears as though the bananas, carried on the
back of the ‗Fierce Warrior‘ to his future father-in-law, should be exchanged for a
woman to be carried in the reverse direction, towards her father-in-law.
163
For the Cubulco Achis, too, Oyew Achi is like Sipakna: ―He could pass under the
earth the way we do through water‖ (Shaw and Neuenswander 1971: 55).
 109

exchange for other riches (Momostenango tale), or she is kidnapped (as in the
history of Tz‘utujil - Kaqchikel, and of Poqomchi‘ - Achi relations).
The Rabinal Achi pursuing and capturing the Fierce Warrior
corresponds to the Lightning Captain pursuing that other Fierce Warrior,
Hummingbird. Indeed, the alternative designation of the Rabinal Achi warrior,
Cavuq Rabinal, also occurs as Cauk Rabinal in the Brasseur text (Breton 1994:
158); given that it may, as Breton assumes, refer to a military clan or lineage, it
is tempting to understand this name as a functional designation, viz. ‗Lightning‘
of Rabinal (caoq, Ximénez; qavok / kaok, Edmonson; cf. PV 7877). Further, in
the Rabinal Achi (line 1365), the war captain is stated to represent the King‘s
anger, and in the Q‘eqchi‘ and Ixil Hummingbird myths, either a Lightning
captain is sent on his way by the angered Grandfather of the Land or else
lightning is viewed as an immediate manifestation of Grandfather's anger.
Both sorts of narrative (the Fierce Warrior and the Hummingbird tales)
oppose two kingdoms and two strategies. The invader attempts to procure the
enemy‘s women without being subordinated to the kingdom‘s ‗Father-in-law‘
and distributor of its women, who, for his part, wants to control both his women
and his sons-in-law. In the Rabinal Achi play, the warrior, although made
captive, still considers the possibility of first serving (or paying tribute to) the
King, and then to be left free to return to his own land. Contemporary Fierce
Warrior tales of oral history sometimes translate this service as bridal service;
but the intruder‘s sexual greed and his intention to acquire a woman on his own
terms inevitably make the bridal service an abortive one.
In Hummingbird myth, the Fierce Warrior steers a similar course.
Again he is made captive: In his hummingbird transformation, he is shot by the
King, and a bridal service follows. As in the Rabinal Achi, the warrior‘s naive
hope that, after this service, he shall be free to leave (RA lines 1220ff) comes to
nothing. In the case of bridal capture, he would theoretically be in a position to
enter upon negotiations; but the King is not inclined to negotiate. Therefore,
instead of being ritually married to the Kingdom‘s ‗Mother of Quetzal and
Cotinga‘ and allowed to make an edifying spectacle of his sacrificial death, the
would-be son-in-law of Hummingbird myth, together with the abducted woman,
suffers in many tales a complete defeat. In the woman‘s case, however, this
defeat (her destruction) is also a transformation – and that is where
Hummingbird myth acquires a distinctive character of its own.
 110

CHAPTER 5

HUMMINGBIRD AS A MARRIAGE CANDIDATE

The Hummingbird tales properly speaking focus on courtship and marriage

rather than warfare. They vary in three main respects: the modality of the
elopement (flight after bridal service or immediate bridal capture), the nature of
the female transformation (into certain animals or something else), and the
subsequent residence, and associated status, of the abductor (underworld,
surface of the earth, or sky).
In Ixil, Tz‘utujil, K‘iche‘ and Kaqchikel versions, the hero (called
Oyew Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘ in the Ixil versions) woos the daughter of King
Mataqtani and enters upon bridal service before resorting to elopement.
Lightning intervenes, and the woman is fragmented and transformed into
various animals. The hero stays on earth.
In the Lacandon version, there is again bridal service and elopement,
but the hero fails to get his woman beyond the reach of his father-in-law (the
death god). As a consequence, there is no fragmentation and no transformation.
Instead of reaching the sky, or staying on earth, the hero ends up in the
underworld.
In a brief Kaqchikel tale, the hero (called ‗Hummingbird‘) sleeps with
the King's two daughters and then abducts them. Lightning intervenes, and the
girls are fragmented and transformed into honey-producing bees. The hero stays
on earth.164
In the Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the hero (called (X)balank‘e or Sakk‘e) abducts
the daughter of King Mat‘actani immediately upon sleeping with her. Lightning
intervenes, and she is fragmented and transformed into harmful creatures, but
then resumes human form before becoming the Moon. The hero ascends as the
Sun.
Finally, in a version current both among the Q‘eqchi‘s and the
neighboring Poqomchi‘s, the King's daughter is immediately abducted. She is

164
This brief and very syncretic version (Tax 1951: no. 26) would probably have to be
considered an abbreviated bridal service tale.
 111

not fragmented by lightning, however, but stored like the maize into which she
is finally transformed. Only in the Poqomchi‘ variant from Santa Cruz Verapaz
does the abductor (Quiche Uinac ‗K‘iche‘ Warrior‘) finally rule the sky as the
Sun, just as in the main Q‘eqchi‘ myth.
The most extensive and also most atypical variant (Burkitt) of this last
version is explicitly told as a semi-historical tale of war and alliance centering
on Xucaneb Mountain conceived as a king. It will be considered here in
considerable detail.
The following sections discuss the modalities of bridal service and
bridal capture. For both modalities, a general sketch of Mayan courtship is
followed by a detailed treatment of the relevant mythological episodes. It should
be emphasized that the mythical killing of Hummingbird‘s wife, the imposition
of an interminable bridal service, and the murderous assaults of the father-in-
law all represent extreme reactions that, as such, are hardly representative of
social reality. In the final analysis, the mythical discourse of the Hummingbird
tales goes beyond social reality to pursue its own explanatory aims.

The Meaning of the Hummingbird Transformation

The transformation of the hero into a hummingbird, of itself, aptly

expresses the transition from a threatening Fierce Warrior to a marriage
candidate and the blending of war and alliance in courtship procedures. On the
one hand, the hummingbird is often viewed as a warrior (see Hunt 1977: 66-
67): ―A man who wishes to engage in a fight is believed to gain agility and
quicksightedness by eating a hummingbird‘s heart beforehand‖ (Laughlin 1975:
105 s.v. ¢'unun). More particularly, the bird can represent the ancestral warrior.
Among the Tzotziles, for example, the hummingbird is the primary
representative of the ancestors in their continual fight against evil sorcerers and
their transformations, opposing daylight to darkness (Guiteras 1961: 263, cf.
292-293).165
On the other hand, in the interaction of the sexes, the hummingbird
serves as a love charm for suitors: ―A hummingbird may be wrapped in green

165
The Aztecs, for their part, believed the souls of dead warriors to accompany the Sun
on its ascent to the zenith, whence they swarmed out like hummingbirds, and to be
changed into hummingbirds after the completion of a four-year cycle (Seler IV 1961:
65).
 112

ribbon and carried wherever one goes to talk to one‘s prospective mistress
because the hummingbird is credited with the power of softening a girl‘s heart
when she is spoken to‖ (Laughlin 1975: 105). Hummingbird love magic was,
and still is, widespread, and could be used in ways both socially acceptable and
unacceptable. Generally, in Mexico, a male hummingbird served the women, a
female one the men (Quezada 1984: 101, 105). Women used to carry the charm
―on some part of their body with an erotic connotation, such as the breasts, or
else in their clothes‖ (Quezada 1984: 101-102). However, there were also more
dynamic ways to achieve the desired result, as in the case of the male servant
who, wishing to avenge himself for ill-treatment from a young woman, spread
the dust of a pulverized, dried hummingbird over her clothes to make her
sexually dependent on him (id.: 104).
In Yucatan, hummingbird love magic is recognizable in a text for curing
nicte tancas ‗flower (i.e., erotic) seizure‘ of the 18th-century Ritual of the
Bacabs (Roys 1965: 11/76, MS pp. 30-31), which describes the seizure‘s origin
as the ‗birth‘ of the aphrodisiacal avocado (ix on), of the plumeria flower (ix
nicte), and of the ‗hummingbird plumeria‘ (dzunun nicte).166 In a contemporary
Yucatec Mayan tale from Izamal (Montolíu Villar 1990: 81-88) describing a
case of erotic seizure, these three elements (italicized below) recur. The tale,
which shows a superficial resemblance to Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth
precisely because of the love magic implied in it, is about three brothers looking
for a wife. Two return with their women to the parental home; the third is less
fortunate and continues his search until he comes upon a young woman catching
fish at the beach. It is a moonless night. They walk together until they arrive at a
tree with white, odoriferous flowers, identified by Montolíu as plumeria
flowers. There, they fall asleep. Suddenly, a hummingbird appears near the tree.
The girl desires the bird for a mascot, and asks the boy to shoot it. He succeeds
in capturing just two of its feathers, which the girl puts under her cloth. They
continue their walk until they arrive at an avocado tree. They pluck and eat the
avocados, and take a rest. The heat rises, they bathe, a thunderstorm rises, and
on returning to the beach, the lovesick couple discover a pit filled with stones

166
Nicte means both ‗flower‘ in general and ‗plumeria flower‘.
 113

and sticks,167 and with all sorts of venomous creatures beneath. The creatures
escape, giving origin to plague and disease.168
As this example shows, hummingbird love magic is translatable into
different sorts of tales. The hummingbird transformation episode of Q‘eqchi‘
myth and its versions elsewhere is but one visualization of love magic, one that
fits within a political context of war and alliance. Consequently, the tendency to
identify the hummingbird with the sun (e.g., Thompson 1939: 129, 141, 1970:
313; Hunt 1977: 68-69) is not always appropriate. This equation would give
undue precedence to one class of hummingbird tales (the type investigated in
the present study), and within that class, to just one or two versions thereof
(usually the Q‘eqchi‘ tale). Simply put, the Sun can be a hummingbird, but a
hummingbird is not always the Sun. What is important is that the bird embodies
the combined energies of conquest, courtship, and lovemaking, while the
flowers from which it sips appear to represent a girl – the flower being a
common metaphor for a desirable woman,169 and as we shall see, more
particularly for a nubile woman in ritual petitioners‘ speech. By changing into a
hummingbird, the Fierce Warrior manifests and magically acts upon his desire
to conquer a woman. But it is characteristic for the Hummingbird tales that this
‗nahualistic‘ male love magic only works because it acquires an antagonistic
complement in an act of female love magic. The hummingbird is usually
spotted by the young woman, who (as in the Izamal tale) asks someone to shoot
it for her. She thus acquires a love charm – a male bird being used for female
love magic – and, by putting the stunned hummingbird in her clothing, shows
her readiness to let the magic do its work for her. Paradoxically, however, by
acquiring the love charm she already found her lover.
The earliest extant reference to the hummingbird as a love bird courting
the flowers can be found in early colonial Yucatec collections of esoteric lore,
the so-called Books of Chilam Balam. The Book of Chilam Balam of

167
Cf. Motul Dictionary (in Roys 1967: 99 n. 5): u che u tunich ‗stick and stone‘
defined as ‗punishment‘, viz. death and pestilence.
168
The tale‘s conclusion is probably related to what occasioned its telling, a
conversation about the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of Izamal, and
protectress against epidemic diseases.
169
This includes the courtesan, addressed in colonial Kaqchikel by specific flower
names: a certain composite colored flower (ziqahan) and a flower (muc) used in
preparing chocolate beverages (see Coto1983 s.v. muger; cf. Smailus 1989: 552 s.v.
muc and 697 s.v. ziqahan ).
 114

Chumayel, in a text describing ominous events during a particular twenty-year

period (katun 11 Ahau), has a ‗Flower Lord‘ (nicte ahau) transform himself into
a hummingbird and descend to the flowers to suck their honey. Rather than with
the sun deity, Hummingbird and flowers are here identified with deities
associated with lovemaking and feasting. Whereas the hummingbird is viewed
as a manifestation of a god of dance and music (Ppizlimtec, alternatively called
Ah Kin Xocbiltun) – corresponding to the Aztec deity Xochipilli ‗Flower
Prince‘ (Thompson 1970: 313) – the flowers themselves are associated with an
Aztec goddess, Macuil-Xochitl ‗Five-Flower‘, who embodies the attraction of a
nubile woman. The text, cast in elusive, metaphorical language, runs as follows
(Roys 1967: 104-105, MS p. 46 C):

―Then there sprang up the five-leaved flower, the five drooping

[petals], the cacao [with grains like] a row of teeth, the ix-chabil-
tok, the little flower, Ix Macuil Xuchit, the flower with a brightly
colored tip, the laurel flower, and the limping flower. After these
flowers sprang up, there were the vendors of fragrant odors, there
was the mother of the flowers. Then there sprang up the bouquet of
the priest, the bouquet of the ruler, the bouquet of the captain; this
was what the flower-king bore when he descended and nothing
else, they say. It was not bread that he bore. Then it was that the
flower sprang up, wide open, to introduce the sin of Bolon-ti-ku.170
[…] Then descended Ppizlimtec to take the flower; he took the
figure of a humming-bird with green plumage on its breast,171
when he descended. Then he sucked the honey from the flower
with nine petals. Then the five-petaled flower took him for her
husband. Thereupon the heart of the flower came forth to set itself
in motion.172 Four-fold was the plate of the flower, and Ah Kin
Xocbiltun was set in the center.‖173

170
Bolon-ti-ku, ‗(the) nine gods‘, as opposed to the thirteen gods, these two usually
being interpreted as referring to the gods of the underworld and the sky.
171
The text has yax bac dzunun. Roys‘s translation of yax bac ‗with green plumage on
its breast‘ seems debatable. The Ritual of the Bacabs (e.g. Arzápalo 1987: 434, fols.
231-237) includes a curing ritual for yax bac tancas, apparently a problem with the
bones, in which the pairs yax bac - yax tzootz (‗yax bone - hair‘) and yax olom - yax kik
(‗yax coagulated blood - blood fluid‘) appear to refer metonymically to the patient.
172
Possibly referring to a dance.
173
Roys‘s translation is on most points supported by the ‗synoptic‘ translation of
Alfredo Barrera Vásquez and Silvia Rendón (1972: 88-89), which takes into account
parallel passages in other Chilam Balam books .
 115

The katun 11 Ahau text as a whole (MS pp. 42C-48C) evokes the
restoration of the cosmological order that occurred after the destruction of the
world, and the mating described by the text seems to be part of it. In addition to
being an episode in a mythological tale, the passage quoted above can be
viewed as an extended metaphor referring to the marriage between a foreigner
and a native woman, a marriage in which magical coercion may have played its
part. In this respect, the notion of ‗sin‘ is suggestive. According to the text, ‗sin‘
is provoked by the opening of the flower. Moreover, it seems that the mating
itself was also viewed negatively, since it is probably the descent of the
hummingbird which is meant by ‗the descent of the sin of the mat‘ a few lines
further on. This descent had for a result: ―The flower was his mat, the flower
was his chair.‖ In the Chumayel manuscript, the notion of ‗flowers‘ (nicteob),
when referring to sexuality, tends to be a negative one (cf. Roys 1967: 104 n.
15). It is repeatedly used to denote the ‗carnal sin‘ attributed to the Mexican
conqueror, Nacxit Xuchit (Xuchit meaning ‗Flower‘) and his followers (e.g.,
MS pp. 20 C, 107 C). Furthermore, in the Chilam Balam of Mani, the king of
Mayapan, Hunac Ceel – allied to the Mexicans – is stated to have used black
‗flower magic‘174 to coerce a political opponent into abducting the bride of
another ruler, with disastrous political results (Roys 1962: 80, cf. Craine and
Reindorp 1979: 127).175 One cannot be certain if the hummingbird was meant to
refer to a specific historical person, but it is noteworthy that the text from which
the quoted passage was taken is interspersed with allusions to conflict over
political legitimacy. On the pages immediately preceding and following the
hummingbird fragment (MS pp. 45 C, 47 C), there are references to a katun 3
Ahau, when purges were held to remove those of dubious descent (the ‗sons of
whores‘) from their positions of power (see MS pp. 28C-42C). In sum,
hummingbird magic, like ‗flower magic‘ generally, appears to have been
fraught with danger. And this is dramatically illustrated by the Hummingbird
tales.

174
Roys‘s English translation refers to ‗the 13-cluster plumeria flower‘, probably
rendering oxlahun-tzuc nicte (cf. Ritual of the Bacabs MS p. 62, Roys 1965: 163: Ix
Canlahun-tzuc-nicte) .
175
The abduction motif has already been considered in connection with Oyew Achi and
Quiche Uinac.
 116

Petitioning and Bridal Service

The Hummingbird tales include various features of traditional

courtship, courtship procedures that seek to defuse the tensions between the two
groups involved. These ceremonial procedures are often suggestive of a latent
hostility between the bride-givers and bride-takers. Such hostility need not
always exist in reality, in which case the courtship procedures may be seen as
serving merely a preemptive function. Nonetheless, courtship procedures serve
to mark the conflict between independence and subordination that is carried to
such dramatic extremes in the Hummingbird tales. And as we shall see,
Hummingbird myth may serve as a sort of ‗charter‘ in petitioning for the bride.

General Features
On the whole, traditional Mayan adolescents had little occasion to
converse freely with each other.176 A boy might have spied upon a girl going to
a well or assisting at the market or a public festivity, but usually he would not
have been entirely free to talk to her. Where attitudes were more lenient (as in
the Ixil community of Chajul) a sort of betrothal could develop during which,
soon enough, the matter of the bridal price was likely to be brought up by the
girl (Palomino 1972: 78). Whatever the degree of freedom, the boy should
sooner or later have put the matter into the hands of his family, foremost, his
own parents. Marriage was contracted by the representatives of patrilineal
groups rather than by individuals acting alone.
In pre-Spanish aristocracy, it was considered shameful for the suitor or
his father to directly approach the girl or her father; instead, embassies
mediated. For the commoners, the approach was more direct (Landa 1941: 101;
cf. Miles 1957: 760-763). Both traditions survived until the recent past: Either
representatives (community elders or relatives) were employed, or the fathers-
in-law conducted the negotiations directly. In either case, if the bride could be
said, with some overstatement, to be ‗sold‘ by her family to the patrilineal group
of her father-in-law, ‗buying‘ was not made easy. Marriage suitors met with

176
Although, in remote corners, the descriptions given here might still be valid, the
world of costumbre is now quickly disappearing; therefore, I have here used the past
tense.
 117

harsh initial refusal; in a protracted series of visits, the boy‘s father was
expected to offer bridal payments, consisting mainly of food and drink; and
commonly, bridal service was required from the prospective son-in-law. The
following, more detailed sketch is based largely on Jane F. Collier‘s excellent
description of the entire courtship procedure in the Tzotzil community of
Zinacantán and on the comparisons she draws with marriage procedures
elsewhere among the Mayas. I pay particular attention to aspects that are
relevant to the dramatic development of Hummingbird myth, especially those
with emotive content.
Collier (1968: 193) has noted that in Zinacantán courtship is pervaded
by an atmosphere of mistrust between the two parties and a fear of being sha-
med. There is no reason to suppose that in this regard, Zinacantán is
exceptional. The hostility between the two groups is at first unmistakable.
Should the girl‘s father get wind of the schemes of the other group, he is likely
to absent himself. Therefore, the house of the father-in-law is first spied upon
for some time as if it were the stronghold of an enemy, and then, at night, the
girl‘s father is distracted by some ruse or other, and the petitioners together with
the boy force their way into his house (Collier 1968: 150-151). Even where
such trickery and violence are not used, as in Oxchuc, the girl‘s father makes a
great show of his anger at the intrusion, and throws the suitors out (id.: 187).
Small wonder that generally, as a next step, the petitioners elaborately excuse
themselves for having violated the sanctity of his ancestral hearth. Their aim is
at first considered hostile, since it amounts to plucking a ‗precious flower‘
(Q‘eqchi‘ li lok’laj uutz’u’uj) that thrives by virtue of the ancestors (Estrada
Monroy 1990: 159).177 The petitioners offer food and drink to show their
concern for the health and life of the girl as well as for her family.
If the girl‘s group feels uncomfortable, the reverse is no less true. In the
K‘iche‘ town of Chichicastenango, the suitor‘s father may engage, before
negotiations are opened, in certain ―ceremonies for his son against the parents
of the girl, so that they will be induced to give up the daughter‖ (Bunzel 1967:
110). Upon their first visit, the petitioners make it explicit that they ―have fallen
into the trap which they [the ancestors of their own group] have set‖ for them,
namely the girl and her home (id.: 115-116). Apparently, the image is taken

177
Significantly, uutz’u’uj is defined as ‗flor (cortada para adornar)‘ and contrasted with
atz’um ‗flor en la mata‘ (Haeserijn 1979: 360 s.v. uutz’u’uj).
 118

from the sphere of the hunt, with the wife of the hunter as an erotic trap for the
stags, or with the doe as a trap for the hunter (see Chapter Six).
In Zinacantán, the boy‘s group penetrates into the sacred precinct and
the petitioners kneel in front of the father, while the girl remains apart and
silent. From this point, it is hard for the father to refuse engagement in the
courtship procedures. The boy subsequently comes in and acknowledges the
girl‘s father as his own, calling him by a term otherwise used for divinities (Tot
Kahval [‗My] Lord Father‘). After a drinking bout, he sees his parents-in-law to
their beds as a true son would do (Collier 1967: 152-153).
Once the negotiations and the accompanying gifts have their desired
effects, a period of bridal service and uxorilocal residence is often inserted to
test the capabilities of the young man as a hard-working husband and compliant
son-in-law. Timing and duration vary considerably, from a few days to months
or even years. The pre-conquest Yucatec bridal service occurred after the
marriage celebration, when the couple slept together for the first time. The
groom had to live in the house of his father-in-law for several years (Landa
1941: 101 and n.). Among the Southern Lacandons (Boremanse 1998: 115),
there existed permanent uxorilocality: The wife-taker stayed with, and worked
for, his wife‘s parents until they died. Among the Northern Lacandons,
arrangements were less stringent; the bridal service was not very demanding,
and was concluded by the ceremonial offering of firewood to the wife‘s parents
(Boremanse 1998: 109). In Zinacantán, the first, forceful ‗entering of the house‘
is followed by a total of about fifteen days of bridal service in addition to gifts
in food and drink (Collier 1968: 160). About a year and a half later, a second,
more formal and elaborate ‗entering of the house‘ follows. This one serves to
conclude the agreement and it is celebrated as a feast. A month of protracted
bridal service in the father-in-law‘s house follows. Preparations are then made
for a marriage ceremony in the Catholic church (id.: 165-166). In Chenalhó,
another Tzotzil town, the celebration of the final agreement between the
patrilineal groups is followed by a period of twenty days of strictly observed
bridal service; only upon its conclusion is the couple permitted to speak to each
other and sleep together. There follows a complete year of uxorilocal residence
– as in Tzotzil Chanal (Collier 1968: 187-188) – now accompanied by less
demanding bridal service (Guiteras 1961: 128-129).
Throughout the Guatemalan Highlands, the courtship procedures are
much as in Zinacantán and the other Tzotzil communities. A few examples
make the point. Around 1970, there were among the Ixiles of Chajul (Palomino
 119

1972: 65-68) three traditional courtship options: (1) The fathers-in-law secretly
arranged the marriage, (2) the boy and the girl made their personal choice, and
(3) the boy and the girl eloped. In each case, however, the bride price had
subsequently to be negotiated through an Elder, often in a series of three or four
nocturnal visits (the ‗petitions‘) to the father-in-law‘s house (id.: 85-89).
Palomino grimly observed that, ―on listening to these conversations, when they
reached their highest pitch, one got the impression of finding oneself in a heated
discussion of various politically antagonistic groups, or in the midst of a street
fight between two city gangs‖ (1972: 88). On the third visit, known as ‗The
night in which the doors get opened‘ (86), or on a following visit, the wedding
was celebrated and the bridal price paid. Only when the wedding had been
concluded was the sexual taboo lifted from the couple.
Among the Jacaltecas, the boy‘s parents used to conduct negotiations in
an extended series of twelve visits. Upon the last visit, the boy and his friends
carried enormous loads of wood into the house of the father-in-law,
symbolizing the betrothal. Subsequently, ―when the parents of the girl are
reluctant to have her leave the house, or the young man is not in a position to
support her, the young man comes to live with them and work for them. Then
they pay for the wedding, and he is bound to them for a number of years. This
arrangement is called a’lip, a term used for various kinds of cooperative work‖
(La Farge and Beyers 1931: 87; cf. Wagley 1949: 39-40). This sort of
arrangement will be further discussed in the bridal capture section. At the final
visit of the boy‘s parents to their in-laws in K‘iche‘ Chichicastenango (Bunzel
1967: 116), firewood was again carried along. The firewood, together with
aromatic bathing herbs and medicinal herbs, is now, however, explicitly stated
to be for the steam bath, which was to assuage the grief of the parents whose
daughter was about to be taken away. A similar role of the steam bath will recur
in Ixil Hummingbird myth.
The price paid by the groom may have been high, but the bride also
faced challenges. The ties to her father‘s group were largely severed. In
Chichicastenango, her inheritance rights on the paternal land were curtailed
when she left her father‘s home, with precedence being conceded to her
brothers. Only if she stayed with her father, or if the father had no sons, could
she inherit (Bunzel 1967: 18). Just as the boy had to stay for an often consi-
derable period in the home of his father-in-law, so the girl had to live after
marriage in the foreign and skeptical surroundings of another patrilineal group,
closely supervised by her mother-in-law and the wives of her husband‘s elder
 120

brethren (Bunzel 1967: 18). The boy‘s father ruled over his extended family as a
patriarch, demanding unswerving obedience. In short, the ideal of independent
residence was not quickly realized.

Bridal Service in Hummingbird Myth178

The bridal service tales have a very restricted cast of characters: Suitor,
girl, and her father, that is, the protagonist‘s future father-in-law (rarely with his
consort),179 with the suitor‘s father (M) or mother (TT, XP) sometimes being
added. The girl‘s father is Ma-Taqtani, the deity who, to the Q‘eqchi‘s, is the
supreme Mountain-Valley. It is probably in this same sense that Ma-Taqtani's
alternative designation, Kub’aal ‗Our Father‘ (K), should be understood. Being
a general honorific bestowed on the most important deities, in Ixil prayer ‗Our
Father‘ occurs in combination with ‗King World‘ (the ‗Rey Mundo‘ of so many
Mayan texts) and ‗King Mountain‘ (Lincoln 1942: 123), though it can equally
denote his four grandees, the year-bearing ‗Alcaldes del Mundo‘ inhabiting
their sacred mountains (ibid.: 109).180
The Ixil and Palopó Kaqchikel variants betray the tensions inhering in
traditional Mayan courtship set out in the preceding section. In the Colby and
Redfield variants, the boy acts alone, like the orphan he effectively is in
Q‘eqchi‘ myth; in the Tz‘utujil variant, his father is stated to have died. He
therefore assumes the roles of his own father and of his group‘s petitioners. The
boy petitions the girl‘s father, who denies him access to the girl (C, K).
Alternatively, the boy‘s father is active behind the scenes, and it is he
who proposes and is rebuked (M). It is important to note that in the Ixil tales,
the boy is explicitly identified as the Fierce Warrior. Viewed historically, this
would imply that the anonymous father of the warlike Hummingbird is a
K‘iche‘ King, just as the Rabinal Achi is the son of King Hob-Toj ‗Five-Water‘,
and as the Quiche Uinac is a son to the paired rulers Teken Toj - Teken Tijax.

178
The references in this section are to the sources listed in Appendix B, section
‗Transformation into Animals‘. The number following the abbreviation of the author‘s
name refers to the page(s).
179
For convenience‘s sake, I will call the intended or future father-in-law simply
‗father-in-law‘.
180
Not inconceivably, ‗Our Father‘ is meant to refer to the heart of the Ixil world, Huyl
mountain near Chajul (cf. Lincoln 1942: 112-114). There,‗el Seðor de Chajul‘ appeared,
and ―there, a king existed called Rey Oyev (Tz‘unum)‖ (Paz Pérez 1994: 17).
 121

The paternal figures, set in opposition by the myth, would consequently be

‗Grandfathers‘ of antagonistic realms.181 However, with such few Ixil tales at
hand, it remains unclear whether such a consistent viewpoint still dominates.
We have seen how, among the Zinacantán Tzotziles, the house of the
father-in-law is spied upon for some time as if it were the stronghold of an
enemy; then, at night, the girl‘s father is taken off guard by some trick and the
petitioners together with the boy force their way into his house – the petitioners
being designated as hpukuhtavaneh, intruding were-animals. This is precisely
what is suggested by the Maxwell variant: The tick, flea, and firefly act as a sort
of petitioners who, in their nahual transformations, are harassing the father to
give up his daughter. They spy on the girl‘s father‘s house and enter it by tricke-
ry. The fire-fly in particular suggests a nocturnal surprise attack of the sort just
described, and it is he who appears to have achieved success: Mataqtani
exclaims, ―they found us,‖ to which Hummingbird‘s father responds, ―[you]
better give us the girl now‖ (M).182 In the other variants, the same tick (or louse)
and flea, or else a ‗Commission‘ of fleas,183 are spying in the bedroom of the
daughter and her lover.
As is the case in Zinacantán, once the girl‘s father has been taken by
surprise, his freedom to refuse courtship procedures has been diminished. Yet,
the Ixil father and his son decide upon a further stratagem (M): Once the firefly
entered and ‗petitioned‘, the boy is now to change into a hummingbird and enter
the house of the old man himself. This, of course, strongly contrasts with
acceptable procedure; it signals the intervention of the predominant metaphor
for coercion through love magic. The hummingbird sucks the flower. As has
been noted, the ‗precious flower‘ is a rather obvious metaphor for the nubile
daughter in petitioners‘ speech; its applicability to the Grandfather‘s daughter is
one of the features that aligns this character with the Aztec goddess,
Xochiquetzal ‗Precious Flower‘. Taken by itself, the Grandfather‘s shooting of
the hummingbird could, at first sight, suggest an act of counter-sorcery resulting
from the hostility and distrust of the group he represents; and in two variants (K,

181
I shall at times refer to the girl‘s father as ‗the Grandfather‘.
182
In Maxwell's free rendering: ―They‘ve found us. I‘ll have to give up the girl‖ (1980:
65).
183
This investigative commission seems to be connected to a place (the daughter‘s
bedroom?) humoristically called ‗Santos Pulgatorios‘ (Palomino 1972: 134 line 195),
instead of Purgatorios (pulga being a flea).
 122

SCHA), he indeed intends to kill the bird. Usually, however, the myth explains
the shooting by the young woman‘s desire for a pet, that is, by reference to an
act of female love magic complementing her suitor‘s transformative love magic.
As a result of the shooting, the suitor now seems, in the words of the K‘iche‘
petitioners of Chichicastenango, to have ‗fallen into the trap‘.
The next passage visualizes another petitioner metaphor. Just as in
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the woman puts the wounded or stunned hummingbird inside a
weaving basket, or under her blouse, and reproduces it in her very weaving.
Fierce, savage, and representative of a kin-group initially conceived as hostile,
the bird seems to become ‗domesticated‘ into a reliable ally. The imagery is in
keeping with declarations of the Chichicastenango mediators: ―For thus indeed
we have come to see her, the [female] watcher and listener, the woman‘s skirt,
the woman‘s blouse within this house,‖ while her father begs for more time,
―for perhaps she has not yet finished weaving her clothing‖ (Bunzel 1967: 116).
In the ‗Rabinal Achi‘, the ‗double warp and single woof‘ of the queen-mother‘s
loom, offered to the Fierce Warrior, have already been suggested to symbolize
the fabric of affinal kinship. Remarkably (and perhaps ironically, in view of the
old man‘s mistrust of the hummingbird), various tales have the woman weave
the motif of a hummingbird into a piece of clothing intended for her father,
rather than into her own skirt.
The bird is then taken to bed by the girl, where he resumes a human
form and sleeps with her. The hero thus violates a taboo and offends the father-
in-law, since he has not yet proven capable through bridal service of fulfilling
the tasks that will be set for him or of sustaining his bride and future progeny,
nor has he paid any bridal price yet. In short, he behaves as one would expect a
Fierce Warrior governed by his passions to behave. The father, for his part,
wishes to uphold the taboo, and the same emissaries who, in the Maxwell
variant, preyed on him as petitioners of a sort for the other and hostile party,
now prey on the couple on his behalf. Two hairs are brought forward as
evidence of the taboo‘s violation. The general atmosphere of mistrust has given
rise to images associated with evil sorcery, in which hairs, fingernails, and alike
regularly feature (e.g., Thompson 1930: 74).184 In real life, the case might now
be brought before judicial authorities; however, the royal Grandfather,

184
These are also the elements referred to in the rhetoric of curing Fright (see Chapter
Seven).
 123

personifying the Mundo, represents the supreme judicial instance himself (see
Chapter One, ‗The Father-in-Law‘). Seeing his daughter‘s desire, the father now
willy-nilly agrees upon bridal service.185 The tasks he sets are entirely custo-
mary.
The four main tasks found in the bridal service tales and their manners
of completion are as follows:
Gathering firewood. As we have seen, bringing firewood to the father-
in-law‘s house is a symbolic act initiating or (as among the Northern
Lacandons) concluding the bridal service period. The wood serves to maintain
the hearth of the house and the fire of the steam bath, that is the health and
fertility of a family about to part with its daughter. In the Kaqchikel (R), K‘iche‘
(TT), and Tz‘utujil (XP) tales, the hero mistakes firewood for antlers (and in the
Kaqchikel text, also for the horns of goats and cows), and is ordered to restore
these to the animals from whence they came. The vernacular texts in K‘iche‘
(TT 28) and Tz‘utujil (XP 155) may shed some light on this mistake, in that the
word uk’a[a]‘ is not only the name of a particular firewood tree (‗Palo de Jiote‘,
or perhaps the madroño or Texas madrone), but also means ‗antlers‘ or
‗horns‘.186 The misunderstanding would seem to signal the intrusive
Hummingbird‘s failure to appreciate the niceties of the local language.
Nonetheless, given that Hummingbird‘s wife is finally to be changed into deer
and other animals, there may also be a ritual meaning to the severing of the deer
antlers. One possibility is the obligation of the hunters periodically to restore the
antlers of the quarries to their Owner for regeneration (see Chapter Six), the
Owner being the Father-in-law (Mataqtani).
To obtain the firewood, Hummingbird, in the Palopó Kaqchikel tale (R
329), is instructed by his fiancée to go with her father to fetch a pair of sandals
(caites) and to bury them at the foot of a tree; this will make the tree fall. But he
forgets to return the sandals, and they disappear into the ground. This greatly
disturbs his fiancée: ―Now you have spoilt the world, because the gopher
(taltuza) has entered. Too bad that you have given a bad example in the world.‖
Sandals of moleskin – the ‗mole‘ usually referring to the gopher – also
characterize Mountain-Valley among the Mayas of San Antonio, Belize

185
In his overview of Hummingbird myth, Thompson (1970: 366) did not summarize
the bridal tasks, since he considered them as ―being outside the theme.‖
186
The same word play also works in Kaqchikel: uk’wa’ che’ ‗palo de cuernos‘ and
k-ik’wa’ ri wakx ‗cuernos de vacas‘ (Petrich and Ochoa 2001b: 23-24).
 124

(Thompson 1930: 58, 142)187. The K‘iche‘ tale (TT) replaces the tree-felling of
the gopher sandals by an incantation.
In an Ixil myth (CC 182), Hummingbird is to bring dry firewood for the
steam bath he has just built for his Father-in-law:188 ―Maria told him to leave his
machete on the peak of a mountain where there were large stones and then go to
sleep.When he awoke he had dry wood.‖
Laying out a maize field. Cultivating the maize can entail the separate
tasks of chopping down the trees, burning the stubs and shrubs, sowing, and
guarding the maize harvest. Hummingbird‘s fiancée orders him to leave six
choppers in the middle of the field, and she creates the ant laborers needed for
clearing it (CC).189 In the Tz‘utujil tale (XP), the fiancée is not mentioned, but
ants are again clearing the field. When it comes to the sowing, the fiancée of the
K‘iche‘ tale (TT) assures Hummingbird that the ‗nawal [spirit] of the mountain‘
will take care of the maize seeds he has sown. The growth is miraculous. The
vernacular text itself does not use the term ‗nawal‘, but mentions (TT 31) ri
juyub’ taq’aj ‗the mountain-valley‘ (i.e., the cooperative Earth, which here does
not seem to be identified with the Father-in-law) as the agent. In the Tz‘utujil
tale, the fiancée and her sister have been omitted. The boy throws maize seeds
into the center of the field and plants stakes with red cloths in the four corners,
and these turn into chili plants. The key point is that he has to kneel and pray to
effect this miracle (XP 154), a ritual act which is likely again to involve the
spirit of the mountain.
In the K‘iche‘ tale (TT), the father-in-law tries in vain to kill
Hummingbird while he is burning the field and guarding the maize. When the
maize is ripening, Hummingbird is ordered to guard it by sitting on the roof of
the storehouse he himself had constructed. The father-in-law sends a two-
headed eagle to kill and devour him, but Hummingbird is warned by his fiancée,
puts a turkey on his head, and survives unscathed. The key to this episode might

187
In the story concerned (Thompson 1930: 142), the Earth Owner (Mam) plays the role
of an owner of animals.
188
Mataqtani is considered a king, and the association of king and steam bath seems to
have been an intimate one. In the dynastical listings of the K‘iche‘ royal Houses, the
name ‗Venerable Steam Bath‘, Qo-Tuja, recurs through various generations and up to
the Spanish Conquest (Popol Vuh).
189
These choppers are to do the work by themselves, a motif which, in another type of
tale, leads over to the killing of a Grandmother in the steam bath.
 125

lie in the use of the monstrous bird as a motif on the wedding skirt of a bride,
such as it is known from the Ixiles of Chajul (Palomino 1972: 91 n. 33): There,
it represents the kot, a gigantic, man-eating, bicephalic eagle.190 The image may
emphasize the inviolable character of a bride guarded and protected by an
otherworldly father.191
Building a house. The hair of the fiancée turns either into trees that
enable Hummingbird to build the house (P) or into straw for thatching (M). Her
breast milk sprinkled on the ground (or ‗sown‘, CC) makes the vines and
grasses needed for the construction grow (M). Strands of her hair are used as
vines to tie the beams together, and ―today, the vines still belong to her‖ (K).
When cattle are needed for transporting the wood, Marikita seeks out saints who
can help (such as San Antonio [i.e., Saint Anthony the Abbot]), and
Hummingbird is instructed to remain and pray (P 137). In this last Ixil variant
(P), the house is to have twelve doors. The twelve doors are not only
reminiscent of the twelve apostles, but also of the twelve warriors of the Rabinal
King who offered to become the ‗brothers-in-law‘ of the captive Fierce Warrior
in the Rabinal Achi.192
Bringing food. When, in the Ixtahuacan K‘iche‘ text, the firewood has
been carried to the steam bath, a strange passage occurs, one that is also found
in the Palopó Kaqchikel variant. On leaving the steam bath, the father-in-law
vomits. Following instructions of his fiancée, Hummingbird catches the vomit
in a calabash and puts it into small holes on the river bank. In the Kaqchikel text
(R 346), the steam bath plays no role. The daughter administers her father an
emetic (‗su atolito‘) and recovers the seeds from the vomit (‗bola‘). When
Hummingbird sows the seeds on the river bank, fruits (‗pacayas del ahuacate‘)
and also, apparently, maize ears sprout. The K‘iche‘ text (TT) has a different
plant sprout from the vomit, namely, the boxnay (b’oxney), a root eaten in times

190
The huipil with the bicephalic eagle stands in contrast to the huipil with the
hummingbird woven by the earth god‘s daughter. The Father-in-law‘s bicephalic eagle
recalls the eagle transformation of the Chontal king, Fane Kansini, as well as that of the
Huaxtec Old Adoptive Mother.
191
Similarly, the Veracruz Nahuas of Amatlan de los Reyes, Veracruz, used a purple
wedding skirt called tecuancueitl ‗puma skirt‘ (enagua de león) (Reyes García, in
Weitlaner-Johnson 1976: 56).
192
In Thompson‘s Q‘eqchi‘ myth, Matactani‘s house has thirteen rooms (see Synopsis,
Appendix A). In different ways, twelve and thirteen seem to symbolize the totality of
the Earth.
 126

of food scarcity. In this way, Hummingbird is able to complete his task of

bringing food to his father-in-law. ―And therefore‖, the K‘iche‘ text adds (TT
30), ―this boxnay is known as ‗vomit of the mountain‘ [uxa’oj juyub’].‖193 As
usual, the anonymous father-in-law of the K‘iche‘ tale appears to be the
mountain deity.
This review of Hummingbird‘s principal bridal tasks allows some
general conclusions. There is a marked imbalance between Hummingbird and
his prospective bride. Hummingbird – the ‗Fierce Warrior‘ and semi-historical
intruder – finds himself on unfamiliar ground, and consequently, tends to do
silly things, such as severing deer antlers when he is to bring firewood and
letting gophers spoil the world. The reason for these and similar mistakes
appears to be that Hummingbird is uninitiated in the mysteries of the earth into
which he has penetrated. In contrast, his fiancée is the autochthonous daughter
of the local Earth Owner. The earth‘s workings hold no mysteries for her: Her
very body (in particular her hairs and breast milk) represents its powers of
growth. The tale‘s outcome only confirms this. Thus, just as her hair became
straw and trees and her breast milk trees and vines,194 so too did her ‗bones and
veins‘ finally become transformed into wild animals. To the contrasts of
allochthonous with autochthonous and uninitiated with initiated underlying the
tales, another contrast explicitly formulated in some texts (P, XP) should
probably be added, that between poor and rich. We will return to this important
point when considering the Blanca Flor tales.
In the Lacandon Hummingbird tale, Hummingbird‘s position is quite
different. In this case, Hummingbird had already been initiated into the alien
world of his fiancée (that of the dead) by a powerful kinsman of his father-in-
law. This kinsman guides him throughout. Apparently as a consequence of this
initiation, there is no need to test the hero, and his bridal tasks (such as clearing
a maize field, sweeping the house, making balche beer) are straightforward and
require no assistance from his fiancée. Their description (Boremanse 1986: 88-
89, 297) is brief and tells nothing of the nature of his prospective bride. There is
no reference to the father-in-law‘s reaction but, as in the other tales discussed
here, he has no intention of letting his daughter go. Since his daughter‘s body is

193
The Rabinal bridal myth of ‗Our Beloved Maiden‘ (Akkeren 2002 and next section)
makes a very similar use of botanical images.
194
In certain Hummingbird bridal capture tales still to be discussed, her teeth become
maize kernels.
 127

already a skeleton, there is no reduction to bones and subsequent transformation

to end the tale; she simply fails to leave the paternal home. (Hummingbird‘s
role in Lacandon myth will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Nine.)
The attitudes that other tales ascribe to the Father-in-law upon the bridal
service‘s completion vary somewhat. In the Kaqchikel variant, he is moved by
the relentless labor of his son-in-law – overlooking the decisive contribution of
his own daughter – because: ―I ask something of you, and you comply;
therefore, you shall not make any costumbre [ritual petitioning and bridal
payments] now: the work you did suffices. Already you have won my daughter‖
(R 350). He asks no further bridal payments and gives his ‗benediction‘ to seal
the marriage. He apparently expects them to stay, for now, ―the Hummingbird
looked for another way to carry his woman off,‖ and the woman declares: ―I
don‘t like it any longer to be with my father‖ (R 352/354). However, the woman
knows her father shall ‗call them back‘ with his blowgun (probably a shamanic
attribute) as also happens in Q‘eqchi‘ myth. The expression ‗call back‘ is
significant, since it suggests that the father-in-law is not so much bent on
eliminating his son-in-law and his now-legitimate wife, as he is on keeping
them in his own territory.
In the Ixil and K‘iche‘ variants, the antagonism is much more marked.
One Ixil variant in particular (P 22-24) puts heavy emphasis on the couple‘s
continual transgression of the sexual taboo (even in the midst of a bridal service
conceived as a ‗punitive sanction‘ of these very transgressions) and on
Mataqtani‘s resolve to eliminate the culprits and save his honor. And yet, when
an enormous maize field has successfully been sown, he decides to let them stay
as his workers, just as in the Kaqchikel tale. Other Ixil variants, however,
convert some of the ‗sanctions‘ (Palomino) into outright attempts at murder.
The Ixil tales also give a fatal twist to the function of the steam bath in
courtship and marriage. In one Ixil variant (CC), the Father-in-law
hypocritically invites the couple to take the first bath in the just completed
building, a bath that normally would aid the birthing process (in this case
producing the old man‘s grandchildren) and promote the health of the mother.
In other Ixil variants (K, M, P), it is the father who is made to enter the steam
bath first. There is a very practical reason for this: In Ixil elopement practice,
―when the night for the flight has been set, the ixwa.k [girl] awaits the favorable
moment, which traditionally is said to be the moment her parents enter the
temascal [steam bath] for taking a bath‖ (Palomino 1972: 69).
 128

The steam bath is sealed off, and the old man nearly suffocates.195 The
sabotaged blowgun in the Kaqchikel tale has the same effect. Upon
recuperation, the father-in-law turns ‗very fierce‘ (spe kon ‘qano rojo’wal ‗se
fué muy bravo‘): ―Poor me, I ask for justice; it is better that my daughter dies‖
(R 358/360).196 Consequently, Lightnings are now mobilized to attack and
destroy. A King ordering the murder of his own daughter by his Lightning war
captains is but the ultimate consequence of the predominance of the interests of
the group over those of the individual, and particularly those of a marriageable
woman, who is expected to respect the rules of interaction between kin-based
groups. Herein lies a decisive difference with most of the semi-historical Fierce
Warrior tales considered in the previous chapter: In these Hummingbird tales,
the woman is not just an object of desire, but someone who acts in an
unexpected way that threatens to subvert the rules of the game as conceived by
the head of her patrilineage.
Nonetheless, the woman is finally reduced to bones, or rather –
expressed with ritual formality – to ‗bones and veins‘,197 thereby rendering
visual a phrase used by Kaqchikel petitioners in addressing the prospective
father-in-law: ―We court your bones, your blood vessels [i.e., your daughter]‖
(King, in Shaw 1971: 84). In a Kaqchikel version (T), Lightning‘s heat reduces
her to ashes that are blown away by the wind, as if to mock another phrase from
the Kaqchikel speech just quoted: ―Don‘t give it [i.e., our petition] to the wind,
the north wind.‖ The daughter of the Earth does not recover her human form.
By the same token, the Fierce Warrior of the semi-historical folktales who had
been trying to kidnap and abuse the women of the kingdom, now finds himself
back in the woods as a hunter of animals. The unfortunate intruder appears to

195
The Father-in-law‘s suffocation in the steam bath runs parallel to that of the
grandmother of the Twins and her consort in a Kaqchikel tale from San Antonio Palopó
(Redfield 1946: 252-254; cf. Orellana 1975: 854-855). In the Colby tale, the Ixil fiancée
had been assisting Hummingbird by making the hoes work for him, and her father
slowly came to realize this. In the Palopó tale, the heroes‘ hoes had fiercely been
slashing down the vegetation, until their suspicious grandmother neutralized their magic
(cf. PV lines 2909 ff).
196
The formula ‗asking for justice‘ can imply invoking the ancestral powers to mete out
punishment, especially diseases, to wrongdoers (cf. Bunzel 1967: 294-296), and here
constitutes something of a paradox, since ancestral justice is primarily embodied in
Mountain-Valley himself.
197
―Así se fue a mirar el hueso canuto de Catarina y sus venas‖ (Palomino 1972: 143
lines 511-512).
 129

have been reduced to that legendary early stage during which the semi-savage
ancestors had to eke out a living by hunting for what the Popol Vuh calls ―the
children of hornets, wasps, and beehives‖ (PV lines 6269ff).

Hummingbird Myth in Petitioners’ Speech

From the anthropological literature, the occasion or occasions for the
telling of a Hummingbird tale are usually unclear, as are the expectations and
reactions of the audience. But there are important exceptions. In the Ixil area,
the Hummingbird bridal service myth used to be formally recited, in the
vernacular, during ritual visits (pedidos ‗petitionings‘) to the father-in-law‘s
house for asking the hand of his daughter. The recital thus connected local
family history to the broader history of the ‗mountains and valleys‘ where the
Fierce Warrior once walked. One of these recitals was registered by Aquiles
Palomino during his 1971 research into matrimonial patterns among the Ixiles
of Chajul. Its Spanish translation gives the impression of being quite literal
(1972: 129-149). The recital was performed by the head of the suitor‘s
delegation, an Elder (Mama’), on the second of a series of visits. This occurred
before the decisive entry into the house, which might take place only on the
third or fourth visit (Palomino 1972: 85, 148 n. 20). The dates for the visits
were determined by the indigenous calendar, and are included in the recital‘s
text.
The ritual occasion brings about a considerable change in the character
of the mythological text, rendering it elusive and more difficult to read. The text
is replete with ritual couplets (Garibay‘s ‗difrasismos‘) and triplets that time and
again coalesce into new combinations, as well as with mystical names.
Moreover, it is interrupted by prayer-like passages of a markedly syncretic
character and by references to sacred places. To give some idea of the ritual
couplets, any important person is referred to as ‗his foot, his hand‘, his presence
as ‗his right (hand), his left (hand)‘, and a divine person as ‗his God[hood], his
Saint[hood]‘. A word is often doubled, modified first by ‗white‘ and then by
‗red‘ (e.g., ‗white blowpipe, red blowpipe‘, Palomino 1972: 133, line 147). In a
similar vein, the daughter of Mataqtani is referred to as ‗his [i.e.,
Hummingbird‘s] flower, his sacrament‘, or called by the mystical names of
‗Marikita Alelusia Alintoma Malenchina‘ (line 339), the last one of which
 130

might contain an allusion to the legendary Malinche – the indigenous and very
helpful wife of that Spanish ‗Fierce Warrior‘, Cortés.198
Aside from the young woman, the tale‘s characters are her father
(Mataqtani), the suitor (‗King Hummingbird, King Man, King Warrior‘ [‗Rey
Gorrión, Rey Hombre, Rey Achi‘]), with a minor role for Hummingbird‘s
grandmother, the guardian of Marikita‘s bones. In addition to her already-
mentioned names, Marikita is called Eve as well as ‗Maria Mundo‘ (lines 178,
245), the latter being a tell-tale title, since the Mundo or ‗World‘ is everywhere
among the Mayas used to refer to the divine Earth. On one occasion (line 455),
Marikita refers to her father as ―my Father King, King World, King Paña,199 my
Mountain my Valley‖, thus showing her father‘s identity with the Mataqtani of
the Q‘eqchi‘s, another Tzuultaq‘a ‗Mountain-Valley‘.
Aquiles Palomino finds the reason for the myth‘s recital in its
‗pragmatic purpose‘ (1972: 24), which consists in reminding the audience of the
prescriptions and values that should regulate the conduct of young men and
women. It seems obvious, however, that this cannot be a sufficient explanation,
since a long sermon (such as one of the Ixil Elders actually gave at a wedding,
see Palomino 1972: 91-92) would also have done the work, and being
unimpeded by esoteric allusions, perhaps more effectively so. Instead, the
otherworldly character of the tale should be fully appreciated. The reciting Elder
himself tells us he is the ‗successor of King Hummingbird‘ (line 43), thus
taking the hero‘s place in the petitioning. Consequently, the father-in-law
hidden in his house finds himself invested with the dignity of Mountain-Valley
hidden in his cave: the divine Earth itself, not only the source of all riches – as
embodied in his daughter – but also the warrant of morality. It is in this
transcendent perspective, evoked and enhanced by ceremonious language, that
the moral force of the recital resides. However – and this might be misleading –
the Mayas do not idealize their ‗Mountain-Valley‘, but picture him quite
realistically, as a violent player in the game of life, and subject to such
vicissitudes of history as the invasion of a Fierce Warrior.

198
The name once given to Hummingbird, ‗King Magdalena‘ (line 58), seems to
contain an allusion to a female figure (María Magdalena) on one line with Malinche.
199
Perhaps paño ‗fabric, textile‘, occurring as a metaphor for clouds in a Tzotzil curing
text (Köhler 1977: 38 n. 32), is meant; or the reference could be to some attribute of the
Hummingbird dance..
 131

Just as the tale of the Fierce Warrior of Rabinal was (and still is)
regularly executed as a dance drama, so the tale of the Fierce Warrior of Chajul
apparently was staged in the Hummingbird Dance (Tz[‘]unun), ―the most
autochthonous of the dances practiced in Chajul‖ (Palomino 1972: 139 n. 14).
Its first staging is explained in the Hummingbird recital: It was organized by
Marikita to assuage her fathers‘ anger at Hummingbird‘s successful
accomplishment of the first bridal task. Hummingbird himself invited him to
come and watch, and received this answer (lines 393-401):

―Ah, damn! How dare you! Leave it, my son. I don‘t know why,
nor why I am so angry. Perhaps you have a right to her foot and
hand!! I am going to put on a gallant white costume, a gallant red
costume. […] Perhaps I will be happy…I am going to shout!‖, thus
spoke his godhood his sainthood, his foot, his hand. So he rested,
and as it is, so remained his Son, and so the dance remained in the
world.‖

Being the script for what was probably the most important dance of Chajul, the
social reach of Hummingbird myth apparently extends beyond the families
establishing a marital alliance to embrace the entire community. This is so
because the relationship between bride-taking and bride-giving families
replicates that between the Fierce Warrior representative of the outside world
and the Mountain-Valley overseeing the own community.200
The custom of reading aloud a bridal myth as an exemplum in the
course of petitioning procedures appears to have been widespread. In the less
accessible hamlets of Rabinal, the tale of ‗Our Beloved Maiden‘(Qachu kilaj
qapoj) is still recited inside the father-in-law‘s house during the decisive
Petitioning (Tz’onoj), which takes the place of a wedding ceremony (Akkeren
2002). It is told, first by the representative (‗abogado‘) of the bride-taking party,
then retold by the representative of the bride-giving party. The tale‘s initial
situation is not unlike that of Hummingbird myth: A young woman is kept
locked up by her jealous father, called ‗Our Celestial Father‘, who then turns

200
What seems to be the same Chajul dance, the ‗Dance of the Bird Cages‘, is said by
some to have been devised by Hummingbird to divert Mataqtani‘s attention and create
an opportunity for making love to Marikita (Yurchenco 2006: 87-88). What the dance
actually stages is the killing of the intrusive Oyeb (the Fierce Warrior) at the hands of
Mataqtani (id.: 88-89).
 132

angry at her violation of the rules of alliance. However, the tale soon steers
another course. Since the girl has become pregnant through the gift of an apple,
her angry father orders her death. She is, however, spared by the executioners
and flees. On her way to Jerusalem, wealthy people give her impossible tasks to
fulfill in exchange for shelter, and animals come to her rescue. Once across the
sea, she rejects a group of rich suitors in favor of a humble man with a
flowering staff (Saint Joseph). She then crosses the desert. The trees that give
her shade come to fruition as soon as she leaves; finally, her son (Christ) is
born.
As Van Akkeren notes, the tale‘s first episode is a variant of the Xquic
episode of the Popol Vuh (albeit with remarkably sophisticated plant
symbolism). The other episodes, however, betray a strong influence of Spanish
narrative traditions concerning the Virgin Mary. Indeed, this aspect sets the
Rabinal bridal myth apart: Much more than in the Chajul bridal myth, the
female protagonist is focal. Instead of a male bridal service, we find another sort
of service that could be taken as alluding to a poor fiancée‘s future in the home
of a wealthy mother-in-law. Indeed, the constant tension between the two sides
of the alliance seems to have given way to another contrast, that between the
poor and humble, and the rich and pretentious. The difference in economic
status, which also forms the background of the bridal service in Ixil
Hummingbird myth, has become a major concern.

Bridal Capture

The Q‘eqchi‘ myth, together with a few other Hummingbird tales,

includes no bridal service, but instead has Hummingbird magically enter a
foreign house to capture the daughter. In the preceding section on Bridal
Service, the arrangement of the marriage and the types of bridal tasks assigned
to the groom was given most of the attention. But it was also noted that in the
relevant Hummingbird tales, the bridal service ends with elopement. Whereas
bridal service has the suitor not only showing good will but also paying, at least
in part, for his bride with the work of his hands, bridal capture or elopement
(here used synonymously) is a drastic, but traditional way to forestall or shake
off the burden of bridal service. The factors responsible for adopting this
strategy are now to be considered in some detail.
 133

General Features
The key factor in deciding for elopement is the suitor‘s obligatory
residence at the father-in-law‘s home – that is, the parental home of his
prospective bride (uxorilocality) – which plays such an important role in the
bridal service versions of Hummingbird myth. The circumstances leading to
uxorilocality clearly come to the fore in case studies carried out in communities
around Lake Atitlan. In the case of Santiago Atitlan, Gross and Kendall (1983:
201-228) found that uxorilocality occurs in about one third of the connubia;
among the Mayas in general, its frequency is estimated rarely to fall below 20
percent (id.: 205). In Santiago, it is not a normal stage in the procedure leading
up to marriage (as among the Tzotziles). Instead, it is the path taken by orphans
and sons of poor families, as among the Jacaltecas. Not surprisingly, more
prosperous families have a clear preference for poor and unassuming sons-in-
law.
As used to be the case in another village of Lake Atitlan (San Pedro La
Laguna), uxorilocality in Santiago probably was supposed to be followed by the
far more desirable virilocal or neolocal residence (cf. Paul and Paul 1963: 137).
The parents with whom the newly-weds reside (whether viri- or uxorilocally)
have the obligations of assisting in setting up an independent household and of
giving some land in usufruct (Gross and Kendall 1983: 207-208). Especially if
the last-born child is a daughter, however, the girl‘s parents make an express
attempt to get the couple to reside with them permanently, so as to have a
female care-taker and a male laborer to provide for their needs in old age.
Since it runs counter to the prevalent patrilineal ideology and entails an
inferior position, a young man usually considers uxorilocality to be highly
undesirable. He is no longer living on his parents‘ ancestral lands; the grounds
on which he lives will be inherited not by him, but by his wife and children; and
under some circumstances, his children can even ―gain a kind of ascendancy
over their father‖ (Gross and Kendall 1983: 221). Once the woman obtains her
inheritance, ―the husband is in a position of a tenant in respect to his wife's
property,‖ and as a result, he tends to eschew tilling her lands (id.: 220).
Understandably, uxorilocality is often rife with tension. As an example, Gross
and Kendall (id.: 219) quote the case of a young groom who ―awoke one
morning with his father-in-law‘s hands around his throat screaming that the son-
in-law was too arrogant and should get out.‖
 134

A traditional escape from such entanglements is elopement, even

though, from the bride giver‘s perspective, this is tantamount to stealing the
bride. In Santiago Atitlan, marriage negotiations involving an uxorilocal
arrangement can be protracted, especially if the parties are of relatively equal
status, and induce growing resistance. Then, the suitor may resort to elopement
as an ―institutionalized way out of the stalemate‖ (Gross and Kendall 1983:
218), with the consent of his parents who will have to pay the fine. Among the
Chuj Mayas (Maxwell 1996: 72), bridal capture is even described as a ‗second
major marriage mechanism‘, after payment of the bridal price and bridal
service. The candidate ―is especially likely to try this if he cannot afford a bride
price, if he suspects her family will not receive his family‘s visits, or if the girl
seems reluctant to wed.‖ The fugitive couple hide in a cabin in the hills; with
his girl safely ‗locked in‘, the ‗captor‘ can return to negotiate a marriage with a
much stronger hand. At times, if no arrangement can be reached, ―the de facto
unions continue.‖ Bridal capture was also a traditional option among the Ixiles
of Chajul (Palomino 1972: 68-69, 82). The fugitive couple sought lodging with
the boy‘s friends, the boy‘s family stepped in, an Elder was contacted, and bride
price negotiations and petitioning were started. For the Tz‘utujiles of San Pedro
La Laguna (Paul and Paul 1963: 138-140), elopement took place at the initiative
of the boy and girl themselves, apparently with previous consent of the boy‘s
parents who would have to receive the fugitives and pay the fines. ―A load of
firewood delivered by the son-in-law to his wife‘s parents frequently marked
the resumption of friendly relations‖ (id.: 140), delivering firewood otherwise
being typical of the beginning of uxorilocal bridal service (id.: 138).
From the above, it appears that the dramatic move of bridal capture was
either an interruption of marriage negotiations or a premeditated way of bridal
acquisition. Either way, it was usually to be followed by negotiations so as to
normalize the situation. Just which course of action was chosen by a suitor
seems largely to have been a matter of socio-economic circumstances.
Characteristically, ―some informants attribute the origin of elopement in San
Pedro to a certain couple in the 1890‘s who feared to approach the girl's
irascible father‖ (Paul and Paul 1963: 138 n. 11). Although it could almost
appear to have been taken directly from Hummingbird myth, this story has
another background. In the 1890‘s, the ‗corporate community‘ gradually began
to give way to a community of private land-owners supported by legal titles,
and the need to conserve family capital made it difficult to pursue the costly
procedures of formal petitioning (id.: 145). Consequently, the father-in-law‘s
 135

ritual role on receiving petitioners (corresponding to his mythical role vis-à-vis

the hero and his fiancée) became less and less acceptable.

Bridal Capture in Hummingbird Myth

The ‗Fierce Warrior‘ of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, Xbalanque, is
emphatically stated to be unwilling to make use of marriage negotiators
(Thompson 1930: 126). He wants to win the girl all by himself. By deliberately
rejecting existing social networks, he hardly enhances his trustworthiness in the
eyes of the group he is approaching; and his sudden descent from the skies,
where he rules over his territories like the Sun (Wilson), is no less suggestive of
aggressive intentions. Consequently, he is rightly treated as a Fierce Warrior, set
on kidnapping and seducing women. The daughter of the ‗Grandfather of the
Land‘ mocks him by washing him away with the lime water (nixtamal) in which
raw maize kernels had been soaking, thus putting him to shame. Significantly,
for the Totonacs, lime water is a liquid refuse comparable to excrement and
urine (Ichon 1969: 131).
There is reason to assume that this use of nixtamal constitutes a
Mesoamerican motif expressive of an extremely unequal relationship between
bride-givers and bride-takers. It is also at the heart of one of the few extended
legendary passages in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Kirchhoff et al. 1989:
152-156), which otherwise is made up mainly of exhaustive listings of ethnic
groups, their divisions and leaders, and the towns they have conquered. On their
trek from the Cave of Origins, the Tolteca-Chichimecas have entered the ter-
ritory of the Olmeca-Xicalancas with its capital, Cholollan. There, they live
apart in a state of serfdom and – not unlike the poor marriage candidates
considered above – are forced to carry water and firewood for their masters.
Moreover, they are the object of malicious mockery: ―They threw nixtamal
water in their faces; they scratched their legs with feather quills; they cut arrows
and set up reeds in their backs [or anuses]‖ (par. 129). From a parallel passage
(par. 147), it becomes clear that it was the Olmeca-Xicalanca women who threw
the nixtamal water. The passage culminates with the victims exclaiming: ―Are
we perhaps dogs?!‖201

201
Horcasitas (1988: 208) finds an allusion here to the post-diluvial origin of mankind
by the mating of a man with a humanized bitch, a myth found among the Huicholes,
Tlapanecs, and Totonacs, and – in view of their name – especially applicable to the
 136

The Tolteca-Chichimecas decide to take possession of the town,

Cholollan. Their stratagem involves inviting the Olmeca-Xicalancas to a feast.
Apparently, war dances are to be held, and for this, the weapons of the guests
are to be borrowed; but instead of good, new weapons, the Tolteca-Chichimecas
ask for only ―your wasted weapons that are lying somewhere in the nixtamal
water‖ (par. 152),202 that is, weapons that had been abused along with the
suffering, allochthonous servants themselves. These weapons are assembled,
painted, and repaired…and there a lacuna in the text brings the story to a halt.
However, since the Tolteca-Chichimecas had asked themselves: ―Shall we be
eaten, or shall the shield and weapon of the Olmecs eat the Olmeca-
Xicalancas?‖ (par. 148), there is reason to suspect that weakness finally turned
into strength, and vice versa – especially so, since the Mocker, Tezcatlepoca,
had prompted the strategy. In any case, the Olmeca-Xicalancas are ousted and
haughty Cholollan is taken.
In the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, the Tolteca-Chichimecas
penetrated as hunters and warriors into a foreign territory, where they appear to
have become incorporated and subordinated as humble marriage candidates not
yet fully legitimized as ‗sons-in-law‘. Q‘eqchi‘ myth develops along similar
lines. Its ‗Fierce Warrior‘ is a hostile intruder – a hunter accompanied by jaguar
and puma ‗dogs‘ (Curley) – who, as we have seen, shook the mountains of the
Q‘eqchi‘ Grandfather. But when Xbalanque tries to become a son-in-law, he is
treated much as would be a poor and powerless marriage candidate.203 I suspect
that the ‗female‘ lime water magically destroys the power of his phallic arrows,
one of which had also shown him the way to his future wife (Cruz Torres). In

Chichimecs (chichi meaning ‗dog‘). In its Huichol rendering, the skin of the bitch is
burnt away and her naked flesh soothed with nixtamal water. Since in this case,
nixtamal water obviously carries a positive connotation, and the female, not the male is
affected by it, I can find no meaningful parallel here.
202
Zan yehuatl yn ma cana uetztoc nextamallayotitlan amotlauizoltzin ―sólo aquellas
insignias viejas que están tiradas por ahí, donde arrojan el agua de nixtamal‖ (Hist.T-
CH. 1989: 156). Horcasitas‘ translation (―all we want are your old weapons, lest your
new ones be spoiled with the nixtamal water‖, 1988: 208) does not seem to be correct.
203
It seems strange that a Poqomchi‘ version (Mayers 1958: 3) initially stages him as an
‗old man‘ (rejeb’). In a 17th-century Pokom dictionary, one finds: ‖Rihib: something
old; said of plants, trees, animals and men. ‗You are grown to stalks‘, said of a mature
man who ought to have been married long since‖ (Zuðiga, in Miles 1957: 763). Perhaps
the idea is that nobody had been willing to give Hummingbird a wife, or that he could
not afford to pay for his bride.
 137

sum, Xbalanque finds himself symbolically reduced to a state of serfdom, a

stalemate from which only the use of love magic can save him.
The ensuing bridal capture provokes what amounts to a war (with the
war captain cast as a rain deity) that leaves the reckless bridal capturer with a
dead woman. The invader is obliged to resort to petitioning. It is only by being
recognized as a son-in-law to the ‗Grandfather of the Land‘, that the abductor‘s
dead woman can regain life: ―He went to the Thirteen Mountains and Thirteen
Valleys to petition for [rogar por] his beloved‖ (Cruz Torres). However, the
Q‘eqchi‘ ‗Grandfather of the Land‘ (the Mountains and Valleys of War, or the
‗Provincias de Guerra‘ which had become the Spanish ‗Verapaz‘ provinces) had
been traumatized by the Fierce Warrior‘s invasion and afflicted by the diseases
he had caused. Therefore, he remains basically hostile. According to some
renditions (briefly referred to in Estrada Monroy 1990: 141 n. 197), Sun first
reconnoiters the land with his beams of light to ensure that Mountain-Valley is
not lying in ambush, ―ready to take Kana Po‘ with him into the sky.‖ The
protective daylight comes first, and Moon reflects the light of her husband only
when the coast is clear.
Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth is cast largely in terms of the deer hunt,
but, as shall be explained presently, the tale can also be told in terms of
agriculture, particularly maize cultivation. An overview of the variants at my
disposal together with a detailed treatment of their implications will be found in
Chapter Eight; here, I intend to consider the maize version only in the
perspective of bridal capture. In either case, a human woman is transformed into
a non-human woman. But instead of enclosing a fragmented woman in jars and
leaving her in the custody of a guardian, the Fierce Warrior – who initially bears
comparison to the ‗Sipak(na)‘ and impertinent maize robber type of the tales
discussed in Chapter Four – leaves an unfragmented woman in the custody of
an ally who encloses her in a mountain.
One of these maize tales, a Poqomchi‘ Hummingbird myth from Santa
Cruz Verapaz (Búcaro Moraga), lends itself particularly well to a historical
reading in terms of war and alliance.204 It has the Quiche Uinac for a
protagonist, a war captain who, being the representative of the K‘iche‘ conquest
state, is, just as in Q‘eqchi‘ myth, identified with the victorious Sun. The
Quiche Uinac descends on a mamá ‗Grandfather‘ of the Land who, in this

204
See also the Synopsis of the maize version in Appendix B.
 138

particular case, is probably to be understood as the Poqomchi‘ King. The

Quiche Uinac captures the King‘s daughter, retreats, and constructs K‘iche‘
mountain fortresses to control Poqomchi‘ territory. The King and his two
Hawks (i.e., principal war captains) are shaken off. Then, the hero marries the
Poqomchi‘ princess off to an ally from Rabinal, instructing the ally to imprison
her in one of the mountain fortresses constructed in between Poqomchi‘ and
Rabinal territories. When Rabinal complies, the woman changes into the Maize
Mother, that is, the sowing-seed. To save the life of his subjects, the Poqomchi‘
King has to send his Lightning Captains to set her free. What we may have here,
is a Poqomchi‘ perspective on the conflicts set out in the ‗Rabinal Achi‘, one
that turns on the ambiguous role of the Poqom. And just as the Rabinal King
offered a Q‘eqchi‘ princess from Carchah to the Quiche Uinac to ‗weave‘ the
Kingdom‘s affinal network, so the representative of the K‘iche‘ King seems to
have offered a Poqomchi‘ princess to the ‗man from Rabinal‘ (i.e., the Rabinal
Achi). But the available data are thin, and the suggestion must remain
speculative.
From the viewpoint of a King who lost his daughter, the bridal capture
remains a hostile procedure tantamount to kidnapping. Certain variants of the
maize version, however, present a situation not unlike that reported from the
Chuj Mayas, where the fugitive couple hide in a cabin in the hills until the
‗captor‘, with his girl safely locked up, returns to the woman‘s father to
negotiate a marriage. In these variants (Mayers, Schumann), it is the abductor
himself who imprisons the abducted woman in a mountain cave. He cohabits
with her and makes her pregnant; and this signals the necessity of establishing
an affinal tie to the King. The woman urges her husband to approach her father;
but at the very moment he leaves his mountain retreat as a marriage candidate,
the mountain encloses the woman, and a situation similar to that in the Quiche
Uinac Hummingbird myth is thus reached.
Even more emphatically than Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth and the
Poqomchi‘ tale from Santa Cruz Verapaz, an early Q‘eqchi‘ variant of the
Maize Mother tale published by Burkitt (1918) takes the perspective of the
Q‘eqchi‘ king identified with the predominant mountain, Xucaneb. This King
presides over a council consisting of dignitaries with their own domains (i.e.,
mountains), such as it indeed existed in pre-Spanish times. The narrator has
shrewdly construed the tale by doubling some of its key roles: The abducted
daughter is assigned a double who is the ‗Maize Mother‘, and the bridal
capturer becoming a son-in-law is assigned a double who is a son-in-law
 139

becoming a hostile kidnapper. The political argument appears to be that bridal

capture and war should be transformed into affinity and peace, and that a denial
of affinity can only mean war. When the King‘s daughter is enclosed in the
abductor‘s mountain, the King twice sends his Jaguars and Pumas, to no avail.
He is forced to send a female marriage broker and to persuade the abductor to
become his son-in-law. But at the very moment the abductor returns to his
father-in-law, the latter‘s daughter is imprisoned in the mountain of the rejected
other son-in-law. Once more, a hostile mountain is to be attacked.

Syncretism: The Blanca Flor Tales

Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, and even more its Ixil, K‘iche‘, and
Kaqchikel versions, have all been influenced by Ladino oral tradition, or rather,
have sometimes expressed their messages through this medium. Although
various Ladino tale types can come into play here, whether alone or together, it
is the tale of Blanca Flor that has made the biggest impression. Blanca Flor
shares her name with the princess of the chivalrous medieval legend (who is
better known, perhaps, as Blancheflour).205 However, the folktales included
under the heading of Blanca Flor evince a structure quite different from the
medieval legend and correspond to Tale Type 313, ‗The Girl as Helper in the
Hero‘s Flight‘, in Aarne-Thompson‘s ‗Types of the Folktale‘ (see Taggart 1997:
173). Leaving aside the tale‘s initial part (which explains why the hero should
have left for the realm of a foreign king) and the final part (the hero temporarily
losing his bride through magical amnesia), I will here focus on the stay with the
otherworldly father and the impossible tasks he demands of his young visitor.

Blanca Flor’s Generative Powers

In Mexico and Guatemala as in Spain, the central part of the Blanca Flor
tale usually conforms to a particular pattern (cf. Taggart 1997: 173; Dary 1986:

205
According to the medieval tale, a Christian mother and her daughter are held captive
by a Moorish King. In her prime youth, the daughter falls in love with the King‘s son.
The Moorish King reacts by selling her to another, and distant King, who imprisons her
in a tower. The prince, Floris ‗Flower‘, sets out on a quest for his beloved ‗White
Flower‘, and frees her by defeating her guardian in a game of chess. He marries her, and
converts to her creed.
 140

235; Laughlin 1977: 80). The hero enters the household of a foreign King, who
is often the Devil. He is given a series of impossible tasks, the first of which
entails the killing of one of the Devil‘s own daughters. The hero wins her
allegiance, and she helps him to accomplish what is being asked of him. After
he has completed many of his tasks, the Devil decides to give his daughter to
this efficient ‗servant‘, and the next tasks thus become true bridal tasks.
However, since the Devil comes to realize that his daughter is deceiving him,
the final tasks also become outright attempts to murder the couple, forcing them
to flee. During the flight, Blancaflor throws away her female attributes (such as
comb, soap, and mirror) which change into obstacles on the road, the final
obstacle often being a lake or a sea. The fugitives themselves assume various
transformative shapes so as to mislead the Devil; these typically include a
church dedicated to the Virgin together with its priest. In each case, it is the
Devil‘s shrewd wife who points out her husband‘s mistakes. But the lovers
escape.
The variants of this tale told in Nahua mountain communities of
Northern Puebla (Taggart 1983: 224-228, Tale nos.17, 18; 1997: 196ff) not only
give a strongly agrarian character to the bridal tasks, but also emphasize
Blancaflor‘s generative powers and her love for her ant helpers. We have
already met these ant helpers in one of the Ixil Hummingbird tales. The
anthropologist and folklorist, James Taggart (1997: 221), has pointed out
Blanca Flor‘s resemblance to the female character found in many tales of a
more indigenous nature, a character he calls ‗Lightning Bolt Woman‘: A young,
seductive earth goddess who often assumes the shape of a serpent and who
brings riches to those she favors (cf. Taggart 1983: 138-139, 142-152). A
convincing demonstration of Taggart‘s thesis can be found in a version of the
Blanca Flor tale type told by the Totonacs of Tepango de Rodríguez, Northern
Puebla (Avila Soriano 1990: 246-249), where the young woman (who remains
anonymous) turns into a serpent, specifically a boa constrictor, and glides
through the wild vegetation to prepare a maize field for her fiancée.
Apparently, the Blanca Flor tale could influence indigenous tales by
serving as a vehicle for traditional indigenous concepts (such as serpent
transformation) and concerns (such as those of alliance). This is as true for the
Mayas as it is for the Nahuas, and Blanca Flor‘s role could as well be played by
the Mayan daughter of the mountain as by the Nahua Lightning Bolt Woman.
Suggestive of an interaction between the Ladino and Mayan oral traditions
concerned are Hummingbird myths with a long series of impossible bridal tasks
 141

(Kaqchikel of Palopó, K‘iche‘ of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan); with bridal tasks

with murderous intent (Santa Maria Ixtahuacan, Ixil of Chajul); and with the so-
called ‗magical flight‘ episode (Kaqchikel of Panajachel and Santa Maria
Ixtahuacan).206 In these syncretic tales, it is only the tale‘s conclusion that is
radically different, showing a conception of Blanca Flor different from the one
commonly found in Ladino renderings.
The Blanca Flor influence is also recognizable in lesser elements. In the
Kaqchikel story from Panajachel (Tax), the Ma-Taktani of the Palopó variant is
replaced by the Devil. In the same story, the daughters assume the shape of
white lilies, suggestive of the Catholic Virgin; in Ixil myth, the daughter is
called with the Spanish name of María or Margarita. In the Blancaflor tale, the
Devil keeps his daughter locked up with seven keys (Dary 1986: 232); in many
variants of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, T‘actani is suggested to inhabit a palace with a series
of rooms (like the house which Hummingbird is to build for his father-in-law),
where his daughter is locked up with as many keys. The speaking saliva left by
the couple on fleeing (Dary 1986: 233, 352, Tax 1951: 2550) recurs in the
slightly expanded Estrada Monroy edition of the Q‘eqchi‘ Wirsing variant. The
shrewd wife of the ‗magical flight‘ episode seems to be present in some
Q‘eqchi‘ variants (Drück), when Mountain-Valley‘s wife hands him his mirror
or his blowgun; in the Panajachel tale, only the father-in-law‘s suspicious wife
is able to recognize the fugitives in their various transformations. In addition to
these syncretic names, motifs, and characters, one sometimes notices the use of
magical formulas savoring of European fairy tales.207
It should be emphasized that Hummingbird myth constitutes only a
specific class of the indigenous bridal tales that are patterned to some degree on
the Blanca Flor tale type, tales that in turn are but parts of a still wider,
sophisticated discourse about the many modalities of establishing or
manipulating affinal ties to an Earth Owner. Consider for example three of the
tales collected by Tax (1951) among the Kaqchikeles of Panajachel, all, as it
appears, from the same narrator. One (no.26) is a Hummingbird myth with its

206
The ‗magical flight‘ is equally noticeable in otherwise very indigenous myths, such
as the Zapotec Sun and Moon myth (Parsons 1936: 326; Stubblefield and Stubblefield
1969: 58-60).
207
―Vengan mariposas de oro, mariposas de plata‖ (kixojo k’ut q’ana pepe saqa pepe),
and: ―Levántate Palo Jiote de oro, Palo Jiote de plata‖ (katwa’lija k’ut q’ana uk’a’ saqa
uk’a’) (Ixtahuacan K‘iche‘, Ajpacaja Sohom 2004: 32/28).
 142

implied love magic, followed by the capture of the two daughters of the Devil,
the ‗magical flight‘, and the attack, first by lightning, then by a wind dispersing
the daughters‘ ashes, which thereupon change to bees. This tale is paralleled by
one (no. 28) about a lazy bird-hunter208 who finds bathing doves that turn out to
be daughters of the Devil. Since they do not enter his bird traps, another bridal
capture follows, with in its wake again the ‗magical flight‘ and the persecution
by the devil‘s cronies – in this case winds, the last one of whom takes the
woman away from the unhappy bird-hunter. She is neither destroyed nor
transformed. The third tale (no. 20) substitutes a bridal service in disguise for
the bridal capture and thus approaches the Blanca Flor model more closely.
Another lazy bird-hunter aims carelessly and wounds the birds of the Mountain
(the ‗Devil‘), thus violating an important hunting taboo. He is taken to the
mountain to carry out tasks that are really sanctions. He succeeds only with the
help of the Devil‘s daughter; next comes the ‗magical flight‘, and the Devil
sends his lightnings to kill – which is where the text breaks off. Confronted with
narrative variations like these, one can only wonder at the relative stability of
Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth.
The tale type of Blanca Flor is widespread in Mesoamerica, both among
Ladino and Indian groups. In the indigenous bridal service tales, the Devil's
daughter may be called Blanca Flor, but she can also assume another name, or
just remain anonymous.209 The rich Devil and father of Blanca Flor can still be
viewed as the ogre of many Ladino renderings (e.g., Thompson 1930: 167ff);
often, however, he has the same, ambivalent status as the fathers-in-law of
Hummingbird myth. When he is viewed as a foreign King (Gossen 1974: 303-
304, Sexton 1992), he is essentially the Rey Mundo, ‗Mundo‘ (‗World‘) usually
referring to the Earth. Thus, the father-in-law is also called the Dueño del Cerro
‗Owner of the Mountain‘ (Tax no. 20), the Chaneco (García de Leon), or
Lightning and his avatar, a snake (Taggart 1983: 128, 138). More specifically,

208
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, contrarily, the boys are hunting for birds with their blowguns and
traps, but laziness is not a theme. If ‗bird‘ becomes a metaphor for woman, the blowgun
almost inevitably acquires a phallic connotation.
209
Blanca Flor: Dary 1986: 232-234, 352-353; Garcia de León 1976: 90-94; Knab
1983: 488ff; Münch 1983: 163); Taggart 1983: 224-228. Other name, Rosalie:
Thompson 1930: 167-172, 175-178, María or Margarita: Ixil myth. Anonymous: Avila
Soriano 1990: 246-249; Sexton 1992: 17-23; Taggart 1983: 117-135; Tax 1951: 2550
(Tale 20), 2556 (Tale 28). Compare also Miller 1956: 179-182 (Tale 33).
 143

he is a boa constrictor embodying wealth stemming from the earth (Avila

Soriano); and consequently, the daughter can be a large snake or boa herself
(Avila S., Totonac; cf. Taggart, Nahua, Huitzilan Version 1,Yaonahuac Version
2; and Miller, Mixe, Tale 33). In his ophidian form, the supreme Father-in-law
recurs in various Mesoamerican initiation tales.
Whatever the specifics, the bridal task of cultivating a maize-field in
one day is rarely absent. As has already been noted in the discussion of
Hummingbird bridal service tales, the daughter manifests herself as a generative
power on a par with that of her father, and in this type of tales, especially one
relevant to agriculture. In the Totonac Blanca Flor tale, she burns the field by
slithering through the shrubs in the form of a boa constrictor (Avila Soriano).
For the one she has come to love, this nubile woman can perform miracles of
regeneration, which are often expressed through the metaphor of weaving. In
this context, the image of the chopper (machete) is instructive. Mixtec farmers
liken their wives to their choppers, since both wives and choppers eventually
produce food and life for their children (Monaghan 1996: 60). The bridal
service tales, however, which describe the way in which the cooperation of the
sexes came about, suspend the male perspective inherent in the Mixtec
metaphor, and replace the ‗female chopper‘ by the volitional action of the
batten, expressive of the autonomous female drive to produce food and children.
Whereas the batten, or ‗chopper of the loom‘ (‗machete de telar‘), destroys the
texture of the wild vegetation (García de Leon 1976: 91), the skirt which the
woman is about to weave (i.e., the loom threads) is stretched out between the
remaining trees and thickets as a cleared maize-field (Thompson 1930: 168);
her hairs are identified with maize tufts that, placed at the four corners of the
field (i.e., adorning the four corners of her weaving) produce the maize (Sexton
1992). The notion of useful vegetation as the ‗weaving‘ and ‗clothing‘ of the
earth can be extended to the animals living in this texture. For example, in a
Kaqchikel Hummingbird myth (Redfield), the daughter of the Earth Owner
rewards a King Fisher by weaving his feathers.
A bridal task that sometimes follows sowing and harvesting, and in
which the bridal service then reaches its climax, clearly reveals the hero‘s
subordination: Bringing forth, in the course of just one day, a child in the
likeness of the Father-in-law. In the Tz‘utujil Blanca Flor tale (Sexton), the
anonymous daughter instructs her lover to catch a fish; a big wave leaves it on
the sea-shore – a possible metaphor for birth-giving – and when the fish is laid
between the lovers in the childbed, it changes into a baby that already has teeth.
 144

Significantly, the admiring father-in-law declares: ―The child is going to have

my name‖ (Sexton 1992: 21), i.e., to be his namesake and ‗substitute‘.210 In
other words, the mam ‗grandchild‘ who has just been delivered will in time
replace a mam ‗grandfather‘ who in this case is also the supreme Grandfather of
the Land. This same concept probably underlies a Mixe variant (Miller 1956:
181-182) in which the father-in-law behaves much as a mother-in-law, happily
swaddling the child as if it were his own. We shall see in another chapter how,
in Lacandon Hummingbird myth, this bridal task acquires a very specific
function.
Once the woman seizes a chance to flee, her accessories are transformed
into features of the landscape, destined to keep her father and especially her
shrewd mother at bay. But this landscape is now being readied for human use,
and it is perhaps for this reason that at this point a Jacaltec variant (Stratmeyer,
in Shaw 1971: 129-131) reaffirms the daughter‘s new destiny. Instead of
changing herself into a Marian church and her husband into its priest, she
becomes a maize-stalk and her husband a farmer working his field. To the
indigenous mind, these alternative transformations would largely coincide, since
a farmer not only participates in collective agrarian rituals (in which the various
Virgins play their role), but also performs ‗costumbre‘ rituals himself. In terms
of the bridal tales, the purpose of these rituals is twofold: to have his bare fields
clothed with the texture of the fruits and crops, and to be allowed to keep these
‗fruits of his marriage‘ and live by them (see Chapter Eight, ‗The Farmer‘s
Marriage to the Soil and the Maize‘).

Bridal Service and Peonage

Returning to the fundamental preconditions of bridal acquisition, it are
the balance of payments, debt and acquittal, and thus the economic situation of
the suitor, that stand out. If a suitor is from a rich family, he could in principle
afford to pay the bridal price. But in the tales of concern here such is not
normally the case. Rather, the suitor tends to be staged as a poor man who will
have to either find other means of paying or else enter into the service of his
father-in-law and accept a burdensome bridal service. Indeed, with respect to a
father-in-law who owns all the land, the image of the poor suitor is particularly

210
Nah. tocayo ‗namesake‘, Ixil tuko (cf. Nachtigall 1978: 200-204, 238).
 145

apt. In a hierarchical perspective, human wealth is, in the final instance, seen to
derive from the primordial wealth of the Earth, which is jealously guarded by an
Owner to whom man is in principle nothing but a poor servant.211 As the tales
demonstrate, the suitor indeed sets out as a servant forced to do bridal service.
The father-in-law sets him tasks that, being impossible, could be extended
forever. Consequently, the suitor would, to all intents and purposes, end up as a
peon. In the real world, a father-in-law might well value a son-in-law with
means of his own and with useful social connections; but the myth appears to be
seeking the extremes, making the social distance between the father-in-law and
the suitor as wide as possible.
The menace of being converted into a mere servant is prominent not
only in the bridal service tales, but equally in the more encompassing collection
of bridal acquisition tales. Already in Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, we came
upon the nixtamal (lime water) incident with its implication of reduction to
slavery, specifically enslavement by a wealthy group of bride-givers. This dire
lesson was not lost upon the poor deer hunter Xbalanque, who resorted to love
magic and bridal capture rather than considering bridal service. In the
Panajachel Blanca Flor tale discussed above, the devil‘s daughter instructed the
hero – who, with her help, had successfully completed his tasks – that he should
not accept money from her father, for doing so would mean remaining
imprisoned in the mountain. In a similar vein, a Nahua tale from the northern
Sierra de Puebla (Taggart 1983: 119-120, cf. 123-124) emphatically warns that
a poor man, if he can choose his own reward for a service done to the Earth
Owner (such as rescuing or healing his animals), should never accept a woman
from his hands directly:

―Soon you‘ll arrive there and you‘ll find my sisters very attractive.
They‘ll invite you to eat, but if you accept you‘ll stay there forever.
My father will offer you a plot of land, an axe, a hoe, a machete, or
a tumpline for a reward. But don‘t accept any of these things, or
you‘ll stay forever working with them. […] Don‘t be attracted to
my sisters. My father will invite you to eat, but tell him you‘re not
hungry because if you eat you‘ll stay there forever.‖

211
This is also illustrated by those persons who have asked the Earth for riches. After
their death, they are made to pay for these riches, and are reduced to slavery.
 146

In other words, accepting a woman as compensation implies agreeing to

become the tenant, or even peon, of the father-in-law, and moreover not for a
fixed period of time (as would be normal), but without a set limit. This is also
what the Palomino variant of Ixil Hummingbird myth explicitly formulates
(1972: 23): When ‗Rey Achi‘ has accomplished the herculean task of sowing an
enormous maize field, Mataqtani decides not to kill the intruder who ravished
his daughter, provided the latter accepts his offer to stay with him as his son-in-
law and to work for him.
This menacing development rests upon two stereotypical features of the
bridal tales: the poverty of the suitor and the exclusive concentration on the
daughters rather than the sons of the father-in-law. The explanation of this
mythological development is to be sought in the institution of permanent
uxorilocality, which comes into play whenever a poor man desires to marry the
daughter of a rich father-in-law without sons (cf. Nachtigall 1978: 238);212 for in
the absence of sons the patriarch‘s land-holdings cannot be patrilineally
inherited. Instead of his sons and sons‘ sons, his daughter‘s sons should take his
place. As a consequence, the daughter remains a prisoner of her father‘s
patrilineage and her lover should be made to stay: He should be absorbed by the
group of his in-laws, and in a sense, be adopted. In Mixtec, this reversal of the
normal situation, which puts the suitor in such an undesirable position of
dependency, is neatly captured by the expression: ‗The bride buys the groom‘
(Monaghan 1996: 76-77 n. 11). It implies that through his wife, the suitor‘s
male children will inherit the father-in-laws property.213 Therefore, in the myth,
the patriarch is overwhelmed by joy once his servant has fulfilled the ‗bridal
task‘ of generating a child with his daughter: For now, there is a ‗substitute‘
who can inherit his lands, while the son-in-law is there merely to labor until a
son who in a sense is not his own, but rather the patriarch‘s heir, can take his
place.
But then the father-in-law comes to realize that his daughter has
interpreted her ‗buying of the groom‘ in a highly undesirable way and
effectively does the work for her suitor, thus enabling him to pay off his debt

212
The Ixil case described by Nachtigall assumes the male head of the household
already to have died, thus accentuating the temporary matrilineal inheritance through
the widow (who inherits her husband‘s possessions) and her daughter.
213
In Acxotla del Monte, Tlaxcala, this co-resident son-in-law is sometimes jokingly
referred to as nuero ‗male daughter-in-law‘ (Robichaux 1997: 156).
 147

and abduct her. In a sense, she is thereby serving the interests of a patrilineage
other than that of her father. If she has given her father a grandson, it is only to
give her suitor a son. Thus, the strained, radically uxorilocal solution, which
makes a peon of the son-in-law, is subverted, and, in a wider perspective, an
opening is created through which the benefits of the earth could reach mankind.
The above considerations may have affected the way the Blanca Flor
and Hummingbird tales were understood by a 19th or 20th-century audience of
poor Mayan tenants and laborers. It will be recalled that various Q‘eqchi‘
Hummingbird tales were told on some of the German-owned plantations that
had gradually engulfed the mountains of the Alta Verapaz, dispossessing the
indigenous communities in the process. Thompson (1930: 67) noted as early as
the late1920‘s that the Q‘eqchi‘s of southern British Honduras believed in
spooks that had the body of a mare and the head of a German coffee planter.214
But a more fundamental comparison was made as well: Even in the 1980‘s,
Q‘eqchi‘ elders still imagined the Mountain-Valley deities as blond, and
sometimes cannibalistic, German landowners (Wilson 1995: 57-58). Both the
Tzuultaq‘a and the landowners are called patrón ‗boss‘, an equation also made
by other Mayan groups (Wilson 1995: 58). For Q‘eqchi‘s consciously
identifying themselves as Catholics, this perspective is sometimes adjusted:
God the Father is then viewed as an absentee landlord and ‗patrñn‘, while the
Tzuultaq‘a is assigned the role of the latter‘s mayordomo, overseeing the work
of the laborers on the finca (Kahn 2006: 57-58).215
Against such a background, Hummingbird‘s bridal service, consisting
of an interminable series of heavy and, indeed, impossible tasks, is apt to have
been understood as a metaphor for the debt peonage in which the audience
found itself entrapped.216 Q‘eqchi‘ mozos colonos must, therefore, have rejoiced
in the daring and cunning (na’leb’) with which their hero managed to
circumvent this servitude, and in the writhing of a powerful landowner who had
just swallowed a load of pepper from his sabotaged blowgun. This specific
interpretation of the Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird as a symbol of resistance against

214
These landowners seem to have acted in the shape of were-animals, not unlike the
way-spooks of the distant pre-Spanish Mayan kings
215
In Chapter Ten, we shall find an analogous relationship between Xulab as an
absentee cattle farmer and the Mountain-Valley deities as his overseers.
216
It will be recalled that debt peonage had been legalized in 1894, fifteen years before
the oldest variant of the tale was told to Wirsing.
 148

plantation servitude is further supported by the fact that the boss‘s violent
coughing is stated to have introduced lung diseases into the mountains
(Wirsing) – diseases that all too often infected a plantation owner‘s
malnourished laborers. Whereas, from this perspective, the Q‘eqchi‘ hero could
appear to have broken with the plantation system by abducting his wife, a
historicized bridal service tale current among the Mames of Chimaltenango, in
northwestern Guatemala, veers the other way (Watanabe 1992: 67). It has the
protagonist‘s father arrange a durable marriage of his son with the daughter of
the Mountain: ―The bride brought with her seeds for coffee trees, and
Chimaltecos say this is why the first coffee plantations began on the Pacific
coast near Tajumulco [Mountain].‖ The contrast could hardly be stronger. It
finds its explanation in the fact that in this case, the protagonist was not a Maya,
but the son of the very man who virtually reduced the Highland Maya‘s to
servitude, President Rufino Barrios.
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CHAPTER 6

TRANSFORMATIONS OF WOMAN: GAME, FOWL, AND HONEY BEES

The Hummingbird tales stereotypically receive their impetus from love magic,
signaling a blending of war into alliance, and symbolized by the invader‘s
transformation into a hummingbird. In this chapter, I shall argue that in the
Hummingbird bridal service tales, the outcome of the initial love magic is the
sexual attraction operative during the hunt and, in the case of the domesticated
bees, continuing afterwards.217 In the Hummingbird myths generally, the hunt
strongly comes to the fore, while the figure of the otherworldly father-in-law
looms large. In the Ixil and related versions, the daughter of Mountain-Valley is
finally transformed into deer and other game, including wild bees; in the
Lacandon Hummingbird myth, the hunt for gophers paradoxically leads to the
procreation of gophers. In several Hummingbird myths, the hero is responsible
for the white-tailed deer‘s distinctive features, such as their hooves, antlers, and
speculum. In the Q‘eqchi‘ version, finally, the hero is a deer hunter who, at
various moments, assimilates himself to the deer, and woos a woman who
interacts with them in various ways. In the course of this chapter, I will try to
find coherence in these motifs by considering what appears to be an ancient
Mesoamerican conception of the hunt.

From Prospective Human Wife to Animal Wife

Essential elements of a hunting ideology extant over the entire

Mesoamerican area are the close association (and often, in dreams, the
interchangeability) of women and game, and the regeneration of the bones.
These two elements are also characteristic of the Hummingbird bridal service
tales to be discussed. In the Ixil Hummingbird myth published by the Colbies

217
In so far as they treat of love and procreation rather than war and conquest, these
‗flowery‘ tales overlap with the sphere of the Aztec deity Xochiquetzal and of her male
counterpart, Xochipilli ‗Flower Lord‘ (or Chicome-Xochitl), whose equivalent Mayan
name (nicte ahau) denotes the Hummingbird character in the Book of Chilam Balam of
Chumayel.
 150

(CC 180-183, cf. M 60-66),218 the Father-in-law‘s lightning bolt struck his
daughter, Maria Markaoo, and ―there was nothing but the bones of Maria left.‖
Crying, Oyew Achi collects the bones of his beloved in a ‗handkerchief‘ and
with the bones instead of a wife, returns to his family: He visits an aunt and
stores the bones in an ‗urn‘ for regeneration.219 The aunt is instructed not to
touch the urn, and Oyew Achi leaves for some days. In the meantime, the bones
come back to life, and the accompanying noise causes the aunt to open the urn:
―The bones turned into animals which jumped out of the urn and ran in all
directions. When the man returned, he cried‖, because there was no trace of his
bride. But then a woodpecker,―singing like a person‖, showed him the way:

―The woodpecker hammered at a tree and caused some bees to

come out. ―That‘s your wife‖, said the woodpecker. Oyew Achi
asked the bee, ―Is it really you?‖ The bee answered that it was and
upbraided him for abandoning the urn. If the aunt had not
interfered Maria would have returned to life in her original form.
Now she was a bee and she also was the wild pig, and her body had
turned into the rabbit and deer as well. She [the transformed
woman] asked Oyew Achi to call all of them [her animal
transformations]. So he called her bones. They came, all the
animals: deer, rabbits, wild pigs, birds, and bees. The man asked,
―Are you all my wife?‖ They all answered yes.‖

Among the animal transformations of the bride are not only large
mammals that are (or used to be) hunted, but also pigeons and doves (M, T),
common avian transformations of the daughters of the Earth in syncretic tales.
Depending on the variant, other birds may come into focus. The Santa Catarina
Ixtahuacan K‘iche‘ tale (TT) has a single, indeterminate, and beautiful bird
escape from the jar, which some Santiago Atitlan Tz‘utujil renderings specify as

218
The references in this section are to the sources listed in Appendix B,
‗Transformation into Animals‘. The number following the abbreviation of the author‘s
name refers to the page(s).
219
The container with the bones is alternatively described as an urn (Colby and Colby),
a p’tish ‗botija‘ or large cooking pot (Prechtel) – the same word used by some Q‘eqchi‘
variants – an apaste or kaswe’l ‗cazuela‘ (Tepaz Tuy), and a ‗cajñn‘ or box (Palomino).
In the Palomino Ixil recital (1972: 144), after the escape of the animals from the box
(cajñn), there is an enigmatic statement: The grandmother ―opened the box (cofre) and
filled it with cotton bajo su cola‖ (emphasis added).
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wild forest fowl, such as the ocellated turkey (Agriocharis ocellata; Prechtel
2001: 107),220 or the horned guan (Oreophasis derbianus; id.: 65). In his own
idiosyncratic, ornate re-telling of the Tz‘utujil tale, Prechtel informs us that
previously, Hummingbird had wrapped each shred of flesh ―in the particular
leaf from the tree or plant under which it had been thrown‖ (id.: 52-53) and
carried the load home. The author then amply describes the final wrapping of
the thirteen body parts of the woman in the leaves of thirteen specifically named
herbs (perhaps aromatic ones for the curing of meat) and their deposition in a
large cooking-pot (id.: 57-58). This part of the tale may well be authentic,
apparently comparing the gestation of the woman‘s remains to food-processing
(even though no fire is involved), while modulating the same episode in its
Q‘eqchi‘ rendition (see next chapter). If we are to believe Prechtel, the final
transformation into an ocellated turkey relates to the customary ritual sacrifice,
dismemberment, and distribution of specific parts of the bird over various
districts towards the end of the dry season, to usher in the season of growth (id.:
100). A hunt for an ocellated turkey preceding the onset of the rains would
constitute a parallel to the bee hunt preceding Holy Week.221
In the Colby (CC) tale, the last animal to be spotted, but the first to be
recognized as the bride, is the bee, and more particularly, according to another
Ixil variant (Maxwell 1980: 65 n. 13), a ‗highly prized variety of honeybee‘
(called q’an us). This parallels the Q‘eqchi‘ version, where the true wife (the
Moon in this case) is only discovered when all other transformations have
already left their containers – the last-discovered transformation apparently
being the most precious one. A Kaqchikel rendering of the tale focuses
exclusively on the bees, leaving aside the origin of the game animals (Redfield
1946, San Antonio Palopó; summarized in Thompson 1970: 365-366).
According to the Kaqchikel informant (R 292), the tale ―explains how the bees
came to be, for if the woman had not opened the jar that was left in her [house],

220
The wild turkey (pavo) is sometimes replaced by a peacock (pavo real), a
domesticated exotic.
221
Together with a co-author (Carlsen, Tarn), Prechtel – who lived for many years
among the Tz‘utujiles and married a Tz‘utujil woman – published various oft-quoted
scholarly articles based on his knowledge of Tz‘utujil culture, before finally turning into
a neo-shamanist teacher of humanity. Consequently, his recent publications (including
the one referred to here) can only be used with great caution, since having left the world
of academic discourse, the author is no longer wont to state his sources and argue his
interpretations.
 152

the queen bee would not have got out; as she did open the jar, part of the bees
got out, and ever since there have been both bees of the house and bees of the
woods.‖ Apparently, some of the bees left the urn, and turned wild; others
remained in the urn to become the domesticated bees. At the tale‘s conclusion,
Hummingbird declares to the woman responsible for the untimely opening of
the container:

―I take my jar with me.‖ ―That‘s alright, father, take it.‖

Hummingbird said, ―Well, my wife died now, and I will give an
example for my wife, there will be a feast, a Holy Week, and the
woman, her work, is useful for the sake of God [se sirve a la
cuenta de Dios], because the woman died, but she did not die,
because her bones were transformed into animals that produce
honey for the feast, and the bees produce wax and the candles are
used for the sake [para la cuenta] of God.‖

Hummingbird thus appears to have carried the urn containing the

remaining, domesticated bees with him, implying the bees‘ transfer to the
domestic compound.222 This domestic compound is not necessarily located on
the grounds of San Antonio Palopó itself, for the tale concludes with
Hummingbird‘s lament: ―God knows where I shall go and live.‖ In another part
of his field notes, Redfield (1944: 64) informs us about local bee-keeping: ―In
San Antonio there are two or three people only who have bee hives. In the old
days, nobody had bee hives. They used to hunt the wild bees for the honey; they
used to get wild honey before Holy Week. It is a little watery, and has not as
good a flavor as that of the house bee.‖ The situation described by Redfield
seems to suggest that since Hummingbird took the domesticated bees with him,
San Antonio Palopó remained poor and was left with wild bees only. In an Ixil
variant (M 66), a focus on the destitute is apparent from Hummingbird‘s words,
directed to his wife who had changed into a wild honeybee and was living in a
hollow tree:

―He spoke to her, but she replied, ―I can‘t come with you, because
I am no longer myself. ―So be it,‖ he replied. ―But don‘t show

222
Especially in the case of the bees, the buzzing container, or jar, in which the bones of
the nubile Earth had been stored to regenerate, can prefigure the womb-like container
where the honeybees are traditionally kept.
 153

yourself to the rich people, because they will only want more
sweets. Just show yourself to the poor people, and they will take
care of you.‖

In the Ixil petitioner‘s recital of the myth (Palomino 1972: 144), it is the
woman‘s Father, ‗Padre Junto‘, i.e., Mataqtani himself, who first assuages
Marikita‘s fears that she might be transformed into a wasp – a well justified
fear, as Q‘eqchi‘ myth shows. Mataqtani then instructs his daughter to follow
the woodpecker to a hollow tree, proclaiming: ―You will be for the poor […].
They will suck your Foot, they will suck your Hand.‖ Somehow, these poor
would seem to include Oyew Achi and – taking into account the context of
petitioning – all those seeking a bee wife.
In this same Ixil variant (P 24), the woman‘s bones are contrasted with
her eyes: ―From her [Marikita‘s] bones the deer and the other animals came
forth, and from her eyes the bees.‖ Eyes and bees somehow belong together.
The reference to the eyes is not unambiguous, since it could refer to the eyes
themselves or to their bony sockets. Since lightning destroyed Marikita‘s flesh,
her eyeballs can hardly have survived. That may imply that ‗eyes‘ refers to the
eye sockets, which consequently seem to be compared to cavities in which bees
originated. On the other hand, we have to assume that inside these cavities the
chambers are to be found where the bees produce their honey; therefore, both
the eye sockets and the jelly-like, as well as honey-like, eyeballs inside can in
principle be implied. The same association between eyes, bees and honey is
made by Yucatec beekeepers, in tales that again, as does Ixil myth, emphasize
the bee queen‘s commiseration with the poor and weak (Zwaal 1993: 25-27;
Jong 1999: 265-266). An example is the tale about a dedicated young beekeeper
who didn‘t wish to share the hives with his two brothers, and who was therefore
blinded by the bees (Zwaal 1993: 26):

―…the queen of the bees came and said to the brothers that they
had to look for a comb. After the comb was found they had to put it
in the eyes of the boy. Then his eyes were covered by a cloth. After
eight days the cells came out and the young bees started to make
new eyes. So the boy could see again and the three brothers went
on cultivating together.‖

This queen bee is the Xunan kab ‗Lady Bee‘, the most important of the
indigenous, non-stinging honey bees (Melipona beechii). She also figures in
 154

what could be considered a truncated version of the beekeepers‘ Hummingbird

myth, reported recently from Quintana Roo (Jong 1999: 145). While almost
completely suppressing the role of the girl‘s father, it has a frustrated marriage
candidate finally take possession of the daughter:

―Once there was a gentleman, a prince. He fancied Xunan kab. He

asked if he could marry her and they [probably the girl‘s parents,
EB] told him he could. But there was no house where they could
live [and consummate their marriage]. Again and again the man
came to visit her…but eventually he could bear it no longer and,
during one of those visits, he violated Xunan kab. She flew away.
She fled to the forest. Ever since, we have had to search for her in
the forest and take her home with us.‖

The conclusion of this story suggests that the bee hunt, which here
implies a process of domestication, should be viewed as ‗bringing home the
bride‘, replicating in this respect the search of Hummingbird for his transformed
wife; and I shall argue that with certain modifications, the same holds true for
the other versions of Hummingbird myth.
It is perhaps appropriate to pause here to reconsider the situation in
which Hummingbird finds himself. In keeping with his attitude during bridal
service, this intruder into unknown territory continues to be ignorant and naïve.
Consequently, all variants end on a note of deception. Oyew Achi is very
unhappy with an outcome he does not really understand. The only thing he can
think of is to protect a bride who is about to retire into the forest: ―Then to the
deer he said he would give shoes because she was so unfortunate, having to run
from dogs […] For the rabbit he put hair on her feet so the scent of her feet
would not stay on the road. That way the dogs would not be able to smell her so
easily‖ (CC 182-183). To all appearances, and without knowing it, in courting
the ‗bones and blood vessels‘ of his prospective Father-in-law, Hummingbird
had already been courting animals, and although he now appears to be
protecting his wife against the hunters, one could also argue that in so doing, he
is really confirming her new destiny as game. Redfield‘s Kaqchikel informant
insisted that the entire story was an ‗ejemplo‘ set in ancient times (R 292); and,
as will become more apparent in the next sections, the most general lesson to be
drawn from the story may well be that a woman one is courting, can under
certain circumstances represent the game, whereas the animals one is seeing,
may represent one‘s bride. Perhaps Hummingbird‘s bride had to become
 155

animals for animals to be recognized as brides. This brings us to the ideology of

the hunt, or rather, to one of the traditional ways of viewing the hunt.

Hunting for a Partner

The relation between Hummingbird and his animal wife appears to

reflect a widespread Mesoamerican hunting ideology in which human
personhood and identity are attributed to game that is treated as potential affinal
kin. The game is commonly imagined as a family, or as a group of families
living together in a village. During the actual hunt, however, the game (whether
individually, or collectively) is in many cases considered female with respect to
the hunter, and male with respect to the hunter‘s wife. In such a way, the pursuit
of the game becomes comparable to human courtship (which, as has been set
out in Chapter Five, often includes elements of hostility and trickery). Since this
affinal concept of the hunt has received little attention in the existing literature –
at least insofar as Mesoamerica is concerned – it will be treated in detail below,
in a juxtaposition of tales, dreams, and rituals, and with due reference to
Hummingbird myth223.
Three points need to be emphasized. Firstly, alliance with the game is
not an aim in itself; the alliance serves the acquisition of food, and is in
principle temporary and needs to be renewed for each hunt. Only in exceptional
cases (possibly involving shamans) is an actual marriage assumed to have been
concluded. When the hunt is acted out as an erotic dramatic performance, it
remains to be explored if the imaginary establishment of an affinal relationship
with the game is not sometimes to be understood as a form of deceit, whether
on the part of the hunters, or on that of the game. Secondly, the game animals,
while being conceived of as possible marriage partners, remain animals, and
bestiality is out of order. Thirdly, it cannot always be assumed beforehand that
the specific model provided by a given myth is also guiding the hunter in the
actual practice of the hunt. Much is still unclear about the ideas governing the
hunt and its aftermath. Next to nothing is known, for example, about the
possible extension of kinship notions to the preparation and consumption of the
meat. A rare exception is the Lacandon initiation custom of adding to the child‘s

223
The following sections are an adaptation and enlargement of my article ‗The Way of
All Flesh‘ (Braakhuis 2001).
 156

surnames the species name of the animal that, shot and prepared by the parents,
is eaten by the child together with its ritual sponsor (Boremanse 1998: 87-88).224
Furthermore, in the world of the hunters, the soul or spirit of the game animal is
usually assigned an important role. Although this spiritual dimension can also
be demonstrated for southeastern Mesoamerica, the evidence is sparse.225

Male Role: Courting the Game

As an introduction to the ethnographic evidence to follow, one may first
consider a story from the Mayas of the former British Honduras that has been
entitled ‗The Deer Folk‘ (Thompson 1930: 173-175). Set in the context of
garden hunting, it is about a boy who longs for a wife, and finds a beautiful doe
standing in the middle of his maize field. As he looks at it, it turns into a girl.
He decides to marry her, but the doe‘s human transformation turns out to be
unstable, and a visit to the prospective in-laws ends up in disaster. Urged on by
the unreliable deer woman, the bucks attack him,226 and hunting dogs must
come to the boy‘s rescue. The tale‘s dream-like, shifting images appear to
illustrate the belief found among the Ixiles, that ―a bachelor dreaming he got
hold of a deer will get a woman‖ (Paz Pérez 1994: 31). In Northwestern
Mesoamerica, among the Coras, a similar concept of alliance is theatrically
acted out in the ‗deer-playing‘ ritual (Coyle 2001: 68-72). Visiting women
(prospective brides) are hunted down with lassoes while defending themselves
with antlers, and are finally ‗corralled‘ onto the dancing ground. In their
struggle, the women are assisted by one or more ‗bucks‘, thus opposing the deer
folk as a whole to the hunters. In such a way, acquiring a woman from a foreign
group is quite consciously staged as the capture and domestication of a wild and
resisting doe.227 When, in Mesoamerica, intermediaries between the groups

224
For this custom, a close parallel exists among the Aché hunters of eastern Paraguay
(Edeb 1994: 13).
225
The tale of Nuxi‘ (Boremanse 1986: 82) mentions spectral game animals whose
souls were later to be reincorporated. Outside the Mayan area, the Pipiles (Schultze Jena
1935: 37) assumed the deer to have tonalli souls which were also to be reincorporated.
226
The aggressive deer in-laws surrounding the tree were in all likelihood sent by the
Zip, a deer with magic powers protecting the other deer (cf. Ruholl 1995: 157-160).
227
One of the tales about the local hero of Tepoztlan (Müller, in Jäcklein 1974: 281)
appears to allude to such a ‗deer-playing‘ ritual. It relates how the hero‘s Chichimec
father wooed his mother (the daughter of the ‗King of Tepoztlan‘) by transforming her
into a doe, shooting her with an arrow, and finally mounting her.
 157

entering upon alliance are involved, the same sort of images are liable to recur.
In the rhetoric of the K‘iche‘ Mayas (Ajpacajá Túm 2001: 12, 30, 120-130), for
example, the marriage petitioners metaphorically play the role of hunters armed
with lassoes and accompanied by dogs, while foraying into the mountains of the
deer folk, that is, the prospective in-laws.
If the hunt is thus a Mesoamerican metaphor for establishing human
alliance, the reverse is no less true: Human alliance serves as a metaphor for
what happens during the hunt. Over a large part of the world, hunting for game
is experienced as if it were a hunt for women. This is as true for traditional
reindeer hunters in Canada (e.g., Tanner 1979: 125, 136-138), as it is for many
Amerindian groups in Central and South America, and Mesoamerica is no
exception in this. Inverting the Ixil dream interpretation mentioned above, the
Mixes of Oaxaca, for example, believe that ―to dream of embracing a woman or
spirit lover means the hunter will surely obtain deer‖ (Lipp 1991: 45).
Especially traditional Lacandon culture brings abundant testimony to this way
of thinking, since in their semi-nomadic existence, hunting used to play a
pivotal role. Lacandon men believe that a lovely woman appearing in a dream
presages game. Thus, if in a dream ―you kiss a woman‘s mouth, you will soon
taste meat‖ (Bruce 1979: 237 s.v. ts’u’utsik), and ―a woman‘s vagina represents
an animal‖ (id.: 149 s.v. -e’[-el]).228
The purpose of premonitory dreaming is to establish a framework of
alliance with the game; there is a feeling that without such dreams, there is no
good sense in beginning the hunt (e.g., Wisdom 1940: 72 n. 15). This alliance is
specifically a marital one. To the Lacandons, dreaming of courtship, a bride, or
a wedding foretells hunting or stalking game (Bruce 1979: 234-235 s.v. ts’i’otik
‗desire, want‘).229 In the same way, a Tolupan hunter of Central Honduras who
dreamt he was caressing the breasts of a woman from the other moiety declared:
―The next day I went to court the deer‖ (Chapman 1992: 78).230 To assure the

228
The association extends to the preparation of the meat: ―A woman‘s thigh (u
chakbäk’el ch’uplal) represents the cutting of solid red meat‖ (Bruce 1979: 301).
229
See also under tsoy ilik ‗love‘: ―If in your dreams you love a woman, you will see
beautiful game‖ (Bruce 1979: 232) and k’a’atik lak’ ‗propose, petition a bride‘: ―You
are about to see a beautiful animal‖ (id.: 178). Unfortunately, the author only
investigated the male point of view (id.: 232).
230
The Tz‘utujil hunter, too, assumes affinal ties when he ritually addresses the deer as
‗sister-in-law‘ (Prechtel 1998: 153).
 158

courtship‘s success, love magic is needed. The Cuna hunter of Panama, for
example, bathes in a herbal perfume and, as a result, ‖becomes fragrantly
attractive to animals, who fall in love with him and approach him, enabling him
to kill them‖ (Sherzer 1983: 115).
Initiating or establishing a marriage alliance is a matter not to be taken
lightly. Therefore, in traditional Lacandon culture, ―obscenities or ‗chaotic
speech‘ (k’äläx t’an) in a dream foretell seeing animal tracks while hunting, but
the tracks will lead nowhere. Also, anything indecent (pähsutal) foretells an
animal running away – game which will escape the hunter‖ (Bruce 1979: 302,
cf. 318). The same negative result is to be expected when the hunter dreams he
asks for a girl‘s hand, and is refused: ―It means he will see game and it will
escape‖ (Bruce 1975: 27). With reference to the Hummingbird myth, dreaming
of making love to a woman representing the game could possibly mean re-
establishing contact with the lost daughter of the Earth Owner (in the latter‘s
role of Owner of the Game), and winning her favor.
The conception of the hunt as a temporary alliance extends into
northern South America. It is particularly prominent among the Desana
Tukanos of Amazonian Columbia. According to Reichel Dolmatoff (1974:
225), ―the hunt is practically a courtship and a sexual act, an event that must be
prepared for with great care and in accordance with the strictest norms. The
verb ‗to hunt‘ is [...] ‗to make love to the animals.‘ The manifest idea is that of
sexually exciting the game so that it will draw near and allow itself to be killed.
[...] ‗The game animals are like coquettes,‘ the informant says.‖ Indeed, ―to kill
is to cohabit‖ (ibid.).
The domestication of wild bees, too, can be understood as bringing
home a bride from a foreign household, in keeping with the conclusion of the
Quintana Roo tale discussed above, about a prince courting and violating the
Xunan kab ‗Lady Bee‘, who thereupon fled into the woods: ―Ever since then,
we have had to search for her in the forest and take her home with us.‖
Beekeepers from Quintana Roo tell about their stingless honey bees (together
referred to as Xunan Cab), that ―it often happens that they fall in love with the
beekeeper. Therefore they are very jealous and do not like other women,
especially [not] the wife of the beekeeper‖ (Zwaal 1993: 44; cf. Jong 1999: 243-
 159

245).231 The bride-seeking bee-hunter has thus become a beekeeper with two
wives. By comparison to the deer and other game ‗wives,‘ the honeybee is a
closer approximation to the human wife in that she is brought home alive, feeds
the ‗husband‘ with whom she lives, and always returns to him. This may be the
main reason why the Hummingbird bridal service tales appear to give a
privileged status to this particular transformation.

Female Roles: Seducing and Welcoming the Game

In various ways, the hunter‘s wife can assist her husband in his pursuit
of the game. Thompson (1930: 89-90), for example, describes ritual behavior of
the Belizean Mopan Maya‘s in which the hunters‘ wives walk around a sleeping
hog while burning copal, with the intention of calming down the game outside,
in the woods.232 However, the wife‘s role could also be informed by the idea of
an alliance with the animals.
Seducing the Game. In Mesoamerica, the woman plays a vital part in
the strategy of courting the game. The hunter uses his wife as bait, or, to be
more precise, he promises a woman to another group, that of the ‗deer folk.‘
First, however, the game is to surrender and give up its own women, whereby
the hunter acquires an animal ‗wife‘ and prospective ‗sisters-in-law.‘ When the
Tolupan hunter dreams that his wife is taking a bath with another man, this
means she will succeed in attracting the deer (Chapman 1992: 78). The
Kaqchikeles of San Antonio Palopó appear to have put this into practice, for we
are told that there, ―the wife of this leader [of the deer drive] had to bathe in the
lake before the hunt, so the deer would go toward the lake to be shot‖ (Redfield
1946: 54).233 It will presently be shown that the erotic role played by women in
hunting is part of an ancient Mesoamerican tradition.

231
That a beekeeper is also, inversely, emotionally committed to the bee wife he had
brought home, is suggested by observations made among the Chontal Mayas (Vásquez
and Solís 1992: 358): The beekeeper shows tender love for his bees and great affliction
when they happen to die in the process of harvesting the honey.
232
Thompson here uses the Frazerian term ‗sympathetic magic‘.
233
The information from Palopó does not stand entirely by itself in Mayan ethnography.
In a very similar way, the prospective Ixil priest (or ‗prayermaker‘) is imagined to be
seduced by a nude woman, bathing in a river, who represents the calendar (Nachtigall
1978: 251-252). The stratagem could also be used in an overtly hostile manner. In the
legendary part of the Popol Vuh, the enemies send their daughters to ‗Tohil‘s Bathing-
 160

Whereas Hummingbird myth focuses on the hunter‘s courting of the

bees and the deer, explaining it by an unsuccessful effort to restore the bones of
his wife to their original shape, 16th-century Nahua hunting rituals – as well as a
contemporary myth connected to it – take the opposite, and complementary
perspective. The hunter‘s wife is to act as if she desires to convert the wild bees
into her husbands, and to attract the deer conceived of as her originally human
partner. The Aztec rituals for catching bees, deer, fish, and scorpions, as
recorded by Ruíz de Alarcón (in Coe and Whittaker 1982), all center around the
‗love magic‘ worked by the hunter‘s wife, who is equated with that
personification of female seductiveness and nubility, Xochiquetzal.
When the bee hunter, for example, intruding into the territory of the
bees with the axe in his hand, declares: ―Let no one be afraid of me. I shall take
them [the bees] to see my elder sister Xochiquetzal,‖ Ruíz de Alarcñn
comments that ―perhaps the wife of the one who makes the said spell is meant,
and it seems that he praises his wife‘s beauty to the bees to entice them to go
and live with her‖ (Ruíz de Alarcñn 1982: 128, Tract II Ch. 7). Xochiquetzal is
thus like a ‗precious flower‘ offered to the bees in marriage, whereas the bees
seem to be invited to become the bee hunter‘s brothers-in-law. The 16th-century
bee hunt text ends on the same note as the conclusion of the Kaqchikel myth
about the origin of the bees from 20th-century Palopó: ―Because they [the wild
bees] fashion wax which will burn before our Lord God, they are loved, and
held in high respect‖ (Ruíz de Alarcón 1982: 128).
It is noteworthy that the implied affinal ties between the hunter –
representative of a wife-giving group – and the bees have been historicized. The
bee-hunter‘s axe is called ‗red Chichimec‘, whereas the wild male bees are
denoted as ‗inhabitants of Tollantzinco‘, Tollantzinco being – according to
Sahagún (1979: 595, 613, Bk. 10 Ch. 29) – the first settlement of the invading
Toltecs, whose invasions apparently evoked the image of swarming bees
establishing new colonies. One is reminded of the Oyew Achi tales234 and the
semi-historical references in certain Hummingbird tales (see Chapters Four and
Five), but also of the hunting deity Mixcoatl as a representative of the
Chichimecs.

place‘ in order to undo the three ancestral deities of the K‘iche‘ (Tedlock 1996: 167-
168; cf. Edmonson 1971: 194ff).
234
Compare also Breton‘s interpretation (1994: 363-368) of the bee hunt as a model for
the war against the Uxab Poq‘omab, as mentioned in the Rabinal Achi dance drama.
 161

Welcoming the Game Husband. The ancient Nahua rituals for hunting
deer with nooses and with bow and arrow (Ruíz de Alarcón 1982: 131ff, Tract
II Ch.8-9) involve a series of deities, one of whom is again Xochiquetzal.235 The
texts more specifically refer to the parents of Cinteotl (or Xochipilli), viz.
Xochiquetzal and Piltzintecuhtli. Piltzintecuhtli (the name given to the deer)
appears to have left his wife, and on the pattern of the bee hunt, Xochiquetzal is
once more to exercise her powers of attraction – now not to acquire a new
husband, however, but to bring a former ‗husband‘ back home. The hunter
himself plays the part of ‗the orphan‘, who is like a son to Xochiquetzal. He
declares: ―At last I shall carry my father Chicome-Xochitl Piltzinteuctli; I have
come to seize him, I shall carry him. Already she awaits him expectantly, my
mother Xochiquetzal‖ (Ruíz de Alarcón 1982: 145,Tract II Ch. 9).236
For this dramatization of the deer hunt, the mythology of the
contemporary Nahuas and their neighbors along the Gulf Coast provides a
background (for references, see Braakhuis 1990 and 2009b; López Austin
1992). Its hero is a maize god and culture hero corresponding to the Aztec deity
Xochipilli (the son of Piltzintecuhtli and Xochiquetzal), and often bearing the
same calendrical name as his father, viz. Chicome-Xochitl; like the hunter of the
Aztec ritual, he is a kind of orphan. Significantly, in one variant, the initial
encounter of the hero‘s mother with her partner is staged as if it were a dream
about acquiring the meat of the game: ―She meets a handsome young man on
the trail back from the spring and as they are parting, he promises to see her
again. When she turns to look at him, she sees a beautiful deer bounding away‖
(Sandstrom 2005: 47). This already presages the tale‘s outcome (Sandstrom and
Gómez 2004: 346), which has the hero retrieving his father‘s bones, only to see,
in the same moment, a deer arising and running away. Before this happens,
however, the role of the domestic woman (‗Xochiquetzal‘) in the home-bringing
of the deer, as we find it in the Ruíz de Alarcón text quoted above, has in most
variants of the tale already been instituted. This will be set out presently.

235
Thompson (1939: 136) noted that in Tlaxcala, the feast of the god of the deer
hunters, Mixcoatl-Camaxtli, also included a celebration of Xochiquetzal.
236
Amongst the other deities involved are the Macuiltonallehqueh, that is, the ‗pleasure
gods‘, and again the erotic background of the hunt transpires. The fingers of the hunter
throwing a net over the deer (already caught in the noose) are personified as female
deities, and, more specifically, as seductive women (the Macuiltonallehqueh) adorning
the male quarry with flowery bands (Ruíz de Alarcón 1982: 138-139).
 162

In search of the maize, the father of the maize hero had disappeared into
the realm of the rain and lightning deities, where he was killed. Since the
mother cannot feed her child, she drowns it. The child is reborn, however, and,
once grown up, rejoins his mother. Together, they plan to bring the lost father
back home: The son‘s task is to retrieve the paternal bones, regenerate them,
and bring the father home, while the mother‘s task is akin to the female task of
attracting the other sex, and hence, also, the game: When the hero approaches –
either supporting his father, or carrying the paternal body on his back – she is to
welcome her husband joyously. Instead, however, she weeps as if she saw a
corpse, and her husband‘s transformation is interrupted: He dies again, and falls
apart into bones, or regenerates as a deer instead of a human being.237 The hero
destines the deer-father to be hunted forever. From this, one may draw the
conclusion that it is the deer substitute that shall henceforth be ‗coming home‘
again, now carried on the back as a quarry, which is precisely what the Ruíz de
Alarcón passage appears to be alluding to.
In a general sense, the mythical episode appears to provide a rationale
for the ceremonial reception of the quarry and the hospitality extended to this
desired ‗guest‘, as practiced by various Mesoamerican groups. As is only to be
expected, these receptions bring into play alliance symbolism. Ch‘orti‘ Mayan
women, for example, ritually welcome the quarries carried home by the hunters
by giving a man‘s hat to the doe, and respectfully putting a woman‘s shawl on
the stag (Wisdom 1940: 73, cf. 73 n. 16). More directly, among the Guerrero
Tlapanecs (Dehouve 2008: 17), the hunter‘s daughter welcomes the stag,
whereas the son welcomes the doe.
The reason that some versions give for the inappropriate welcoming of
the ‗husband‘ (e.g., Nahua, González Cruz and Anguiano 1984: 223-225;
Popoluca, Münch 1985: 167-168) fits seamlessly within this interpretive
framework. The hero instructs a lizard to go ahead of him and tell the woman to
laugh at her husband‘s arrival, but this first lizard is relieved by another one
who instead makes her believe that she should weep. A Tlapanec custom
(Dehouve 2008: 16) elucidates this sub-plot: Before carrying the quarry on his
shoulder to his homestead, a hunter customarily sends a little boy ahead to
inform his wife that she should prepare herself for receiving the ‗guest‘. The

237
In its basic features, the Tarascans shared this origin myth of the deer (Chronicles of
Michoacan; cf. Graulich 1987: 183-184).
 163

role of such a ceremonial messenger is apparently played by the lizard in the

tale; and in order for the long-awaited guest to become a metaphor for the
precious deer quarry, this lizard should be cast as a liar.
When the home-bringing episode is retold by the Totonacs of
Ozomatlan as part of a narrative about the hero Nine-Wind (Stresser-Péan 2009:
435-437), there is again a switch to the alternative, complementary mode of the
hunt-as-alliance: It is no longer the father who is carried home and changed into
a deer, but the mother. What both versions have in common, though, is the fact
that the hero brings the parental figure that is to become the deer back from the
realm of the rain and lightning deities; in the second tale, the mother has even
joined the ‗Lord of Lightning‘ as a consort. In Mesoamerica, the deer are often
assigned to this deity, and it is not rare to find him in the role of Owner of the
Game.238

The Owner of the Game as a Father-in-Law

Returning now to Hummingbird bridal service myth, its outcome

demonstrates that the otherworldly Father-in-law can also be the Owner, or
Master, of the Game. The same is likely to apply to the Father-in-law of
Q‘eqchi‘ bridal capture myth, the Tzuuultaq‘a. It is true that in that version, the
daughter is changed into a category of animals that is not normally hunted; but
the Tzuultaq‘a also occurs as an Owner of the Game in Q‘eqchi‘ tales in which
a deviant hunter is summoned into a mountain and admonished to respect the
rules of the hunt (e.g., Tovar 1999: 143-145). Inversely, it will be shown that
the figure of the Owner of the Game – the subject of a whole class of
Mesoamerican hunting tales, usually with a moralistic tenor (for an overview,
see Haekel 1959) – is, at least in some contexts, viewed as a Father-in-law.
Whether or not the Owner be imagined as a Father-in-law, however, the
notions of exchange and contract are heavily emphasized. In the hunting tales
that feature the Owner of the Game, there is always a contractual relationship
involved between Owner and hunter. It can take the form of a pact, in which
case the hunter enters into the Owner‘s service after death to tend to the needs

238
Among various Mesoamerican groups, the Owner of the Game is identical with the
lightning deity (e.g., Mixe, Lipp 1991: 30, 37; Nahua, Taggart 1983: 126). Nahua tales
relate encounters between hunters and Lightning‘s daughters, or ‗earth mothers‘
(Taggart 1983: 126 -135).
 164

of the game in exchange for consistent luck in hunting (e.g., La Farge II and
Beyers 1931: 132). This obligatory work could, hypothetically, be viewed as a
postponed bridal service. There is also an analogy between bridal payments and
the ritual payments offered to the Owner immediately previous to the hunt and
continued afterwards – a hunt that itself is subject to severe restrictions and
surrounded by taboos relating to the selling of the meat, overhunting, and
unnecessarily wounding the game, thus spilling its blood. But it is the hunting
taboo on adultery that most closely approaches the marriage contract model.

The Taboo on Adultery

Human sexual behavior is often directed towards the desired alliance
with the animals by a temporary suspension of intimacy between the hunter and
his wife239 and, without exception, by a strong taboo on adultery. In tales
serving to uphold this taboo,240 alliance terminology is not often used.
Nonetheless, the Owner‘s strong dislike of human adultery is what one would
also expect of a Father-in-law, since it directly touches upon the maintenance of
the rules of alliance. In Mesoamerican tales that take the viewpoint of the
Owner, it is especially adultery on the part of the hunter‘s wife that is treated as
a breach of contract. Stereotypically, she gives to her lovers the meat that her
husband had brought home, is summoned by the Owner, and is severely
punished, sometimes together with a husband who has proven to be unable to
control (or, perhaps, satisfy) his wife.
Customs like the one of the Ch‘orti‘s mentioned above suggest that just
as the hunter is thought to be allied to the female game, so his wife is allied to
the male game, her husbands‘ ‗brothers-in-law‘. In the adultery tales, she has
shown by her unashamed behavior that to her, these affines (who, after all, gave
up their lives) had been no more than casual lovers. A way of explaining the
taboo on adultery would be to see adultery as a violation of the ‗procreationist‘
ideology shared by the two ‗families‘ in alliance, an alliance that should
promote the fertility of both. The human woman should cooperate with her
husband and sexually attract the stags; the stags will then give themselves up

239
According to Mixtec hunters, the smell of the hunter‘s wife still sticking to his body
would make the animals flee (Esther Katz, in Dehouve 2008: 20).
240
E.g., Pérez Chacón 1988: 335-341; Meer 1990: 171, 172-173; Bartolomé 1979: 32;
Hasler 1969: 12-13 (Tale A.15); Münch 1983: 287-288; Laughlin 1977: 278-288.
 165

and indirectly enable her to become a mother. If she breaks the rules by
behaving promiscuously, her husband‘s otherworldly ‗father-in-law‘ knows no
mercy and – as happens in a Oaxacan Tlapanec tale (Loo 1989: 38-39) – may
even allow his stag ‗sons‘ to violate her (using their antlers) as if she were a
mere prostitute.

Sexual Regeneration of the Bones

The Owner of the Game is also responsible for regenerating his
‗children‘, the game animals. In this respect, animal bones have a vital role to
play. Everywhere in Mesoamerica, hunters preserve and cure the bones of the
game to deposit them periodically in special hunting shrines in the mountains
(often in caves), thereby ritually restoring them to their Owner for regeneration
(see Brown 2005: 137-138, 140-141).241 In a version of the Chicome-Xochitl
myth already mentioned (Sandstrom and Gómez 2004: 346), the hero (here
accompanied by his twin sister) went to search for the bones of his father, ―only
to observe a deer rising from the spot where they were buried,‖ a sudden
regeneration that could suggest that the father‘s resting-place had been a
hunting shrine. Under the cloak of an origin myth, a Pipil tale from Izalco, El
Salvador (Schultze Jena 1935: 48-51, Text VIII), sets out the workings of these
shrines. A boy descends into the mountain of the Owner of the Earth to discover
that there, all the bones and feathers of animals and birds are being kept. When
the old man strikes a stone, the bones and feathers change into girls preparing
food. The boy is given bones and feathers of each species to take with him.
Back on the surface of the earth, one of these bones turns into a girl instructing
him. On the boy‘s request, the other bones and feathers are transformed into
wild animals and birds. ―And so came into existence what we now see flying,
and also those who go about in the mountains on all fours.‖ 242

241
In my article ‗The Way of All Flesh‘ (2005: 394-395, 396) I already mentioned these
deposition rituals. Brown‘s study of archaeological hunting shrines and associated
customs appeared at about the same time.
242
The Pipil myth received some comment from López Austin (1988: 315-328), who
used it mainly to argue a speculative theory concerning Mesoamerican cosmogonic
concepts.
 166

The hunt is part of a cycle in which the body is reduced to bones and
bones are regenerated as bodies.243 This comes strongly to the fore in the
mythology of Sun and his Elder Brethren current in the northwestern
Guatemalan Highlands (LaFarge 1947: 50-57, cf. Montejo and Campbell 1993:
99-103). In these tales, part of a deer is shot down from the moon, and eaten;
when Sun sows the deer bones in a prototypical hunting shrine (for this
identification, see Brown 2005: 140), the bones reincarnate as ‗deer and rabbit‘
and all sorts of mammals that, though hitherto tended like domestic animals,
finally escape to become game. The relation prevailing here between Sun and
the moon, both of whom are connected to the origin of the game, is analogous
to that between the Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon characters. It is, however, in the
other Hummingbird myths reviewed here that the hunting shrines with their
slumbering bones reappear. Acting like a prototypical hunter, the hero collects
the bones of his wife and, in what appears to be a reference to similar deposition
rituals (cf. Brown 2005: 141), wraps them in a cloth. After the bones have been
stored in a container that is the functional analogue of a ‗ritual fauna cache‘
(Brown) deposited within a hunting shrine, they are again clothed with flesh.
These bones are carriers of life. When Hummingbird ‗called the bones‘ of his
wife (as the Colby Ixil myth mystically puts it), creatures that had regenerated
from these bones responded. ‗Calling the bones‘, then, amounts to a plea for
new animals, directed at their Owner. It gives an unexpected meaning to the
phrase in petitioners‘ speech directed at the father-in-law and referring to his
daughter: ―We court your bones, your blood-vessels.‖
The womb-like container is suggestive of pregnancy. Yet, even though
various Hummingbird tales explicitly mention Hummingbird sleeping with his
fiancée (during the bridal service, or even before), this ‗pregnancy‘ in effigy
does not appear to have been caused by his seed. Under certain conditions,
however, the hunter does enter the cycle of the regeneration of the bones as an
active engenderer. In many Mesoamerican stories, the hunter meets an attractive
young woman (often while she is bathing) who turns out to be an animal,
usually a doe. She leads the hunter into the cave of her ‗father,‘ the Owner,
where the hunter is reprimanded because of a flaw in the fulfillment of his
contractual obligations. Not uncommonly, the hunter is then made to cure the

243
In the case of the bee-hunt, old combs might conceivably substitute for the bones and
receive the same ritual treatment.
 167

animals he has wounded and whose blood he has spilled (e.g., Thompson 1930:
141; Reyes García and Christensen 1976: 77 ff). The Lacandons, however, also
tell hunting stories in which an ancestral hunter is obliged not only to redress
his behavior and cure the animals, but also to engender new animals with the
Owner‘s daughter (Boremanse 1986: 229-231, cf. 227-228; Rätsch 1984: 177-
180, cf. 180-182). This can entail his marriage to the animal woman. (These
tales will be revisited in the chapter on Lacandon Hummingbird myth.)
The Lacandon hunting stories about regenerating the game are
paralleled by another tale from the (now extinct) Pipiles of Izalco, El Salvador
(Schultze Jena 1935: 34-40, Text VII). It differs from the preceding tales in that
the mating with the Owner‘s daughter is now intended as a final settlement,
since the Owner has decided to introduce the hunter to agriculture, and thus to
keep his deer safe from further killings.244 The text lays great emphasis on the
fact that, through his sexual service, the hunter is to restore life to the deer
bones. These bones lying in the Owner‘s cave had apparently been ritually
deposited by hunters in a hunting shrine. The Owner addresses the hunter thus
(Schultze Jena 1935: 37):

―Are you the man who killed my children? Just come here, see
what you have done! Look, here are their bones! I had not thought
they would ever return to life again – and now it becomes true! I
say, they are about to come to life: This very day I will give you
one of my daughters, so that you may restore to me all of my
children killed by you. First [...] it‘s the turn of this bone, that one
you killed first – and so forth until you will have finished restoring
all the spirits [tunal] of my children!‖

This brings us to the climax of the ‗burial-rites‘ which began when the
skulls, antlers, and other bony parts of the quarry were dried to be left in the

244
This motive is apparently widespread. In a Nahua story from S. Miguel
Acuexcomac, Puebla, a nomadic deer hunter and invader is made sedentary by the local
Owner of the Deer, and for the same reason (Fagetti 1998: 58-59). The transition from
deer-hunting to agriculture can also, however, be occasioned by a hunter doing a
spontaneous service to the Earth Owner, and receiving sowing seeds in reward (see
Bartolomé 1979: 27). In a Ch‘ol story (Cruz Guzmán, in Spero 1987: 135-139), farmers
whose maize is dying receive the ‗spirit of the maize‘ and abundant rain from the
Owner, in exchange for the promise that they shall no longer make his deer suffer by
only wounding them.
 168

mountains or, as among the Lacandons (Boremanse 1986: 102), buried at the
foot of a tree. They were then collected into the funerary chamber of the Owner
of the Deer – an unmistakable image for a hunting shrine – which is now about
to be transformed into a delivery room.
The Pipil text states that the regeneration of the bones, through sexual
heat, is the revivification of the deer‘s tonalli‘s (Pipil tunal), or souls (in this
case the full number of twenty, since the settlement is to be a definite one). This
regeneration within a sort of funerary chamber has a parallel in human burial
rites. The Aztecs specifically denoted the rite of making an effigy of someone
who had died, and more particularly of encapsulating his tonalli-bearing
remains (the incinerated bones together with the hairs and nails), by the verb
(te)tonaltia ‗bring sacrifices for someone who died‘ (Siméon 1963: 650), but
rendered more accurately by López Austin (1980: 367-368) as ‗give tonalli‘ to
the deceased – with tonalli to be taken in its full complexity of ‗soul‘, ‗heat,
power of growth‘, and ‗birth sign‘ (cf. also González Torres 1975: 40).
The task of regenerating the bones by mating with what one might call a
‗Game Mother‘ is only a specific instance of kin-based absorption by the game.
The Huichol myth of the hunting deity, Marrakuarrí, for example, has two deer
women capturing the hunter, feeding him herbs and grasses, and finally making
him live with them and their mother. As a result, the hunter is transformed into
a stag (e.g., Benítez II 1971: 222-224).245 On passing the threshold of the
Owner‘s cave to face the slumbering bones and regenerate them, the hunter
enters an underworld, is completely absorbed by the foreign group constituted
by the animals, and is assumed by his kin to have died. The Lacandon hunter,
for example, not only mates with his game-woman (a peccary), but marries her
and enters into the service of his animal affines as a curer. Only when his
peccary wife is accidentally killed during the hunt by a brother who had become
a stranger to the former hunter, does the latter return to the earth, where he soon
dies from grief.

245
The concept of absorption by the game has found expression in tales from both
Americas. A surprisingly close parallel for the Huichol episode can be found among the
Guajiros of Colombia (Perrin 1987: 31-39), but similar tales are known from the
southeastern United States as well (Swanton 1929: 91, cf. 126). The opposite idea, of
having deer women live in a human community, is also explored (Swanton 1929: 193),
as it is in the Belizean ‗Deer Folk‘ tale (see section ‗Courting the Game‘).
 169

It may be noted that the Lacandon hunter regenerates not only the
animals he himself killed, but also those killed by others. This may hold for the
Pipil hunter as well, since he represents, in a single person, a complete
transition from hunting to agriculture. When the Lacandon hunter subsequently
becomes a professional curer to his affines, he takes upon himself a task that
would otherwise have had to be carried out by his fellow hunters, that is, by
those who had wounded the deer without killing it. In paying for the faults of
others, the life-restoring hunter of these tales effectively becomes their
representative.246
Intermediaries between the hunters and the Owner of the Game are
known to exist in Mesoamerica, as among the Nahuas of the Huaxteca (Reyes
García 1960: 37-38) and the Yaquis living far to the Northwest, and are likely to
have existed throughout Central America. The ‗punakpanes‘ of the Tolupans of
Honduras, for example, were shamans who visited the ‗Masters of Animals,‘
conversed with them, and as a consequence could send deer to the hunters
(Chapman 1992: 250). The Yaqui case is particularly relevant. Yaqui hunters
wishing to ascertain the success of their hunt could approach a man seemingly
living in celibacy and often sleeping alone in the woods. He could ‗command
animals‘, and his permission was sought by hunters who wished to kill deer
easily (Beals 1945: 12). Like the Lacandon hunter, this uncanny figure was a
son-in-law to the Owner: A special emissary in the shape of a small deer had
once approached him,247 offered herself in marriage, and made him into her
husband.

Role Reversal: The ‗Grandfather among the Deer‘

The idea of a marriage alliance governing the hunt rests on the axiom of
two parallel social groups primarily intent on fostering their own fertility (game
animals being often imagined to have a social life modeled after that of human
beings, and to be living in villages). In this framework, the exchanges of the
hunt can be viewed ideally to represent a system of checks and balances: The
human women seducing deer men are counterbalanced by the Owner‘s deer

246
Once dead, this intermediary may conceivably have returned to the Owner‘s cave to
assume the role of an intercessor invoked in the hunters‘ expiatory rituals.
247
This small deer may be identical with the small deer, carrying a honeycomb between
the horns, that talks to the hunter, and can give him hunting success (Beals 1945: 13).
 170

women seducing human hunters, and accordingly, human hunters courting the
Owner‘s deer women would require the counterbalance of deer men courting
human women.248 What one finds instead is an old man sexually harassing
human women whom he seems to perceive as does: the ‗Grandfather among (or
on) the Deer‘ (Mam pa Kiej) of the Guatemalan deer dance. There are
indications that this old man represents (or originally represented) the Owner
himself, taking the place of younger deer men.249
The pattern of events is usually the same (Paret-Limardo 1963: 13-17).
Because of his particular skill in setting nooses, the Grandfather‘s assistance is
invoked by hunters (e.g., Mace 1970: 56; Janssens and Van Akkeren 2003: 64-
65).250 Though married, the old man has a marked liking for young women. In
one of the Rabinal deer dances (Janssens and Van Akkeren 2003: 122-123), for
instance, his title of ‗Deer Hunter at the Foot of the Valley‘ is jokingly changed
to ‗Molester of Women in the River‘. In exchange for ensnaring the deer, the
lustful Grandfather is to be allowed to interfere with the women watching the
play, to caress their breasts, and so on (e.g., Thompson 1930: 103; Sexton 1992:
64).
One Tz‘utujil account in particular (Sexton 1992: 58-64) strongly
suggests that if the Grandfather assists the hunters in finding their ‗women,‘ he
in turn views the human women surrounding the spectacle (and conceptually
living in the mountains) as does that he ardently desires to marry and fertilize:251

―Then the old man says, [...] ‗now I‘m going to kill the animals
that are better known as the deer.‘ Then the old fellow enters again

248
The sort of changes of perspective implied by these interactions have been analyzed
from a cognitive point of view by Viveiros de Castro (1998).
249
By itself, the notion of Owners of specific natural domains, and of demons seducing
human women and reproducing their species with them, is wide-spread, both among the
Mayas and among other Central American Indians (such as the Tolupan and Misquito);
it sometimes serves to explain specific disease symptoms in women. What is of concern
here, however, is the strategic aspect of sexual conquest and its coexistence with
contractual relationships.
250
These hunters are sometimes suggested to have been at fault in the fulfillment of
their contractual obligations (e.g., Mace 1970: 56, accusation of adultery; 61, weapons
useless and trodden upon by animals). The kidnapping of a woman by the Tz‘utujil
Grandfather is probably connected to this (cf. Sexton 1992: 64).
251
In this respect, the Tz‘utujil ‗Grandfather among the Deer‘ is not unlike that other,
much more strongly sexualized Tz‘utujil Grandfather, Maximón.
 171

to kill the deer, and he mixes again among the people, looking for
concealed deer‖ (Sexton 1996: 63).

―There is one thing—when the old man goes to look for the
animals among the people, the women hide or retreat and shout a
lot when the old man approaches them, because the old fellow is
very naughty. He puts his cane between the skirts of the women,
feels the breasts of the seðoritas [...]‖ (id.: 64).

Moreover, together with the shot deer, a pretty woman may be carried off as
another quarry.
This Mayan ‗Grandfather on the Deer‘ has his counterparts elsewhere in
Mesoamerica (cf. Bricker 1973: 201-211), most recognizably in the lewd ‗Old
Men‘ performers of the Yaquis and Mayos of distant northwestern Mexico,
Sonora, and Arizona, which were once the northernmost ‗Chichimec‘ territories.
The Yaqui ‗Old Men‘ in particular used to stage a mock deer hunt of the
Tz‘utujil type just mentioned (Spicer 1940: 196). Their varied roles also made
them imitate all sorts of animals, but more importantly, it often took the form of
a parody of human sexual behavior and of a general licentiousness vis-à-vis the
spectators. Apparently, these ‗Old Men‘ (or paskola) characters were to
represent the procreative urge of the game, while their high age reflected that of
the Owner by whom they had previously been initiated (Crumrine 1977: 98; cf.
Beals 1945: 127).252
Considering the above, it is tempting to assume that the Mayan
‗Grandfather on the Deer‘ represents an aspect of the Owner of the Game not
expressed by the usual moralistic hunting stories.253 More specifically, his
association with the noose of a trap recalls an ancient Yucatec deity invoked by

252
The paskola dancers had been initiated in a cave full of animals, either by being
embraced and licked off by a large snake (Beals), or by meeting an old man who seems
to be identical – the text is not entirely clear – with the ‗Old Man of the Forest‘
(Crumrine).
253
As such, the ‗Grandfather among the Deer‘ shows a certain resemblance to the
Desana Tukano Owner of the Game (Reichel Dolmatoff 1974: 80-85, 131-132), whose
dominant feature is his sexual prowess and concomitant jealousy of human procreative
power. He should like to possess all females, whether animal or human. In addition to
procreating the game with his animal women inside what Reichel Dolmatoff calls his
‗uterine storehouses‘, the Desana Owner violates human women and multiplies the
game with them; his daughter seduces young hunters with the same result. At the same
time, the Owner assists the hunters in their hunting forays.
 172

the hunters, Ah Tabay ‗Ensnarer‘ (Landa 1941: 155); ensnaring the game could
serve as a metaphor for ensnaring persons of the other gender, and hence, for
mating, as well.254

The Owner of the Game as an Adversary

Hummingbird myths, particularly the bridal service versions, can be

situated within the wider group of moralizing hunting tales (ejemplos
‗examples‘) demonstrating the hunter‘s dependence on an Owner for getting his
game. Within this group, the contractual relationship with the Owner of
Animals and the associated idea of affinity can not only give way to open
conflict, but can also lead to the Owner‘s demise. Mataqtani‘s temporary defeat
by the sabotaged blowgun (in Q‘eqchi‘ myth) and the sealed-off steam bath (in
Ixil myth) is carried to further extremes by certain hunting tales that do not offer
the usual picture of an Owner of Animals sitting ceremoniously on his
armadillo bench while reproaching the hunter for disregarding his ordinances
and mistreating his (the old man‘s) children. Boot (1989: 36-37), for instance,
presented (in a discussion of Classic Mayan hunting scenes) an intriguing story
from Nicaragua, communicated to him by Wolfgang Haberland, and probably
stemming from one of the country‘s three Amerindian groups. In this story, a
hunter wounds a deer and follows its bloody trail high up the slopes of a
mountain. There, the deer is seen to enter a house. When he opened the door,
the hunter

―saw a young woman. Asking where the deer had gone, he just saw
the door at the back of the house shut. He went to the door, opened
it, and saw a badly wounded man struggling onto a bed. As he
wondered where the deer had gone, the young woman answered:
‗You shot the Lord of the Deer.‘ Thereupon the hunter left.‖

The conclusion of the Nicaraguan tale is strangely inconsequential, for

although matters can hardly have rested here, the intentions, nor the reactions –
or fates – of the hunter and the ‗deer folk‘ are disclosed. Fortunately, what
appears to be the same story is also known from Chiapas. As it is told among

254
This is also suggested by the names of those demonic seducers of Belize and
Yucatan, the male Tabay and the female Xtabay (Howard 1975: 44-45).
 173

the Tzotzil Mayas (Xilón Gómez 1997: 167-169), the events fall into a familiar
pattern. The hunter who wounded the Owner in his deer transformation had
been killing the game without restraint. He had not only ridiculed the Owner‘s
warnings, but explicitly and bluntly refused to recognize his overlordship: ―The
animals don‘t have an Owner.‖ Such an independent attitude, of course,
amounts to rebellion, and the adventurer is duly punished by death. This
degenerate character is set off against two fellow hunters who assist the
wounded deer in reaching its cave, where it recovers and, assuming a human
form, manifests itself as the Owner.255 The hunters fall to their knees and win
the Owner‘s favor; they later decide to give up hunting altogether.256
Whereas this Tzotzil tale still remains within the boundaries of the
moralistic ‗exemplum‘ genre, a Chuj version (Maxwell 2001: 15-17) entirely
moves away from it by converting the same refusal to recognize the Owner‘s
overlordship into a formal trial of strength: The Owner with his lightning
weapon confronts the defiant hunter with his gun, is severely wounded, and
loses the contest.257 The changing attitude of the hunter probably correlates with
the demonization of the Mountain-Valley deity noticed by various scholars, a
process in which the Owner can acquire the traits of hated Ladino property
owners (e.g., Watanabe 1992: 77-78; Wagley 1949: 55ff). The Chuj type of
hunting tale can also shed some light on what has always been an isolated,
anecdotal fact from Yucatec hunting lore: The shooting of the powerful deer
guardian, the cervine Zip, by the hunter. That killing constitutes an exceptional
feat of counter-magic with serious consequences, since the deer holding the
funeral wake for the Zip are without defense and can all be slain (Redfield and

255
The killing without restraint would appear to be the decisive point. The tale is
otherwise similar to a Mam story (Wagley 1949: 57), in which a hunter who had not
respected the sexual taboo and wounded a deer, finds a wounded child on his way
declaring: ―I am the deer you shot,‖ and which then turns out to be the Owner. The
hunter is taken inside the mountain, reprimanded, returns home to make sacrifices, and
abjures deer hunting.
256
This outcome is also found in the Pipil tale discussed above, about the hunter who
killed too many deer; the Owner finally introduced him to agriculture.
257
Part of various hero myths is a trial of strength between a major deity and a (divine
or semi-divine) representative of mankind. Examples are Q‘eqchi‘ myth (Hummingbird
vs. Old Adoptive Mother ), Gulf Coast maize hero myth (maize hero vs. lightning
deities), and the Popol Vuh (Twins vs. death gods).
 174

Villa 1934: 118). The idea of the hunt as an effort at alliance has here been
given up for what amounts to merciless warfare.
The ambiguity inherent in the hunt, oscillating between war and
alliance, made it particularly useful as a symbol, and it is quite probable that, for
this reason, the hunt has always been a vital part of Mesoamerican ideology.
The Aztecs, for example, were familiar with ancient myths connected to the
Chichimec hunting deity, Mixcoatl, in which war and alliance stand in a
transformative relationship (Lehmann 1974: 358-359, 363-365; cf. Graulich
1987: 170-178, 345). Deer pursued by two primeval hunters turn into
dangerously seductive women ready to kill their excited pursuers, whereas other
women are hunted down as if they were does. One of the latter women – the
main representative of the conquered territory – confronts her enemy, removes
her clothes and exposes herself to the phallic spears of the hunting deity.258
Thus, the confrontation takes the form of foreplay to the sexual act that follows:
The woman is thrown to the ground and impregnated to become the mother of a
king, Quetzalcoatl. This view of the hunt as a sexual contest continues to inform
basic myths from Northwestern Mexico. In the Huichol myth of Marrakuarrí
(Benítez II 1971: 222) already referred to, for example, a doe catches the
hunting deity‘s arrow (just as the deer woman shot at by Mixcoatl caught one of
his spears), changes into a woman, and, together with her sister, captures the
hunter.259

Transference of the Deer‘s Fertility: Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth

About the Q‘eqchi‘ narrative, Thompson (1970: 369) commented: ―In

Sun‘s courtship of moon and subsequent life, the deer plays many roles. These
are so varied and intimate that they suggest some now lost religious notions on
the relationship of deer to the moon and sun.‖ The observation is important, but
its phrasing slightly off the mark. Particularly in the Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird
episode, the myth‘s protagonists do not appear to relate to the deer in a way

258
Mixcoatl throws four spears at her; the fourth spear ―passed between her thighs‖
(ihuan ce imet<tz>tzallan in quiz ―ging zwischen ihren Schenkeln hindurch‖; Lehmann
1974: 365).
259
Another example of continuity is a Northern Tepehuano myth (Benítez V 1980: 94),
in which Morning Star is reduced to Evening Star for having slept with a deer woman
after the hunt.
 175

predicated upon their astronomical transformations, and the ‗lost religious

notions‘ can be argued actually to be traditional concepts guiding the hunt. The
paired ideas of sexual competition and sexual exchange with the game animals
strongly come to the fore here. In one version in particular, the hero and the
deer seem to be presented, not just as the hunter and the hunted, but rather as
sexual rivals, trying to win over the same woman, representative of the fertility
of animals and maize. The myth was collected from Civijá (municipality of
Purulá, Baja Verapaz) and San Juan Chamelco, Alta Verapaz (Schumann 1988:
213).260 It opens with the following scene:

―A girl was walking close to her house when she met a deer. At
first, she was frightened, but the deer followed her, and since she
saw that he was not afraid of her, she drew nearer, and they stuck
together. Seeing that the girl was at ease, the deer persuaded her to
let him have sexual relations with her, but a hunter witnessed her
from a distance, and when the girl went away, the hunter took the
opportunity to approach the deer and kill it.‖

The scene can be taken as a prefiguration of the later female hunting

role: The woman has to attract the stags so as to enable her husband to shoot
them. The initial fright of the girl could suggest that she is not used to the
advances of the deer and that these lie outside her normal domain. However, in
the same variant the girl turns out to be identical with Mountain-Valley‘s
daughter who, in other versions, is transformed into the game. Excluding,
therefore, the fright as an element due to an interference with a later human
hunting practice that is only being prefigured here, the story seems to present
the woman as a daughter of Mountain-Valley in the latter‘s quality of an Owner
of Animals.
A fragmentary Tzeltal account provides a comparable story. It has been
put forward by Thompson (1970: 370) as an instance of the relation prevailing
between the Q‘eqchi‘ ‗Moon Goddess‘ and the deer, and is found included –
together with other ethnographic material – in an ‗indigenista‘ novel by C.A.
Castro, ‗Los Hombres Verdaderos‘ (1959: 19-20). It runs as follows:

260
Since it entails a transition from the hunt to maize cultivation, it shall be discussed
together with its subsequent episodes in Chapter Eight.
 176

―My eldest brother, my bankil, says that our forefathers told the
story of the deer and the woman; that the animal wanted to
approach her and lifted up her skirt, her tsek. It is for this reason,
for having put its head under her cloth, that it changes its antlers as
each year passes: The heat of the woman burnt them!‖

Again, a deer takes the initiative for a sexual relation, and is sanctioned.
This will be repeated when, later on in the myth, the deer are asked to mold the
woman‘s lost genitals, and are punished for their excessive enthusiasm. Each
time, a disjunction is brought about. The emphasis seems to be on the idea of
separating the woman from the world of the deer and of nature to which she
originally belonged. The female ‗heat‘ could conceivably refer to sexual
excitement, but might also represent a more general energetic concept. In any
case, it is clear that the woman‘s primary referent is now, not the wife of the
hunter putting to use a hunting strategy, but a deity with the power to put an end
to the rut. It has been observed that ―when a buck‘s antlers drop, he usually
becomes less belligerent. The breeding season has tired him‖ (Rue 1989: 106).
Of course, if this woman can make the antlers drop, one might assume that she
can also make them grow, and that, if she can put an end to the rut, she can also
provoke it. It appears likely that the woman of the Tzeltal fragment belongs
either to an Owner of the Deer, or to that more general Owner, represented by
Mountain-Valley in Q‘eqchi‘ myth.
The deer killed by the hero is specified by various sources as a brocket
deer (yuk, Mazama americana) rather than as a white-tailed deer (kej,
Odocoileus virginianus), the other Mesoamerican deer species; and it is under
the skin of another brocket that the hero will later hide in order to attract the
vultures. The brocket is sometimes called a ‗goat‘ (cabro) because of its two
short, spike-like antlers and small size. Although the two deer species could be
contrasted in various ways (the brocket is, for instance, much more solitary), we
do not know which contrast favored the narrator‘s choice. Nonetheless, it seems
relevant that the brocket is relatively defenseless, and the favorite prey of jaguar
and puma (cf. Alvarez 1991: 119-120). Q‘eqchi‘ myth has the hunter shoulder
this deer and parade it in wide circles around Mountain-Valley‘s homestead, an
action intended to impress the young woman by conveying a false impression of
abundance of game and thus, of a great hunt.
In the Schumann variant, the hunter appears to carry a deer of flesh and
blood, but in the other variants, the quarry‘s hide has been sewed into a dummy
that I suggest could be a magical instrument for ensuring a good hunt. The
 177

ethnographical literature on the Mayas is not very helpful here (Mayan hunting
practices being generally underreported);261 however, among the Chuj Mayas,
the skins of animals killed with rifles (to which apparently a special power was
ascribed)262 were stuffed, and the resulting dummies were preserved and prayed
to (Williams, in Shaw 1971: 101 n. 3).263 Moreover, hidden inside the dummy
of the Q‘eqchi‘ tale, there appear to have been tobacco seeds amongst the leaves
and pine needles, tobacco being a powerful herb used in all sorts of magic. The
preparation of a magical deer dummy would be in keeping with the preparation
of deer hoofs to ensure good hunting among the Itza Mayas (Hofling 1991: 154-
159), and also with the cutting, drying, and tailoring of a sexual rival‘s penis
into a ‗talisman‘ to the same effect (as in the Zinacantec Tzotzil adultery tale
discussed in Chapter Two).
However, this use of what would appear to be a magical implement is
presented by the tale as an elaborate deceit – a trick of no avail against the
Owner of the Game and his daughter who do not appear to have been
recognized as such by Hummingbird (which reminds one of Hummingbird‘s
ignorance in the bridal service tales). The hunter slithers in the lime water
poured on his path, the dummy bursts, and the hero is put ashame. According to
the Cruz Torres rendition, he returns later to retrieve the skin, again suggestive
of its great value. A message implied in this brief episode could be that hunting
magic can produce an abundance of game only if it has first been ‗validated‘ by
establishing a relationship with the Owner and his daughter.
For an understanding of the message of the myth, however, the crucial
point is that the Q‘eqchi‘ hunter, in the Schumann variant, has now taken the
place of the stag as a lover to the Maiden. A substitution of a hunter for a stag
also occurs in the Pipil hunting tale discussed above (Schultze Jena 1935: 34-
40) wherein a hunter initially meets a girl – now explicitly stated to be the
transformation of a doe – and penetrates into the mountain of the Mountain-

261
Characteristically, in the recent three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican
Cultures (2001), one looks in vain for an article about the hunt.
262
―The rifle is considered to have a spirit like the cross‖ (Shaw 1971: 101 n. 3). This
might be connected to the crossed bullets needed for killing the Zip deer (Redfield and
Villa Rojas 1934: 118; Villa Rojas 1978: 295). In Quintana Roo, the brocket deer has its
own Zip (Ruholl 1995: 154).
263
Outside the Mayan area, the Huicholes had ‗artful imitations of deer for assuring
success in the hunt‘ (Hell 1988: 85).
 178

Valley deity and Owner of the Deer. There, the hunter takes the place of the
stag, and copulates with the doe girl in order to engender the deer with her, or
rather, to create them anew.
From the perspective of the hunter, however, the meaning of the
substitution is otherwise. The killing of the stag constitutes a first breaking point
– to be followed by the destruction of the Maiden herself – leading to the
transformation of the deer woman into a human woman. The myth operates a
transition from the world of the deer with its invading hunters to the world of
man, conceived as a hunter, with its invading deer. The purpose of Q‘eqchi‘
myth can be brought into relief by pursuing the comparison with the Pipil (and
also Lacandon) tales. Whereas the Pipil hunter together with the Owner‘s
daughter engenders the deer, the Q‘eqchi‘ episode cuts off such a development.
The copulation of the Pipil hunter and the young woman is not only licensed,
but even ordered by the Mountain-Valley; the copulation of the Q‘eqchi‘ hunter
with his woman, however, is out of their own initiative, and not approved of
afterwards by the Owner of the Game. Hummingbird (‗Sun‘) prefigures the
husband who needs a permanent woman (‗Moon‘) of his own; therefore, the
couple has to leave the earth god‘s realm – the domain of the wild, of the deer,
and of the Maiden as a deer goddess – before gestation has even begun, and
flees towards the world of man.
In most Q‘eqchi‘ variants,264 Hummingbird‘s wife ultimately becomes
the celestial, lunar ancestress of human beings, rather than a terrestrial ‗deer-
rabbit‘ or ‗honeybee‘ wife. This notwithstanding, as a lunar fertility goddess,
she is bound to remain closely associated with the procreation of the game. Not
only is it a stag that will conduct her into the sky (O 121), but, in Mam and
Q‘anjob‘al hero myth (Peck and Sywulka 1966: 193-194; Montejo and
Campbell 1993: 100-101), a deer is believed to inhabit the moon, like the rabbit
elsewhere.265 At the present stage of the tale‘s development, however, the
woman‘s womb remains closed after her restoration. To gain access to the
source of human fertility, the hunter finds himself obliged to return to the deer,
and by the same token, to establish some sort of exchange with them; for he is

264
References to the Q‘eqchi‘ myth are to the sources listed in Appendix A. The
number following the abbreviation of the author‘s name refers to the page(s).
265
When shot by the hero, a leg of this lunar deer falls to the earth; from its bones, the
wild animals take their origin. Save for the initial shooting of the lunar deer, this tale, in
its Santa Eulalia Q‘anjob‘al rendering, is also given by LaFarge (1947: 50-53).
 179

now about to incur a debt that will not easily be repaid. In one rendition (C/EA
154, cf. 397), an intermediary informs the hunter: ―Your wife still wants that
you speak with the deer; that deer should step over your wife and thereby she
will become your companion.‖
Characteristically, it is again the woman who, in this tale, is directing
the decisive transition, in line with her behavior in the Hummingbird bridal
service tales discussed previously. Wild stags, temporarily domesticated by
what had been their ‗wild‘ mistress, are to definitively domesticate her vagina.
As a result of the exchange, a stag emissary arrives and jumps over the woman
three times, thereby transforming her into a true, full-grown human being. In
most other variants, however, the small brocket deer (yuk) and the larger white-
tailed deer (keh) are invited to cover the woman and to mold her small and large
labia with their hoofs, in order that her husband, the hunter, may subsequently
penetrate her. Usually, the small and shy brocket is treading only lightly in the
woman‘s abdomen, whereas the white-tailed deer is aggressively running
towards the female, making a deep imprint, as if it violently wished to possess
her (CT 43-44). Again, there is the suggestion of an underlying antagonism
between the hunter and a dominant stag.
Instead of using the hoof of a living stag, the hero can also slit the
womb of his wife with an antler (WL 143). The use of the antler as an
instrument for bestowing fertility could suggest a ritual, perhaps for opening the
breeding season of the deer, in which case the hero would again have seized a
prerogative of the stags, by using phallic antlers for initiating human
procreation.
Viewed from Hummingbird‘s perspective, the paradox of having the
woman made ready for human intercourse by wild stags has the function of pro-
claiming a decisive reversal of fortunes, and the ultimate predominance of the
heroic hunter over his Father-in-law: Instead of the Father-in-law ordering the
hunter to assume the role of a stag and to mate with his daughter so as to
procreate deer in his dark subterranean world, it is now the rejected son-in-law
and hunter who orders the stags to mate with his wife, so as to pave the way for
the procreation of human beings ‗in the beautiful light of day‘ on earth.
 180

Once the uterus has been opened, ―like the alluring smell266 of many
wild flowers its fragrance came forth‖ (my transl.).267 The sweetness of the
flowers holds a promise of honey and fertility.268 It further elaborates the motif
of the hummingbird sucking nectar from the tobacco flowers, or, in the Book of
Chilam Balam of Chumayel, mating with flower goddesses that include a
female Macuil-Xochitl. Indeed, the ‗flowery‘, sexual attractiveness exercised
during the hunt by Xochiquetzal and her Mayan counterpart now becomes
entirely explicit.269 But there may be more to this passage of Q‘eqchi‘ myth.
The deer treading the female abdomen as if it were the soil, and the odor of
flowers emanating from the uterus, suggest a homology of body and landscape.
In Mayan shamanic discourse, the human body is referred to as ‗earth‘ (lúum) in
Yucatan (Jong 1999: 306) and as ‗mountain-valley‘ (juyub-taq’aj) in the
K‘iche‘ highlands (D. Tedlock 1996: 227; cf. B. Tedlock 1996: 223, 263),
corresponding to Q‘eqchi‘ tzuul-taq’a.270 In such a view, the uterus of the
daughter of Mountain-Valley being opened up here is metaphorically a cave,
and more particularly, a Cave of Origins – another body-metaphor, and one of
long standing in Mesoamerica.271

266
‗Alluring smell‘ translates tzununquil, modern spelling sununkil. According to
Haeserijn (1979: 311 s.v.), sununquil is ‗odorous‘ and xsuununquil (possessed noun)
‗lure‘.
267
Chan quile atzum ix tzununquil qui él ix vuoc (WR), changed by Estrada Monroy to:
Chan chan li q’uila atz’um li xsununquil, qui’ qui’ xel ixcuokx. The spelling of the final
word is wavering: Ix vuoc ‗fragancia‘ (WR, in Quirín), ixcuokx ‗espuma‘ (EM), ix woqx
‗froth, spray‘ (Kockelman). Haeserijn (1979) distinguishes cwoc (booc, uooc) ‗vaho,
aroma‘ from cwokx ‗espuma‘, which, in the standardized spelling of the Academia de
Lenguas Mayas (Sam et al. 1997), becomes: b’ook ‗vaho, vapor, aroma‘ and woqx
‗burbuja, espuma‘.
268
Considering that the Yucatec bee-keepers of the past used an antler to ‗castrate‘ the
beehive and puncture the honey combs (Motul, Barrera 1980: 26 s.v. bak), an analogy
could be construed with cutting the womb and freeing its flower aroma.
269
This passage provides direct evidence for the connection that Thompson (1939: 138-
140) sought to establish between the Q‘eqchi‘ ‗Moon Goddess‘ and the flower as an
erotical symbol. For an example, Thompson could only point to the lust goddess
Tlazolteotl depicted with a flower sprouting from her vagina (e.g., C. Borgia 74).
270
It has already been noted that inversely, the mountain can be assimilated to the
human body (cf. also Wilson 1995: 53, the cave as a womb).
271
In Ruíz de Alarcñn‘s Treatise, body cavities are assimilated to the Aztec cave of
origins, Chicomoztoc ‗Seven Caves‘ (Tract VII Ch. 9-10, pp. 245-249; Tract VII Ch.14-
15, pp. 256-257; Tract VII Ch. 26-27, pp. 285-290).
 181

Passing the entrance of this ‗cave‘ is like passing a threshold. If one

pursues the analogy with the Cave of Origins, then leaving the uterus where the
mystery of regeneration is located, is like leaving the Owner‘s caves where the
deer are procreated. Passing the threshold of the cave is like being ‗captured‘ as
a resisting ‗fawn‘ by the midwife, the first human being the child meets. What
was originally a fawn, but on passing the threshold became human, is now, as in
progressive rites of initiation, to be definitively ‗domesticated‘ and irreversibly
to become a human being. The southern Lacandons used to talk about the birth
of a human being in comparable terms (Boremanse 1998: 80). About the young
mother it was said: ―She caught a possum,‖ while the mother would explain to
her other children (jokingly perhaps): ―I cut off its tail and nose, and its head
became round.‖
In short, taking the Pipil and Lacandon tales as a point of departure, I
propose the following model. There is an intermediate stage in the transfor-
mation of the Maiden into the prototypical human woman: By way of her
pseudo-copulation with two stags, a deer woman copulating with the hunter and
giving birth to fawns, is transformed into a human woman copulating with the
hunter and giving birth to human children.
However, this development is a dialectical one, in that the preceding
stage is not entirely lost, but acquires another, more encompassing meaning.
The circumstances of the creation of the vagina already point this way.
Hummingbird is stated to have made the girl ―lie down in a narrow defile
between two hills‖ (TH 129), or, in the earliest variant, ―in between the
mountains on the valley‘s floor‖ (WR 186).272 Reading this metaphorically,
there is a double message. On the one hand, there is the suggestion that the
female genitals to be created replicate the shape of the landscape. On the other
hand, it appears that within the dualistic concept of the Tzuultaq‘a ‗Mountain-
Valley‘, the daughter primarily represents the Valley constituent. Therefore,
although now being transformed into the prototypical woman, the female
protagonist remains conceptually linked to the fertility of the earth, its
entrances, and the deer treading it. Indeed, if the resemblance of the vagina to
the hoof imprint of the deer is recognized (as if in recognition of the Lacandon
rule of dream interpretation that ‖a woman‘s vagina represents an animal‖), the
reverse can also be true: The hunter, following the trail of the deer through the

272
Quixyocob a Pó sa ix yanc tzuul chiru tacá.
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mountains and into the valleys, is being guided by erotic signs leading him –
conceptually – to his ‗wives‘, the does. In reality, however, given that female
and male imprints are hard to distinguish (Rue 1989: 45-46), the erotic signs
will lead him to deer of both sexes.
The mythological explanation of the origin of the human vagina should
be understood from the basic fact that the myth, at this stage, still remains
within the world of the hunt. The Maize Mountain has not yet been opened and
the ‗man made of deer meat‘273 has not yet been succeeded by the ‗man made of
maize‘. Therefore, the pseudo-copulation with the two stags is not intended to
make one entirely forget the woman‘s original and true copulation with the
stags in the wilds that had been interrupted by the hunter but to the contrary,
should evoke and ritually reinstate it. The use of deer hoofs and antlers in the
myth to ‗open up‘ a female is suggestive of hunting rituals in which these
objects are manipulated as ‗talismans‘ to ensure the availability and fertility of
the game. Their handling appears to rest on the idea that the hunter –
continuously switching between the areas of the tame and the wild – is to take
the place of the deer (represented by his mythological stag rival) as a husband to
the game. Since in the myth, the game woman‘s transformation (her
regeneration and ‗resexualization‘) is made to occur outside the cave and
beyond the reach of the hunter‘s Father-in-law, the transformation is one into a
human spouse.
The continuation of the play of attraction, which is now being directed
by the hunter, is already implied in the very wording of the passage describing
the origin of the vagina. The uterus, on being opened, drenches the whole
atmosphere with an odor of wild flowers. This odor is denoted by a word
(tzununquil) which also has another meaning intimately bound up with it, that of
‗material or means to hunt something‘, i.e., a lure (Haeserijn 1979 s.v.
suununquil). In this last sense, it appears to correspond to the awkward ‗su
atractivo de mujer‘ that recurs in Cruz Torres's rendering of the passage (CT 43-
44). Consequently, when the large stag (quej) – instead of the brocket in most
other variants – plants its foot too lightly in the womb of the fertility goddess

273
Reference has already been made to the Lacandon initiatory custom of giving a child
the species surname of the first wild animal whose meat he had ritually consumed
(Boremanse 1998: 87-88).
 183

for fear that it might get stuck (DD 5, WR 186), 274 its reluctance is justified by
the original procreative function of the deer woman, which has now changed to
one of luring the main deer ‗rival‘ of her human husband into an odoriferous,
sexual trap so that he can be shot.
On the other hand, according to another variant (DR 492), it seems that
the large stag did not less, but more than it was required to do, and made an
attempt to emulate the excited stag of the Schumann version. According to the
Drück variant, the small brocket deer made a first and unsuccessful attempt, and
therefore, the hero set the larger, white-tailed deer to the task. While omitting a
description of its execution (perhaps for reasons of prudishness on Drück‘s
part), the short text adds instead: ―And on leaving together, they [the hero and
his wife] beat up the deer.‖275
In order to withhold ‗stags‘ of all sorts, human or animal, from future
transgressions,276 the female power of attraction should not be allowed to
‗intoxicate‘ and make suitors ‗run wild‘, but should be tamed. Therefore, the
delirious and thus, dangerous, effect of the pseudo-copulation is mitigated by
having a rat urinate in the newly-created vagina, with the result that ―since then,
sexual pleasure has been followed by revulsion‖ (TH).277 A frog then follows
the rat‘s example (CT), and this provides an explanation why women urinate so
often – a urination that could moreover suggest rainfall, since the frog is an
animal of the rain deity, and the female moon a bringer of rain.278

274
Wirsing, as published by Quirín (1966: 186): Xin xin qui pab, ma re tilc, tocbal roc
chi sa (―Poco a poco lo ejecutñ para no causar daðo‖), a faulty rendering and translation
corrected by Estrada Monroy (1990: 138-139) to: Xiu xiu nak quixpaab’, mare t’ilk,
tokb’al rok chi sa’ (―[El venado] tenía miedo de aceptar, porque pensaba que se trabaría,
se le podía quebrar la pata adentro‖; the same in Kockelman 2007: 381).
275
Ut naj x’co-eb chi bäc sä cib’bal, xextiäc li quej (―Und als sie nun zu zweit loszogen,
verprügelten sie das Reh‖). The third verb (-tiäc) would nowadays be spelled –yeq’,
from yeq’(ok) (Sam et al. 1997: 429).
276
A variant which seems largely a composition of various known tales, but also
contains some details not found elsewhere (Búcaro Moraga 1999: 237), has a deviant
reading which again makes Sun and deer rivals: ―La Luna dio al venado la fragancia de
las flores y esto molestñ mucho a xbalank‘e porque sentía celos de él y entonces tomñ el
almizcle (sustancia odorífera) del ratñn para untarselo al venado.‖
277
Rutting stags are attracted instead by the urine secreted by the doe (Rue 1989: 315,
331).
278
For the frog provoking rain, see also Chapter Eleven (section ‗Moon‘s Bathing
Place‘). Urination as rainfall is implied in a Pipil rain hero myth discussed in Chapter
Two.
 184

CHAPTER 7

TRANSFORMATIONS OF WOMAN: HARMFUL ANIMALS

In Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, after the killing of the Maiden and the
gathering of her remains, her blood changes into snakes and insects, before she
finally becomes the moon. This is a very different outcome from that described
in the other Hummingbird myths, wherein her remains become game animals,
birds, and honey bees. As has been set out in previous chapters, the relationship
of man to the earth and its bounty can be modeled on an affinal relationship, and
it could even, especially in the bridal service versions, imply a permanent state
of being a suitor to the earth. In this way, the ‗game woman‘ is destined to be
sought after by the hunters, the ‗bee woman‘ by the beekeepers, and also (as we
shall see in the next chapter) the ‗maize woman‘ by the farmers. Such a manner
of viewing the relationship between man and the products of the earth suggests
that the ‗snake and insect woman‘, too, should be important to the members of a
specific social group.
Taking the lead from an observation by Pablo Wirsing (in Thompson
1939: 143) that ―Kekchi shamans recite the legend of the sun and moon when
effecting cures‖, I intend to demonstrate that the principal concern of the
Q‘eqchi‘ episode is disease and curing, and that both are inextricably entwined
with disease-casting and sorcery.279 J.E.S. Thompson, who otherwise
emphasized the myth‘s importance, harbored some doubts as to whether what
he called the ‗Pandora‘s Box episode‘ (the untimely opening of the jars leading
to the escape of disease agents), represented a truly indigenous tradition (1970:
370). It will be shown that the episode is entirely consistent with traditional
Mayan and Mesoamerican ways of thought and attendant imagery. To this end,
and in addition to the Q‘eqchi‘ tales of Thompson, Wirsing, and Cruz Torres, I

279
I regret not having been able to consult two unpublished theses: James S. Boster‘s
‗K‘ekchi‘ Maya Disease Concepts and Curing Practices in British Honduras‘ (B.A.
Honors Thesis, Harvard University, Dept. of Anthropology, 1973), and John
Bringhurst‘s ‗Folk Healing Practices and Beliefs of the Kekchi Indians‘ (independent
Study Project Thesis, University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, 1986).
 185

will make use of important additional information gleaned from lesser known
variants.280

Origin of Menstruation

The theme of disease makes its first unmistakable appearance in the

myth when the deer hunter elopes with the daughter of a powerful old man
called Tzuultaq‘a ‗Mountain-Valley‘. The invading warrior (Sun; Xbalanque in
the earliest texts) takes a woman without having paid for her in the form of
bridal service. Using his magical mirror, the infuriated ‗king‘ locates the couple,
and with a blowgun, attempts to suck them back. Mirror and blowgun serve to
characterize Mountain-Valley‘s role here as a shamanic one. The mirror is
commonly used to locate objects intruded into the body (e.g., Redfield and Villa
1934: 140, 170, 175; Hanks 1990: 340). The blowgun is defined by Cruz Torres
as a jicbil puub ‗sucking tube‘ (CT 35, cf. CT 362), an instrument, that is, used
in various Mesoamerican regions, that serves to remove harmful objects from
the body (e.g., Ichon 1969: 224). Other Q‘eqchi‘ sources are in agreement: ―He
almost spent his power in sucking them back‖ (WR),281 ―he began to draw back
his daughter with his blowgun‖ (C/EA).282 This could imply that, within a
mountainous landscape viewed as a human body, the hero and his wife are
treated as disease agents, and the Old Man representing this landscape tries to
remove them. However, in using the ‗sucking tube‘ and mirror, Mountain-
Valley is affected by the pepper put inside the tube and the red dye smeared on
the mirror by the hero. In this way, eye sore, whooping cough (ji’c, CT 38),283

280
This chapter is an adaptation and enlargement of my article ‗Xbalanque‘s Canoe‘
(Braakhuis 2005). References to the Q‘eqchi‘ myth are to the sources listed in Appendix
A. The number following the abbreviation of the author‘s name refers to the page(s).
281
Qui ix choy raj ix metzéu re ix tzobbal eb riquín. Tz’oboc ‗chupar, sorber‘ (Haeserijn
1979 s.v. tz’ob), therefore: ―para succionarles‖ (Quirín), and not: ―to blow them with it‖
(Kockelman 2007: 365).
282
In one variant (O-a), however, the tube is an unmistakable blowgun containing a
pellet, and it is the pellet, rather than the usual lightning, that hits the woman. Even in
this case, however, an analogy with shamanic behavior may be discerned. Among the
Huaxtec Mayas, for example, ―evil is blown from a reed tube (a sort of blowgun)‖
(Alcorn 1984: 179).
283
In the Cruz Torres as in the Carlson/Eachus variant, there is a play on (in modern
spelling) jiq’ ‗whooping cough‘ and jiq’ok ‗swallow, inhale heavily‘.Wirsing nor
Thompson mentions the whooping cough, but Owen does.
 186

and also, in some variants, toothache (A 23), originated. This conversion of a

‗cure‘ into its opposite is a prelude to the pursuit that now begins and that
results in the couple fleeing towards the sea (palau, also lake) and hiding in a
turtle, crab, or armadillo.284 Unlike other Hummingbird tales, the Q‘eqchi‘
version assigns a specific, negative quality to the water of lake and sea,
connecting it to the ‗female disease‘ (as menstruation is commonly referred to
among the Mayas).

Terrestrial and Aquatic Filth

In the sea, not far from the shore, the lightning of Mountain-Valley
strikes the carapace of the crab (TH 128, CT 39) that serves to protect his
daughter, and destroys it. Sun sees ―the water dyed with the blood of
X‘t‘actani‖ (TH 128). Her blood ―spattered down on the water of the sea‖, and
―all of her blood painted the water of the sea red‖ (CT 39). Alternatively,
Mountain-Valley‘s daughter hides in an armadillo carapace that is struck by
lightning on the shore of a lake.285 Subsequently, ―her blood descended over the
water‖ (WR 182). Dragonflies collect the blood and take it to the hero, who puts
it in jars. By running in circles over the surface of the water, lizards gather the
blood for the dragonflies to scoop up (CT 39).
Blood is the central element of this part of the myth, rather than the
shreds of flesh that may also be mentioned.286 By comparison, versions of this
myth dealing with the origin of game do not focus on the woman‘s blood, but
on her bones (see previous chapter). In the case of the maize woman, her origins
are apparently so close to human origins that no violent fragmentation and no

284
Having the fleeing couple hide in a turtle, crab, or armadillo could be a reference to
imprisoning disease agents in such containers as a conch (Ritual of the Bacabs MS pp.
166, 170, Roys 1965: 56-57) or a cistern (Hanks 1990: 348).
285
The armadillo, a great burrower, is a terrestrial animal; when in the water, it ―does
not swim, but goes to the bottom and continues its way there until it has reached the
other side of the river or brook‖ (Alvarez del Toro 1991: 46). Estrada Monroy (1990:
244 n. 303) compares the armadillo sheltering the future moon goddess to the armadillo
basket of the Q‘eqchi‘ midwife containing her implements, particularly those for
treating the umbilical cord.
286
The first Owen variant (Gordon 1915: 117) is rather exceptional in omitting any
mention of the blood; it concentrates instead on the reconstitution of the flesh by a
school of small fishes, a task which the Avila variant (1977: 24), again unusually,
assigns to the dragonflies.
 187

bloodshed occur at all. Instead, in a Poqomchi‘ tale, red flowers are strewn into
the sea to deceive the pursuing Mountain-Valley (Bucaro Moraga 1991: 70).
The heavy emphasis on spilled blood in the Q‘eqchi‘ tales clearly needs an
explanation. Since it is only in these tales that the Maiden becomes the Moon,
the first possibility that comes to mind is the strong association existing
between the Moon and the menses,287 both commonly referred to by the same
word (Q‘eqchi‘ po, Sam Juárez et al. 1997: 260), the menses being more
particularly known as ‗moon sickness‘ (Q‘eqchi‘ yajel re po; id. 425).288
The hypothesis that the myth refers to the origin of menstruation is
confirmed, at least in part, by a little known variant of the episode included in a
study of Q‘eqchi‘ ideas concerning tooth decay (Avila 1977). Here, the
primordial Moon had apparently found no hiding place at all, and received the
full blow of her father‘s lightning strike. The dragonflies now gather her body,
and it is Sun himself who recovers her blood from the earth:

―The dragonfly only found remains of the body, gathered these and
handed them to the sun, and therefore the dragonfly is standing in
the air. But the sun had not found the blood and began to search for
it. He had to root up seven layers of earth and finally he found it,
and therefore it remained in the earth [por eso en la tierra quedó]
that women should see menstruation each month. The woman
starts menstruating at the age of thirteen or fourteen years. That
was in those times, but nowadays they start at the age of fifteen‖
(Avila 1977: 24).

It may be noted that this fragmentary tale was told by a farmer, not by a
woman. Given that the blood of Moon, or Mountain-Valley‘s daughter, signifies

287
In a review of Cruz Torres‘s ‗Rubelpec‘, Etta Becker-Donner already recognized the
theme of menstruation in the episode of Moon's destruction (1976: 126). Later,
Kockelman (2007: 339) followed suit.
288
Also in view of the fact that Spanish flor ‗flower‘ can denote menstrual bleeding (cf.
Paul 1974: 298), the delicate Poqomchi‘ image of the red flowers strewn into the sea
would appear to be a veiled allusion to the origin of menstruation. One could also think
of a Totonac myth (Ichon 1969: 95, cf. 56-57), according to which menstruation originated
when the jealous Moon brother removed Sun‘s flower offerings from an altar and threw
them on the ground.
 188

menstrual blood when it is absorbed into the earth,289 the hypothesis that the
lunar blood coloring the sea in the other variants refers to menstruation acquires
additional strength.
A recent bilingual compilation of variants, put together by a Q‘eqchi‘
author (Cu Cab 2003), appears to refer to a tale that could confirm the above
hypothesis. In this composite narrative, clearly deriving in part from the Cruz
Torres variant, the hero asks the dragonflies to collect the lunar blood from the
sea, explaining to them that (contrary to what really happened) Moon ―came to
wash her clothes and hurt herself‖ (xchal chi puch’uk ut xtoch’ rib), and that
because of the lost blood, she is about to die. ‗Washing clothes‘ (puch’uk) is a
euphemism for menstruation (Haeserijn 1979: 265 s.v. puch’), as is confirmed
by the narrator a few lines further on. Unfortunately, the variant (or the
informant concerned) from which the passage appears to have been taken
remains unidentifiable, since no references are provided.
I shall continue to argue the analogous, aquatic origin of menstruation
in more detail, by concentrating on the female quality that often in Mesoamerica
is assigned to bodies of water, including lakes and the sea (both covered by
Q‘eqchi‘ palau). In referring to the blood and particles of Moon‘s body floating
on the water, the Wirsing variant (Quirín 1966: 183) uses an uncommon
Q‘eqchi‘ term, viz. mul ha ‗aquatic filth‘, which Kockelman (2007: 371)
translates as ‗flotsam‘. This suggestive term has a Nahua equivalent that,
significantly, belongs to the vocabulary of curing rituals. Nahua shamans on the
Gulf Coast recognize a ‗water filth wind‘ (apantlasole ejecatl), a disease agent
―found in the filthy scum that forms on the surface of water‖ (Sandstrom and
Effrein 1986: 94). That this scum should – at least in the context of Q‘eqchi‘
myth – be interpreted as a sign of menstruation is implicit in the indigenous
conception of ‗sea and lake‘ (palau) among neighbors of the Q‘eqchi‘s, the
Pipiles of Izalco, El Salvador. These Pipiles justify their belief in Moon‘s
predominance over the sea, not by referring to tidal movements, but in the
following way: ―Because it is apparent that it [the sea] gets indisposed just as
women do: On its shores it excretes blood and foam‖ (Schultze Jena 1935: 79) –

289
The absorption by seven layers of earth could suggest a special place of retreat for
menstruating women, on the shore of a river or a lake, such as it existed for birth-giving
women (Estrada Monroy 1979b: 150-151).
 189

that is, what both Q‘eqchi‘s and Gulf Coast Nahuas call ‗aquatic filth‘.290 Also
relevant is the case of the Lencas of western Honduras, who extend the view of
menstrual waters to other terrestrial waters as well: ―There are also lakes the
waters of which are attributed the property of changing into blood and even to
have periods similar to the menstrual cycles of women‖ (Rivas 1994: 52).
These cosmographic body metaphors for lakes and the sea derive from
two basic assumptions. On the one hand, they reflect the Mesoamerican concept
of the earth as a living body, the soil being the flesh, the rocks its bones, and the
water its blood (see Sandstrom 1991: 238). On the other hand, particularly in
the Mayan area, lakes are usually seen as female, and intimately associated –
indeed, identified – with the moon goddess (Thompson 1970: 244; Milbrath
1999: 33). Having lakes menstruate, or produce ‗aquatic filth‘, is a logical
consequence of such identifications.291
In a broader perspective, the way Mesoamerican Sun and Moon myth
explains the origin of menstruation can be seen to vary according to Moon‘s
gender. On the one hand, if Moon is considered to be male, as among the
Tarascans, the Chatinos of Oaxaca, the Totonacs, and the Huaxtecs, then there
is little sense in the dramatic Q‘eqchi‘ scenario that operates the origin of
menstruation directly on the body of Moon. Instead, Moon is made into a
womanizer, whose first visit to a woman initiates menstrual bleeding (cf. Loo
1987: 146-148).292 This difference notwithstanding, a structural affinity with the
Q‘eqchi‘ episode can persist, as in a Huaxtec version (Stresser-Péan 2008: 362-
363), which replaces the lightning hitting the woman of Sun by Sun‘s arrow
hitting the woman of Moon. On the other hand, if the Moon is female, then the

290
The image of red ‗aquatic filth‘ floating on the water may conceivably have been
inspired by the occurrence of toxic ‗water bloom‘ (or ‗red tide‘) caused by
phytoplankton.
291
The red sea (or lake) is akin to what the Aztecs called Cihuatlalpan, the western
‗Region of Women‘, i.e., those who had died in the child-bed. The Gulf Coast Totonacs
of El Tajin still see the West as ‗a great lake full of blood, stemming from those who
died in childbirth‘ (Kasburg 1992: 170 n. 152), and where the souls of deceased
midwives dwell (170). Therefore, Bassie-Sweet (2008: 185) views the lost blood of
Moon as birth blood. Such an identification presupposes, however, the existence of the
menstrual cycle.
292
Q‘eqchi‘ myth contradicts Van der Loo‘s assertion (1987: 148, 150) that the
mythological origin of the menstrual cycle requires a masculine Moon.
 190

fact that, once enclosed in jars, her menstrual blood changes to living creatures
(snakes and insects) is consonant with an apparently widespread view of
conception. According to this theory, pregnancy implies the accumulation of
menstrual blood: The fetus grows ―due to the nourishment from the mother‘s
menstrual blood which is retained for that purpose‖ (Guiteras Holmes 1961:
103, Tzotziles; cf. Paul 1974: 294, Tz‘utujiles).

Lunar Cycle and Menstrual Cycle

The origin of menstrual bleeding in Moon‘s destruction and reduction
to blood is a necessary prelude to the periodicity of menstruation so closely
connected to the lunar cycle. However, even though the goddess is commonly
denoted as ‗the Moon‘ (li Po) throughout, it should be borne in mind that the
lunar cycle has, at this point of the myth, not yet been instituted, the goddess not
yet having risen into the sky; interpreting the myth in terms of lunar astronomy
thus requires due reserve. Nonetheless, some possibilities merit to be explored.
The annihilation of the primordial Moon, the spreading reddish color of
the blood, and the sudden onset of darkness, are all suggestive of a lunar
eclipse, an event that invariably occurs during the full moon. It is curious that a
solar eclipse appears to occur at the same time, as Sun dives away in his turtle
carapace; as noted by the Wirsing text (WR 182), when Sun hid in the depths of
the lake ―the sunlight disappeared, and darkness descended on the world.‖ The
muteness (U 177) and lameness (UU, also DR 492) of the regenerated child
Moon could also be interpreted as being due to a lunar eclipse.293 More
generally, the eclipsed Moon is seen by the Mayas as a frightening portent of
sickness and of the resulting mass death.294 These implications of a lunar eclipse
are borne out in the remainder of the myth.
The water jars, gourds, and ritual ceramic bottles in which the menstrual
blood of the eclipsed Moon is collected295 are likely to derive from the common

293
For the Quichés (Tedlock 1992: 184), a child‘s muteness or lameness is the result of
the mother having been exposed to a lunar eclipse. For the child‘s limbs being affected
by a lunar eclipse, cf. also Reina (1966: 239, Pokoman) and Nash (1970: 201, 203,
Tzeltal).
294
E.g., Bunzel 1967: 428; Tedlock 1992: 184; Nash 1970: 201, 203.
295
The sources include the following terms: Cúc (water jar; WR 183); tinaja (water jar;
O 121); su (tecomate; DR 491); putix (WR 184, for the 13th jar; CT 40-43, for every
 191

Mesoamerican metaphor of the rain-bringing moon, that of a water jar cyclically

filled and emptied. This is especially clear in the Cruz Torres variant (1965: 43),
where the thirteenth jar is expressly identified with the aquatic Moon: When this
jar is opened, the nude lunar woman it contains is found to be ―squatting in the
water.‖296
The phases of the Moon, which are seen by the Mayas as the changing
tilt of a lunar jar, are connected to rainfall as well as to the menstrual cycle. The
Ch‘orti‘s, for example, believe that ―woman is full during the Full Moon phase
and then, analogous to her patron, she pours out her contents in the menstrual
flow, and after that she remains ‗dry‘ for the remainder of the month‖ (Girard
1948: 80). Menstruation would thus coincide with the waning moon, and
‗dryness‘ could in principle be visualized as the empty jar of the reborn moon.
In most variants of Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, the blood is collected
and stored in thirteen jars for thirteen days. Since we have no native exegesis
for these numbers, one might hypothesize that the thirteen jars represent a series
of thirteen consecutive manifestations of the waning moon, that is, of the
inclined lunar jar signaling the outpour of menstrual blood. However, the
moment for menstruation is sometimes postponed until the conjunction of moon
and sun. The Mopan Mayas associate this new-moon phase with a general
predominance of wetness, menstruation included (Fink 1987: 403). According
to some Tzotziles, the Moon herself menstruates during this phase (Milbrath
1999: 32); consequently, among the Tzotziles of Larraínzar, the majority of
women are believed to menstruate during new moon, and ―the period of new
moon is considered especially unfavorable with regard to accidents resulting in
injuries, since during this period, bleeding is very copious and cicatrizing
[healing] very slow‖ (Holland 1978: 78).
From the above, one might conclude that the thirteen jars with
menstrual blood gestating for thirteen days refer to the second half of the lunar
cycle, from waning moon to new moon. The temporal position of the thirteenth
jar, however, remains ambiguous; it would rather seem to belong to the waxing
moon, and in one source, the woman reborn from it is represented by a crescent

jar). The word putix is defined as a ‗ritual bottle with a narrow neck‘ (Haeserijn 1979
s.v.) and apparently derives from Spanish botija.
296
In another episode, dealing with Moon‘s liaison with the rain deity, the empty water
jar left on the river‘s shore signals, and its emptiness symbolizes, Moon‘s disappearance
to the sky of the vultures (see Chapter Eleven).
 192

(MC 132). All in all, it is hard to decide if a correlation between the thirteen jars
and a series of thirteen moons, or moon phases, is relevant to the myth‘s
interpretation. Yet we do know with certainty that ‗thirteen‘ is recurrent in all
sorts of curing and disease-casting rituals.

Rhetoric of Soul Loss: ‗Looking for the Blood‘

‗Blood‘ is one of the core concepts of traditional healers. In the context

of cures for the overall debility, and especially pallor, caused by soul loss, or
‗fright‘ (‗susto‘), one comes upon expressions such as ‗my blood is frightened‘
(naxicwac in quiq’uel, Haeserijn 1979 s.v. xiuac), that is, actively struck by
fright illness. This expression is to be understood in the context of the
diagnostic practice of taking the pulse, in which the blood is interrogated and
asked many specific questions concerning the whereabouts of the lost ‗shadow‘,
or soul (Cabarrús 1979: 66). In another, more significant, formulation, the task
of the healer in recovering the lost shadow is stated to be to ―look for the blood
and collect the bones, the hairs‖ (Cabarrús 1979: 47). Here, elements
traditionally believed to be the recipients of materialized ‗souls‘297 have been
transferred to the landscape, which is also the situation presented by Q‘eqchi‘
myth when the blood and bones of Mountain-Valley‘s daughter were dispersed
over sea and land.
Fright illness results from a break of the moral code guarded by the
Tzuultaq‘a ‗Mountain-Valley‘. The angered Mountain-Valley is often held
responsible for accidents occurring in rivers, wells, or ravines that lead up to
soul loss (Cabarrús 1979: 48) and, in the discourse of healing, for the stumbling
and resulting fragmentation that appear to go with it. Furthermore, the
Q‘eqchi‘s are likely to have known the concept of ‗lightning fright‘ familiar to
Ch‘orti‘s (Wisdom 1940: 337) and Poqomames (Reina 1966: 239), lightning
being the main instrument of Tzuultaq‘a‘s castigating power (Sapper 1897: 282;
Carlson and Eachus 1978: 42, 44). One can understand, therefore, that a mere

297
The ‗blood, bones, and hairs‘ that denote the lost soul or shadow of a patient recur in
a curing text of the Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987: fol. 231) as yax bac -
yax tzotz - yax olom - yax kik ‘yax bone - hair - coagulated blood – liquid blood‘. Yax
bak is defined by the Cordemex dictionary (Barrera Vásquez 1980) as ‗descolorado,
hinchado, enfermizo‘. See also Lñpez Austin on the tonalli soul (1980: 223 ff; 241-243,
hairs as recipients of tonalli).
 193

mentioning of the word tzuul (mountain) suffices to denote the spirit loss in
which a whimsical Mountain ―grabs the blood and plays with it‖ (Wilson 1995:
147-148).298
Returning to the episode at hand, through the action of Mountain-
Valley, the daughter – condemned for having betrayed her father – is struck by
lightning, and her blood and body particles are dispersed in the sea. Within the
framework sketched above, Q‘eqchi‘ healers could easily have interpreted this
as an extreme case of fright. Among the defects of the Maiden reborn in the last
of the thirteen jars is the muteness (U 177) that also characterizes fright
(although its meaning probably extends beyond that); but more importantly, the
task of the dragonflies (tulux) – or, in the Avila variant, of the hero himself – is
strikingly similar to that of the healer restoring the lost soul by looking for
blood and collecting bones and hairs.
Strong support for this interpretation comes from a still practiced
Cahabón ritual for restoring the soul (Parra Novo 1997: 138-139), wherein the
dragonfly is called upon to assist in recovering and reintegrating the lost soul, or
‗shadow‘ (muhel):

―I invoke you, holy Hill, holy Valley! From the spot where you
[i.e., the lost shadow, EB] have fallen, from the stones, on the
trees, under the depths of the waters. I have put you there, little
creature (dragonfly, PN), so that you may call his ‗shadow‘
(xmuhel, PN) and recover it. I ask you, please go and bring his
power! Come, X, arise in this moment, in this very moment!
Come, come, I want you to come (the pulse is taken, PN), one holy
blood, one holy water, one holy bone. Your veins, your arteries, I
want to know what happened to you. Let us recover your shadow! I
will reintegrate it, so that there is once more one single body,
united, whole.‖

Moreover, from a recent interview with a Q‘eqchi‘ shamanic curer

(ilonel) describing traditional healing practices (in Cuz 2001: 19), it would
appear that the dragonflies – here explicitly mentioned by the interviewee – are
among an entire army of quick and aggressive little fliers operating as assistants

298
Here, Tzuul would appear to refer to the seizure rilom [i]tzuul ‗seen by the
Mountain‘ (cf. Cabarrús 1979: 66, 71; Haeserijn 1979: 169 s.v. ilom).
 194

to the curer. Talking about the names of the Thirteen Tzultaq‘as to be

mentioned in sacrifice or in healing, the curer states:

―Those that have the power to cure, those are the ones we, the
sacrificers, call. In such a way there are the thirteen wild bees,
thirteen dragonflies, thirteen hummingbirds, those are the ones that
are invoked over the patient and the one suffering of fright [li
xiwajenaq].‖ (My trans.) 299

And in another section of the book (id.: 59, cf. also 72), what would
appear to be the same curer reiterates:

―We call the sacred Tzuultaq‘as for the patient, the three
Tzuultaq‘as. We must mention the thirteen wild bees, the thirteen
dragonflies, the thirteen hummingbirds, these are invoked over the
patient, these lift up the patient when the sacrifice is brought.‖300
(My trans.)

This further confirms the reading of the mythical event proposed here,
and accords with the fact that in the principal variants, the Q‘eqchi‘ hero
commands not one, but a number of dragonflies to scoop up the blood of his
lost wife. Apparently, the shamanic curer could summon many more specialized
assistants, since the variants also mention small agile lizards and insects that
walk on the water, and small fishes.301 Velocity, numerosity, and size –

299
A’aneb li wankeb’ xwankil chi k’irtasink, a’aneb li naqab’oq laa’o laj mayejanel.
Jo’kan naq wankeb’ li oxlaju chi saqk’aw, oxlaju’chi tuulux, oxlaju’chi tz’unun, a’aneb
li nake’b’oqmank sa’ xb’eeneb li yaj ut li xiwajenaq. Saqk’aw is given by Haeserijn as
‗abeja silvestre‘ (1979: 294 s.v. sakc’au).
300
A’aneb li loq’laj tzuultaq’a naqab’oqeb’ chi rix li yaj, li oxib’eb chi tzuutaq’a.
Qayehaq, li oxlaju chi saqk’aw, li oxlaju chi tuulux, li oxlaju chi tz’unun, a’aneb a’an li
nake’aatinamank sa’ xb’eeneb li yaj, a’aneb a’an nake’wanklesink re li yaj naq yo li
mayejak. For wanklesink read waklesink.
301
While the relationship of the curer to the thirteen dragonflies, wild bees, and
hummingbirds may have had a permanent character, the concept of shamanic animal
assistance is a broader one. Boremanse (1991: 289), for instance, in analyzing Lacandon
therapeutic incantations, mentions the invocation of the ‗symbolic assistance of wild
bees‘ for curing a wound; in another Lacandon text (id.: 290), eight different birds are
called upon to suck the vomit of a patient.
 195

proportional to the fragments to be searched for – are some of the factors that
may have contributed to the choice of the assistants.302
It would appear that there is still another side to this animal
collaboration. In Mesoamerica, curers often invoke certain stars and
constellations. Among the Totonacs, for example, the curers have their own
‗Reed Tube Star‘ (or ‗Sucking-tube Star‘), just as the diviners have their
‗Divining Crystals Star‘ (Ichon 1969: 100), whereas Mixe curers acknowledge
the ‗Star of the Sea‘ as a tutelary spirit (Lipp 1991: 150). A related shamanic
enlistment of the sky is suggested by one of the earlier Q‘eqchi‘ variants (O-a
117). Fishes spontaneously collect the tiny fragments of Moon and by holding
each others‘ tails, weave a mat. Next,

―the great shiny mat swam under the girl and gave a big jump up to
the sky […] they stuck her up in the sky and were hurrying home
when they lost their way and had to stay up there too. Any clear
night if you look up at the sky you can see them, for they form the
great white streak [the milky way].‖

Although this variant‘s overall narrative tone has a sentimental quality

more savoring of American children‘s tales than of traditional Q‘eqchi‘ myth,
there is – also in view of Owen‘s serious intentions as a tale collector (see
Danien 2005: 6-7) – no reason to doubt its derivation from a Q‘eqchi‘ source.
What we have here, then, is less an ‗origin myth‘ of the Milky Way, than a
description of a vital aspect of shamanic curing. In collecting Moon‘s remains,
the fishes do the same thing as the other assistants of the hero; and if, moved by
compassion, they here seem to act on their own account, this is well suited to
demonstrate the Milky Way‘s favorable predisposition and, thus, susceptibility
to shamanic invocation.303
The same Owen variant gives unusual prominence to the construction
and positioning of Tzuultaq‘a‘s giant blowgun, the mouth of which ―rested on

302
It also deserves mentioning that both hummingbird and dragonfly can stand still in
the air.
303
With good reason, this variant stresses the benevolence and compassion of the fishes,
since in other variants (WR, TH), they behave cannibalistically. The cannibalistic fishes
should, perhaps, be associated with the dark rift in the Milky Way. K‘iche‘ shamans pay
considerable attention to the moon‘s changing path across this cleft, which they call
‗road of Xibalba‘ (Tedlock 1992: 191, cf. 181).
 196

the top of the highest mountain in the land‖ (O-a 116). Also in view of the
particular importance of star lore in traditional Q‘eqchi‘ culture,304 it is tempting
to assume an allusion here to a ‗Blowgun‘ (or, perhaps, ‗Sucking-tube‘)
asterism, observed in a specific position over the horizon.
Healers are also potential black sorcerers, an ambivalence that seems to
hold for the dragonflies as well. Haeserijn (1979: 333), who made use of notes
by Wirsing, defines ma’-tulux as ―the persons who changed themselves into
their nahuals, dragonflies, in order to collect the blood of Moon.‖
Notwithstanding the honorific ma’, the nahual transformation suggests
sorcerers. The Wirsing variant (WR 183) uses the word ah tulun instead of ma’-
tulux and translates it first as ‗dragonflies‘ and then, more appropriately, as
‗sorcerers‘ (‗brujos‘), the usual form of which would be ah tul[anel] (Sam
Juárez e.a. 1997 s.v.).
Dragonflies would, indeed, appear to be suitable shapes for powerful
healers as well as for black sorcerers.305 With an uncanny power of aerial
motion and a proclivity for territorial fighting, they are among the most
effective predators of the insect realm.306 Again, the same ambivalence also
appears to characterize other shamanic assistants, such as the fishes that started
to devour the remains of the lost wife instead of saving them. In any case, it
seems reasonable to conclude from the above that, in recruiting dragonflies to
make his wife whole again, the hero is in fact acting as a healer treating soul
loss.

304
Among the Q‘eqchi‘s, not only had each individual his own ‗moon and star‘ (po-
chahim), or destiny (Haeserijn 1979: 128 s.v. chahim), but each species of game animal
had its own star (or perhaps, ‗moon and star‘), too (cf. Cuz 2001: 34-35). See also
Chapter Ten.
305
As sorcerers collecting unclean blood, the dragonflies would be akin to
Cuchumaquic ‗Blood-gatherer‘, one of the K‘iche‘ Lords of the Underworld. In
collecting and drinking blood spilt through injury and disease, this figure is, in recent
lore, on a par with the ‗Evil One‘ and his helpers among the Q‘eqchi‘s (cf. D. Tedlock
1996: 338; Cruz Torres 1965: 151-161).
306
Given that the fishes that collected Moon‘s particles from the red sea became the
Milky Way, it is not unlikely that the dragonflies had an astronomical correlate as well.
The Lacandons, for their part, distinguished a ‗Red Dragonfly‘ star and identified it with
Betelgeuse (Milbrath 1999: 39). Along this same line, the turtle might well correspond
to stars in Gemini or Orion.
 197

The Crisis of Gestation

Following the collection of the blood and the storing of the jars, a
mysterious process of gestation sets in. The sounds signaling the conclusion of
this process cause great panic to the jars‘ custodians. In a Q‘eqchi‘ variant from
Belize, the process seems to be equated with decomposition: When one of the
containers is opened prematurely, it is noted that ―inside there is a frog covered
in thousands of flies and the frog is rotten‖ (K 33). In Prechtel‘s re-telling of
Tz‘utujil Hummingbird myth (2001: 61-63), the woman‘s flesh inside the large
cooking pot (p’tix) undergoes a serial transformation that Q‘eqchi‘ myth has
divided over thirteen jars (putixes). From the book‘s glossary (id.: 138), it
appears that one of the woman‘s fleeting transformations is the Qan tí
‗Yellowmouth‘, that is, the bushmaster, or fer-de-lance: ―Said by some story-
tellers to be one of the animals the Tall Girl [Hummingbird‘s bride, EB] turned
into as she changed from one animal to the next in the pot.‖ In an Ixil variant of
Hummingbird myth (Palomino 1972: 144-145, lines 566, 613), Marikita fears
her own transformation into a wasp or a whirlwind. Apparently, a terrible and
unpredictable Verwandlungszauber (‗transformational witchcraft‘) is going on.
In the Tz‘utujil tale, as in another Ixil tale dealing with the origin of game
(Colby and Colby 1981: 182), the untimely opening of the container is
presented as a fatal interruption of a process that would otherwise have resulted
in a return of the woman to her original, human form. Clearly, the husband
should not have left the jar.
In most Q‘eqchi‘ variants, too, the hero is absent for the period of
gestation. The reasons for this absence are usually not made explicit. The one
exception is the Cruz Torres variant (CT 40), according to which the hero,
having stored the remains of his wife, ―went to the thirteen mountains and
thirteen valleys to plead for his beloved, and to use all his abilities in this.‖307
Immediately before opening the thirteenth jar, the ‗lords of the thirteen
mountains and valleys‘ are again invoked: ―May your powers and mine make
my beloved reappear in the thirteenth jar‖ (CT 42).

307
Se fue a los trece cerros y trece valles a rogar por su amada, y a hacer sus
habilidades.
 198

This last invocation, in particular, includes an appeal that strongly

parallels the sort of cooperation between the powerful mountains and the curer
that is sought in ritual incantations such as the following (Burkitt 1902: 447-
448):

―A green hill, a green valley! [One Blue-green Hill-Valley!] a little

of thy might, a little of thy power, shall I borrow.‖

And a few lines further:

―Thirteen hills, thirteen valleys! Thence cometh thy poison [may,

also tobacco and medicinal herbs], thy poison [id.], over a mighty
sea; I blow in thy mouth [i.e., of the patient], I blow in thy face,
with thirteen hills, with thirteen valleys, with potent blood, with
potent ‗lymph‘.‖

Although Mountain-Valley is called ‗C‘agua Aatán‘ in the Cruz Torres

variant (corresponding to T‘actani in the Thompson variant), he is called, more
broadly, Tzuultaq‘a ‗Mountain-Valley‘ in the earlier Wirsing and E.P.
Dieseldorff variants. In the curing text quoted above, Mountain-Valley is
alternately regarded as one and as manifold. Thus, it seems reasonable to
conclude that the hero is in fact invoking Mountain-Valley when he ritually
addresses the ‗lords of the Thirteen Mountains and Valleys‘ while opening the
thirteenth jar.
The previous visit (or visits) of the hero to the ‗thirteen mountains and
thirteen valleys‘ apparently served the purpose of establishing the conditions for
a successful cure: That of reaching a truce and establishing cooperation with his
angered ‗father-in-law‘. Such an agreement is also sought in the parallel myth
about the origin of the maize woman shared by Poqomchi‘s and Q‘eqchi‘s.
There, the hero‘s absence during the pregnancy of his wife (a true pregnancy, in
this case) is explained by his desire to notify his father-in-law of the impending
birth, and to make peace with him (Schumann 1988: 214).
Alternatively, however, we might assume that because the hero has fled
to another territory, he could well be invoking the Tzuultaq‘a of that territory. In
this case, the snakes and insects could be seen as the punishment meted out by
the first, hostile Tzuultaq‘a, and the restored woman as the blessing of a
different, benevolent Tzuultaq‘a.
 199

Empowering Snakes and Insects

Prior to the opening of the thirteenth jar, mentioned above, an important

episode of the myth occurs in which the other containers are opened. Their
contents are revealed to be a variety of small, almost invariably poisonous
creatures, including, foremost, snakes and insects, but also worms, lizards,
spiders, scorpions, and toads. The extant variants of the episode show several
differences in the manner of introduction of these creatures to the earth. In some
of the variants, the opening of the jars is preceded by specific preparations. In a
short variant from the early years of the 20th century (O-b 121), the hero orders
masons to construct a ‗fountain‘ for emptying the water jars. The much later
Cruz Torres tale (CT 40) makes clear why the contents of the jars require such a
containment. In this variant, the ‗fountain‘ is a wooden canoe filled with water
and crushed tobacco leaves, and by being immersed in this liquid, the creatures
from the jars receive their poisons.
The other main difference in the sources concerns the treatment of the
creatures once they have emerged. In most cases, including the Wirsing and
Thompson variants, they are viewed as pests, which, being inherently poisonous
and dangerous, are to be immediately thrown into the sea, but instead escape
(DD 185, TH 129). ―Before this, there had been none of these pests‖
(Thompson). In contrast, the Rubelpec variant (CT 40-42) has the hero
purposely set the creatures free, after having given them their proper dosages of
poison. The Cruz Torres tale is important because it addresses the relation of
tobacco to animal poison and the origin of the latter, whereas the other variants
take the toxicity for granted. I shall argue that the hero‘s action can best be
understood as fitting within the system of disease and shamanic curing.308

308
Following Köhler‘s systematic treatment of the issue (1990: 261-271), what is
loosely called Mesoamerican shamanism coincides with ‗classic‘ Siberian shamanism in
the following main points: soul loss and ‗perils of the soul‘ of the patient; a ‗sacred
geography‘ of celestial and infra-terrestrial layers centered on an axis; the assistance of
animal companions; shamanic warfare; and dream vocation. Not clearly represented
ethnographically is the ecstasy during which the shaman sends his soul on a quest to the
beyond (on the issue of Mayan shamanism, see also Tedlock 1992: 46-53 and Lipp
2001: 107-108, 115).
 200

That it is the hero rather than a demon who empowers the creatures is at
first sight enigmatic. Here, it may be relevant that the Wirsing and E.P.
Dieseldorff variants call the hero Xbalanque. As early as the 17th century,
Fuentes y Guzmán (1969: 76-77, Bk. 1 Ch. 6 [insert]) described Xbalanque as a
god imbuing arrows and spears with war power. Q‘eqchi‘ myth seems to have
extended this patronage to include the stings of what I shall generically call
‗snakes and insects‘, animals that are of great importance to curers and sorcerers
alike.
Another and more important reason for the hero‘s involvement in the
release of the snakes and insects is that together – notwithstanding their
frightening aspect – these creatures represent the body of the hero‘s lost wife,
the nubile Earth. The snakes and insects born from the menstrual blood in the
jars are, in this respect, nothing but transformations of the game animals and
bees that are regenerated from the female bones contained in the jar of Ixil
Hummingbird myth – animals that, when questioned by the hero, proclaimed
themselves to be his wife (Colby and Colby 1981: 182). Just as the Ixil hero
gave the deer their hooves and the rabbits hair on their feet for masking their
scent, thus enabling them to escape from the hunters (ibid.), the Q‘eqchi‘ hero
kindly provides the snakes with their own means of defense, namely the precise
amount of poison they need: ―I will give you your defense, it will stay in your
fang‖ (CT 41), and in similar ways, every other creature is addressed and
admonished.
The most immediate reason why this poison should stem from tobacco
is that in Q‘eqchi‘, the word for tobacco, may, happens to have the additional
meanings of ‗pain‘ and ‗poison‘. In the myth, through may the creatures
received their may, and through may their may can be undone again. For Mayas
generally, tobacco is also the main apotropaic substance (cf. Thompson 1970:
103-123; Robicsek 1978: 11-43), the juice of tobacco being a close
approximation of what their viscous poison is to certain animals.309 Like is thus,
at least in this case, cured with like. Treatment with tobacco and tobacco juice,
substances recognized as poisons, belongs to the standard procedures of healing.

309
This can explain the paradox that, at times, the curer seems to imitate a serpent
spitting venom. A Tzotzil shaman, for example, is stated to spit tobacco juice to a
serpent (Laughlin 1975: 241 s.v. moy); a Ch‘orti‘ curer sprays tobacco-impregnated
saliva onto the patient‘s body ―with a hissing sound through his teeth‖ (Wisdom 1940:
349).
 201

With regard to the canoe in the Cruz Torres episode, its use as a trough
for preparing chewing tobacco (pilico) – with its magical properties – has been
noted in Tzeltal Cancuc (Guiteras Holmes 1992: 61). Among the Lacandons,
the canoe was used for preparing alcoholic beverages. To strengthen such a
brew, tobacco could be added (Gage 1969: 225), as well as poisonous creatures
such as wasps (Rätsch 1985: 63-69) and even toads (Gage 1969: 225). The
Q‘eqchi‘ myth is unusual in that it turns this practice around: Rather than
having the creatures invigorate the brew, it has the brew invigorate the
creatures.
Hummingbird‘s care for his transformed wife casts him in the role of
unwitting helper to his father-in-law by providing Mountain-Valley with the
animals, specifically the snakes and insects, that he needs to carry out his
verdicts and bring disease over offenders (snakes, Sapper 1897: 282; insects and
snakes, Carlson and Eachus 1978: 42, 44). Here, as in other Hummingbird
myths, the very excessiveness of Tzuultaq‘a‘s reaction signalled a creative act
ultimately leading to the origin of animals. However, in a moral sense,
Mountain-Valley‘s daughter‘s fragmentation by lightning can also be viewed as
a primordial punishment, from which several other punishments took their
origin. The first of these is the punishment of the ‗female disease‘,
menstruation; through this affliction, a whole class of other punishments, the
agents of disease, is unleashed. Fortunately, owing to the tobacco juice prepared
in the hero‘s canoe, the poisons of these creatures are of such a nature as to be
susceptible to treatment.

Herbal Substitutions

The idea that the antidote to poison is inherent in its origin can be
expressed in various ways, as the gradation of the containers‘ contents in the E.
P. Dieseldorff variant clearly shows (DD 5). The first four containers hold
variously-colored bees (probably of the aggressive, undomesticated sort), the
next ones contain wasps and hornets, but then, before the restored goddess is
discovered in the twelfth and (in this variant) last container, two of the
containers turn out to hold two species of medicinal herbs.310 Thus, in the end,

310
The two herbs concerned, tzoloj-quen (Bidens warszewicziana) and ruj-max
(Sanicula mexicana), are used ―against swellings of the glands, usually resulting from
 202

the poison is replaced by its herb and, according to Haeserijn‘s Q‘eqchi‘

dictionary (1979: 221), both can be called by the same name, may. As a
consequence, the restored goddess comes to symbolize the healing effects of
medicinal herbs that can be viewed as an alternative form of her body.311 In
short, the invocations of the hero not only result in the cure and restoration of
his wife, but in a cure for mankind as a whole.
The existence of a variant with a mix of poisonous beasts and medicinal
herbs leaves open the possibility that a variant exists in which the jars contain
only herbs. The existence of such a variant is suggested by stereotypical
incantations, such as the following one from a Tzotzil bone-setter: ―Thirteen
devils [pukuj], thirteen swellings, thirteen fractures, thirteen resins of pine,
thirteen resins of vine, thirteen medicines, thirteen junctures, thirteen curings!‖
(Holland 1978: 178-179). Similarly, in the Ritual of the Bacabs, disease
symptoms are countered with thirteen jars full of hailstones, against fever (Roys
1965: 180, MS pp. 139-140), or with thirteen jars filled with the ‗blood‘, that is,
vegetal juice, of trees and bushes, to ‗replace‘ the affected blood of the patient
(Arzápalo Marín1987: fols. 227-229).312
A sequel to the canoe episode, provided by an informant commenting
upon a Mopan version of the myth, indeed comes close to such a substitution of
herbs: ―The Sun God told the man [the guardian of the jars] to watch what each
animal ate and then tell him, for, whatever plant each animal eats is the
medicine to be used by herb healers to treat anyone bitten by the animal‖ (U
179 n. 6). Both among the Q‘eqchi‘ and among the Yucatec Mayas, one notes
that the herb curing a disease is often named after the animal causing it.
That herbal medicine is indeed a central concern of the Q‘eqchi‘ version
of Hummingbird myth is nowhere more apparent than in the conclusion of the
Rubelpec tale (CT 67-68). In this variant, after the escape of the hero and his
wife from the town of the vultures and their celestial ascent and concomitant

infection due to an injury of the feet, against itching eczema, and for purifying the
blood‖(Dieseldorff 1926: 5). This last, more general application is most related to the
episode treated here.
311
It has been argued (Chapter Five) that the flower from which Hummingbird initially
sips symbolizes the woman he is wooing; this flower is, in the principal variants, a
medicinal tobacco flower.
312
This text from the Ritual of the Bacabs is found only in the Arzápalo Marín edition
(1987). Since I disagree with Arzápalo Marín‘s approach of translation, I depend here
on my own translation.
 203

transmutation, Sun and Moon can neither speak nor move. Following the logic
of disease and healing, this stagnation is apparently diagnosed as a sort of
paralysis. Curers great and small congregate, apply herbal and incense cures and
collect their fees, all to no avail. But then, the chief curer, Cosmas (i.e., the
Catholic patron of physicians, companion to Damian), arrives. This unusual
entrance is paralleled in a traditional Cahabón prayer for restoring the shadow in
which Cosmas is the first one to be addressed (Cabarrús 1979: 47; cf. Parra
Novo 1997: 134). In the myth, Cosmas succeeds in restoring health to the
celestial bodies by having them smell the fragrance of the flowers of certain
trees and lianas, thereby releasing them from their paralysis. The perspective of
healing clearly dominates over that of war and human sacrifice.313 Rather than
sacrificial blood, as in the Mexican tradition, the scent of flowers performs the
miracle of starting the Sun on his orbit.

The Curing Ritual of a ‗Serpent Master‘

Pablo Wirsing‘s observation that the Q‘eqchi‘ myth was recited during
curing rituals should, in all likelihood, be taken to mean that relevant passages
were brought forward as the occasion demanded. A curing text containing such
a reference has been recorded by Burkitt (1902: 447-448). The words are for
curing snake poisoning, an important part of the task of the healer, who is
therefore often called aj k’anti’ (serpent master; Cabarrús 1979: 66). The
incantation can be broken down into four segments: (1) the healer states his
position and intention; (2) mentions the origin of the disease; (3) ‗borrows‘ the
healing power of Mountain-Valley, Tzuultaq‘a; and (4) proceeds to his healing
action. Let us first consider the two initial sections (Burkitt 1902: 447):

―Son of mine is the small bolay[-snake] and the great bolay[-

snake], I have power [k!i], I have poison [may]; I am thy mother, I
am thy father, to quench thy fires, to extinguish thy fires, to annul
thy power and thy poison.‖

313
In Aztec creation myth (Sahagún, Leyenda de los Soles), the sun refuses to move,
and demands human hearts and blood.
 204

―Where wast thou begotten, were wast thou born?314 Under the
white sea, the blue[-green] sea. Where gottest thou thy little power
[k!i], thy little poison [may]? In the canoe of the demon of the cold
[xbalam ke].‖

The bolay mentioned in the first section is among the snakes born from
the containers, and includes the black ic’bolay (O 121, CT 41, WR 184) and the
red chacbolay (CT 41), of which the former is the more poisonous. In Q‘eqchi‘,
bolay appears to be the generic name for venomous, viper-like snakes from the
Crotalidae family, such as the fer-de-lance (Bothrops atrox) and the timber
rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus).315 With these ferocious snakes as ropes, the
hammock of the Tzuultaq‘a is tied to its poles; the snakes are also sent off to
bring death to serious offenders (Sapper 1897: 282). The ‗fire‘ of the snakes
probably refers to the spreading pain of the poisoned blood and to fever. For
ic’bolay poisoning, the corresponding herbs are ic’bolay k’een (icbolay-herb),
ic’bolay c’aam (ic’bolay-liana; Haeserijn 1979), and these may have been
among the herbs that, according to the Mopan variant discussed in the previous
section, were originally prescribed by the hero upon opening the containers.
The mythological origin of snakes appears to occupy an important place
in the snake handler‘s mind. In one of Cruz Torres‘s ethnographical sketches,
for example, a ‗serpent master‘ taming a menacing icbolay addresses it as ralal
lish quiquel li poo, or ‗daughter of the blood of the Moon‘ (Cruz Torres 1965:
333; cf. 309-310, in a context of black sorcery). The second section of the
Burkitt incantation is another example of the value the myth must once have
had as a frame of reference for serpent masters. It is of particular interest,
because it directly refers to the canoe of Xbalanque, thus confirming the
authenticity of the episode as rendered by Cruz Torres and, in a watered-down
form, by Owen.316 Burkitt, however, does not appear to have recognized
xbalamke as a name (the Popol Vuh not yet having attained its present renown)
and, by interpreting its constituent elements, arrived at the misleading
translation ‗the demon of the cold‘. Since the curer also mentions the sea as the

314
Bar! xat sia, bar! xat yola? According to Burkitt (1902: 449-450), sia presupposes a
female progenitor and could also be rendered as ‗conceived‘.
315
In Yucatec (Barrera1980 s.v.), bolay refers to devouring animals such as the jaguar.
316
Owen, in Gordon 1915. Thompson (1970: 343) ascribed the Gordon 1915 tales to
Robert Burkitt; Elin Danien (2005), however, found out that the real source was Mary
Owen, a friend of Gordon‘s.
 205

origin of the snakes and the canoe as the place where these received their
defenses, there is basic agreement between the ritual text and the myth.
Burkitt‘s text (1902: 447-448) now repeats part of the first section (―I
am thy mother, I am thy father,...‖), and then proceeds:

―A green hill, a green valley! [One Blue-green Hill, One Blue-

green Valley!] a little of thy might [k!i], a little of thy power [k!i],
shall I borrow. Thirteen potent water courses! to quench the fires of
thee, to quench the fires of thine, in the holy day, in the holy time-
of-light, that I cast out thy power [k!i] and thy poison [may].‖

―Thirteen hills, thirteen valleys! Thence cometh thy poison [may],

thy poison [may], over a mighty sea; I blow in thy mouth, I blow in
thy face, with thirteen hills, with thirteen valleys, with potent
blood, with potent ‗lymph‘.‖

Finally, the actual fulfillment of the task set in the initial section is
announced: ―I quench thy fires, I extinguish thy fires, I annihilate thy power and
thy poison.‖
‗One Blue-green Mountain-Valley‘ is coupled to the twice repeated
word, k’i (might, or power), and ‗Thirteen Mountain-Valley‘ to the twice
repeated word, may (poison). Since ‗power‘ and ‗poison‘ are also claimed by
the shaman in the first section of the text, this repetition shows his alignment
with the powers of the mountains. At this point in the healing procedure,
however, the couplet could equally be rendered as ‗abundance and medicine‘,
which would clarify the purpose of the text.317 Burkitt comments: ―The thirteen
hills enter into the doctor, and with their magical fluids of life [‗blood‘ and
‗lymph‘, EB] he breathes on the sickness and annihilates it‖ (id.: 450). Since
there is no cure without the consent of Tzuultaq‘a (‗Mountain-Valley‘),
Xbalanque, too, had to appeal to his authority before opening the Thirteen Jars.

317
Burkitt‘s rendering of the stereotypical couplet k!i – may as ‗power – poison‘ seems
open to debate. Both Haeserijn (1979) and Sam Juárez et al. (1997) render k’i (formerly
spelled q’ui) as ‗growth, abundance‘, whereas may has the opposed meanings of
‗poison‘ and (following Haeserijn) ‗medicine‘. Furthermore, in some ritual texts
(Burkitt 1902: 443; Cabarrús 1979: 66), k’i (abundance) is replaced by ki’ (sweetness).
In every case, however, the reference is to some powerful agency.
 206

Sorcery and Intrusive Magic

Normally, a Q‘eqchi‘ curer (ilonel/banonel), or ‗serpent master‘ (aj

k’anti’), is also a sorcerer (ah tul[anel]), able to practice counter-sorcery in any
form, defensively or aggressively (Cabarrús 1979: 66-67). In fact, the words for
ensorcelling are stated to be the first thing taught to apprentice healers (Parra
Novo 1997: 124-125).318 The Q‘eqchi‘ shaman thus has two complementary
roles, and he is likely to petition Tzuultaq‘a in both (Cabarrús 1979: 70). A
sorcerer conjuring the powers of death, for instance, can, in the same breath,
invoke Tzuultaq‘a to assist in punishing the prospective victim and making him
sick (Burkitt 1902: 445). The evil creatures set free by Xbalanque are
summoned for this purpose. The sorcerer calls on the powers of disease and
death to mobilize not just snakes, but all animals – snakes, toads, ants – that
have poison: ―Let all their poisons [may] collect themselves!‖ (Burkitt 1902:
445). These creatures can, of course, work from without; but even more
threatening is their devastating action from within.

‘Biters and Destroyers’

In the Wirsing text (WR 184), the evil creatures are called aj tionel - aj
sachonel (‗biters - destroyers‘), terms with a strong connotation of black, or
‗destructive‘ sorcery (re li sachoc tülac, Cabarrús 1979: 65). Indeed, with the
formula t’in tiw a t!xot!x ain ―I [shall] bite this earth!‖ (Burkitt 1902: 445), the
sorcerer acts as a ‗biter‘ himself.319 The equating of black magic with what
amounts to cannibalism is not restricted to the Q‘eqchi‘s. A term for the black
sorcerer among the Tzotziles of Chenalhó is ti’bal (‗biter, devourer‘; Guiteras
Holmes 1961: 219), which corresponds to Yucatec ah chi’bal (‗one who bites or

318
Thompson remarked about the sorcerers (pulya or ‗disease throwers‘) of southern
Belize that ―throughout the area, even in the Maya-speaking village of San Antonio
[where Thompson's variant of the myth was recorded] they are Kekchis‖ (1930: 68). For
a large part, these Q‘eqchi‘s came from Cahabñn (35-36), which up until recent times
had a reputation for sorcery (Cabarrús 1979: 62; cf. Cruz Torres 1967: 281).
319
Burkitt (446) comments that ―here the speaker gets down and bites the ground.‖ In
the context of a black sorcery ritual, the expressive act of ‗biting the ground (or earth)‘
is likely to be a demonstration of the act of ‗biting a human victim‘, with ‗earth‘ used as
a metaphor for ‗body‘.
 207

stings‘), a term repeatedly used in the Ritual of the Bacabs to refer to insects
that cause disease. Many Mayan groups believe that evil sorcerers can either
enlist, or convert themselves into, certain animals (wayob) in order to attack and
kill the protective animal companions and devour the associated souls of the
members of the community, who thereby fall ill and die. Alternatively, the
person who loses his soul (ch’ulel) becomes like ‗meat‘ (ti’bol) to the devourer
(ti’bal; Guiteras Holmes 1961: 219-220). Thus, within a context of black
sorcery, the enemy is attacked and devoured by the parallel action of animal
doubles and evil creatures (cf. Hermitte 1970: 110-111).
In the Cruz Torres variant (CT 40-42), the poison (may) applied by the
hero is material: It is made to enter the teeth of snakes, the sting of the scorpion,
the skin of the toad, the legs of the flies, and so forth. This does not imply,
however, that these creatures always cause disease directly, or that the diseases
are only those that modern medicine would predict. The main means by which
sorcerers transmit disease is magical intrusion, either into food or directly into
the body. The intruding animals are of the same sort as those born from the first
twelve of the thirteen jars. For the Tzotziles of Chenalhó, for example, Guiteras
Holmes lists various sorts of poisonous snakes, ants, wasps, scorpions, and,
secondarily, armadillos, frogs, toads, and rats.320
In Chenalhó, ‗Thirteen‘ is a name for diseases caused by intrusion
because ―thirteen is the number of items put by magic into the victim‘s body‖
(viz. the animals just mentioned, plus a prickly grass; Guiteras 1961: 135).321
The use of thirteen objects in intrusion magic seems to have been widespread.
For example, an early 18th-century Kaqchikel curer specialized in undoing black
sorcery is reported to have performed a cure in which tadpoles, toads, and
beetles – together with inanimate objects such as strands of corn silk and cords
– were extracted from the patient‘s intestines and orifices. The creatures and
objects, numbering thirteen in all, were subsequently burnt (Hill 1992: 103-105;
cf. Wisdom 1940: 350-351). The parallel of these practices to the thirteen jars
and the various classes of animals they contain is clear, and this makes the
reappearance of the restored woman in the thirteenth jar all the more dramatic.

320
Guiteras Holmes1961: 135; cf. Hermitte 1970: 110; and Nuñez de la Vega, in
Brinton 1894: 19.
321
One might have expected the number nine here, but Guiteras is emphatic. In
Chenalhó, ‗thirteen‘ also refers to poisonous snakes (1961: 293), and to manifestations
of evil sorcery generally (223, 227).
 208

Worms and flies in particular are feared as transmitters of disease,

directed by the action of evil sorcerers. Indeed, ―the future sorcerer (Z[utuhil],
aj its, Sp., brujo) comes into the world with worms or flies clutched in the fist‖
(Paul 1975: 708). In Yucatan, the flies are among the ‗pets‘ of the evil sorcerer,
a term reminding one of the affectionate treatment of the snakes and insects by
the Q‘eqchi‘ hero. They spoil the food of a victim with their eggs (Redfield and
Villa Rojas 1934: 178). Among the Tzotziles, the blow-flies belong to the
agents of sorcery directed against hostile communities and damage their
livestock with worms (Laughlin 1977: 60-63; Holland 1978: 142). The concept
is widespread. Among the Ch‘orti‘s, Ah Yacax ‗Fly King of Hell‘, is invoked by
evil sorcerers to send worms and flies into the nasal cavities of their victims
(Wisdom 1940: 405 and n. 52, cf. 341).
In several Q‘eqchi‘ variants, worms (DD 184, O-b 121) and caterpillars
(TH 129) are mentioned among the evil offspring of the Maiden. Consistent
with the presence of caterpillars in the containers, Wilson (WL 328) includes
butterflies among the creatures born from her blood. Amongst other evil
creatures, Tzotzil black sorcerers invoke butterflies to cast disease (Holland
1978: 250 ff). Conversely, one finds a Yucatec curer from Dzitas who makes a
butterfly leave a swollen navel, and then burns it. In another case, worms,
butterflies, insects, and a snake leave the swollen abdomen of a seemingly
pregnant woman (Redfield and Park 1940: 76-77).
With regard to the ‗crickets‘ in the containers (WL 328), these may
rather refer to the locusts, or grasshoppers, with which they are often confused.
Locusts, as well as the rats mentioned by Mayén among the creatures in the jars,
are mainly agricultural evils that can damage or even devastate the fields.
Locusts are among the weapons of the black sorcerer (e.g., Gossen 1974: 269,
Tale 29). Thompson reports an invasion of locusts and the ‗service‘ held in the
church of San Antonio, Belize, on that occasion: ―Thirteen of them [the locusts]
are caught in a milpa and taken to the church, where, shut up in a receptacle,
they are placed on the altar. Four black beeswax candles are lit, and a service is
held. After the service the thirteen locusts are returned to the milpa from which
they were taken‖ (Thompson 1930: 52). The black beeswax candles are a clear
indication that this ritual represents black counter-sorcery through which the
 209

entire locust swarm is to be returned to the ones who sent them.322 The formula
used on the occasion is equally applied to rats (ibid.).
In the Thompson (TH 129) and Wirsing variants (WR 185), the jars
holding the ‗biters and destroyers‘ are, once opened, handed to a man who is to
throw them into the lake or sea.323 These containers are like the gourds or other
containers holding the evils extracted by a curer, which are inevitably to be
discarded somewhere outside the area of human habitation. If they are not
discarded, the contagion will spread everywhere. In most variants, this is
precisely what happens: The man charged with casting out the biters succumbs
to curiosity and opens the jars.324

‘Fever Vessels’
Not only the ‗biters and destroyers‘ themselves belong to the sphere of
shamanic warfare, the jars in which, according to Q‘eqchi‘ myth, they
originated, and which so terrified their guardians, have similar associations. The
‗receptacle‘ containing thirteen ‗crickets‘ mentioned above is probably a case in
point. A Chamula Tzotzil tale is more explicit, in that it has a sorcerer putting
worms, bats and smoke in a pot and locating it alongside a road; passing by the
spot, the intended victims were contaminated by the pot‘s contents (Gossen
1974: 269, Text 29). The stratagem is similar to an incident from the early wars
of the K‘iche‘s, in which the wives of the tribal leaders uncovered four jars
filled with stinging hornets, wasps, and snakes, so as to bring a decisive defeat

322
Thompson (1930: 52) somewhat naïvely commented: ―Presumably, this is done so
that they may carry the message to their fellow locusts.‖
323
Disposal in the sea was a common procedure. The worm responsible for toothache,
for example, was thrown out into the sea and tied to aquatic plants by a crab (Gordon
1915: 112), or imprisoned in a conch (Ritual of the Bacabs, in Roys 1965: MS pp. 166,
170).
324
A very similar disposal episode is part of Gulf Coast maize hero myth. There, the
ashes of the cannibalistic Old Adoptive Mother, on being unpacked, are converted into
various sorts of evil creatures, usually insects (e.g., Ichon 1969: 259), but at times
including snakes and other creeping animals (e.g., Elson 1947: 202-203). In Oaxacan
Sun and Moon myth, it is the ashes of a man-eating animal, rather than those of the old
woman herself, which are to be cast out but change into biting insects (e.g., Mixe, Lipp
1992: 75-76).
 210

over the Seven Tribes325 – the four jars of the K‘iche‘ ancestresses being
reminiscent of the four jars with bees in the 1926 Dieseldorff variant of
Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth (DD 5).
The use of the jar as a sort of ‗biological weapon‘ is not restricted to
Mesoamerica, and particularly its symbolism among the Desana Tukanos of
Colombia can help us to bring the meaning of the jars in Q‘eqchi‘ myth into
sharper focus. In discussing the banishing of disease agents, Reichel-Dolmatoff
(1977: 95) describes the ‗throwing‘ of a vessel resembling a jar for holding
intoxicating beverages, but filled with mosquitoes. This vessel is considered to
be female, and the author argues that the practice of using it as a weapon should
be understood in the context of exogamic marital relations: ―A vessel full of
disease is a well-known metaphor among the Desana and, generally, represents
a forbidden marriage-partner. Sometimes it is said of an evil payé [shaman] that
he will hide such a vessel near a maloca [communal house] or the landing place
of an enemy, who then will be ‗stung by mosquitoes‘.‖ By analogy with the
Tukano ‗fever vessel‘, the womb-like jars of poisonous snakes and insects in
Q‘eqchi‘ myth could be taken to symbolize Mountain-Valley‘s refusal to make
the female womb of his daughter available for marriage and human procreation:
Through his anger, another ‗forbidden‘ female marriage partner is transformed
into ‗a vessel full of disease‘, and misalliance becomes the origin of death.

Another Pregnancy
The theme of equipping black sorcerers for casting disease, inherent in
the birth and empowerment of ‗biters and destroyers‘, is further elaborated upon
in the mythical episode of Moon‘s abduction by the black vultures and her
subsequent cohabitation with their king. This king is called by an evasive term
for the Devil, Ma-us-ajcuink (‗Not-good Man‘; CT 55ff, WR 72ff). For some,
he can assume the shape of a king vulture (TH 130).
In all likelihood, Ma-us is a god of evil sorcery. In the myth, he is also
called Aj Tza’ (WR 75), a common term for the devil, which Burkitt renders as
‗The Enemy‘ (1902: 446). As such, this figure is invoked in rituals of black
sorcery (Burkitt 1902: 445). Moreover, Ma-us ‗Not-Good‘ has a namesake

325
Título de Totonicapán fols. 11v-12v, in Carmack and Mondloch (1983: 179 and
corresponding notes); cf. Chonay and Goetz (1974: 173-174).
 211

among the Nahuas of the northern mountains of Puebla, namely Ahmo-cualli

‗Not-Good‘, who is represented by owls and vultures. This deity is invoked by
shape-shifting sorcerers and sends mortal diseases to his victims (Signorini and
Lupo 1989: 143-145). Mopan variants (U 178, V 52) have explicitly drawn the
obvious consequence from Moon‘s cohabitation with the Evil One: her
pregnancy. Sun violently causes her to abort by kicking her belly, and the
goddess gives birth, either to young vultures (V) or to snakes, toads, lizards, and
scorpions (U). In the latter case, the original ‗biters and destroyers‘ have thus
reappeared, but now exclusively as the offspring of an evil sorcerer and only to
be immediately killed off.326
There is a similarity between the goddess‘s pregnancy and the pseudo-
pregnancy of the bewitched Yucatec woman from Dzitas noted earlier, whose
swollen belly held snakes and insects. A Tzotzil example from Chenalhó
(Guiteras Holmes 1961: 254) connects pseudo-pregnancy directly to
cohabitation with a sorcerer. A woman suffering from pains in the abdomen and
with difficulties in defecating has frightening dreams in which ―a baby appears
who then turns into a man with whom she copulates.‖ Her husband tells her that
―it is Tentaciñn‖, responsible for the maladies, ‗Temptation‘ being one of the
many aspects of the Evil One. In a similar vein, a Yucatec sorcerer asks a client
about his prospective victim: ―Do you want me to make her shit snakes? [...] Do
you want me to make her give birth to a gopher?‖ (Burns 1983: 136).
The line separating pseudo-pregnancy from true pregnancy is not
always a sharp one: ―If a pregnant girl or woman denies having had sexual
intercourse, it is thought by many Pedranos that the pregnancy was caused by
evil sorcery‖ (Guiteras 1961: 102), and abortion is induced by a healer (id.:
105). Conversely, women may bewitch men. When a man dreams about women
soliciting men on the marketplace to make them marry them, this signifies
danger to the soul, for ―we know that woman is illness‖ (id.: 271).
One way to deal with such sorcery stories would be to take sexual
intrusion resulting from cohabitation with a (generally female) victim as a
specific form of generation of disease by object intrusion. In any case, the
obvious interaction with European witch beliefs concerning succubus and

326
Among the Tzeltales, ―when the power to work evil came from the devil, sorcery
was illegitimate, and the sorcerers were liable to be killed. It was said that such
evildoers descended from a woman seduced by the devil‖ (Nash 1973: 221; cf. Holland
1978: 133).
 212

incubus should not deceive us into considering these stories to be extraneous to

native ways of thought. To the contrary, they are firmly bound to traditional
indigenous perceptions about the relations between the sexes, the nature of
woman, and the role that sexuality can play in connecting human to non-human
worlds.

The ‗Lust of Creation‘ and the Origin of Disease

The twofold origin of disease in Q‘eqchi‘-Mopan Hummingbird myth is

basically a sexual one, since either it is the indirect consequence of an illicit
cohabitation of Hummingbird and his fiancée that, upon discovery, prompts the
fatal flight, or it is the direct result of an even less desirable cohabitation with
‗Not-Good‘. Although this specific myth about the origin of poison and disease
does not seem to occur among other groups, it shares its basic notion of a sexual
origin of disease agents with the most important early colonial collection of
Mayan curing rituals, the ‗Ritual of the Bacabs‘ (Roys 1965; cf. Arzápalo Marín
1987). This manuscript, written in Yucatec, opens with a series of eleven rituals
for tancas (MS pp. 1-90), a term usually referring to seizures and epileptic fits.
Whatever the specific name of the tancas, in each case the actual disease agents
mentioned are snakes, lizards, wasps, and ants. The next series of six rituals
(MS pp. 90-115) mainly concerns k’ak (‗fire, fever, inflammation‘), a term
specifically referring to skin diseases. Again, the symptoms are all caused by
the same sort of small animals. Accordingly, more recent names for k’ak
diseases largely refer to snakes, wasps, and similar creatures (Roys 1931, in
Thompson 1972: 50).
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth and in the Ritual of the Bacabs, these disease agents
are the ultimate outcome of sexual transgression. In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, an
illegitimate sexual union, brought about by love magic, precedes the birth of
disease. The resulting pregnancy takes the form of gestation in womb-like
containers, with the husband playing a ritual role; menstrual blood is viewed as
the origin of disease. In the Ritual of the Bacabs, the evil creatures appear to be
a direct result of negatively valued sexual lust.327 Thus, in the context of the

327
María Montolíu Villar (1990) made an attempt to link the Q‘eqchi‘ myth to the
Ritual of the Bacabs by way of a folktale from Izamal, Yucatan, while emphasizing the
notion of sexual transgression leading to the origin of disease. It has already been noted
(in Chapter Five) that, apart from its conclusion, the Izamal tale is a faithful narrative
 213

origin of the disease – or rather, its agents (as on MS pp. 171-172) – one time
and again comes upon expressions such as u col ch’ab u col akab (with its
variants, cool and coil), rendered by Roys as ‗lust‘ (or lewdness) of [male]
creation and [female] darkness‘ (1965: xv).328 In most cases, these expressions
are used either to refer to the disease agents or to address them. Roys (1965: xii)
further notes that the shaman ―recounts its [the disease‘s] parentage often only
on the mother‘s side.‖ If a father is mentioned at all, he is in most cases called
by what would seem to be a title of the upper god in his punitive aspect (cf.
Roys 1965: xvii). On the other hand, for the mother – or, more often, mothers –
there is a staggering array of female names and titles, their occurrence
depending on the sort of affliction. It is primarily on the female side that the
specificity of the disease is being established.
With regard to the etiology of disease, both the specific notion of
intrusion (of snakes into the belly, wasps into the head, worms into the teeth)
and the more general one of ‗bite‘ or ‗sting‘ (chibal) are prevalent. As in the
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the idea of poisoning is implied in both cases. Terms for ‗heat‘
or ‗power‘ with the primary implication of ‗poison‘ and a secondary one of
‗medicine‘ are common (kinam, cabil, dzacal). In addition to this, the disease-
agent is stated to receive its poison from a deity. It ‗falls‘ in a certain direction,
at the place of the deity, and there vomits, licks blood or froth, and takes its
poison (e.g., MS pp. 7-8, 66-67). The ‗viscous poison‘ (cabil) in particular was
believed to stick to the back of spiders and creeping creatures (Motul dictionary,
in Barrera Vásquez 1980: 278 s.v. kab), a belief that harmonizes well with the
way they received their poison in the Cruz Torres tale.
Moreover, at the beginning of a short incantation for the cure of a spider
bite, one finds an etiology (MS p. 157) closely approximating the canoe scene
itself: ―Three days were you apart in the trough [or canoe, chemil] of the earth.
Ah Uuc-ti-cab [Lord Seven-Earth]; then, how [thus], you took the viscous
poison of your back.‖ Considering the fact that, in the Cruz Torres variant, the
poison came from tobacco juice, making its cure with tobacco possible, it is
instructive to compare the canoe of Uuc-ti-cab, filled with poison, to another

expression of the ‗Plumeria seizure‘ described in the Ritual of the Bacabs (MS pp. 30-
31, in Roys 1965: 11, 76).
328
Three pairings are recurrent: kin - akab (day – night), ch’ab - sihil (creation – birth),
and ch’ab - akab (creation – night). It should be noted that kin - u (sun – moon) is
nowhere found to substitute for one of these pairs.
 214

canoe filled with tobacco juice mentioned in a cure for asthma (MS pp. 64-
82).329 The word used is again chem(il), meaning both canoe and trough. The
disease agent gets its poison by falling to various places in the east, the last of
which is a canoe (MS pp. 66-67). It remains virulent until it arrives, at the end
of a ritual circuit, at the canoe in the south (MS p. 80): ―Then he entered to the
front of the trough [or canoe], its front. For four days he would drink the juice
of the red tobacco, the white tobacco, the black tobacco. Then he would be
asleep; then he would be curled up.‖
Finally, the ‗marginal area‘ of the seashore where the evil creatures are
born from their containers and where they should have been cast back into the
sea is also found in the Ritual of the Bacabs. In this case, the shores of sea and
lagoon are repeatedly mentioned as the place where disease agents ‗fall down‘
to cause damage.330 From these, and from the other parallels just reviewed (to
which the thirteen ritual jars mentioned under ‗Herbal Substitutes‘ also belong),
it seems safe to conclude that Q‘eqchi‘ myth, especially in its Cruz Torres
rendering, offers a variation on themes and motifs already present in early
Yucatec curing rituals. Indeed, its specific configuration of these elements is
arguably the most important mythological expression of Mayan ethnomedical
lore to have survived.

329
For an insightful discussion of the asthma ritual, see Rätsch and K‘ayum Ma‘ax
(1986: 137ff).
330
The beach is mentioned, in the Roys edition (1965), on MS pp. 37, 38 (tarantula-
fever); 54, 60 (wasp-seizure); 64-85 (asthma); 109, 112, 113 (red ulcers); 118 (snake-
pulsation in the abdomen); 131 (snakes and worms in the abdomen); and 140 (wasp-
poisoning).
 215

CHAPTER 8

TRANSFORMATIONS OF WOMAN: MAIZE SEEDS

The alliance with the daughter of the mountain is a precondition for the
existence of the ‗man made of meat‘, and the same holds true in the case of the
latter‘s complement, the ‗man made of maize‘. The daughter of Tzuultaq‘a who
– in the bridal service versions where she is usually changed into animals –
assisted Hummingbird in cultivating the maize is, in some bridal capture
versions, changed into the maize herself. In an Ixil Hummingbird tale
(Yurchenco 2006: 87-88), the maiden contains in her belly the kernel that,
fertilized by Hummingbird, gives origin to the maize upon her destruction by
her father; in the tales considered below, however, the Mesoamerican concept
of the mountain as a maize granary is paramount. Applying the same reasoning
as in the other versions, I shall argue that the relation between Hummingbird
and his maize wife prefigures that between the maize farmer and the sowing
seeds.

Hummingbird Myth as a Maize Mountain Myth

The Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon ‗legend‘ as set out by Thompson is

preceded by the story of the Former Sun(s) and concluded by the ascent of Sun,
Moon, and Venus into the sky. The epic tale of origins is incomplete, however,
since ―at that time, mankind had no maize or other agricultural plants. They and
the animals lived on fruits and the roots they found in the forest. However, there
was maize in the world. It was hidden under a great rock‖ (Thompson 1930:
132). When the discovery of the maize treasure had been made, and the rock
had been split by lightning deities, the maize seeds became available to
mankind and to the associated maize-eating animals. The Pipil myth of the rain
brothers (Schultze-Jena) has its heroes first defeat the Old Adoptive Mother and
her lover, and then open the Maize Mountain and introduce agriculture. The se-
quence in the Popol Vuh is identical (and, indeed, may have served Thompson
as a model for his presentation): Once the Twins have ascended into the sky
after having made the earth inhabitable by defeating the predominant powers of
disease and death, the tale of the discovery of the maize and the splitting of the
 216

Maize Mountain is told. The tale of the opening of the Maize Mountain belongs
to a wider Mesoamerican tradition; in its Aztec rendition according to the
Annals of Cuauhtitlan, it involves both a deity who is to become the sun
(Nanahuatzin) and the hero Quetzalcoatl transformed into an ant.
Most of the variants of the Maize Mountain myth do not ask how the
maize seeds became imprisoned in the mountain. However, Q‘eqchi‘s and
Poqomchi‘s have raised and answered this crucial question by making
Hummingbird responsible for it. In this more complete rendition of the Maize
Mountain myth, the first part constitutes another version of Hummingbird
myth.331

The Storage Chambers of the Earth

The Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird, or ‗Sun‘, not only has a role to play in the
areas of hunting and curing, he is also vitally important to agriculture. Sun‘s
agricultural role already transpires in the main version of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and
Moon myth. In the adultery episode, Sun is pictured as a farmer sowing his
maize field, an activity ritually requiring absolute peace and harmony; instead,
his wife, Moon, is having an affair with his elder brother (see Chapter Eleven).
Moreover, among the harmful creatures that escaped from the twelve jars, there
were (in the Wilson variant) also agricultural evils, such as crickets (locusts)
and rats.
In the Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird tale to be considered first (Cuz 2001: 31-
34), the roles of Sun and Moon are similar to those in all other Hummingbird
myths discussed so far. The tale was collected in the framework of a project on
‗Mayan spirituality‘ organized by the Q‘eqchi‘ branch of the Academia de
Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, for which interviews with traditional Mayan
farmers and their wives were conducted. On their flight, the hero and his wife
cross a large expanse of water without being harmed, and follow the course of a
river. Next, Hummingbird magically constructs a ‗rock house‘, i.e. a cave, and
urges his wife, Lady Moon, to enter it:

331
References to the sources will be found in Appendix B. The abbreviated name of the
author is followed by the page number(s).
 217

―…the woman, Lady Moon, is already pregnant. […] The moment

came that they arrived in the desert.332 They took a rest, the man
[Saq’e ‗Sun‘] came, and whistled [kixxuyb’a] to the rocks, ―xuy
xuy xuy‖ he said. Thereupon he started to construct a rock house,
he left a small peeping hole in it. When that had succeeded, the
man said to the young woman, ―Now you shall stay here.‖ ―You
only … [?kinaawisa] ‖, said she. ―That is not what you have told
me‖, she said to him. ―No, I shall see to you, I shall love you‖, the
man said to her. ―Oh! no, that is not true.‖ ―It doesn‘t matter,
because it is necessary for you to take care of our children. You
shall give them whatever they need. When they want the seed of
the red maize, the white maize, the yellow maize, you will give it
to them. Because that is your work, that you will be staying here.
You will give them their food and drink, so that the food of all that
is ours will not stop and finish, of our great-grandchildren and of
our animals. In such a way our grandfathers and grandmothers
have worked the holy Mountain-Valley.‖ (My trans.)

One may note the quarreling, which traditionally characterizes the

relationship between Sun and Moon. Nonetheless, the tale‘s intention is serious.
Apparently, the Moon – the first woman to bear children – is treated as the first
ancestress of mankind, of ‗our children‘ and of ‗our grandfathers and
grandmothers‘. At the same time, the meaning of her pregnancy is ambiguous.
If it seems that she is pregnant of human children, one should also consider that
during the period of ritual abstention surrounding the first sowing, ―the maize is
the pregnant woman who is going to give birth‖ (Hatse and De Ceuster 2001a:
54). The cave created by her husband, Sun, is thus first of all intended as a
house of birth, and then, also, as a storehouse for the maize seeds. The role
assigned to Moon, dispensing the maize seeds, manifests the vital importance of
the phases of the Moon for sowing and the subsequent development of the
plants.
To this point, we have been dealing with a tale that at only one point
shows a sign of the context in which it was produced. When, during their flight
from the girl‘s father, Sun and Moon had to cross a water, Sun first talked to

332
The significance of this ‗desert‘ (chaqich’och’ ‗dry earth‘) is unclear. The motif
could stem from the popular story of Mary and Joseph‘s flight into Egypt (compare
Chapter Five, ‗Hummingbird Myth in Petitioners‘ Speech‘) and also, perhaps, serve to
symbolize the dry season and the dry seeds.
 218

three turtles. Then, Moon entered the carapace of one of these, ―so that the three
turtles, they bear the earth on their heads [a’aneb nake’b’iton li ruuchich’och’],
so that we use in our prayer the expression ‗tz’aqol b’itool‘ [roughly, ‗one
whose turn it is to carry on the head‘].‖ It is probable that here, the names of
two of the creator deities in the Popol Vuh have been reinterpreted. As it
happens, the book containing the tale is introduced by a prayer, taken from the
Popol Vuh and translated into Q‘eqchi‘, which starts with the invocation: ―You,
Our Lord Tz‘aqol, B‘itol!‖
The Hummingbird tale quoted above has a sequel. Regarding the
directive, ―You will give them their food and drink, so that the food of all that is
ours will not stop and finish‖, the narrator counters certain voices of doubt: ―It
has been said that the holy maize is depleted, but that is not true‖, and
continues:

―There still is [maize] where the sun goes up, where the sun goes
under, where the wind goes up, where the wind goes under,333
through the holy Moon, the holy Sun, when they went around the
world, when they gave its name to each of the holy storehouses
[k’uuleb’aal] of the seed, in this way: [1] Our Father Kawoq-Kaaq
[Thunder]. Where the Sun goes up, that is, the house of the red
corn ear. [2] Imox. Q‘uqumatz-Tepeyak. Where the wind goes up,
that is, the house of the white corn ear. [3] Aq‘ab‘al. Q‘eq [Black].
Aak‘ab‘ [Dark]-Chijolom. Where the sun goes under, that is, the
house of the black corn ear. [4] Q‘aniil. Paxiil-Tib‘elej. Where the
wind goes under, that is, the house of the yellow corn ear. These
four are called ‗Jwalchan‘.‖ (My transl.)

Normally, the colors of the maize are said to originate through the heat
of the lightnings opening up the Maize Mountain, but since in the present tale
there is no lightning, the existence of variously colored maize ears is explained
by reference to solar positions visible at the horizon.334 In the passage above, the
yellow maize is associated with Paxiil-Tib’elej, i.e. Paxiil-‗Flesh‘. Paxiil is the

333
In Burkitt‘s ‗The Hill and the Corn‘ (1920: 199 n. 11), one finds the expression
―between the sun and the wind‖ (sa’xyanq li saq’e jo’wi’ li iq’); Burkitt interprets it
here as ―between the rising sun, and a wind probably blowing from the south.‖
334
Not unexpectedly, the ears of four colors can also be personified by four maidens, as
shown by a story from San Pedro Soloma, beyond the Q‘eqchi‘ region (R. Montejo, in
Navarrete 2000: 58-59).
 219

traditional name for the Maize Mountain, mentioned not only in the Popol Vuh,
but also in many tales from other ethnic groups (Miles 1960; Navarrete 2000);
the addition of ‗Flesh‘ renders it virtually synonymous with the Nahua name for
the Maize Mountain, Tonacatepetl ‗Mountain of Our Flesh‘.
The classification according to the four directional colors is unusual in
that they are associated with four days of the 260-day calendar (Kawoq, Imox,
Aq‘ab‘al, Q‘aniil). Although popular within the Maya Movement, this calendar
is no longer in use among the traditional Q‘eqchi‘s. The day names stem from
Guatemala‘s dominant Mayan group, the K‘iche‘s (who still use the 260-day
calendar), and are in part provided with Q‘eqchi‘ translations. Since the Popol
Vuh creator deities, Q‘uq‘umatz and Tepeyak, are also mentioned, this part of
the text betrays a syncretism of K‘iche‘ and Q‘eqchi‘ notions.335
The final part of the tale (C 34) expands the fourfold classification
while focusing on the mountains as resting places for Sun and Moon during
their travels:

―When Our Father Sun together with Lady Moon went around the
world, they first went to where the sun goes up to rest on Kaqi Pek
[Red Rock]. Second, they went to where the wind goes up to rest
on Tepeyak. Third, they went to rest where the sun goes under on
Xjolom Pek. Fourth, they went to rest on the Jwalchan. There they
left the holy maize. Happily they left the holy maize, happily each
of them was in the holy Mountain-Valley, on the holy rocks.‖ (My
trans.)

A short parallel passage (Cuz 2002: 19) adds a fifth mountain, simply
called ‗the Middle‘ (li Xyi). Taking everything together, the cavernous
storehouse of the maize seeds where Hummingbird left his wife is placed within
a fourfold classification of mountains and their associated maize ears, together
representing the holy (loq’laj) landscape, or Tzuultaq‘a – which is also the
name of the aged father of Moon. This landscape is clearly analogous to the
maize field in the ritual of the first deposition of the seeds: The seeds are
planted in the center of the field, where the altar is, and in its four corners

335
It cannot be entirely excluded that this part of the text has to some extent been
influenced by staff members of the ‗Spirituality‘ Project.
 220

(Knoke 1981: 143 ff; Wilson 1995: 102; Hatse and De Ceuster 2001b: 106ff).336
I believe that the present version of Sun and Moon myth goes a long way in
resolving Wilson‘s perplexity at finding (1995: 103-106) that in the just-
mentioned ritual, called ‗taking possession of the maize field‘ (chapok
k’al),337‗Father Sun‘ and ‗Mother Moon‘ were among the first deities to be
invoked. The Sun is otherwise absent from rituals pertaining to the land; the
Moon represents women, who are generally excluded from ritual sowings.
According to the tale, however, this primeval couple, in defiance of the
patriarchal and fearsome Tzuultaq‘a, took possession of the world, conceived as
a maize field. In so doing they were able to assist their progeny, mankind, in its
cultivation.
The woman in the cave recurs in a brief and much more syncretic
Q‘eqchi‘ tale told by a man from the Alta Verapaz living in El Estor (MR/B
125), in which the Moon guarding the maize seeds has become a princess with
very white maize teeth, born ―on a night when the moon was full.‖

―One morning while she was taking a bath, she heard a voice say to
her, ‗Follow those footsteps that you see and you will meet a very
special man.‘ The tracks led her to the entrance of a cave. Inside
she met the man that the voice had told her about and she stayed
with him for some time. One day she found out that there was a
famine in her land because numerous mice had eaten all the corn
seeds. The princess returned to her father who said to her, ‗Go and
look for corn seeds because the children and old people are going
to die of hunger.‘ The princess began to walk and walk. One night
she went to sleep and when she awoke, she was in her lover‘s cave.
She cried and told the man about what was happening in her town.
He said to her, ‗Return to your village and tell the men to work the
earth. Afterwards, take out your teeth and plant them.‘ She did as
he instructed and the milpas grew and grew and produced grains of
white corn. Now there was no more hunger and nobody died
because of the lack of food. Each time that you see corn, think of
the princess who planted her teeth to save lives in her village.‖

336
There would appear to be an analogy with taking possession of a territory in the
parallel rites of the hunters and warriors, with arrows substituting for digging-sticks. In
Huaxtec narrative, for example, the mythical demarcation of the first maize field occurs
when the maize hero shoots an arrow towards each of the field‘s four corners (Alcorn
1984: 341).
337
For some reason, Wilson opted for the awkward translation ‗grab crop‘.
 221

Although Hummingbird and his love magic are absent, the El Estor tale
can still be considered a variant of Hummingbird myth, albeit an atypical one.
By comparison with our first tale, the cave constructed by Hummingbird has
become the lover‘s cave, and Hummingbird‘s instruction to give the farmers
(being his own ‗children‘) their sowing seed has become a more general
instruction to ―tell the men to work the earth,‖ and then to plant his wife‘s teeth,
or maize kernels, for them. Moreover, the woman‘s father, left behind in the
first tale, is still present and acting in the background. The princess returns to
him, and this return motif equally characterizes the Hummingbird variants to be
discussed presently.
First, however, it may be worth demonstrating the similarity of the El
Estor tale to the Hummingbird myth by comparing it to another origin tale of
the maize, one that does not belong to the Hummingbird group. In a K‘iche‘ tale
from Cantel (Weisshaar and Hostnig 1995: 4-7), God sent a young woman with
a yellow skin to the earth. Having first been courted by a lazy man called ‗The
Dreamer‘ whom she rejected, she then ―felt that someone called her to the
mountain,‖ where she entered a cave. On her own request, she was ritually
killed there. Later, a brave young man called ‗The Whistler‘ (Ajxub’) passed the
cave, entered, and saw a maize stalk, which told him: ―Bring me to your house
and sow me in the earth. […] I will be your flesh and your bones. You only
have to thank God when you eat me.‖ The bringing home of the ‗bride‘ turned
into a joyous procession in which the whole community participated, with the
young maize stalk high above the heads on a litter – the procession being in fact
the feast of Cantel‘s own Virgin.
Again, the notion of a marriage to the maize is put forward, first in the
courtship of the Dreamer, then in the invitation to the parallel figure of the
Whistler to take the maize woman to his home. Various motifs of the El Estor
tale recur: The father (or rather, God the Father), the dream-like voice directing
the woman to the cave, her transplantation to a community, and the sowing of
(parts of) her body. At the same time, the correspondence to the present episode
in the Hummingbird tales, with its strong emphasis on the affinal tie to the
Tzuultaq‘a, has notably diminished.
In the final three Hummingbird tales, the woman, protected by the turtle
carapace, has not been hurt by Lightning, and the couple continues its voyage.
According to Schumann‘s composite Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird tale (SCH 214),
from Purula (Baja Verapaz) and Chamelco (Alta Verapaz):
 222

―For days they kept fleeing, until they came to a cave. There the
three of them [including the turtle, EB] entered and she had
relations with the man, and when she was already certain that she
was expecting a child, she asked the man to go to her home and to
convince her father that he should forgive them and that then they
would return to live with him.‖

A Poqomchi‘ variant from San Cristóbal Verapaz (Mayers 1958: 6) is in

agreement:

―[…] the baby began to form. Let‘s go they said. Let‘s go now
with our father said the girl. ―Okay,‖ he said and they came and
found a rock cliff [tz’akrep] or a stone house [pet abaj]. ―I will
inform your father first,‖ he said. ―Okay,‖ she said.‖

However, while Hummingbird was on his way to restore the relation

with the ‗Grandfather‘ of his child, ―the cave started to close itself, and the
woman and the turtle stayed within. Afterwards only a cliff remained and no
one could see that there was a cave in that place. The woman stayed in the cave
forever changed into maize‖ (SCH); or: ―The girl stayed in the rock place [pan
abaj] from then on. She turned into corn‖ (M).
Having explained how the maize came to be in the mountain, the tales
proceed to set out the tale of the opening of the Maize Mountain. The details of
this episode lie largely outside the scope of this study (for a recent discussion,
see Navarrete 2000), except for one point: The relation of the Maize Woman‘s
father to the upper god ordering the opening of the Maize Mountain. The
Schumann variant distinguishes between the ‗father of the girl‘ and ‗Dios‘, the
Mayers variant between the ‗father of the girl (rajaw i xuk’un, actually the girl‘s
‗lord‘ or master)‘, and ‗Our Father‘ (Kajaw), who is also the ‗Our Father‘ of the
Lord‘s Prayer. These differences may be due to the imperfect integration of
Hummingbird myth and Maize Mountain myth; the oldest variant, that of
Tiburcio Caal, calls both figures by the same name, that of a specific
Tzuultaq‘a: Xucaneb Mountain.
Finally, the Santa Cruz Verapaz Poqomchi‘ variant (BM) presents a
complication of the plot by introducing another male character. The fugitives
continue to be pursued once they have crossed the sea. They construct stone
walls on three mountains to hold up the angry Grandfather. These mountains –
 223

Don Juan, Don Paxil, and Don Pablo – are all considered to be (probably in a
metaphorical sense) ‗fathers of the maize‘ (BM 71 n. 13); they seem to take the
place of the four ‗resting-places‘ of Sun and Moon mentioned in the Q‘eqchi‘
tale we started with, all these mountains serving as store-houses for the maize
seed, with Paxiil occurring in both tales. When the old man is halted by these
obstacles, he orders two hawks to continue the pursuit, but to no avail:

―When K‘iche‘ Winak had left the mountains behind, he arrived at

the house of a man from Rabinal, to whom he gave the girl in
charge for seven years,338 instructing him to deposit her afterwards
in a cave situated in these mountains and to leave three candles of
twenty-five pesos each for her to have light. Then K‘iche‘ Winak
ascended into the sky and changed into the Sun. The Rabinal man
accomplished his duty. He sought a cave the entrance of which had
a small opening and there he left the girl. Once inside the cave, she
changed into the maize and for a long time, nobody knew that in
this place there existed such a cereal.‖

The three candles are likely to reflect agricultural ritual related to

sowing, as appears from information gathered by Wilson (1995: 94). He was
told that ―during the planting vigil, the seeds are ‗being born‘. They must have
light for this because ‗the seed cannot be born in the darkness‘;‖ and therefore, a
candle is inserted in the basket with maize seeds on the house altar. The three
candles left in the cave alternate with the turtle carrier that according to the
Schumann variant was taken into the cave. This single turtle carrier corresponds
to the three turtle carriers of the Cuz variant. Since the traditional Q‘eqchi‘s pay
much attention to the nocturnal sky, it is not impossible that these three turtles
refer to a constellation of three stars signaling sowing time,339 ‗Turtle‘ being
such a Mayan constellation. The three candles could equally symbolize a

338
Seven is the number of the Earth. There are seven maize seeds in one sowing-hole,
seven tonal patterns of the music for the maize, seven tamales for the assisting sowers
(Knoke 1981: 145-148); esoteric lore pertaining to the Earth should be kept secret for
seven years (Cabarrús 1979: 51); etc.
339
In San Juan Chamelco (Knoke 1981: 144), the ritual proceedings on the day of
sowing start ―when one of the three main stars of dawn is in a certain position‖; whether
these stars belong to one and the same constellation, remains unclear. Another
possibility would be the three stars in Orion (see Milbrath 1999: 266-268).
 224

constellation. These considerations notwithstanding, the meaning of the turtle, a

recurring element in the Poqomchi‘ tales, remains obscure.340
In the above five tales, a progressive transformation of the kidnapped
cave woman into the maize is notable. In the first tale, she is the Moon
dispensing maize seeds; in the second tale, she already evinces maize teeth;
while in the last three tales, she completely changes into the maize.
Hummingbird has been courting a woman generally representing the
helpfulness and fertility of the earth, which can manifest itself in animals as
well as in plants, especially the maize. As will be shown in another section, this
relationship betrays a significant analogy with that between the farmer and the
earth and maize.

Between War and Alliance: A Perspective from Cobán

The theft of the Maize Mother followed by the opening of the Maize
Mountain is also the subject of an intriguing tale first published, for philological
purposes, by Robert Burkitt (1918, 1920) under the title ‗The Hills and the
Corn. A Legend of the Kekchí Indians of Guatemala Put in Writing by the Late
Tiburtius Kaál and Others‘. The text is in Q‘eqchi‘, reliably translated into
English and annotated by Burkitt.341 Apart from the fact that it represents the
oldest example of the tale type under discussion, its interest also resides in the
strong exposition of the myth‘s political dimension, already encountered in the
Poqomchi‘ narrative about the ‗Fierce Warrior‘, Quiche Uinaq, given by Búcaro
Moraga. Since the tale is in some respects idiosyncratic, however, it should not
be approached uncritically.342

340
In a Tamahu variant (M-b 92), for example, the oriole takes a turtle with it into a tree
to find out the whereabouts of the two fugitives; in another Tamahu variant (M-b 93),
―when they wished to pay their debt to the turtle they cracked open his shell. And he
went into his house of rock [his ‗cave‘]. And he was told that he would never again
come out of his house of rock [‗cave‘].‖
341
The tale has later been republished in Spanish by Lola Villacorta Vidaúrre (1949)
and, in part, by Quirín (1974), who also gives the Q‘eqchi‘ text. There are minor
disagreements between Burkitt‘s and Quirín‘s vernacular texts, but these do not affect the
tale‘s intelligibility. I have based myself on the Burkitt 1920 edition. In spelling the actors‘
names, I have largely followed Quirín.
342
Bassie-Sweet (2008: 181-193) accepts the tale at face value and, without argument,
takes it to be the original model for the bridal capture version of Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird
myth. She even refers to the latter‘s characters by the names of the various mountain
 225

The Status of the Tale

‗The Hills and the Corn‘ is not a verbatim record, but a composite text
resulting from an editorial process, and some doubt has been cast on its overall
authenticity. According to Burkitt (1920: 184), 343 ―it happened that two of the
men that I got hold of, one of them a Cobán man, and the other a Carchá man,
each knew something of this tale – it was a tale I had heard something of before
– and I got each man to write out for me what he knew. The two writings, when
they were done, of course were not alike. And it turned out that one of the two
men, the Cobán man, not only wrote much better than the other, but knew much
more of the story. At the same time that other man, who knew less of the story,
knew an interesting part of it that the Cobán man didn‘t know. What I did then,
– I had the Cobán man read the other man‘s story, and incorporate the other
man‘s story with his own. Some paragraphs of his own were dropped, and new
paragraphs were added.‖ The important point made here is that both men gave
their versions of an existing story that, in the light of the tales that I have
already reviewed, must have been part of oral tradition. Equally important is the
role played by the principal writer, Tiburcio Caal.
Tiburcio Caal (1854-1918), whom Dieseldorff (1926: 16) somewhat
misleadingly called a ‗cacique‘ or local political boss, was ―the chief man – the
father ov the town, az they say – among the Koban Indians‖ (Burkitt 1920:
185). In fact, Cobán had long been a town with many Q‘eqchi‘-speaking
residents, and Caal was preeminent among them. From Eduardo Portocarrero‘s
booklet about the history of Cobán (1919: 109-112), we learn that he was far
from being a naïve man.344 He had been an Infantry Lieutenant, director of an
evening school, Cofrade Principal of Cobán‘s most important confraternity,
Third Alcalde and Juez de Paz. In 1899, he had played a decisive role in an
equitable distribution of land among Q‘eqchi‘ peasants. Burkitt briefly and
sympathetically sketches the portrait of a cultivated man of letters who ―had

actors of ‗The Hills and the Corn‘. This unfortunate procedure reflects her overall
tendency to conflate distinct myths.
343
In the quotation, I have not adopted the idiosyncratic English spelling devised by
Burkitt.
344
The point needs emphasizing, since Burkitt (1920: 196 n. 1), in a rather patronizing
tone, wrote: ―In the belief of Tiburtius and the Indians, ov course, the tale iz a true tale.‖
 226

made a hobby ov reading and riting in Indian. He had even invented an alfabet
for Indians.‖ Portocarrero adds that among Caal‘s papers were found a Q‘eqchi‘
vocabulary, ―very complete and full of learned observations‖, a treatise on
indigenous mythology, and yet another one, ―very imaginative [fantástico] and
very poetical, which he entitles ‗Love affairs of the Mountains and the latter‘s
Wars‘ [‗Amoríos de los Cerros y Guerras de los mismos‘].‖ The last-mentioned
manuscript is very likely a version of Burkitt‘s published text, or else, quite
possibly, the Burkitt text was extracted from it (Burkitt writes that Caal had
promised to come forward with other ‗fairy tales‘). From the above, it is in any
case clear that Tiburcio Caal had a strong and serious interest in native culture
and oral tradition, and built upon an existing folk tale.
The narrative resulting from the interaction of Caal with his co-writer
from Carchá has been criticized by Carlos Navarrete (2000: 75, 81) – on the
basis of a Spanish translation by Lola Villacorta Vidaúrre – as a semi-literary
construct, in which only the part dealing with the opening of the Maize
Mountain could be considered authentic (in the sense of belonging to a long-
standing peasant oral tradition). It is not hard to counter most of Navarrete‘s
objections. Some relate to style and plot. The style of the Q‘eqchi‘ text is not
particularly literary, and even if it were, the content could still be authentic, as
the Cruz Torres variant of Sun and Moon myth shows in its own way. The
notion of a kidnapping out of love may seem to be a theatrical, operatic motif,
but it is also present in most Hummingbird myths and reflects an aspect of
traditional Mayan bridal capture practice. The fact that instead of Owners of
mountains, we meet named mountains speaking and acting like persons is – as
will be explained presently – entirely within Q‘eqchi‘ (and Mesoamerican)
tradition.
Nonetheless, there remains one argument that is more difficult to
counter: There is no apparent logic in Xucaneb‘s decision to store his maize
with the suitor of his daughter, at the very moment his daughter has been
kidnapped by another lover. It may be noted that this very ‗shortcoming‘ also
renders it unlikely that the cultivated Caal made the story up, and intended to
write something acceptable for an educated Ladino public. But more
importantly, as I shall argue, it is this very lack of narrative logic that calls our
attention to the tale‘s structure and to the message it implies. Although it is at
present impossible to penetrate the process whereby it came into being, ‗The
Hills and the Corn‘, put together by two knowledgeable Q‘eqchi‘ men,
originated at a time when traditional indigenous culture was still much more
 227

intact than it is now. The choice is between rejecting the tale altogether or
taking it as an interesting specimen of Q‘eqchi‘ narrative tradition that in
principle should be discussed on a par with the other tales in this chapter. I have
opted for the second alternative.

The Role of the Mountains

The actors of the myth are all existing mountains behaving like persons.
This is a general feature of Highland Mayan oral tradition and is especially
characteristic of Q‘eqchi‘ tales. ―The mountains are living (yo’yo). They have
the quality of wiinqilal, or ‗personhood‘, a concept that applies only to
mountains and people‖ (Wilson 1995: 53). The tale of the opening of the Maize
Mountain aptly demonstrates this. In a Q‘eqchi‘ variant from Rubelpec (Cruz
Torres 1965: 85-97), a whole array of deities representing existing mountains is
mobilized to free the maize, amongst them Qana‘ Itzam. The place where one
lives influences the choice of the mountains. Thus, within the same tale type,
the Maize Mountain is represented by Rubelpec mountain in the Cruz Torres
tale (1965: 85-97), but by Sac Lech Mountain in the Tiburcio Caal tale (only
Sac Lech, however, being personified). The deity cleaving the Maize Mountain
is Chichil Mountain in the tale from Rubelpec, Yaluk Mountain in the Belize
tale given by Thompson (1930: 132-135), and Puclum Mountain in the Tiburcio
Caal tale. At the same time, the mythological character represented by Chichil,
Yaluk, and Puclum remains basically the same (an old, decrepit, but powerful
man).
The central character of the Tiburcio Caal tale is the overlord of the
Earth – the role of the Tzuultaq‘a of the principal Q‘eqchi‘ version of
Hummingbird myth – embodied in the highest mountain of the Alta Verapaz,
Xucaneb Mountain, which overlooks Cobán from the south-east. There appear
to have circulated in the Alta Verapaz quite a number of stories that modulated
the plot of the Caal tale and substituted other mountains for Xucaneb. One such
story, dating back to 1937 and stemming from the plantation Semococh in the
Cahabón area (Curley García 1980: 93-97), relates the kidnapping of the
daughter of Sillab (Siyab) Mountain and of his wife, Itzam Mountain, by the
 228

deity of black sorcery (Ma-us), followed by her retrieval in exchange for the
maize.345
The actors in the Tiburcio Caal tale have all been geographically
projected onto the Xucaneb mountain range running from S. Juan Chamelco to
Senahú, to the south-east of Cobán (Burkitt 1920: 196 n. 3), in the direction of
the basin of the Polochic river where Puklum Mountain is situated (Cruz Torres
1967: 282). The main and significant exception is Sac Lech mountain, which
lies in the opposite direction, to the north-west of Cobán (Burkitt 1920: 202 n.
6); and the three lightning gods called Chitsec, which attack and open up Sac
Lech Mountain, would appear to refer to the Chisec Mountains just to the north
of the Saclech mountain range (cf. Sapper 1936: Karte I; Aguilar 1988 [1841]:
38).
Particularly relevant to the authenticity question is that not only
Xucaneb Mountain, but also Q‘uix Mes Mountain (the abductor of Xucaneb‘s
daughter) was, in the 1980‘s, still invoked in asking permission for sowing the
maize (Wilson 1995: 102); while Puclum mountain was, decades after the death
of Tiburcio Caal, still considered ‗the true god of the abundance of the maize‘
(Cruz Torres 1972: 303).

The Expanded Maize Mountain Myth of Cobán

The Tiburcio Caal narration combines the tale of the kidnapping of the
daughter of the Tzuultaq‘a with the Maize Mountain tale through a twofold
integrative mechanism. Firstly, the mountains over which the seeds from the
Maize Mountain are finally distributed, are already assigned a role in the first
part of the tale, namely as the counselors (taktxi’)346 of Xucaneb. Chief amongst
these is the oldest, Ma‘ Puclum, the mountain deity that is to open the Maize
Mountain in the tale‘s second part. Caal gives a rich description of this figure:
―wily [deceiver, aj balac], sick [yaj], dropsical [swollen, puch], senile [mamá],
his back bent by age [‗hump-backed‘, c’upc’u].‖347 Secondly, the kidnapped

345
In this case, the maize reaches mankind through the intermediary of a toad
penetrating into the maize cave (see also Curley García 1971: 79-85).
346
The word seems to be used mainly in the pejorative sense of ‗bad counselor‘ (cf.
Haeserijn 1979 s.v. tacchi’, Sam et al. 1997 s.v. takchi’).
347
The Huaxtec Mayas describe their corresponding figure, Muxi‘, in much the same
way (Alcorn 1984: 59).
 229

woman is put in parallel to the confiscated maize, in a way that calls for closer
scrutiny. The resulting tale differs from the composite Hummingbird myths in
that the opening of the Maize Mountain does not make the maize available to
mankind, but only to animals.
Briefly, the story runs as follows. Xucaneb‘s daughter, Suj Quim, has
been promised to Sac Lech, her principal marriage suitor (aj tzaam). Suj Quim,
however, allows herself to be abducted by another suitor, Q‘uix Mes (Thorn
Broom).348 On discovering, one morning, that his daughter had been kidnapped,
Xucaneb flew into a rage and immediately summoned his six349 named
counselors, the most important of these being the aged and decrepit Puclum.
Puclum advises the king to send his ‗dogs‘, that is, jaguar and puma – evidently,
his warriors – into the territory of his neighbors to search for the abductor. The
warriors, however, are captured by Q‘uix Mes and sent back without the
daughter.
Xucaneb now decides to store his maize with his future son-in-law. His
messengers, a gull (or tern)350 and a hawk, carry the proposal to Sac Lech and
return with his consent. Xucaneb gathers all his animals and has them transport
his maize. The animals shall run free in the woods and are to be fed with the
maize seeds hidden in one of the fiancé‘s ‗stone repositories‘ (xk’uuleb’aal
pek), or caves.
Then, Xucaneb sends another military expedition, headed by his
younger brother, Little Xucaneb351, into the territory of Q‘uix Mes, again to no
avail. The third and final attempt, however, succeeds. The reversal is brought
about by Aba‘as:

348
K’ix Mes ‗Thorn Broom‘ (Burkitt 1920: 200 n. 7); Alix Mes (Burkitt 1918: 281 n. 2)
has apparently been misspelled. Quirín omits the glottal stop and spells Quix Mes.
349
Quirín left out one of these counselors.
350
‗Scissor tail‘ (tijereta), aj calamjé HQ / ajxalamjé RB, a sea gull whose arrival
signals the onset of the rainy season and thus, the first maize sowings (Burkitt 1918:
281 n. 3).
351
Wilson (1990: 73, 79) gives Saq-Tz’iknel (‗White Clitoris/Penis/Bird‘), Christian
name S. Vicente, as Xucaneb‘s Younger Brother. This mountain is situated opposite
Xucaneb, on the other side of the highland valley which forms the Q‘eqchi‘ heartland.
 230

―And this wize [aj nawal]352 old woman, the wife ov Master
Puklúm, made herself ready, and threw herself with a rush on
Thorn broom [Q‘uix Mes]. And Thorn broom at once surenderd.
Nothing else was he able to say, excepting to beg [xts’aamankíl] ov
the old woman that she herself would bring them in [ta oksínq eb
re] before the great hil Shukanep. So the smart old woman did.
And Shukaneps heart waz set at rest when he saw that hiz lost
dauter came near to him [lit. at his side]. He forgave Thorn broom
who stole her. He recognized him az a good son in law [hi’bej].‖

Aba‘as is like a female marriage negotiator, and the two Q‘eqchi‘ verbs
for ‗beg‘ and ‗bring in‘ are associated with bride petitioning and house entering
ceremonies respectively (see Haeserijn 1979 s.v. ocsiinc and tz’aam). Q‘uix
Mes returns together with the abducted daughter. Xucaneb now dissolves the
marriage arrangement with Sac Lech in favor of the repentant abductor, who
thus becomes his official son-in-law.
On learning that he has been betrayed and unjustly deprived of his
prospective bride – who in the meantime has married – Sac Lech keeps the
maize supplies for himself. He hides the maize in one of his caves and denies
the animals of Xucaneb their maize-food. Hawk and gull (or tern) bring the
disastrous news to Xucaneb.
A general famine sets in. This is the point where the tale becomes
another variant of the opening of the Maize Mountain. The fox (or mountain
cat, yak) discovers the maize cave on encountering leave-cutting ants (tsenek)
carrying away the seeds. By spying on the fox (or mountain cat), the other
animals discover his secret. They inform Xucaneb of the whereabouts of his
maize seeds, and three young bachelors – mountains or thunder gods (chitsek) –
are ordered to cleave the rock with their lightnings. However, only the aged and
married fourth thunder god, Puclum, succeeds. Amidst great rejoicing, the
animals carry the maize back to Xucaneb, who has it stored in ‗a magnificent
room‘.353 The five varieties of the maize are distributed among the five
counselors as feed for their animals. In addition, the animal carriers (probably

352
The direct derivation from nawink ‗know‘ is not quite certain. By itself, nawal could
also refer to transformative magic (see Sam et al. 1991 s.v.); aj nawal would then be a
transformer.
353
This passage parallels descriptions of the joyous arrival of the harvested maize (e.g.,
Bunzel 1952: 51).
 231

five-toed animals) are put under the supervision of the principal counselor,
Puclum.

The Parallel Gift of the Mountain

The narrative as a whole evinces an underlying parallel structure. The
elopement of the daughter has a parallel in the untying of Xucaneb‘s animals:
While the abducted daughter is out of reach in the mountain territory of Q‘uix
Mes, towards the south-east, her father‘s animals literally run loose (hitho’
‗untied‘), that is outside their caves or ‗corrals‘, in the mountain territory of Sac
Lech, towards the north-west. There, they are fed with the maize. When
Xucaneb‘s daughter is brought back into the custody of her father, her father‘s
animals and maize return, too.
The three military expeditions into the realm of Q‘uix Mes (south-east)
are paralleled by the three approaches to Sac Lech (north-west). The warrior
scouts, the army headed by Little Xucaneb, and the onrush of the aged woman
Aba‘as match the animal ‗scouts‘, the attack of the three Lightning Captains,
and the decisive attack by the aged husband of Aba‘as, viz. Ma‘ Puclum.
Within the symmetries of the tale, a pivotal role falls to the aged couple,
Aba‘as and Puclum. Aba‘as liberates Xucaneb‘s daughter from her kidnapper‘s
mountain while restoring the proper situation for marriage negotiations. On the
other hand, her husband, Puclum, liberates the ‗Mother of the Maize‘ from the
other mountain and, leading Xucaneb‘s animals in procession, conducts the
‗Mother of the Maize‘ to ‗a magnificent room‘ in her father‘s mountain. This
‗magnificent room‘ probably describes another cave serving as a central storage
chamber for the maize seeds.
The main symmetry, however, is that between Xucaneb‘s daughter and
his maize seeds. As soon as he learns that his daughter has been kidnapped,
Xucaneb puts his maize seeds in the hands of his prospective son-in-law, Sac
Lech. These maize seeds (iyaj) are ‗the five kinds of the Maize Mother‘ (li o’ob
paay chi xna’ ixim),354 a customary name for the variously-colored sowing
seeds of the maize among the Q‘eqchi‘s (Burkitt 1920: 204 n. 3; cf. Haeserijn
1979 s.v. na’). Xucaneb‘s move – hardly motivated by the narrative logic of the
plot (as Navarrete justly noted) – is comparable to what happens in the Curley

354
Quirín gives ix ixim ‗female maize‘.
 232

García tale355 briefly mentioned above (1980: 96): The kidnapped daughter of
Sillab Mountain is ransomed with her father‘s maize harvest, or, to put it
differently, her value appears to be convertible into maize seeds.356 Both moves
can be explained by the double nature of Tzuultaq‘a‘s daughter.
A comparison with what could be called the ‗Coffee Mother‘
strengthens the idea that Xucaneb‘s daughter and the maize belong together. As
noted in a previous chapter, the Mames of Chimaltenango (Watanabe 1992: 67)
affirm that the first coffee seeds came to mankind as a marriage gift of
Guatemala‘s tallest volcano, Tajumulco (Rosnaa in Mam), situated about fifty
kilometers due south of Paxil Mountain (in the San Marcos department). ―The
first coffee trees came from Rosnaa when Rufino Barrios, the nineteenth-
century president and Liberal reformer of Guatemala, arranged for his son to
marry the daughter of this witz [mountain]. The bride brought with her seeds for
coffee trees, and Chimaltecos say this is why the first coffee plantations in
Guatemala began on the Pacific coast near Tajumulco.‖ Although the Barrios
administration led to confiscation of native landholdings on a grand scale, this
short mythological statement clearly inverts the perspective: It is the Great
Mountain, i.e. the indigenous Owner of the land, who through his daughter
brought wealth to Barrios and his plantation owners, and thus, obligated them.
To revert now to the Tiburcio Caal tale, the young woman, Suj Quim,
has not been paid for by her abductor, and probably for that reason there is no
marriage gift consisting of maize seeds. Since the gift of a woman representing
the earth‘s productivity and the marriage gift of the sowing seeds are not only
metaphorically connected, but can be viewed as standing in a transformative
relation, it is as if the daughter‘s powers of vegetative regeneration have been
severed from her – a severance dramatically staged as the sudden transfer of the
‗Seed Mother‘ to the woman‘s legitimate fiancé. It would be in line with this
way of viewing things if, on his return to his Father-in-law and his marriage to
Suj Quim, the repentant abductor would see his wife regain her status as the
Mother of the Maize Seeds. Such a sequel would also help explain why, as
mentioned earlier, the mountain deity Q‘uix Mes (the mythological abductor) is
still invoked in the rituals immediately preceding sowing. The expected

355
The original teller of the tale is stated to be Luis Gkaan.
356
Although I accept the overall authenticity of the Curley García tale, details such as
the names of some of the principal actors and some of the characteristics ascribed to the
latter seem less reliable.
 233

merging does in fact occur in the Hummingbird tales of Mayers and Schumann,
with the character corresponding to Suj Quim (the daughter who went along
with Q‘uix Mes and then returned to her Father) being effectively fused with the
imprisoned Mother of the Maize Seeds: At the very moment Hummingbird
repents and leaves for his father-in-law to restore relations, the abducted woman
changes into the maize.
As a result of this transformation, however, the woman is
simultaneously imprisoned by the Maize Mountain, and this brings another
dimension of the myth to the fore. The Tiburcio Caal tale suggests that the
imprisonment of Hummingbird‘s wife through what appears to be the volitional
action of the Maize Mountain could derive from that mountain‘s rancor against
a former Father-in-law. This amounts to a ‗political‘ reading of the expanded
Maize Mountain tales, in that the Maize Mountain becomes the stronghold of a
former ‗son-in-law‘ and ally turned enemy. A political perspective also
underlies the Mam explanatory tale just mentioned, and clearly informs the
Búcaro Moraga Poqomchi‘ variant. Its Hummingbird is a ‗Fierce Warrior‘ who
– unlike Q‘uix Mes – is unrepentant, stays independent of the Poqomchi‘ xajal
mama, leaves the maize seeds (and thus, agricultural work) to others, and
manages to become the ruling ‗Sun‘ controlling all mountains.357 In this tale, the
Maize Mountain is part of an intrigue between the K‘iche‘ invader and an ally
from Rabinal who seems to be rewarded with the gift of a kidnapped woman
representing the maize of the subdued Poqomchi‘ population.
These ethnohistorical complications aside, the question must finally be
asked why mankind should be absent from the Tiburcio Caal tale. In most other
Maize Mountain tales, including our present version of Hummingbird myth, the
animals are the first to discover the maize, and receive their share, but they
serve only as intermediaries to mankind. The aged deity opening the Maize
Mountain (Yaluk, Chichil, San Pablo,358 corresponding to Puclum in the Caal
tale) subsequently introduces mankind to maize cultivation. The Caal tale,
however, remains enclosed in a self-sufficient world of mountain deities for
whom the maize, though of obvious importance, has the only function of

357
In the Chiapas Maya myth about Sun and his elder brothers, the hero does not reach
the stage of sowing his maize field, and similarly exchanges the earth for the sky.
358
San Pablo is the corresponding figure in a variant from El Estor (Preuss 1993: 121-
125), told by a man originating from Cabonicto, A.V. The smallest of thirteen mountain
deities, San Pablo is stereotypically described as being sick and anemic.
 234

feeding their animal subjects. It is especially here that the tale, in moving away
from folk tradition, seems to betray some artificiality. There might, however, be
a hidden lesson in the state of affairs described by the Caal tale. Perhaps man is
to take the initiative and transform himself into a reliable son-in-law if he is to
bridge the abyss to the Other World and acquire the maize. Indeed, by
amending the Tiburcio Caal tale, contemporary Q‘eqchi‘s seem to have taken a
step in this direction. Thus, as it was recently retold (Wilson 1995: 99), ―the
story continues with ‗the Mayas‘ winning Xukaneb‘s favor through petitions
and sacrifices. In his cave, Xukaneb then gave five types of corn to the
Mayas.‖359

The Farmer‘s Marriage to the Soil and the Maize

We have seen that the daughter of Mountain-Valley is transformed into

sowing seeds called ‗Mother of the Maize‘, and that, in the context of sowing,
the maize is viewed as a pregnant woman. The choice of the female gender for
the maize in the present version of Hummingbird myth has important
implications. Within the Mesoamerican culture area, there have always existed
various options. Of course, according to the Popol Vuh, the first human beings
were made from maize dough, and many customs reflect the idea that man and
maize share a common nature. For the Q‘eqchi‘s, for example, Wilson (1995:
123-124, 129-130) has shown the pervasive analogy between the complex of
‗imprint diseases‘ (awas) among human beings and that among the maize
plants.360 The maize, however, is gendered. Historically, among the Aztecs,
there were male maize deities (Cinteotl, Xochipilli) as well as female maize

359
Wilson (1995: 332 n. 3) states that ―a variant of this story was also recorded by
Burkitt (1918).‖ This is probably putting it the wrong way. Since in Wilson‘s summary
of the tale (1995: 99), the Caal mountain names are virtually unchanged, and also in
view of the modern category of ‗the Mayas‘ occurring in it, I suspect that the Caal text
has again been brought into circulation, and is thus becoming what one might call a ‗re-
activated‘ variant.
360
The basic idea of awas disease is that the sudden repulsion felt by a pregnant woman
for some fruit or animal leads to her unborn child‘s partial assimilation to this repulsive
object, which becomes visible in pimples etc. In an analogous way, breaking a food
taboo related to planting can lead to a partial and undesirable assimilation of the maize-
to-be-born to features of the forbidden food. The Mixtecs have a similar complex (see
Monaghan 1995: 116).
 235

deities (Xilonen, Chicome-Coatl, Xochiquetzal), paralleled, among the present-

day Nahuas living along the Gulf Coast, by Chicome-Xochitl and his twin
sister, Macuil-Xochitl (Sandstrom 1991: 245). Up to the Spanish conquest,
Mayan maize deities were usually imagined to be male (insofar as
iconographical sources have the same validity for all social strata); and among
the contemporary western Highland Mayas, the spirit of the maize representing
the archetypal Maize Mountain, Paxil, can still assume a male gender (male
Paxil, see Rodríguez Rouanet 1971: 175-176, 178-179). Already in the Book of
Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Roys 1967: 130, MS p. 70 C), however, one finds
a cooked ear of green corn metaphorically equated with – and eroticized as –
‗the girl with the watery teeth‘: ―A very beautiful maiden […] fragrant is her
odor and her hair is twisted into a tuft.‖361
Speaking generally, the contemporary Mayas think of the maize deity as
being female. As a consequence of this, the farmer could, in principle, view the
maize as a marriage partner. The deceptive change of an eloping girl into a
maize stalk and of her lover into a farmer working around her, noted in Chapter
Five (Blanca Flor section), would thus – far from being a mere anecdote –
reveal a profound aspect of Mayan alliance ideology. The maize cobs would
consequently have to be viewed as the farmer‘s children, as much as those of
his otherworldly wife.362 However, rather than establishing a complete identity
between the hero‘s otherworldly wife and the maize, our mythical paradigm
treats the maize as the transformation – one amongst various others – of a
woman more generally connected to the mountains and their productivity. It is
this transformative concept that, as will be presently seen, appears to determine
the farmer‘s relationship with the crops and the soil.

361
In the same way, other ‗women‘ are to be understood as squashes and jícama roots.
The metaphors are part of a collection of questions and answers similar to those of the
metaphorical ‗language of Zuyua‘, knowledge of which was compulsory for local
chiefs, and was periodically examined. Therefore, the idea of a maize woman appears to
go back at least to the early 16th century.
362
Whether the farmer‘s marriage to the maize is only an extended metaphor, or implies
a spiritual marriage with the ‗soul‘ of the maize woman, is a question that cannot here
be answered. Related to this is the difficult question as to the compatibility of the
farmer‘s two marriages (those with his human wife and with his otherworldly wife).
 236

Human Procreation and Agricultural Ritual

The concept of the farmer‘s ‗marriage to the soil‘ comes to the fore in a
variety of ways, not all necessarily consistent, and either alternating or
coalescing with that of the farmer‘s ‗marriage to the maize‘. About the
traditional Q‘eqchi‘s, Cabarrús (1979: 42) states emphatically: ―But if
permission is needed to impregnate the earth, the same holds true for ‗using‘ a
woman. There exists an intimate parallelism between woman and the earth.‖
Wilson (1995: 129) uses very similar words. The same concept of a marriage to
the earth is noticeable among the Tz‘utujiles (Tarn and Prechtel 1986: 173): A
farmer kissing successively his maize, beans, a woodpile, and the earth of his
compound, subsequently explained, ―I have just kissed my four wives.‖ In
myth, these four wives would correspond to the polyvalent daughter of the
Tzuultaq‘a. They can be contacted in dreams. Dreaming of having three or four
wives, means buying land (Ixil, Paz Pérez 1994: 31); dreaming of a beautiful
woman foretells a good maize harvest (San Lucas Toliman; Woods, in Bassie-
Sweet 2008: 23). The marriage‘s offspring are the maize ears. When his maize
has been harvested and stored, a Q‘eqchi‘ farmer gratefully declares: ―My
babies have come [xchal lin c’ula’al], the spirit of my ears of corn has entered
the granary‖ (Carter 1969: 103).363
As a consequence of this alliance ideology, human and crop fertility are
being ritually intertwined, and human sexuality becomes relevant to agriculture,
that is, to the interaction with the holy Earth. When, in May, the leaves of the
milpa were to be cut, a Mam farmer first had to bring in a female relative of his:
―She had to be carrying her baby [on her back] so as to be able to cut the
leaves‖; for ―if this woman wasn‘t bearing her baby when she came to cut the
leaves, then neither would the milpa be able to bear [corncobs]‖ (Hart 2005:
134).
Among the Q‘eqchi‘s, sexual abstinence appears to be generally
required preceding and during sowing: ―The man is married to the land during
the planting, so the woman must be rejected and the marital union temporarily

363
In line with this, ―when the husband or his wife dream they hear a child crying in the
maize field, this means that maize kernels and their spirit have been left in the field‖
(Pacheco 1984: 153-154).
 237

denied‖ (Wilson 1995: 66).364 Not surprisingly, then, the planting stick is
equated with the phallus, and the seed hole with the vagina (Wilson 1995: 111).
During this period of abstinence, ―the maize is the pregnant woman who is
going to give birth‖ (Hatse and De Ceuster 2001a: 54).
Since the requirement of sexual abstinence regards the regular sexual
life of the married couple, it would not necessarily exclude a performance of the
sexual act in a strictly ritual context. It has indeed been reported (in Dow and
Kemper 1996: 227) that, ―before planting his crops each year, the farmer and
his wife perform a fertility ritual. They simulate intercourse in three corners of
their dwelling and then consummate the act in the fourth corner.‖365 This
fourfold ritual is not only homologous to the successive sowings of the seeds in
the four corners of the field, but even more so to the Sun Hero and his lunar
wife‘s tour of the world discussed in a previous section, when the couple gave
names to the mountain storehouses of the seeds and took rest there, finally to
arrive at the fourth storehouse, the eponymous Maize Mountain (Paxil) itself.
The Poqomchi‘ variant from Santa Cruz Verapaz equally mentions four
mountains: Having crossed three secondary maize mountains, the couple finally
arrives in the true Maize Mountain, there to consummate the sexual act. Thus,
the ritual space of the house seems to replicate that of the world, and for a brief
interval, the farmer acts out Hummingbird‘s role.
If the sower‘s wife is having an extra-marital affair during sowing time,
it is considered a sacrilege; it is equated with the sower breaking the taboo on
intercourse with his wife, and leads to seeds that do not germinate (Wilson
1995: 65-66). As Wilson noted (1995: 129), sowing the maize requires a ritual
state of harmony and equilibrium (kalkab’il). In this context, the quintessential
equilibrium is that between husband and wife, mythologically represented by
Sun and Moon (or, in the context of agriculture, the Maize Moon, i.e., the lunar
‗Mother of the Maize Seeds‘); when it is broken by Moon‘s adultery, Sun does
not take action until it is sowing time (see Chapter Ten).

364
The conceptualization of the dual-gendered Tzuultaq‘a as father and daughter would
have made Wilson‘s analysis of sowing ritual more convincing. More particularly, it
would probably have made him refrain from stating that the female earth does not have
―any conceptual distinction from the individual mountains‖ (1995: 66).
365
The quotation is from an unsigned encyclopedia article on Q‘eqchi‘ culture probably
written by a researcher of the Human Relations Area Files of Yale University (cf.
Levinson 1996: xv).
 238

At another stage of the maize cycle, abstinence apparently again had to

give way to a ritualized sexual act. Clearly referring to Hummingbird‘s mating
with his wife in the cave of what was about to become the storage chamber of
the maize seeds, Otto Schumann (1988: 217) observed: ―Among the Q‘eqchi‘s,
the myth is openly related to the sexual act, to such a degree that, until recently,
they believed that in order to obtain a good harvest, it was necessary to perform
the sexual act in the milpa [maize field] when the maize was already coming
into ear.‖366 Assuming that the developing, wet ears correspond to a growing
fetus, this act seems to reflect the once common belief that a man should
continue sexual intercourse during his wife‘s pregnancy in order to ‗feed‘ the
growing child with his semen (López Austin 1980: 338).

The Watchful Parents-in-Law

One consequence of the farmer experiencing the soil and its products as
his wife and the maize crops as their common children is that the parents of this
woman (among the Q‘eqchi‘s usually, though not always, represented by the
male Tzuultaq‘a alone) become of paramount importance to him, since they
continue to watch over their daughters. This is illustrated by numerous Tzotzil
tales about the mistreated maize wife,367 tales not unlike the Lightning-bolt
Woman tales of the Sierra Nahuas (Taggart).368 Briefly, a man does a service to
an earth god or to Lightning (Chauk), is awarded one of his daughters (X‘ob,
the Mother of the Maize [Guiteras 1961: 191-193]), and has human children
with her. His wife proves to be an inexhaustible supply of maize; the cobs she
plucks from the four corners of the field magically multiply (Gossen 1974:
287). However, since the farmer is lazy and dislikes agriculture (i.e., caring for
his maize woman), he starts to beat his wife, the blood from her nose giving
origin to the red maize, her tears to the white maize (id.: 267). She returns to her
otherworldly father, while continuing to take care of her human children. This is

366
A detail of the Q‘eqchi‘ ritual preceding sowing may relate to this. In the vigil held
for the maize seeds lying in their basket, a lit candle representing the Sun is inserted and
the seeds are stated to ‗be born‘ subsequently (Wilson 1990: 115, 126).
367
Gossen 1974: 267 (Tale 25), 287 (Tale 65), 311 (Tale 112), 341 (Tale 173); Guiteras
1961: 191-193; Laughlin 1975: 165-170 (Tale 72), 238-247 (Tale 78); Pérez Conde et
al. 1983: 125-157.
368
In fact – as in some of the Taggart tales – the Tzotzil woman can assume the shape
of a serpent or revert to it (Laughlin 1975: 238ff, Tale 78).
 239

one of the basic Mesoamerican narratives, as well known by the far-off

Huicholes (cf. Hell 1988: 107ff) as by the Mayas. It is sometimes modified in
such a way that the identity of spouse and maize is broken up and replaced by a
parallelism (e.g., Puebla Nahua; Johansson 1994: 249-251): The husband
receives his bride and his maize seeds from the father-in-law separately, just as,
upon marrying the daughter of the Mountain, President Barrios‘s son acquired
the coffee seeds. Again, however, the wife leaves her husband, whose laziness
had caused a disastrous maize harvest, and returns to her father.369
The farmer‘s marital alliance with the earth is thus a general
Mesoamerican theme that can be stated either directly or obliquely. John
Monaghan has elaborated this theme for the Mixtecs of Santiago Nuyoo, and his
conclusions confirm the general picture drawn up in this chapter. His
characterization of the maize would apply with equal force to Hummingbird‘s
wife: ―What is most significant about the corn plant is its identification with a
young, desirable, and marriageable woman‖ (Monaghan 1995: 112). The act of
sowing is sexualized, and ―the [maize] plant bears (niso) the ear of corn like a
mother bears a child‖ (id.: 115). Moreover, there are ―striking parallels between
the marriage negotiations carried on between households and the praying for
corn in the house of the Rain. When a man goes to a house of Rain to pray and
make sacrifice, he requests that the ñu’un savi [the rain deities, EB] ‗feed‘ him,
by providing him with the rain necessary for plants to grow and the corn to
sustain himself. […] We can liken this to the speeches made during marriage
negotiations, where it is quite common for the suitor or his spokesman to refer
to his potential in-law‘s household as ―the place from which my tortillas will
come, the place from which my water will come‖ (id.: 112). This affinal model
is systematically extended to the relationship between the farmer and his ‗maize
wife‘ (id.: 113-117). And again, as among the Mayas, if the maize is mistreated,
she is taken back by her parents (here the rain deities), or she returns out of her
own to the parental home; and if a man disrespects the alliance by having illicit
affairs, his corn field will not produce.

369
Although the identity of the father is not explicitly stated in the Nahua tale, he is
clearly the original possessor of the original, yellow maize; the tale goes on to explain
the origin of the various other colors of the maize.
 240

Repentance: A Ritual Theme

The alliance binding the farmer to the Mountain leads to a recurrent
theme in the Hummingbird maize tales, that of guilt towards the wronged
Father-in-law. The Q‘eqchi‘ concept of ‗guilt‘ (maak) has been treated by
Cabarrús (1979: 35-57), a Jesuit priest, who emphasizes the necessity of
compliance with the many ritual rules of conduct governing the traffic with the
all-powerful Owners (the mountain spirits as well as ‗Dios‘), and the occurrence
of disease as a manifestation of having transgressed such prescriptions. The
picture sketched by Cabarrús is that of a rather mechanical, rigid, and also
oppressive moral system. A rather more differentiated picture emerges from a
consideration of such notions as negotiation, persuasion, and repentance that
permeate the myths under discussion.
One may recall that in the Schumann variant, the abducted daughter of
the Earth ―had relations with the man, and when she was already certain that she
was expecting a child, she asked the man to go to her home and to convince her
father that he should forgive them [emphasis added] and that then they would
return to live with him.‖ In Mayers‘ Poqomchi‘ variant, there was the same
attitude once the baby began to form: ―‘Let‘s go now with our father‘ said the
girl. ‗Okay,‘ he said and they came and found a rock cliff or a stone house. ‗I
will inform your father first,‘ he said. ‗Okay,‘ she said.‖ In the Tiburcio Caal
tale, the abductor, confronted with the wrath of Tzuultaq‘a and his female
emissary, was left speechless: ―Nothing else was he able to say, excepting to
beg of the old woman that she herself would bring them in before the great hill
Xucaneb. So the smart old woman did. And Xucaneb‘s heart was set at rest
when he saw that his lost daughter came near to him. He forgave Thorn broom
[Q’uix mes] who stole her [emphasis added]. He recognized him as a good son-
in-law.‖ Here, the moralizing tendency of the above tales becomes entirely
overt. It would appear that only the repentant abductor has a right to the bride;
and when Q‘uix Mes is still invoked in sowing rituals, this is probably due to
the repentance, which removed the wrath of his Father-in-law, the powerful
mountain Xucaneb.
Such obligatory repentance has found its way into prayer and apparently
into the rituals surrounding sowing. The teller of the Mayers tale (M 6) inserted
the following explanation at the point where the Tzuultaq‘a, undone by the
sabotage of his blowgun and the diseases cast on him, gives up his pursuit:
 241

―Because of this, the girl who ran away gave her name as a remembrance
[ehtalil], so that every day at mealtime [kawa’], you ask pardon [of sin, cuy-tak
amahc] of Our Father. Only in this way they began to say ‗Our Father in
heaven‘ and the ‗Santa María‘.‖ Doubtlessly, the reference to the Lord‘s Prayer
is especially to the lines ―give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
debts‖, to be recited because ―your Father knoweth what things ye have need of,
before ye ask him‖ (Matthew 6, 8-12, King James version).370 The ‗Santa
María‘, on the other hand, probably stands for the ‗Hail Mary‘, on from the
point where the praying community joins in: ―Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray
for us sinners [...].‖ In the farmer‘s understanding of these lines, ‗Holy Mary‘
seems to refer to Mountain-Valley‘s repentant daughter.
The ‗Hail Marys‘ spoken before the meal are also part of the Q‘eqchi‘
rituals preceding sowing (Wilson 1995: 97). Not surprisingly, however, the
feelings of guilt are most poignant during the meal following upon sowing.
Wilson (1995: 112) has given us a singular description: ―The atmosphere at the
planting feast is especially heavy and pregnant. The men are silent and eat
shyly, as if embarrassed or guilty. This sentiment is not overtly or verbally
expressed but is, rather, an emotion I intuited. [...] It is difficult to describe the
unstated but dense and pervasive atmosphere of contrition and remorse in the
planting meal. Neither a daily meal nor a festive feast is characterized by such
heavy feelings of shame.‖ Wilson believes that ―the guilt may derive from a
feeling that the men have just had ―sex‖ with the earth and fertilized it, and have
now returned to their wives and the household.‖ Certain data (see below)
suggest, however, that it may also stem from an awareness that the maize
woman had once been abducted from the Tzuultaq‘a, shamelessly impregnated,
and hidden in a ‗rock house‘ by Sun, whence the maize was received by the
farmers.
Finally we turn to Mam territory, in the far north-western mountains of
Guatemala where the archetypal Maize Mountain (Paxil or Paxa‘) is situated
(Miles (1960: 430-436), to find similar feelings of remorse. To the Mames of
Colotenango, the Maize Mountain is identified with a goddess, ‗Mother Paxil‘
(Valladares 1957: 239 ff). Isolated shreds of information suggest that ideas
about the origin of the maize seeds similar to those of the Verapaz Mayas were

370
In Matthew, the context of the Lord‘s Prayer is the Sermon on the Mount, a locality
which may have some relevance for the way traditional Mayas understand the message.
 242

held: ―When the world was born long ago, maize was born in Paxa‖; and ―the
cave gave the maize‖ (id.: 433). The ethnopsychologist Valladares (id.: 260,
294) has emphasized the feelings of guilt (or ‗sin‘) towards the Maize Mother,
springing from the primeval theft of the maize seeds and the concomitant
necessity of asking pardon from ‗Mother Paxil‘ in the rites of agricultural
custom. The theft was carried out by the animals, but instigated by the
ancestors. What is notably missing in Valladares‘s representation (which, on the
whole, is rather thin when it comes to oral tradition) is the figure of Mountain-
Valley looming large behind the maize goddess; and it is quite possible that the
Mames also knew about Hummingbird, the person who once introduced the
Maize Mother into her mountainous home.

Parallelism of Hunting and Maize Cultivation

What is by and large the same myth (or tale with the same overall
structure and general message) can be used to describe either the origin of the
hunt after a bridal service including agricultural tasks, or the origin of maize
cultivation after scenes of hunting. The variants of Cuz, Schumann, and Mayers
initially present the abductor as a hunter. The myth presupposes that animals
and the hunt are already in existence, whereas the maize has not yet been
originated and cultivated. In the Schumann tale, the woman eloping with the
hunter is originally a deer woman, copulating with a stag in a prototypical
hunting scene. It is first of all in the person of the woman that the transition
from the hunt to maize cultivation is enacted, since from a deer woman, she
becomes a maize woman.
This difference in outcome leads to certain changes in the pattern of the
tale. The daughter is abducted, but lightning does not penetrate the waters to hit
the woman hidden in the turtle, and consequently, the woman is not being
reduced to blood and bones. Where the female blood should be, red flowers
strewn by the fugitives are floating in the waters (BM 70). With this image, the
Poqomchi‘ myth from Santa Cruz Verapaz explicitly reacts on the version as we
know it from the Q‘eqchi‘s. It has the effect of neutralizing the poisonous
quality of the blood which in the shamanistic Q‘eqchi‘ version leads to the
origin of evil creatures and disease. The theme of bloody annihilation and
disease as a punishment is suppressed (or rather, transformed) in this tale about
the life-giving substance par excellence. Since instead of charred bones, it is the
 243

woman‘s living flesh that becomes maize, the shared nature of the maize and
the human body is once more confirmed.
Considering the tale as a whole, one wonders why the maize version
should not have followed the game version in using the same narrative
structure, which would have been an easy thing to realize. Taking the hunting
version as a model, and recalling that the woman‘s teeth are sometimes sown
like maize kernels (MR/B), the maize version could have run like this: First, the
fleeing woman is hit by lightning, with only her teeth remaining (on a par with
her hairs in a K‘iche‘ variant of the hunting version); then, the teeth are
collected and stored in a jar;371 and finally, from the jar, a young and shiny
Maize Woman steps forward. In schema (upper row: hypothetical sequence,
below: actual sequence):

Lightning destruction Teeth  Storage jar Maize womanNo lightning

violence
No lightning destructionWoman Cave Maize kernels Lightning
violence

That one does not find the upper sequence is a clear indication that the
maize version of Hummingbird myth indeed represents a fusion with the Maize
Mountain myth, a tale that requires no personified, wet maize plant for an
outcome, but dry maize kernels.372 As a result, the lightnings recur after the
woman‘s transformation; they are no longer directed against her person, but
against the mountain imprisoning her. This is a welcome effect of the altered
tale structure, since lightning (together with the rains caused by it) is meant to
serve the prosperity and growth of the maize, as the Gulf Coast Nahua myth of
Chicome-Xochitl so eloquently demonstrates (Braakhuis 2009b). Moreover, the
narrative development now requires farmers to appear on the stage as recipients
of the maize stored in the mountain, farmers who should emulate Hummingbird
by ‗marrying‘ the Maize Mother and giving her children. Such a continuation

371
Such a jar would be especially meaningful since dry maize seeds are actually stored
in jars, as in San Juan Chamelco (Navarrete 2000: 44).
372
It should nonetheless be noted that at least one Hummingbird tale (Ixil, Yurchenco
2006: 87-88) has the daughter killed by her father (in an unspecified manner) and
changed into maize plants.
 244

was left implicit in the hunting version of the tale, where Hummingbird‘s
‗successors‘ have no role to play in the story.
On the whole, however, hunting and agriculture are subsistence
modalities conceived of in remarkably similar ways, as the following examples
can show.373 Sexual abstention preceding sowing and hunting, both imagined as
sexual activities, is common. Adultery is just as taboo in the alliance with the
Owner of the Game as it is in the alliance with the Owner of the Maize Seeds
(Wilson 1995: 65-66; cf. Dehouve 2008: 11).374 Parallel to this, a woman seen
in a dream can represent the game to be hunted or the maize to be harvested, the
actual dream interpretation depending on the mental focus of the dreamer and
the activity he has in mind. Dreaming of an encounter with a crying or wounded
child appeals to one‘s sense of responsibility towards the maize or the game
‗family‘. Dehouve (2008: 25-27) recently pointed out that among the Nahuas of
the Huasteca, the harvested maize is ritually welcomed in the same way as the
quarry carried home by the hunter, with flower garlands and offerings of food
and drink. More detailed information regarding Mayan practices would
probably lead to a similar conclusion. In hunting as in agriculture, the moon
occupies a central role, connected either to the game (‗rabbit and deer‘ as visible
in the celestial body) or to the maize (inhabiting the Maize Mountain).
In the imagery of the tales, the fleshless bones of the Game Woman
would have the bare cobs (olotes) of the Maize Woman for their agricultural
equivalent. A custom of the Tlapanecs of Guerrero (Dehouve 2008: 23) brings
out the parallelism more clearly. There, the olotes are effectively deposited in
the same rocky cavity dedicated to the Lord of the Game where, in a separate
compartment, the bones of the game are stored.375 The opposites of the hunting
shrine filled with bones and bare cobs are, on the one side, the cave filled with
regenerated animals of Q‘anjob‘al myth, and on the other side, the ‗storage
house‘ of the maize seeds of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, corresponding to the Maize

373
While being realized to varying degrees, this parallelism – which has been analyzed
in detail for the Huicholes (Hell 1988: 103-153) – appears to be a general
Mesoamerican one.
374
In view of those tales where the Owner of the Game hands seeds to a ci-devant
hunter, both Owners are, at least at times, conceived as functional manifestations of the
same power.
375
In Chapter Six, a Pipil tale was already discussed in which the Owner of the Game,
living in a ritual ossuary, turns out to have power over agriculture as well. See also the
references to similar tales given there.
 245

Mountain where the daughter of Mountain-Valley gave birth to the maize. In

these comparisons, the important difference remains that, whereas the Game
Woman‘s bones regenerate as animals, the Maize Woman of the Hummingbird
tales is never reduced to bones, that is, to the equivalents of empty cobs: The
agricultural power of regeneration does not appear to be invested in the empty
cobs, but in the sowing seeds. Returning the empty cobs to the Owner would
seem to be only a precondition for the sowing seed to acquire its germinating
power, a power that, in the case of animal bones, is likely to be thought of as
located in the bones‘ marrow.376
In the agricultural and hunting versions alike, the sexual aspect of
Hummingbird‘s relationship with the nubile daughter of Mountain-Valley
receives emphasis. In this respect, the copulation within the ‗storage house‘ of
the maize seeds is specifically comparable to the Pipil copulation within a
‗hunting shrine‘ full of bones, and thus also to the Lacandon Hummingbird‘s
copulation with the daughter of the death god (see next chapter).
Secondary motifs are also rendered parallel. Even the ‗handkerchief‘ in
which Hummingbird wraps the collected bones of his wife recurs in the cloth in
which, according to a Mam tale from Colotenango (Rodríguez Rouanet 1971:
179), the collected maize kernels received from ‗Juan Pax‘el‘ (the Owner of the
Maize Mountain) are wrapped. There is also the woodpecker. Just as he helps to
open the tree with the queen bee and to liberate ‗Lady Bee‘, he is instrumental
in opening the mountain with the maize and in freeing the Maize Mother.

376
Attention should also be given to possible parallels in the treatment of the soul of the
food. Not only the quarries, with their tonalli‘s, but also the maize ears have souls
(Q‘eqchi‘ muel, muheel); killing the quarry and harvesting the maize seem to make
these souls escape. All maize souls should finally enter the granary (Carter 1969: 103;
Pacheco 1984: 152).
 246

CHAPTER 9

TRANSFORMATIONS OF WOMAN: THE IMMUTABLE WIFE

The Lacandon version is probably the most radical of all Hummingbird myths.
The woman courted by the Lacandon Hummingbird is no longer the
regenerative earth, but rather the dying and decaying earth; not its principle of
regeneration (bones being reinvested with flesh), but its principle of
decomposition (the body being reduced to bones); and it is not maize, or game,
but human immortality that is at stake. The woman can be referred to simply as
u ti’al Kisin, the daughter of the death god, Kisin, or else X-Baakè, which would
appear to mean either ‗small girl‘ or (in accordance with her naked skull) ‗Bone
Woman‘.377 Since the latter name would indeed be appropriate, I will use it
here, in alternation with Gopher Woman. Hummingbird himself is called
Nuxi,378 or the ‗Gopher Trapper‘. He is the Ancestor (nukuch uinik), the one
who returned from the Underworld. The basic tale of reference here will be the
first variant presented by Boremanse (1986: 78-96), stemming from the
Northern Lacandons. Boremanse‘s notes provide a valuable running
commentary to the tales (cf. also Boremanse 1998: 90ff, 112). In this chapter,
the focus will rest on the role of the hunt and on Hummingbird‘s role with
respect to his wife and father-in-law. Along the way, the tale‘s relation to the
other versions will be explored.379

Restoring Immortality to Mankind

The transformation of Hummingbird‘s wife into game animals initiates

a cyclical process: When she is reduced to bones, her bones change into ‗deer
and rabbit‘, ‗deer and rabbit‘ are reduced to bones, and these bones are
regenerated to ‗deer and rabbit‘ in the home of the Owner of the Game. This

377
Cf. Cordemex: ix bak, xbaak ‗niða‘; bak(el) ‗hueso‘; ah bak ‗animal muy flaco en los
huesos‘, ah bak uinik ‗hombre así flaco‘.
378
Only Bruce (1974) spells a final glottal stop (Nuxi’).
379
References are to the sources listed in Appendix B. The abbreviated author‘s name is
followed by the page number(s).
 247

cycle of transformations can be conceived in two ways: as a transcendence of

death, with bones being endlessly infused with life; or as a recurrence of death,
with Hummingbird‘s wife endlessly failing to regain her human form and
becoming instead game animals destined to die. This second viewpoint has
succinctly been expressed in a Totonac formula (Ichon 1969: 76) regarding the
father of the maize hero who had been transformed into a deer: ‗The deer is a
dead‘.
With respect to this cycle, the Lacandon version of Hummingbird myth
is to be situated after the initial transformation of the bones into game animals
for, already at its very outset, we find Hummingbird hunting for game. This
game is not, however, deer, as in the predominant Q‘eqchi‘ version, but large,
rat-like moles, the gophers. The regeneration of these gophers is the tale‘s
immediate subject; parallel to this, however, there is another issue: the
regeneration of human beings and the acquisition of immortality.
In Lacandon Hummingbird myth, events are directed by two deities,
Sukunkyum ‗Elder Brother of Our Lord‘, who is the guardian of the
Underworld, and Kisin, the originator of death. I will first bring together the
basic data about what could be called Nuxi‘s adoptive father, Sukunkyum. As
the subterranean counterpart of the celestial creator god (Hachakyum ‗Our True
Lord‘),380 Elder Brother has no evil disposition towards mankind. Yet, the dead
disappear into his subterranean world to be passed on to Kisin; and probably for
that reason, the Southern Lacandons assert that he once ate human flesh, and
therefore could not ascend into the upper world of his Younger Brother (BO
271-272). Tainted with death, this ambivalent figure was isolated, with his
incense burner being housed in a separate structure, outside the temple of the
gods (Tozzer 1907: 116; cf. Villa Rojas 1968: 98).381 His association with death
has also been expressed in terms of kinship: Elder Brother once gave his sister
in marriage to the death god, Kisin (S 50; cf. Cline 1944: 111). Therefore, Kisin
and Sukunkyum call each other mam and hachil ‗fathers-in-law united by
marriage‘(Sp. consuegros; cf. Boremanse 1986: 96 n. 34).

380
Since Sukunkyum is alternatively called Itsanachaac (Bruce 1974: 364) and the
‗caretaker of the underworld‘ is once called Itsana (Tozzer 1907: 96), both brothers
appear to be aspects of the pre-Spanish Yucatec creator god, Itzamna.
381
At Pelja, Sukunkyum's structure consists of a bower (Sp. enramada) made of poles
and lianas (Villa Rojas 1968: 98), probably representing a cave.
 248

According to myth, Sukunkyum‘s role vis-à-vis the dead has changed

over time (Boremanse 1986: 71-73). Formerly, he did not hand over the souls of
the dead to Kisin. The souls were not annihilated by Kisin, or reduced by fire
into his ‗cattle‘, or made to work for the rain deity (Mensäbäk). Instead, on the
fourth day, Sukunkyum made the soul re-enter the body: The deceased left the
hammock in his burial pit and rejoined his family. However, because the rain
deity complained that he no longer received workers, the upper god,
Hachakyum, took away Sukunkyum‘s full powers of resuscitation.
It appears, however, that Sukunkyum could not reconcile himself to this
new situation. In the tale of Nuxi, he is directing events with the explicit
intention of acquiring immortality for his ‗children‘, mankind. Therefore, one is
led to view the ancestor, Nuxi, as Sukunkyum‘s instrument for re-instituting the
original situation of immortality, which is to be firmly established on a
foundation of affinal ties. By comparison with Ixil Hummingbird myth, the
Lacandon version replaces Hummingbird‘s father (who schemed with his son to
penetrate into the house of the Earth) with the primordial father of mankind in
his subterranean aspect.382 ‗Elder Brother‘ (Sukunkyum) considers Nuxi as his
own creature and true ‗son‘ (cf. Boremanse 1986: 95 n. 10). At the same time,
this role of ‗adoptive son‘ considerably reduces the autonomy of the hero. In
marked contrast to Q‘eqchi‘ myth, it is Sukunkyum, rather than the hero
himself, who either borrows for his ‗son‘ the feather garb of a hummingbird
(BO 296) – more specifically, of the Violet Sabrewing (Campylopterus
hemileucurus) – or who gives him an old, violet-colored tunic383 that changes
into its feather garb on being donned (BO 86 and 95 n. 24).384
Like the souls of the dead, Nuxi enters the Underworld, where he first
visits Sukunkyum, and then is handed over to Kisin. In this case, however,
being handed over to Kisin acquires the meaning of ‗being married off to the

382
In other Mayan hero myths (K‘iche‘, Q‘eqchi‘, Tzotzil, and Ch‘ol), the father figure
is dead and consigned to the Underworld. These deceased Fathers represent the buried
ancestors. Whereas Sukunkyum is carrying the Sun through the Underworld, the same
task is allotted by the Chenalhñ Tzotziles to the ‗Father-Mothers‘, i.e. the ancestors
(Guiteras 1961: 268).
383
The fact that the cloth, a tunic, is worn out, suggests the rotten tunic of a long-buried
dead, elsewhere in the tale referred to as ‗one whose tunic has completely decayed‘ (BO
302). This ties up with Nuxi‘s role as an intermediary to the dead (see further on).
384
The violet color (ya’ax in Lacandon Maya) is stated (Boremanse 1986: 96 n. 29) to
have the power of keeping Kisin at a distance.
 249

daughter of Kisin‘. Kisin, who had received a woman from Sukunkyum, is thus
to give up his own daughter in exchange.385 As Boremanse has pointed out
(1986: 95-96 nn. 21, 34; 1989:78-79), the intertwining of the patrilines of the
two main gods of the Underworld, Sukunkyum (preservation of life) and Kisin
(destruction of life), is also evidenced by the fact that whereas Nuxi is to
perform bridal service for Kisin, Bone Woman is to do something similar for
Sukunkyum‘s wife. Nuxi is to become ‗wild‘ but refuses the ‗wild food‘ (such
as maggots and worms) of Kisin; inversely, Bone Woman is to become ‗tame‘,
but only unwillingly accepts the lessons of her ‗mother-in-law‘ for making raw
food cooked, and for performing other ‗domesticating‘ activities. However,
Sukunkyum‘s strategy ultimately fails (BR 274):

―If the two could have escaped together, there would have been no
death. If the two could have escaped together, Kisin would not
burn the souls of the human beings. Kisin does not burn his own
kin [Kisin ma’ u tokik u mam]. Kisin tells the souls of the human
beings, ‗You are not of my kin!‘ The souls burn. Kisin burns the
souls.‖

Regenerating the Gophers

In Lacandon Hummingbird myth, the central mysteries of death have

been cast in terms of the hunt and of domesticating animals. On the one hand,
the souls of the dead game walk through the woods of the Underworld like
spectral animals; they can no longer be shot. On the other hand, the souls of the
living human beings are visualized in the Underworld as game to be shot by
Kisin, specifically as spider monkeys. Like Lacandons generally (Soustelle
1935: 337), the death god has a strong taste for the meat of these animals. When
he shoots and kills a spider monkey, its human counterpart dies (Boremanse
1986: 82, 95 n. 16).386 Parallel to this, wild human ‗animals‘ are continually
being domesticated: Sinful souls are transformed by Kisin‘s fire into his ‗cattle‘

385
The two deities are hachil to each other. Indeed, Kisin might call Nuxi, too, his ha-
chil, since the term equally applies to a son-in-law.
386
This generic relationship between humans (as it seems, irrespective of their onen)
and spider monkeys recalls the individual relationship existing between a human being
and his animal counterpart; it seems to be without parallel elsewhere.
 250

(mules and cows) and ‗poultry‘ (chickens). The human hunt for gophers has
been used to frame this tableau of the realm of the dead.

The Death God as an Owner of Animals

Once the last gopher on earth has been trapped, Nuxi ‗loses his way‘
and meets an attractive young woman, the daughter of Kisin. She is the mother
of the gophers; she intends to engender a new generation of gophers with him.
Indeed, when she lures Nuxi into the earth, she seems gopher-like herself: ―She
moved aside the cover of her hole [u mak u hool].387 Her head disappeared into
the earth [k’uchi tu ho’ol oki luum]‖ (BR 227). When Nuxi has slept with her,
her father is satisfied (Bruce) – which would be quite unusual, if it were not for
the fact that he can now assume that his gophers will be restored to him. The
various commentators of the myth of Nuxi (Bruce, Boremanse 1986, 1989,
McGee) have silently passed over the fact that the tale of Nuxi has been cast in
the mold of those Lacandon hunting stories in which a hunter, disrespectful of
the hunting prescriptions, is led to the home of the Lord of the Animals to mate
with his daughter and thereby restore the game.388
Two of these stories will serve to underscore this correspondence. The
first (Boremanse 1986: 227-228) is about a hunter who killed a huge number of
spider monkeys, just for fun: ―He didn‘t even eat the meat.‖ The monkeys
kidnap him, and bring him before the Lord of the monkeys,389 who tells him:
―All the ones you have killed, you will have to reproduce them.‖ For two years
he is made to remain among the monkeys; he marries a monkey woman for
whom he collects wild fruits. Once left free, he dies within one moon. The
second story (Boremanse 1986: 229-231; cf. Rätsch 1984: 178) is about a man
who hunted for peccaries in a cruel way and was brought before the Lord of the
peccaries. He was made to heal the wounds he had inflicted and then was
offered one of the Lord‘s daughters in marriage. ―He stayed among them for
almost two years, and received a peccary wife he liked very much.‖ One day,

387
Bruce translates ‗su tapa su hoyo (la puerta de la cueva)‘.
388
In his 1989 article on the transition of Nature to Culture in Lacandon tales,
Boremanse included a discussion of the tale of Nuxi as well as a comparison of various
Lacandon tales about human-animal affiliation. He did not, however, include the tale of
Nuxi in his schema of these affiliations (Boremanse 1989: 97; cf.1998: 121ff).
389
Unlike the Tzuultaq‘a and other Owners of the game, the Owners of these stories are
specific to the species (cf. Boremanse 1998: 126 n. 24).
 251

his peccary wife is killed by a hunter; he returns to his village, where the
peccary meat is being roasted. He refuses the meat, and dies of sadness within
three days.390
Superficially, Nuxi‘s behavior is like that of the hunter for spider
monkeys. Even though hunting down all gophers is a formidable task (the rat-
like creature multiplying rapidly and being difficult to catch), Nuxi‘ ―places a
trap wherever he sees a gopher hill‖ (BO 78).391 However, the hunter for spider
monkeys despised the delicious meat of the game he killed, whereas Nuxi‘s
behavior is quite the opposite. His savage and exclusive appetite for gopher
meat is a motif that (among other explanations) could be taken to signal his
desire to become one with the gophers, to absorb them, and to acquire ‗children
of gopher flesh.‘
The strategy pursued by Sukunkyum is, however, to make Nuxi a father
not of gophers, but of human beings. Consequently, the usual plot of this type of
hunting stories is extended, and assimilated to Hummingbird myth: Having re-
created the gophers, the hunter intends to domesticate his ‗wild‘ woman,
acquire affinal rights over her, carry her home alive, and produce human
children with her – thus realizing an immortal human progeny. When this turns
out to be impossible, the usual ending of this type of hunting stories recurs. The
Gopher Trapper falls ill and agonizes, longing for his gopher wife like the
unhappy husband of the peccary wife: ―But he was not concerned about dying:
he wanted very much to return and see the daughter of Kisin‖ (Bruce, in McGee
1990: 107).
Little attention has been given to Nuxi‘s preference for the gopher – or
rather, the giant pocket gopher (Orthogeomys sp.)392 – over other game. This
gopher, although edible, is usually valued negatively. The animal is very

390
In similar stories discussed in Chapter Six, the re-creation of the game was seen as a
regeneration of the bones. The Lacandons used to bury the bones of the game under
trees, as it seems not for periodical, but only for eschatological regeneration by the
celestial creator deity, Hachakyum (Boremanse 1986: 102); in the meantime, the animal
souls (visible as spectral animals) continued to live in the Underworld (id.: 82).
391
On hunting gophers with special traps, see Rätsch and Probst 1985.
392
The Lacandon word (bah) has loosely been rendered as ‗mole‘, i.e. topo (Bruce),
taupe in French (Boremanse), synonymous with Spanish tuza. However, bah usually
(and also in other Mayan languages) refers to the rat-like giant pocket gopher, or taltuza
(cf. also Rätsch and Probst 1985). Therefore, I have replaced Bruce‘s ‗Trampeador de
topos‘ and McGee‘s ‗Mole Trapper‘ by ‗Gopher Trapper‘.
 252

harmful to the crops. The way the regenerated gophers are set out in the
northern variant – four pairs at the four directional points – follows a familiar
model, the pairs of gophers being analogous to the seed holes in the four corners
of a maize field and to the mountain repositories of maize seeds at the four
corners of the earth. The opposition between the life-giving seeds and the
gopher as a destroyer of the seeds has already been noted. The gopher‘s
preference for darkness over daylight further connects him to the underworld as
well as to black sorcery. In the discussion of the role of black sorcery in
Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, we have already met a sorcerer asking a client:
―Do you want me to make her shit snakes? Do you want me to make her give
birth to a gopher?‖ (Burns 1983: 136).
In view of the tale‘s plot, however, two associations appear to have
been dominant. On the one hand, in Lacandon dream symbolism, the gopher
signals impending burial (Bruce 1979: 132), a gopher hill resembling a burial
mound. On the other hand, the burrowing gophers also create a labyrinthine
underworld from where the roots of vegetative as well as human life are cut
off.393 Therefore, when Nuxi‘s savage appetite leads him not just to kill a huge
number of gophers but to exterminate them altogether, this is likely to have the
metaphorical meaning of undoing the Underworld and forever removing human
burial mounds from the earth.394 Undoing the Underworld is precisely the thrust
of the tale, which is about acquiring immortality; but the metaphorical quality of
the gopher hunt also shows the insoluble paradox inherent in buying
immortality by first regenerating the gophers and thus re-creating the world of
the dead.

393
In Otomi myths, ―a town of evil sorcerers appears under the name of masubi
(‗Gopher Place‘)‖ (Galinier 1990: 595).
394
Bruce (1971: 115-116) has it that ―according to the general legends of the Mayan
area‖, the ‗moles‘ are the transformations of the men from a former generation, that of
the ‗men made from mud‘. In Vucub-Caquix, the K‘iche‘ Twins defeated the main
representative of a former creation, and Bruce therefore suggests that Nuxi‘s work
parallels that of the Twins. According to the Tz‘utujiles of Lake Atitlan (Sexton 1992:
95-96), those members of a generation of men that had been disrespectful of the maize
and beans, and had fled into the earth, were transformed into taltuzas, since then the
enemies of the rest of mankind and its crops; but as far as I know, this view of the
gophers‘ origin is not generally held among the Mayas, and in any case, rather implies a
punishment of ‗evil elder brothers‘. With regard to the Lacandons, it is not so much a
former human generation (in principle created by Hachakyum) that should be
eradicated, but the descendants of Kisin.
 253

The gopher is also present in Kaqchikel Hummingbird myth and is

again viewed negatively, but its function within the tale structure is quite
different. The sandals of the Kaqchikel Father-in-law, Mataqtani, were gophers.
When Hummingbird let them escape and burrow themselves into the earth, his
wife reproached him for having ―spoilt the world.‖ In the Kaqchikel version,
Hummingbird‘s wife personified first and foremost the earth‘s fertility and its
willingness to cooperate . She therefore did not wish the gophers to undermine
the soil and create a sort of underworld. In sharp contrast, Lacandon
Hummingbird myth focuses precisely on the subterranean aspect of
Hummingbird‘s wife and on her fondness for the decaying human flesh in the
burial pit. Therefore, the Lacandon Hummingbird no longer accidentally ‗spoils
the world‘ by regenerating the gophers, but is encouraged to do so intentionally.

Founding an Immortal Patrilineage

Just before finalizing the arrangements for leaving the Underworld,
Sukunkyum – who had been directing events all along – explained to Nuxi: ―
‗All moles [gophers] fell into your traps. Now, your first children will be moles.
Afterwards, your children will no longer be moles.‘ At once his children were
born. There were eight moles‖ (BR 271). According to a variant summarized by
Georgette Soustelle (S 50), Nuxi had a child with his underworldly wife,395 and
Sukunkyum transformed this child into four pairs of moles, and set the animals
out in the four directions.
In such a way, the consequence of the uxorilocality from which
Hummingbird and his wife attempted to escape in the non-Lacandon versions
becomes visible. Apparently, the children produced in the Underworld are
bound to be wild gophers (just as their mother had been intimated to be gopher-
like), and are appropriated by the patrilineage of Kisin. In order also to acquire
children from his wife who would no longer be gophers, Nuxi should first trans-
fer Bone Woman to the realm of mankind, and thus decisively ‗domesticate‘
her. If the hero‘s effort had been successful, the relationship between human
beings and animals would be at issue. On the one hand, there would have been
the gopher children, and on the other, the human children. All of these children

395
G. Soustelle (1961: 50 n. 18) probably missed a reference to Kisin‘s daughter, and
wrongly assumes the ancestor to have been accompanied into the Underworld by a son.
 254

would have the same parents, but not the same locality: Some would be living
in the Underworld, with their grandfather, and others on earth, in their father‘s
household.
A relation of consanguineal kinship between human beings and animals
is also what characterizes a not entirely transparent Lacandon system of social
classification, which assigned the name of a specific wild animal to the
members of a localized patrilineal group. Describing Lacandon society around
the turn of the 20th century, Tozzer (1904: 41-42) wrote: ―The native speaks of
the animal names noted above as in-yonen, my relative, so that there seems to
be a close bond between all the people bearing the same name and the animal
itself.‖396 Onen is related to older Yucatec onel, by which individual
consanguineal relatives were denoted, especially distant ones; one‘s onel should
not be married. 397 Boremanse (1998: 101-104), who, in the early 1970‘s, made
a thorough study of Lacandon kinship, roughly renders the Lacandon term onen
by the functional designation ‗patrilineage‘. There were many onen names,
although it is unlikely that the various lists given by a number of authors are
exhaustive; ‗Gopher‘ (Ba‘) has in any case not been reported. In part of the
Lacandon territory, however, the onen system had been reduced to two
patrinames only, Spider Monkey (Ma‘ax) and White-lipped Peccary (K‘ek‘en),
with the main deities – but not Kisin – being assigned to these onen as well
(Soustelle 1935: 338-340; Bruce 1974: 19-34).398
The onen animals were not just patronyms but, in the collective
imagination, had a life of their own. In the myth about the origin of the onen
animals (Boremanse 1986: 33-34), the upper god (Hachakyum) and Kisin are
both creating human beings. Hachakyum successfully molds his creatures, onen
after onen, but those of Kisin fail, and are transformed by Hachakyum into
animals, with the words: ―Here are the eponymous animals of my creatures‘

396
This did not imply special taboos. Asked how he could eat a kinsman, a Lacandon
man eating a spider monkey cheerfully answered: ―Yes, he is my kinsman, but I eat him
nonetheless‖ (Soustelle 1935: 337).
397
Cordemex Dictionary s.v. onel: ‗pariente en consanguinidad; el tal parentesco,
parentesco muy lejano o de sólo nombre‘ (Motul M-E). ‗Pariente transversal‘ (Motul E-
M; San Francisco). ‗Parentesco algo apartado de consanguinidad; onel k’abalil
[probably ‗consanguineous only by name‘] parentesco de muy atrás o desviado‘
(Vienna). Onelbil k’eban ‗pecado de incesto‘.
398
Similar animal patronyms have been reported from the Choles and Tzeltales of
around 1900 (HMAI 7, in Vogt ed., 1969: 236).
 255

lineages,‖ whereupon the animals retire into the woods and become wild. Thus,
any member of, say, the onen group White-lipped Peccary (K‘ek‘en) could,
with some justification, consider a wild peccary in the woods his ‗co-essence‘.
It was especially in dream-life that the otherwise distant animal relative
drew near. Usually, albeit not invariably, dreaming of an animal with a
counterpart in an onen group, or of one of this animal‘s body parts, is to dream
of a member of the corresponding kin-group and of his body parts, and vice
versa (Bruce 1979: 131 s.v. bäk’ ‗meat‘; cf. McGee 1990: 30-31). In dreams,
the animals that are to be ‗married‘ present themselves to the hunter as desirable
women. Thus, if a man hunts for a white-lipped peccary (k’ek’en), this
metaphorically corresponds to a marriage-proposal to a woman who would, in
real life, belong to the corresponding patrilineage. This appears to be reflected
in stories (Boremanse 1986: 229; Rätsch 1984: 178) in which a hunter is made
to cure a wounded peccary woman, and to compensate the Owner for his losses
by marrying a peccary woman and give her children: This peccary woman is
addressed as ‗Koh‘ by her father (the Owner), which is one of the two personal
names of women belonging to a Peccary patrilineage (Soustelle 1935: 333;399
Boremanse 1998: 45). The model seems to have been that of a parallel society
of animals living in villages similar to those of the Lacandons themselves, and
organized along the same lines.400
From this perspective, one can only wonder if Kisin‘s daughter,
representing her father‘s patrilineage, should not be considered the ancestral
mother of a hypothetical Gopher (Ba‘) onen.401 If Nuxi‘s expedition had
succeeded, his human children in the upper world, on earth, would have had to
call the gopher children their brothers or sisters: their ‗distant relatives‘. It is
only one step further to assume that the onen system itself may have had its

399
Soustelle refers to what he calls the ‗phratrie‘ Karsiya, which coincides with what he
calls the ‗clan‘ K‘ek‘en.
400
The concept of a society of animals also comes to the fore in the Book of Chilam
Balam of Chumayel (Roys 1965: 129, MS p. 70 C). In the ‗language of Zuyua‘, or, the
Cave of Origins, the Mexican Agouti (haleu, paca) and the Spotted Agouti (tzub) are
called ‗the first batab / ah-kulel / hmen‘, the Peccary (citame) the ‗first hmen‘,
suggestive of the foundation of politically organized kin-groups.
401
Nuxi, the Ancestor himself, at least, was sometimes assigned a place in the onen
kinship system. Among the northern Lacandons, he appears to have been known as K‘in
Kobo (Soustelle 1935: 339), K‘in being a common name given to the first-born, and
Kobo a ceremonial name coinciding with the K‘ek‘en ‗White-lipped Peccary‘ lineage.
 256

roots in the alliance concept governing the hunt, so that an ancestor with, say,
peccary children became the founder of a Peccary patrilineage.

Nuxi as a Caretaker of Souls

The final sections of the Hummingbird myths, reviewed in the

preceding chapters, define the roles of Hummingbird‘s ‗successors‘ in relation
to the domain of Hummingbird‘s otherworldly wife. Now the final episode of
Nuxi‘s tale will be examined to see if the same holds true for Lacandon
Hummingbird myth. Initially, characteristic elements of hunting tales come to
the fore, since the underworld left by the Gopher Trapper is the realm of Kisin
as an Owner of the game. Then, however, the tale takes up the thread of the
quest for the eternal life, and it is in the context of this theme that an answer to
our question is likely to be found.
The return of Nuxi to the world of the living is one of a hunter
returning home. The hero is guided by a margay (Felis weidii), a small, but
large-eyed wild cat, who turns out to know everything about the private life of
Nuxi‘s wife, and he tells Nuxi that she has left him and has remarried. The
encounter with the margay may be less fortuitous, and also less innocent, then
the narrator‘s long-winded explanations about the chickens coveted by the wild
cat could suggest. The animal has a counterpart among the Popolucas, where ―in
the mountains, there is a cat (‗belonging to the chaneques‘ [Owners] and
impossible to kill) that informs about female infidelity. When the hunter hears
about this, he should return home, because his life is at risk‖ (Godínez and
Vázquez 2003: 330), no doubt because adultery always provokes the Owners‘
wrath.
Finally, the Gopher Trapper rejoins the wife he had left behind on earth.
It is significant that in the southern variant, the woman initially takes Nuxi for
the specter of her husband, for specters are usually met during the four or five
days of the burial rites (Boremanse 1986: 72 n. 2; McGee 1990:118). Following
instructions from Sukunkyum, Nuxi had taken from the Underworld a flower
plucked from Kisin‘s pubis (BO 89).402 Alternatively, in the southern variant,

402
Ethnobotanically, this flower may well have gone under a name like ‗Kisin‘s Pubis‘,
just as in a K‘iche‘ Hummingbird tale seeds gleaned from the Father-in-law‘s vomit
belonged to a plant actually called ‗Vomit of the Mountain‘.
 257

Nuxi had received from Sukunkyum small, arrow-like objects, but without
arrow heads. Whether with the flower or the small ‗arrows‘, Nuxi descends into
the burial pits of the deceased, reassembles their skeletons, and resuscitates
them. The flower is held under the skull‘s nasal cavity, apparently to make the
dead smell its odor; in a similar way, the smell of the flower of the calabash tree
(Crescentia cujete) had the power to cure the sick and the dying (Boremanse
1986: 283, 287 n. 1).403 The ‗flower of immortality‘ recurs in tales of other
Mayan groups. In a tale from the Peten Itza (Hofling 1991: 166-185), for
instance, a grieving widower descends into the grave of his wife to rub her
corpse with it, and resuscitate her.404
Touching the flower is anathema to the women of Nuxi's household
(since male implements should generally not be touched by females) and Nuxi
warns that breaking the taboo will cause his death. However, his wife violates
the taboo and makes the flower lose its power. The outcome is the death of all
those involved: The resuscitated are again reduced to corpses, their savior Nuxi
soon follows them into the grave, and in the southern variant his wife (probably
together with her second husband) is brutally killed.405
As a result of the violation of the taboo and the irreversible loss of the
‗flower‘, Nuxi himself ―burned with fever‖, and died. He once more descended
into the Underworld he himself had helped re-create by ‗spoiling the world‘
with his father-in-law‘s gophers. Unlike all other dead, however, Nuxi is not
passed on to Kisin and hence to the rain god, Mensäbäk, but stays to live with
his ‗father‘, Sukunkyum (BO 94). In the southern variant (BO 293), Nuxi,

403
Similarly, in Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, the chief curers made Sun and Moon
move again after their paralysis by having them smell certain flowers. Taube (2004: 69-
74) has recently commented upon the importance of the scent of flowers as a Mayan
symbol for the soul and for the remote ancestors, who are believed to live in a sunlit
paradise where they feed on the aroma of flowers.
404
In a Belizean tale recorded by Smailus (1975: 89-91), a ‗flower of immortality‘ is
plucked at the borders of a lagoon to be crossed on the back of a dog. Spanish and
Mayan narrative traditions may have coalesced in some of these tales about the ‗flower
of immortality‘.
405
Nuxi‘s two women fulfill contrastive roles, the underworldly wife being cast as a
potential source of life, the earthly wife as a source of death. Ideally, their roles should
probably concur. Comparable contrasts crop up in some of the bridal tales of the Blanca
Flor type, with the human wife endangering the pact with the other world (the Nahua
‗Tlalocan‘), a pact sometimes symbolized by a golden ring (e.g., Taggart 1983: 126-
130; Reyes and Christensen 1974: 77-91).
 258

initially, had already been following Bone Woman into the Underworld in the
belief that ―she knows where my house is.‖ In fact, he arrived at the house that
was to become his final home, that of Sukunkyum.
Nuxi‘s final stay with Sukunkyum may imply a permanent role as an
intermediary to the living. This possibility is perhaps better appreciated by
placing Nuxi‘s role in a broader context. Nuxi is plainly acting as an extremely
powerful healer who, besides arranging the bones into a skeleton, must be
assumed to have also called back the soul from the Underworld, since otherwise
he could not have resurrected the dead. In so doing, Nuxi appears to be re-
instituting the preceding epoch in which the dead were resurrected in the
Underworld by Sukunkyum on the fourth day following burial.
The neighboring Tzotziles of Chenalhó (Guiteras Holmes 1961: 186-
188), as well as the Ch‘oles, have similar traditions about death and its curing.
In Chenalhó, Nuxi‘s role is played by Sun and the role of the dead by Sun‘s
father. Sun‘s resuscitation of the dead is identified with shamanic curing, that is,
with the reincorporation of the lost soul into the body; and as in the Lacandon
case, this curing of the dead is contrasted with the situation in a previous epoch,
wherein the dead returned from the Underworld without the help of curers. Sun,
after changing his elder brethren into animals, tries to revive the bones of his
long-dead father. Although he succeeds in this, his mother (assimilated to the
Virgin Mary) weeps instead of laughing, and his father disappears. ―It is the
Virgin's fault that we must die‖ (187).406

―Twice did God revive his father [after his first effort]. She again
wept, therefore our children must die. Before that a person only
died for three days, and came to life again. The dead were not
buried. People only waited, the people only went to the Katibak
[the Underworld where the death god burns the bones of the
deceased] to pay for their sin, and would return as before.

That is why those who know how to blow, those who know how to
pray, bring back the soul. He who becomes ill dies and is brought
back to life. Illness was called mahbenal [‗being struck‘ by the
powers, either good or evil]. People came forth from the caves
[where their souls were held imprisoned]. The gods, all of the gods,

406
As in the myth of Nuxi, woman is made responsible for the loss of immortality; on
this point, traditional Mayas and Christians seem to have agreed.
 259

were rezadores [faith healers]; they would blow three times. The
God is the healer, the ‘ilol [clairvoyant curer]‖ (Guiteras Holmes
1961: 188).

The Ch‘oles relate a very similar story (Whittaker and Warkentin 1965:
46-49).407 ‗Our Holy Mother‘, Moon, has four evil sons and a fifth who is Sun.
‗Our Holy Father‘ has died and his bones lie haphazardly in a coffin, until
someone (‗he who loved the bones‘, apparently Sun) starts to reassemble the
skeleton. On seeing the skeleton, Moon starts to cry, and ―the bones of the god
broke apart again; the god came to a complete end.‖408 The theme of the aborted
resuscitation of the father (the first ancestor to die definitively) antedates the
arrival of the Spaniards, as both the Popol Vuh and the Gulf Coast myth of the
maize hero (see Chapter Six, ‗Welcoming the Game Husband‘) demonstrate.
The key point suggested by these two tales, however, is that Nuxi‘s work may
have served as a model for those Lacandons acting as shamanic curers.
If Nuxi re-institutes the immortality of a previous epoch by curing the
dead, he is effectively acting as a substitute for Sukunkyum; and as will now be
argued, it may even be that already in the times of immortality, he had a role to
play. In a tale describing this ‗prehistorical‘ situation (Boremanse 1986: 71-72),
the resurrected dead returns home while carrying two smoking incense burners
to the temple, declaring: ―I have returned. I put here the incense burners of our
lords Itzanachaak and Nuxi K‘ak.‖409 Itzanachaak is another name for
Sukunkyum, Nuxi could in principle refer to various ancestors or divinities, and
k’ak means fire. The text explains: ―The Elder Brother of Our Father had
resuscitated that man and given him these incense burners [of the two deities]
for venerating them. Therefore his body had not decayed, Sukunkyum had
awakened him by returning his soul to him‖ (Boremanse 1986: 71).
Lord Nuxi‘s epitheton K’ak ‗Fire‘ may refer to the burial fires that play
such an important role in protecting the dead (McGee 1990: 116-118). A brazier
holding glowing charcoal is placed under the hammock of the deceased to keep

407
The short Ch‘ol text is not at all points entirely clear. Its colloquial style makes a-
bundant use of pronouns, the referents of which are not easy to make out, and may
partially lie outside the text itself.
408
In a shorter variant, this tale is also known from Chamula (Pozas 1977 II: 231).
409
Boremanse orthographically distinguishes Nouchi (=Nuxi) from Nouxi K‘ak,
although in French, both names are pronounced in the same way. Bruce (1974: 361)
assumes both figures to be basically the same.
 260

his body warm; the next day, when the corpse has been lowered into the burial
pit, the ashes of the charcoal ―are spread over the grave mound to prevent
maggots from infesting the burial‖; and a fire is built next to the grave for the
wandering soul to warm itself.
Although Nuxi is not a name exclusive to one person, it is nonetheless
tempting to conclude from this tale that the ancestral hero Nuxi is either
identical with, or has been modeled after, the deity Nuxi K‘ak who is mentioned
together with Itzanachaak / Sukunkyum and venerated in a context of
awakening the dead. The ancestral hero Nuxi had been adopted as a son by
Sukunkyum and had assisted Sukunkyum in the quest for immortality; was
initiated by him into the mysteries of death; had cured the dead, and upon his
own definitive death was again received by Sukunkyum.
However this may be, it seems plausible that the ancestor Nuxi
continued to live in the subterranean house of Sukunkyum in order to serve as
an intermediary to the living, and especially perhaps, to those acting as
shamanic curers. This role as an intermediary comes more unambiguously to the
fore in another of the Lacandon stories published by Boremanse (1986: 97-
101).410 Here, Nuxi – emphatically called ‗the one who swept the house of
Kisin‘ – assumes the same sort of role Sukunkyum played with respect to Nuxi.
He accompanies a disconsolate widower into the Underworld to help him meet
his wife. Nuxi has the widower wash his cloth, clean it with chalk and pepper,
and haul firewood for Sukunkyum – the very tasks Sukunkyum had given to
Nuxi (id.: 81, 85). Nuxi then leads the widower to Kisin. The wife turns out to
have been an adulteress and to have been transformed by Kisin‘s fire into one of
his domestic animals. For the Tzotziles, this same widower is an important
ancestor, the ‗Living Man‘ (Kuxul Winik);411 back on earth, he acted like Nuxi
in transmitting his knowledge about the Underworld to his fellow human
beings.412 Thus, Sukunkyum is to Nuxi what Nuxi is to the ‗Living Man‘. In this

410
Although on various places, the text of this story refers explicitly to the Gopher
Trapper, the author (Boremanse 1986: 101 n. 1) also, somewhat confusingly, states that
―the narrators are not very precise on this subject‖ (of Nuxi conducting the widower to
Kisin).
411
Kuxul Winik, see Guiteras Holmes 1961: 258-260 (Chenalhó). Important Tzotzil and
Tzeltal ancestors are often distinguished by winik epithets signaling specific legendary
feats (see Braakhuis 2009a: 146 nn. 21, 22).
412
Transmitting knowledge about the dead, see Stross 1977: 12 (Tenejapa). Same tale
type, Ch‘ol: Pérez Chacón 1988: 335-341. In one, rather idiosyncratic version already
 261

disconsolate husband, Nuxi may also have recognized his own fate as an eternal
lover to his underworldly wife. More importantly, Nuxi himself, who returned
to Sukunkyum after his death and could not be claimed by Kisin, could justly be
considered the eternal ‗Living Man‘ of the Lacandons.

The Violet Hummingbird: Final Comparisons

The Lacandon tale, though idiosyncratic, is in some respects close to the

predominant Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth. The resemblance would be more
apparent had Nuxi‘s strategy succeeded, for then there would be a twofold
outcome, just as in Q‘eqchi‘ myth. On the one hand, there would be the
gophers, creatures on a par with the evil creatures regenerated from the lunar
blood, a correspondence which becomes even stronger when one considers that
among the latter creatures, there were also rats. In a later episode, these same
creatures were born from the womb of the Maiden herself, just as the gophers
were born from Bone Woman. On the other hand, had this Mother of Gophers
also become a Mother of Humans, the outcome would have been the origin of a
generation of human beings corresponding to those descending from the lunar
ancestress of mankind, but no longer mortal.
Unlike other Hummingbird myths, the tale of the Violet Sabrewing has
its male protagonist end up in the Underworld. Nuxi, the Father of Gophers, is
not transformed into the Sun, as occurs in Q‘eqchi‘ and Poqomchi‘ myth, nor is
he in any way identified with it (the fact that he initially followed the
descending Sun into the Underworld hardly constituting proof to the contrary).
It is difficult to find a justification for the assertion made by Boremanse (1989:
77-78) – with which J.E.S. Thompson appears to have concurred413– that the
Lacandon Hummingbird and his subterranean wife represent Sun and Moon; it
seems ultimately to rest on the unfounded assumption that hummingbird love
magic necessarily implies an equation of hummingbird and sun (see Chapter
Five). Instead, it is here argued that the solar transformation of Hummingbird
correlates with political dominance and with independence in respect to the

referred to (Hofling 1991: 166-185), the Underworld is represented by the grave and a
mouse presents the widower with the flower of immortality.
413
Thompson‘s overview of Sun and Moon myths was published in 1970 and did not
include the myth of Nuxi; but in 1974, he communicated his opinion about the
Lacandon myth to Boremanse (1986: 78 n. 59).
 262

authochthonous Owner of the Earth; only under certain circumstances may a

solar character be attributed to Hummingbird.
A unique feature of the Lacandon version is that the otherworldly
Father-in-law is not the deity associated with the Earth and its products, that is,
Mountain-Valley. Admittedly, among the Q‘eqchi‘s, Mountain-Valley is also
the deity guarding the moral order and meting out punishment. In these
respects, he corresponds to Sukunkyum and, to a much lesser extent, to Kisin;
but the shift in focus signalled by the choice of Kisin is no less remarkable for
that. Of course, in the lowlands of Chiapas and the Petén inhabited by the
Lacandons, there are no mountains, but in a material sense the fertility of the
earth and the reproduction of the game would appear to have been as important
to the Lacandons as to any other Mayan group.414 Among the factors
responsible for the focus on Kisin may have been the small number of
Lacandons, their high mortality, and their insecurity amidst increasing
encroachments on their territories, all circumstances that could have conveyed a
special urgency on the management of the relationship with the subterranean
deities connected to disease and death.
Directly related to the shift of emphasis occurring in Lacandon
Hummingbird myth is the fact that in the end, Gopher Woman (or Bone
Woman) does not change into game, maize, or other useful things.415 If she has
an enduring value, it is an indirect one, connected to Hummingbird‘s eventual
role: She is his contact with the world of his Father-in-law, the realm of the
dying and of the dead where the souls go. Considering that in the other versions,
the outcome of the tale establishes a functional relationship between the
successors of Hummingbird and the earth conceived as a woman, the same is
likely to be the case in the Lacandon situation. Nuxi acted like a curer with
specialized instruments and, after his final retreat into the Underworld, as a
conductor of souls. As I have already suggested, he may have served as an
intermediary to those Lacandons (or informal Lacandon leaders) who had to
deal with the dying and the dead and with human beings exposed to the ‗perils

414
Nonetheless, in the collections of tales published by Bruce and Boremanse, the
deities of the soil and its fertility are hardly represented at all.
415
As a Bone Woman, she could in principle embody the reproductive vitality
(sometimes identified with the marrow) inherent in bones, but this is nowhere brought
up by the myth.
 263

of the soul‘.416 Table 4 shows the relation of Lacandon Hummingbird myth to

the other versions.

Table 4: Hummingbirds Myths Compared

MALE REDUC- TRANSFOR- TRANSFOR- ASSOCIATED COSMOLOGIC

PROTAGO- TION OF MATION OF MATION OF GROUP PLANE
NIST BRIDE BRIDE HERO
Saq‘e / blood snake-insect none herbal curers earth
Xbalanque and sorcerers
moon sun conquerors sky

Saq‘e / maize seeds none farmers earth

K‘iche‘
sun conquerors sky
Winaq
Oyew Achi bones deer-rabbit none hunters earth

honey bees beekeepers

Nuxi (already none none caretakers of underworld

bones) the dying and
the dead
In this schema, ‗associated group‘ is the functional group related to, and professionally
interested in, the specific transformation of the daughter of the Tzuultaq‘a; ‗cosmologic
plane‘ is where the male protagonist finally ends up.

Finally, given that the Lacandon version of Hummingbird myth

involves a descent into the Underworld and a confrontation with deities of
disease and death, its relation to the Twin myth in the Popol Vuh warrants
comment. Starting from the axiom that the Lacandon tale had necessarily to be a
version of the pre-Spanish K‘iche‘ origin myth, Bruce (1968: 122ff, 1971: 111-
131) made an unsuccessful attempt to reduce its actors to those of the K‘iche‘
tale; I have elsewhere argued that his comparative approach is flawed
(Braakhuis 1978: 364-366). It is undeniably true that Hummingbird‘s role in

416
The 20th-century Lacandons, being basically egalitarian, and living in only a few
small, dispersed settlements, had no room for true specialists (see Boremanse 1998:
xix).
 264

Q‘eqchi‘ myth is played by a hero sometimes called Xbalanque, a character

corresponding in the Popol Vuh to the War Twin who assists Hunahpu in his
trials. In another early source, we find the pre-Spanish War Twin accompanying
the soul of the dead Pokoman king (prefigured by Hunahpu) into the
Underworld, a role not entirely unlike that of Nuxi as a conductor of the ‗Living
Man‘.417 However, these points of contact between the myth of Nuxi and the
Popol Vuh should not be allowed to obscure the dissimilarity between the two
myths in structure and content. The Twin myth is about the ball game, war, and
sacrifice, and alliance is a mere side-effect: The short-lived relation between
Blood Woman and the decapitated father of the Twins focuses on the war-
related symbolism of the calabash tree. The Twins themselves do not descend
out of love for an Underworld woman, and show no interest at all in the fate of
the dead. Indeed, the souls of the dead and their tribulations are absent from the
K‘iche‘ tale.

417
The description of Xibalba given by Las Casas (1967: 506, Bk.III Ch. CCXXXV)
could reinforce this particular correspondence between Nuxi and Xbalanque. Focusing
on the unbearable heat and the drink consisting of pus, it is akin to the way the
Underworld is depicted among the Lacandons and the Tzotzil-Tzeltales. In contrast to
this, however, the Popol Vuh Twin myth hardly pays any attention to food and drink.
 265

CHAPTER 10

THE OLDER BROTHER AS A RENOUNCER OF WOMAN

In the Thompson variant of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, the courtship and
marriage of Hummingbird is contrasted with the marriage of Hummingbird‘s
Older Brother that precedes it. The relationship between older and younger
brother that here comes to the fore is an important one in Mayan culture
generally, and the following statement about the Yucatec Mayas has validity for
other Mayan groups as well: ―Among brothers, age ranking is especially
significant, with the younger normatively being obedient to the elder and
avoiding all criticism of him‖ (Hanks 1990: 104). Q‘eqchi‘ oral tradition has
different deities fulfill the Older Brother role. In the Thompson narrative, the
Older Brother is a hunting deity called Xulab (1930: 120), whereas in other
versions (Cruz Torres 1965; Wirsing, in Dieseldorff 1966), he is a rain deity,
viz. Chocl ‗Cloud‘.418
Xulab has received scholarly attention mainly because of his final
transformation into the Morning Star and his possible connection to the Venus
tables in the Dresden Codex. Here, I shall discuss him first and foremost as a
deity of the hunt and of wild nature. On a par with his ‗solar‘ Younger Brother,
the Older Brother is a hunter, at first only for birds, later for deer and other
game. Given the fact that the hunt itself was commonly conceived as a
courtship, and thus presupposed a readiness to ‗marry‘ the animals on the part
of the hunter, it seems paradoxical that the Older Brother is emphatically stated
to dislike marriage. Although this dislike can be attributed both to Xulab
(Thompson 1930: 124) and to Chocl (Cruz Torres 1965: 33), it is only in the
case of the former that the Older Brother‘s inclinations towards celibacy
become the leading motive of an explanatory myth setting out the break-up of
his marriage and the origin of the hunt.

418
This does not exhaust the combinatory possibilities. In a recent Belizean variant of
the first episode (Grandia 2004: 5-7), told as an independent tale about the catching of
the tapir lover, the two heroes are Morning Star, i.e. Xulab, and Thunder (a name
corresponding to Kaaq in Q‘eqchi‘).
 266

This chapter (i) introduces the tale, with particular attention to some of
its idiosyncrasies and contradictions; (ii) elucidates Xulab‘s position in regard
to marriage and sexuality and solves the apparent paradox of his unwillingness
to marry; and (iii) sets out what appear to have been the reasons for the insertion
of the Xulab myth into the Thompson Sun and Moon narrative as a whole.419

Xulab and the Origin of the Hunt

With an interval of more than half a century, two detailed versions of

the Q‘eqchi‘ myth explaining the origin of the hunt have been recorded in
Belize, more specifically, its southern Toledo district (Thompson 1930: 123-
125; Schackt 1986: 176-179; cf. Milbrath 1999: 34-35). Both versions are
basically autonomous tales about the origin of the game animals. The Schackt
version is presented as such, whereas the Thompson version has been
integrated, albeit imperfectly, into a wider narrative: The Older Brother should
marry, since the shared household of the brothers is – after the killing of their
adoptive mother – in need of a female cook. However, once the woman has
married in, the younger brother is no longer heard of. The two tales are centered
on a hunting deity who also represents the most important star for the hunters:
The ‗Red Star‘ (Kaq chahim), i.e., Venus during its Morning Star phase. The
Schackt version uses this name throughout, whereas the Thompson version calls
its hunting deity Xulab, a name that does not appear to be Q‘eqchi‘, but which
already in early 18th-century Ch‘olti‘ could refer to a star, probably the
Morning Star.420 Although the tale could thus be called an ‗astral myth‘, and has

419
As usual, Thompson 1930 will be shortened to TH.
420
Thompson‘s version was recorded in San Antonio, in the Mopan-speaking area.
Morphologically, the name Xulab appears to be Yucatec (including Mopan and
Lacandon) or Ch‘olti‘, rather than Q‘eqchi‘. In Yucatec, -xul- is a verbal stem meaning
‗to terminate‘ (Cordemex). Yucatec xulab can refer to the leaf-cutting ants to which
lunar eclipses were ascribed (Redfield/Villa 1934: 206), or to certain destructive ground
wasps (Hanks 1990: 355). Lacandon xulab ‗destroyer‘ is one of the names of the
Morning Star (Bruce 1974: 108, 358-359), tying up to an entry in Morán‘s vocabulary
of middle-colonial Ch‘olti‘ (see Boot 2004), including the language spoken in Dolores
de Lacandón, viz. xulab ‗star‘ (cf. Thompson 1938: 600). In Q‘eqchi‘, on the other
hand, xul means wild animal, xulibc hunting, and xulab does not appear to be known –
although Thompson (1970: 250, cf. 1966: 218) suggested ‗Keeper of Wild Animals‘, a
suggestion unlikely to be confirmed. A true Q‘eqchi‘ name for Xulab may have been As
 267

received attention from this angle (e.g., Thompson 1966: 218; Closs 1979;
Milbrath 1999), its focus is unmistakably the origin of the hunt. The secondary,
instrumental role of the astronomical sphere becomes even clearer if one takes
into account Cruz Torres‘ s important ethnographical gloss (1965: 356) that, for
Q‘eqchi‘ hunters, not only the game generally, but specific species of game
animals as well had their own ‗red star‘,421 to which the hunters used to pray in
the hours before dawn. Specialized guardians of the game (such as those known
from the Lacandons), each associated with a star, may possibly have been the
actual recipients of the hunters‘ prayers.
The myth compares the ‗prehistoric‘ situation with the present one
through a series of elementary contrasts: (1) tame animals - wild animals, (2)
meat directly handed out - game first to be hunted down, (3) animals held in
enclosures - animals freely roaming about in the woods. As I will explain
shortly, a fourth contrast should probably be added: (4) Xulab Owner of animals
- Xulab hunter for game. In briefly summarizing the tale, I will follow the
thread of the Thompson version (1930: 123-125). Originally, Xulab tended to
his tame animals and fed them with his maize. Those in need of meat just came
to him and asked for it. However, Xulab‘s wife ―got discontented‖ because of
his continuous absence during the day and his late arrival in the dark, and
wanted to see what her husband was like. When his wife (instigated by another
person) threw light on his face, she burst into laughter on seeing his big beard,
and Xulab got infuriated. He jumped up, and with him, all his animals jumped
up, too, and broke out of their fences, to disappear into the woods.422 ‖Lord

Sun, defined as the Older Brother (as) of the sun god, Xbalanque (Wirsing, in Haeserijn
1979: 310 s.v. sun).
421
What is usually translated as ‗star‘ (Q‘eqchi‘ chahim) could in principle also refer to
constellations and planets (see Milbrath 1999: 37, Tedlock 1992: 180). Following a
remark by Thompson (1930: 64), a ‗red star‘ would seem to refer to any star (or
constellation) first rising above the eastern horizon, or, if more stars are appearing at the
same time, to the most conspicuous of these.
422
It would appear that mythologically, discontinuous sounds from a woman‘s mouth
have the effect of making animals run wild. In Tzeltal myth (Slocum 1965: 15-16), the
convulsive laughter of Sun‘s grandmother makes the tails of the animals she is holding
in her hand come off, whereupon the animals escape into the woods. In Totonac myth
(Ichon 1969: 108-110), the Owner of Animals (‗John the Baptist‘) creates animals
which, tame, assist him in sowing his maize-field, until his wife gives a sharp cry which
makes the animals turn wild, devour the sowing seed, and disappear into the woods.
 268

Xulab ran out to catch them‖ (TH 124). When he tried to withhold them by
violently grabbing their tails, the tails came off. Finally, Xulab went away.
In the matter of the escape of the animals, the Schackt version gives an
interesting twist to the story, in that the deity does not grab the tails of the
animals so as to hold them back, but, to the contrary, so as to launch them into
the air: ―All the animals (were swung by their tails and) thrown away like
stones‖ (Schackt 1986: 178).423 I shall have more to say about this scene. There
is another, and more important difference between the two versions. Whereas
Thompson describes Xulab as an original ‗owner‘ of tame animals, the Schackt
version presents the deity from the very outset as a great and savage hunter for
wild animals who always goes about in blood-stained clothes. As far as these
blood-stained clothes are concerned, one must assume that, on a par with Red
Star, Xulab also killed and butchered his animals, since he handed out their
meat to those in need of it; but in converting its protagonist into a sanguinary
hunter for wild animals, the Schackt version runs counter to the logic of the tale
as an origin myth by introducing an anachronism. The very fact that the hunting
deity finally catapults his animals into the woods would appear to presuppose
an initial situation in which they were corralled, like that described by the
Thompson version. By the same token, the Great Hunter belongs to the present
epoch, with free-roaming animals, rather than to the preceding, ‗prehistoric‘
one. Xulab‘s desperate hunt after his animals once they had run off appears to
have acquired a permanent character in the Schackt version, making him into a
perennial hunter.
The hunting deity‘s two activities – tending to the animals and setting
them free from their corrals – which the tale, for the purpose of the
mythological argument, has dramatically pitted against each other, are held
together in the wide-spread Mesoamerican concept of the Mountain as an
Owner of the game. The mountain deity keeps his animals in corrals and fincas
deep inside his mountains, and every now and then releases them on behalf of
the hunters when duly petitioned (e.g., Q‘eqchi‘, Schackt 1986: 60, Kahn 2006:
52; Tzotzil, Köhler 2006). It is to these deities (known in Q‘eqchi‘ and in

423
Within the wider narrative, this divergent view has its analogy in the origin of
‗snakes and insects‘, i.e., poisonous creatures (see Chapter Seven): According to some,
the poisonous creatures just escaped, whereas according to others, they were set free.
 269

Belizean Mopan as ‗Mountain-Valley‘)424 that Xulab, in the Thompson version,

relegates his initial work of tending to the needs of the animals in their pens.
The mountain deities are also, however, to release the game into the woods for
the hunters to pursue.425 The Mountain-Valley deities are thus to do on a regular
basis what, according to the Schackt version, the angry hunting deity had only
theatrically done on being ‗unmasked‘ by his wife. The idea of a powerful
Mountain-Valley deity being subservient to the Morning Star is unusual; in fact,
in some of the pre-hunting invocations given by Thompson (1930: 88-89), both
deities appear to be invoked on an equal basis, and in one Thompson tale (1930:
143-144), the primordial gift of fishes to mankind, and thus, the origin of fish-
catching, is ascribed to the mountain deities alone.426
As is only to be expected, parts of the myth – while remaining focused
on the hunt – invite an astronomical interpretation. The light thrown on Xulab‘s
darkened face, making him for the first time visible, also appears to announce
his role as an astral body.427 The shock provoked by it, which results in the
escape of his animals and their consequent transformation into game,
dramatically illustrates what is said of Nohoch Ich ‗Large Eye‘, one of Xulab‘s
appellations as the Morning Star: ―When Ah Nohoch Ich rises, his children [i.e.,
his animals] rise too‖ (Thompson 1930: 63). That the deity, in the Schackt
version, is presented as a great hunter – the ‗Red Star‘ spattered with the blood
of the game – coincides with the way the Morning Star, angrily rising after a

424
Thompson (1930: 57ff) often makes use of the term ‗Mam‘ (or ‗Mams‘ in the plural)
to refer to these mountain deities, from Yucatec mam ‗grandfather‘. The corresponding
Q‘eqchi‘ term would be mama’.
425
The delegation of authority to the mountain deities takes the rhetorical form of a sort
of Mosaic Law promulgated by Xulab on taking leave (―my law is this‖, ―those people
who don‘t comply with this law will get no game‖, TH 125). Although proclamations
constitute a traditional literary genre (one occurs towards the end of the Popol Vuh
Twin myth), the notion of ‗law‘ used here is rather unusual.
426
If Xulab can be viewed as a primordial ‗Owner of animals‘, he differs from the
regular Owners (or Masters) of the Game in various respects. A fundamental difference
is that to the latter, marriage is vitally important; their own daughters play an important
role in the procreation of the game, and they see to it that the killing of their animals
only serves to sustain the family of the hunter.
427
‗Seven sticks of pitch pine‘ were lighted to make Xulab‘s face appear (TH 124). The
number is suggestive of ritual arrangements, and the sticks may have been used in the
pre-dawn sacrifice of the hunters. By analogy with the ‗Weaving Sticks‘ constellation of
the Triques (Hollenbach 1977: 131), a possible reference to a Q‘eqchi‘ constellation is
also worth considering.
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period of invisibility, is depicted in pre-Spanish books. In the Mayan Dresden

Codex (46-50), different manifestations of the deity (again called ‗Red Star‘)
direct their spears against both animals and humans; in Mexican codices, the
Morning Star (or Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli) has been assimilated to the hunting
deity, Mixcoatl,428 representative of the ancestral Chichimec hunters. Without
much reason, Thompson (1930: 63, 139) takes Xulab as the Mayan counterpart
to the legendary Quetzalcoatl, who (in written sources) was also identified with
the Morning Star; Quetzalcoatl was considered Mixcoatl‘s son and successor.429
In the Schackt variant, the act of launching the animals into the air is
also suggestive of astronomical meaning. The first one so handled is the
‗gibnut‘ (i.e., the agouti or tepezcuintle, Agouti paca). In view of the fact that
the agouti had its own ‗red star‘ to which the hunters would pray and sacrifice
(Cruz Torres 1965: 356), one of the reasons for its being launched may have
been to signal the game animal‘s celestial counterpart and its stationing. The
next one to suffer the same treatment is the peccary, an asterism (Kitam
‗Peccary‘) to the Lacandons (Bruce 1974: 107), and known as such as early as
Classical times (see Milbrath 1999: 268-269).430 By comparison, the Thompson
version seems to be more ‗earth-bound‘.431

428
This has often been pointed out, beginning with Seler. For Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli in
the Borgia group, see Spranz 1964: 412.
429
Quetzalcoatl‘s beard, mentioned by Thompson (1930: 139), was equally
characteristic of ancestral hunters belonging to Mixcoatl‘s entourage, witness the
frescoes of the Mixtec Mitla palace (Seler 1961 IV: 90, Abb. 64). There, two bearded
hunters (perhaps the ‗Mixcoâ‘ Xiuhnel and Mimich) have been assimilated to Mixcoatl.
With regard to Quetzalcoatl‘s ugliness, also mentioned by Thompson (1930: 139), this
stems from contexts alien to the figure of Xulab. It refers to Quetzalcoatl‘s monstrously
swollen face, a delusion produced by an ensorcelled mirror (Lehmann 1974: 80-82, and
notes); or it specifically refers to his nose, ―with blotches on it, and somewhat wasted‖
(Durán 1971: 58).
430
In the same way, in a Tzeltal tale about the Sun and Moon Brothers (Becquelin 1980:
135), the Moon brother grasps a mischievous rabbit by its tail and throws it into the air,
the tail again coming off. The astronomical implication becomes clear in a Tzeltal
variant (Slocum 1965: 15-17), wherein it is another Moon (the brothers‘ grandmother)
who grasps the rabbit‘s tail, and looses the animal. When she manages to retrieve the
rabbit, she takes it with her into the sky.
431
It cannot be entirely excluded that Xulab, although transformed into the ‗Red Star‘,
was believed to return regularly to the earth. When instituting the pre-dawn ritual of the
hunters, the deity declared that it had to be carried out ―when I am at home‖, meaning
―before I rise high above the horizon‖ (Thompson 1930: 125). It may also be significant
 271

This origin myth of the game, with all its possible celestial
reverberations, ends by Xulab going away and leaving this world, after having
sworn, in the Schackt tale, that those not able to hunt – in particular the women
– shall eat no meat, only its condiment, chili pepper. In this respect, the
Thompson version (1930: 124) is more radical, with the malediction becoming
a formal and general abjuration: ―I won‘t have anything more to do with
women.‖ Therefore, Xulab‘s desperate pursuit of the escaping animals into the
woods is at the same time a definitive running away from the world of women.
Within the wider framework of the Thompson narrative, this renouncement of
women is preceded by the Older Brother‘s declared unwillingness to enter upon
marriage. It was for that reason that his younger brother, the Sun hero, had had
to push him into it, and this mistaken intervention led to the marriage‘s final
disintegration.
Taking the Thompson narrative as a whole, Older Brother‘s choice for
the celibate status and Sun‘s intervention act as a device to integrate the origin
myth of the hunt into the main tale of the solar hunter. Consequently, it is only
after the tale of the Sun hero and his celestial transformation has been told that
Xulab is finally stated to ascend into the sky and become the ‗Red Star‘ of the
hunters. But the theme of Xulab‘s renouncement of women is, as I will argue,
much more than a mere literary device. It intrinsically belongs to the make-up
and social function of the hunting deity.

Xulab and the Initiation into the Hunt

The theme of the renouncement of woman is not restricted to the figure

of Xulab, but recurs in the context of the initiation into the hunt by the Yucatec
deities of the woods. In important respects, Xulab corresponds to these deities
associated with the wild animals and vegetation.

Xulab as a Lord of the Woods

The Lord or Guardian of the Woods sometimes shows a clear exterior
resemblance to Xulab. In some places, a distinction is made between a Lord and

that the Schackt version does not end with the celestial transformation of its protagonist:
Being called ‗Red Star‘ already, the latter is seen to be hunting on earth.
 272

a Guardian of the Woods, but one can easily take the place of the other. Among
the contemporary Quintana Roo Mayas (Günther 1995: 137-138), the ‗Lord of
the Woods‘ (Yum Káx) appears to be the superior guardian of the game,
overseeing the work of the ‗Guardians of the Woods‘ (Ah Canan Káxoob).
These Guardians are also called ‗Jaguar Persons‘ (Ah Bálamoob) – powerful
guardians being commonly compared to, or even identified with, jaguars (cf.
Redfield and Villa 1934: 113-114). Among the northern Lacandons (Boremanse
1986: 333), the Lord of the Woods himself can assume the shape of a jaguar,
and the ‗Guardian of the Woods‘ (Kanan Kax), or ‗Venerable Lord Jaguar‘
(Yuntsil Balam), can also be viewed as the principal lord and protector of the
animals (Rätsch and Probst 1985: 240). This supreme Guardian is described
(ibid.) as a cave-dwelling deity wearing a jaguar pelt mantle and sporting a large
beard, who, significantly, lives without a woman. He thus resembles Xulab.432
The Lord of the Woods can also be conceived as a cattle-owner. For the
Yucatec-speaking Mayas of San Román, for example, on the Río Hondo in
northern Belize, the Lord of the Woods (Yumi Kaax) was both the god of the
hunt and the owner of all animals. In the same way as Xulab kept his animals in
pens, this Lord of the Woods owned a hacienda, the corral of which ―enclosed
an immense number of cattle and mules.‖433 Whereas the animals of Xulab,
although domesticated, are still those of the woods, the animals of this Lord of
the Woods are presented as if they were inherently domesticated. An element of
taming, and thus of active domestication remains, however: ―He [the Lord of
the Woods] drew near to one of the most fiery of the mules, slapped its side and
it forthwith became as tame as a lamb‖ (Muntsch 1943: 33). The ‗cattle and
mules‘ are likely to be be only a metaphor for wild animals kept like tame ones

432
Xulab‘s role as a Lord or Guardian of the Woods could explain Venus‘ ancient
Yucatec title of ‗Wasp Star‘ (Xux Ek’, Cordemex Dictionary), since generally, wasps
are like the ‗arrows and javelins‘ of the game animals and their guardians, sanctioning
offenses of the hunters: The deer-like Zip acts through his wasps (Redfield and Villa
1934: 118), and the protector of the game, Yuntsil Balam, is surrounded by a dangerous
xux tancas, or wasp ‗aire‘ (Rätsch and Probst 1985: 240-242). In Oaxacan Twin myth,
the role of the wasps, punishing the Old Woman who had viciously been kicking the
carcass of a deer, is much the same. The wasps‘ stings also invite comparison with the
deadly spears of the Morning Star at heliacal rise.
433
In principle, Xulab‘s beard could have been modelled after those of 19th-century (or
earlier) hacendados; however, wearing a beard has clear pre-Spanish antecedents, and
possesses symbolic values of its own.
 273

by their Owner. In Quintana Roo, wild animals (baalcheeoob) are called the
domestic animals (álakoob) of their Owners (Rabeler 1995: 150, 152 n. 13), and
the guardians of these ‗domestic animals‘ have the task of periodically
(following a ritual request of the hunters) letting the animals out of their corrals
to retreat into the forest, and thereby to reassume their wild status and become
game (Günther 1995: 137-138). It thus seems that the combination of Xulab (as
an Owner of Animals) and the Mountain-Valley deities (as his Guardians) has
been modeled after the Lord of the Woods and the Guardians working for him,
thereby putting the interior of the mountains on a par with a ‗corral‘.434
The complement to Xulab‘s role as a Lord of the Woods has to do with
the wild vegetation. Once his animals have run off and left their tails in his
hands, the hunting deity wipes his blood-stained hands on the black nightshade
(ichaj, Solanum nigrum), which Schackt (1986: 178) notes is ―a wild herb that
invades burned milpas‖ and which can be eaten. Alternatively, he smears the
blood of the game on the wild, but edible, plants xchay (chaya, Jatropha
acantifolia, eaten like spinach) and xchayuk (xchay yuk ‗brocket‘s chaya‘?), and
by repeating this action on tree trunks (probably left over after burning the
milpa) creates edible fungi (xikinche ‗tree ears‘). ―This Lord Xulab did, so that
the people might have more to eat to replace the tame animals that were no
more‖ (TH 125). In these cases, Xulab, as a god of wild nature, created wild
plants that, upon invading the cultivated area of the maize field, could make it
revert to forest.
Although Xulab is thus primarily a god of wild vegetation, he is also
associated with the opposite pole, and particularly with the maize. The maize
field is taken from the forest and grows from its soil. Therefore, it is understood
still to depend on its deities (Thompson 1930: 107). It is probably for this
reason that Xulab is believed somehow to influence the growth of the crops,
especially the maize (Thompson 1930: 125), and that, under his name of Red
Star, he is still (together with Sun and Moon) being invoked before sowing the
maize (Wilson 1995: 102). In his myth, Xulab originally had his own maize
field, but it served only to provide fodder for his animals.435 The deity of wild

434
It is a common Mayan idea that Owners of wild animals and game keep their ‗cattle‘
in ‗corrals‘ inside the mountain. In an analogous way, the Tzotzil ancestors hold all
animal ‗spirit companions‘ in mountain corrals.
435
This is the same situation as that prevailing in the ‗prehistoric‘ world of interacting
mountains described in the Tiburcio Caal maize myth (see Chapter Eight).
 274

nature feeding his animals with maize would appear to allude to the right of
certain wild animals to a share of the maize growing in the milpa, a right
connected to the myth of the discovery of the Maize Mountain.436 This right –
which is to be respected by the farmer and thus entails a certain obligation on
his part – would only need to be exercised, however, after the animals‘ escape
from Xulab‘s corrals and Xulab‘s disappearance into the woods.

The Lord of the Woods as a Tutor

The motif of the renouncement of woman turns up once more within the
juxtaposition of field and forest discussed above. Among the Yucatec-speaking
Mayas of Belize (Thompson 1930: 173) and Quintana Roo (Tozzer 1907: 161-
162; Villa Rojas 1978: 291), the Lord of the Woods should be pacified and ‗fed‘
whenever the wild vegetation is slashed and burnt for laying out a maize field.
Otherwise, the maize will not flourish. A story from the Corozal district of
Belize (Thompson 1930: 173) makes it clear that the ‗lords of the forest‘ (i.e.,
the Yumil Qaxob, cf. p. 108), should they not receive their indemnity, are bound
to retaliate. It runs as follows. A farmer insistently neglected his ritual duties
towards the Lords of the Woods, provoking them into kidnapping his son.
―Taking him to their home in the depth of the forest, they brought him up
amongst themselves.‖ Once grown up, the young man was sent back – on the
express condition that he abjure women. However, disregarding the sexual
taboo imposed upon him, he wooed a girl. ―On their marriage night he had just
shut the door of his hut when he heard a series of long low whistles‖ (such as
hunters use among themselves). The Lords of the Forest had arrived to carry
him off for good. And there the story ends. From another report, from the
northern districts of Belize (Muntsch 1943: 33-34), it appears that the Lords of
the Forest take over the farmer‘s role as a father and instructor so as to initiate
his son into the secrets of the hunt: ―Those who have been released from the
captivity of Yumi Kaax also glory in the possession of wonderful powers. They
can tame the fiercest animals and easily catch deer and other game.‖437

436
Elsewhere (e.g., Schumann 1988: 215), the wild animals‘ right to a share in the
maize is presented as a prerogative deriving from their role in the discovery of the
maize.
437
Other, minor spirits of the woods may also kidnap children or young men and keep
them for several years so as to initiate them into their secrets. The Yucatec goblins
 275

It is not clear if kidnappings like these were always occasioned by a

father failing to heed a pact with the Lord of the Woods. In San Román, for
example, in northern Belize, ―it is common report among the Indians that Yumi
Kaax steals children and young persons, some of whom return, while others fail
to do so‖ (Muntsch 1943: 33). At times, calling upon an indigenous priest and
presenting a ritual gift to the deity seems to suffice to see the children return
(ibid.). What may have been the ulterior motive of the Lord of the Woods for
kidnapping children comes to the fore in an elaborate version from the Northern
Lacandons (Boremanse 1986: 169-175), which I suggest can be read as a sort of
exegesis of Xulab‘s (or, as the Schackt version calls him, Red Star‘s) failed
marriage and subsequent renouncement of woman.438 The Lacandon Lord of the
Forest longs for male company. Being fond of adolescent boys, he kidnaps two
of them. The boys are adopted and – as in the reports above –instructed in
hunting magic, including secret formulas and songs.439 They learn how to make
their arrows penetrate their prey and magically return to their hands. They are
also trained in catching poisonous serpents for the purpose of removing their
teeth and rendering them harmless. This they do by enticing the serpents,
spitting on the end of a stick and holding it out to them. The Lord of the Forest
is a savage who eats the meat of his game raw; blood stains are all over his cave
dwelling. The superfluity of the kitchen-fire greatly reduces his need for a
woman; although his spouse is present, she takes no active part and remains
invisible. For several years, the two boys share the life of their patron.440 On

(aluxob), for example, are reported to do so for the purpose of teaching the chosen ones
the art of herbal curing (Preuss 2005: 51, 56). The motif of the renouncement of woman,
however, appears to be specific to the Lord of the Woods.
438
Boremanse (1986: 175 n. 1) first signaled the motif of abduction shared by
Thompson‘s Belize and the Lacandon variants, but did not enter upon a discussion of
the tale‘s initiatory aspects.
439
The idea of an erotical bond uniting hunters and hunting deity is wide-spread. In
distant Amazonia, the Tukano Desana shaman, in his efforts to propitiate the Owner of
animals, ―describes the hunters as feminine elements, sexual objects for Vaí-Mahsë [the
hunting deity] who thus ‗falls in love with them and tries to caress them‘ ‖ (Reichel-
Dolmatoff 1974: 223-224). The intimacy established in such a way is not meant to go
much beyond this.
440
In stories about hunters summoned by the Owner of Animals (or the Mountain), the
hunters‘ forced stay in the Other World seems, to the hunter, to have been only for days;
on returning home, however, he discovers that to his familiars, the days had been years.
Therefore, the ‗years‘ of learning with the Guardian could, in ordinary reality, well
represent a much more restricted period of initiation.
 276

reaching marriageable age, however, the young men free themselves from the
exclusively male sphere of their savage instructor and manage to escape.
Weeping, their teacher searches for them, but in vain: The boys never return.
―Therefore, the Lord of the Forest took back what he had taught them, the arrow
spell, and that against serpents. Once back home, the ancients forgot them‖
(173).441
In the Thompson story (really an ‗ejemplo‘) about the farmer whose son
was kidnapped, the young man‘s marriage brought about a breach of trust with
his savage teachers from the forest. In the present Lacandon story, it seems to be
the simple fact of reaching marriageable age, with its awakening of the young
men‘s desire for human women, which, when acted upon, ultimately brings
about the loss of secret hunting knowledge. Hunting magic can apparently
flourish only within an exclusive all-male sphere. But the phenomenon is a
more general one: Hunting weapons should be kept free from female
‗contamination‘ (e.g., Muntsch 1943: 34-35), and the hunter‘s body should not
carry the smell of his wife lest the animals flee (Katz, in Dehouve 2008: 20).
Similar ideas are already present in 16th-century Mesoamerican sources. The
Aztec hunting deity, Camaxtli, for example (another name for Mixcoatl), lost
the deer spirit that made him invincible on giving in to a woman (Olmos, in
Garibay 1965: 37, Ch. 8 par. 82-83), and the three ancestral deities of the
K‘iche‘s were enviously observed to ―have power and glory only because they
never see women‖ (Totonicapan Title fol. 12v, in Carmack and Mondloch 1983:
89, 180). In the case of the Lacandon Lord of the Forest, one may plausibly
hypothesize that women – once ‗captured‘ by their ‗hunters‘, or, inversely, once
the latter have been ‗trapped‘ by them – represent a threat because they will
eventually ‗tame‘ their husbands, breaking the bond of semen and blood which
united them in a male brotherhood with their tutor, and making them settle
down to slash the deity‘s wild vegetation and become farmers.
Reverting to the Lacandon tale: The frustrated love of the Lord of the
Forest for the young hunters makes him homicidal and cannibalistic. Yet, as the
continuation of the story shows (Boremanse 1986: 173-174), there remains an
element of what could be called homoeroticism, but should, perhaps, rather be

441
A much simpler Lacandon tale (Bruce 1974: 216-223) again focuses on the taboo on
relations with women. K‘änän K‘ax is taking three ancestors to his home. Two of them
don‘t heed the deity‘s warning, and give in to seductive Xtabay ‗Female Ensnarers‘; one
stays with the Guardian, and reaches the latter‘s house.
 277

viewed as the consequence of a fixation on phallic power. In case of a renewed

encounter, the unfaithful beloved had to display great virility: He should either
tickle the powerful man and, treating him rather like a woman, undo his
cannibalistic excitement,442 or, contrarily, lay down for dead while maintaining
a staunch erection. The phallic preoccupation of the savage hunting deity will
inevitably lead him to the conclusion that someone had been killed like a
quarry:

―When the Lord of the Forest saw him with his penis completely
rigid, he declared: ―He is dead, pierced by a piece of wood!‖ He
looked at the ancestor who had his mouth wide open and the eyes
closed, took hold of the latter‘s member and examined it,
manipulated it, slapped it…whack! whack! ...The penis was as
hard as ever. Then he exclaimed: ―Poor thing! A sharp pole pierced
your body!‖443

Masturbation here becomes comparable to handling a spear or a javelin.

The overtly sexual symbolism of the pole ties in with the snake-catching stick
with saliva on its head, from which it could be inferred that within the
exclusively male sphere of Lacandon hunting groups, arrows and javelins were
similarly conceived to be loaded with phallic power.444
The boys‘ adoption by the Lord of the Forest – which in this tale had
not been provoked by a ritual omission on their father‘s part – and their
seclusion in the wilderness can have reflected the initiation of young boys or
adolescents into their adult roles. Among the northern Lacandons, this initiation
takes the place of a rite of passage that elsewhere is performed at a much earlier
age (Lacandon mek’-chur, Yucatec hetz’-mek’, cf. Davis 1978: 265-267;
Boremanse 1998: 81-85). In the tale above, the Lord of the Forest, in his role as

442
Since the Lord of the Forest turned into an ogre, he has now apparently become
comparable to the grim ‗Savage Man‘ (Salvaje). Making this wild man laugh (especially
through dance and music), and so undoing him, is a motif in stories about the forest (see
Brinton 1890: 176, on the Yucatec Che Uinic ‗Man of the Woods‘; Hasler 1969: 25, on
the Oaxacan Mazatec ‗Wild Man‘).
443
This scene with an ithyphallic ‗victim‘ invites comparison with Classical Mayan
representations of ithyphallic captives (see Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006: 210ff).
444
This concept of phallic weapons, already plausible by itself, could be further argued.
In Chapter Three, the Lacandon equation of the tapir penis with a spear-thrower was
noted, and in Chapter Ten, that of Mixcoatl‘s penis with a spear.
 278

a hunting deity, appears to have taken the place of the human ritual instructor,
or ‗embracer‘ (meek’ul), in the Lacandon initiation ritual. Even though boys
should also become farmers, their standing as hunters was apparently
paramount: The search for the wood for bows and arrows, together with their
subsequent manufacture and the instruction in their use, appears to have been at
the heart of the ritual (Davis 1978: 316ff). Appropriately, the Guardian of the
Woods (Känän K’äx) was the first to receive the offering of bows and arrows
(Boremanse 1998: 83-84), and in the seating order of the participants in the
ritual, the initiate sat opposite this deity‘s burner (Davis 1978: 334). The tale
above thus may give us a background to Lacandon male initiation rites (which
would probably also have included the learning of magical spells). It is in line
with this interpretation that it is precisely on reaching marriageable age that the
tale‘s two young men leave the initiatory sphere of the wilds, of male bonding,
and of homoeroticism.445
If, as seems quite likely, the initiation into the hunt also existed in pre-
Spanish times, then Xulab‘s myth – being about how the hunt originated – and
especially his theatrical fleeing away from women, may well have served as one
of its central narratives and as a model for a temporary retreat of the male
novices (in Yucatan living together in the young men‘s house) into the
undomesticated sphere of the wilderness.
Xulab‘s stance with respect to human women during the hunt may not
have been very different from his stance with respect of ‗deer women‘, in that
both were to be kept at a distance. In view of his function as a violent Morning
Star, on a par with the Chichimec hunting deity Mixcoatl-Camaxtli, it is perhaps
significant that in Northern Tepehuano myth (Benítez V 1980: 94) the Morning
Star hunter was degraded to an Evening Star for having slept with a deer woman
following a hunt.446 The hunting deity‘s phallic power should remain strictly

445
(Pseudo-)homoerotic relationships such as that existing between the elder Guardian
of the Forest and his adolescent boys have a long history in Mayan culture. In
describing the Verapaz provinces, for example, Las Casas (1967 II: 522, Bk. 3 Ch. 239)
mentions sexual relationships, with a juridical status approaching that of marriage,
between unmarried young men and boys; he also hints at a mythological role model for
such arrangements. In the context of religious instruction in the temples, similar
relationships prevailed (Casas 1967 II: 515, Bk. 3 Ch. 237).
446
The text summarizes the myth in a few lines, and only mentions the mating with the
deer woman as an infringement upon the state of ritual purity required during, and
apparently also immediately after, the hunt.
 279

subordinated to the purpose of killing the game, and not be abused for actually
making love to ‗deer women‘. Xulab, living in a transitional area between the
dwelling-places of humans and animals, may in a final instance be viewed as a
grim guardian of the border separating the two worlds.

Modalities of the Hunt: Elder and Younger Brother

Having discussed the myth of the origin of the game and its
implications, we should now reconsider it as a constituent part of the Thompson
version of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth. I will attempt to show that the
inclusion of the origin myth of the game pertaining to the Older Brother helps to
establish and clarify distinctions that are vital to the role that the Younger
Brother, Sun, has to play within the myth as a whole. In this respect, the
contrast of older brother – younger brother assumes the function of a general
structuring principle, a phenomenon that has also been noted for Tzotzil culture
(Vogt 1969: 238-245). There, the terms for older brother (bankilal) and younger
brother (its’inal) underscore relative status in a variety of contexts within and
beyond kinship.447
Conceptually, Older Brother refers to the world of the woods, as
opposed to that of villages and fields, and to an unchanging mythical prehistory,
rather than to the present. To the traditional Mayas, the forest could be a source
of knowledge, but often, its negative aspect as a prehistoric world of darkness,
entangled plants and bushes, and the menacing lustfulness of demons, receives
emphasis, set off against the orderliness of the areas of human habitation
(Hanks 1990: 306-307; Taube 2003). These more negative aspects of the wild
seem to have found expression in the way the narrators present Xulab. Xulab
seeks the dark, since light would disclose his ugliness, manifested by a big
beard covering his entire face (TH 124)448 or by a face full of warts (Schackt
1986: 177). These features appear to connect him to the world of wild animals,
rather than to civilized humanity. Xulab is in one group with other ‗men of the
woods‘, such as the che’il and the ch’ol wink, the latter being the caricatures of

447
Some of the examples given by Vogt concern seating and drinking order, positions
within the religious ‗cargo system‘, and the ranking of shamans, mountains, waterholes,
and ritual paraphernalia.
448
Already in 16th-century Yucatan (Landa 1941: 88), a beard was considered
undesirable, and measures were taken to prevent its growth.
 280

the former ‗barbarous‘ Ch‘ol Mayas, now relegated to a prehistoric way of life
in woods and caves. Indeed, Xulab may originally have been considered such a
savage ‗Ch‘ol man‘ (his very name probably being a Ch‘ol loan word). If his
ugliness betrays that he represents the unattractive wilderness, it is also directly
connected to his unattractiveness to women and to the resulting dissolution of
his marriage. Formulated positively: It seems to predestine him for male
fraternizing within hunting groups, and for representing their phallic sphere.
As an ‗Older Brother‘, Xulab can be considered ‗prehistoric‘. In Mayan
mythology generally, Sun‘s Older Brothers represent the distant past, and are
somehow connected to the origin of game. In Chiapas Mayan Sun myth, for
example (Slocum, in Thompson 1970: 361-363; cf. Becquelin Monod 1980:
133ff), the Older Brothers are Former Suns and bee hunters, who are finally
transformed into wild animals by their Younger Brother, the New Sun. In
Northwestern Guatemalan myth (e.g., Q‘anjob‘al, LaFarge 1947: 50-53;
Jacaltec, Montejo and Campbell 1993: 100-102), the Older Brothers are savage
hunters who eat their meat raw and make Sun‘s tame animals escape from their
corral, or cave, and thus turn wild.449 The general connection of the Older
Brother (or Brothers) to the origin of the game is likely to have influenced the
choice of Xulab, rather than Chocl, for this role in Q‘eqchi‘ myth.450
The tale of Xulab and the origin of the game is preceded by the tale of
the two brothers, Xulab and Sun, acting together in the setting of a ‗prehistoric‘
world of cannibalism, dominated by the figure of the Old Adoptive Mother. The
choice for Xulab to play the Older Brother role perfectly fits in a tale about the
provision of meat, since in his own myth, Xulab is indeed the great meat
provider, either handing out the meat of tame animals (Thompson) or hunting
for the meat of animals already turned wild (Schackt). Initially, Sun participates
in this ‗prehistoric‘ world. He and his Older Brother are continually outside
(Freeze), in the woods, leading a hunting life. Therefore, not only Xulab, but
also ‗Lord Kin‘ (Sun) is stated to have sported a great beard during this time

449
The motif of the Older Brothers‘ jealousy, however, so prominent in these versions,
is absent in Q‘eqchi myth.
450
In terms of the hunt, the option for the alternative Elder Brother, Chocl, could,
however, have its own logic. Although Xulab appears to be the obvious choice, the rain
deity is, in a Mesoamerican tradition, closely connected to the deer as well. He
sometimes functions as an alternative Owner of the game (e.g., Lipp 1991: 30), and
rides on a deer (e.g., Laughlin 1975: 111).
 281

(TH 124, cf. 139), a beard that appears to characterize the Sun hero (or
Xbalanque) as a savage hunting deity on a par with the Older Brother with
whom he is living.
The first hunting forays of Sun and his Older Brother bear comparison
to the forays of the two Lacandon boys practicing the art of hunting under the
tutelage of the Lord of the Forest. This was a time of learning magical
transformations, of inventing traps, and of practicing hunting magic of the sort
taught by the Lacandon Lord of the Woods: ―With their magical arrows and
javelins, they did not take aim, they just launched them in the air and by their
magic, these found the animals and killed them‖ (Cruz Torres 1965: 21), not
unlike the magical hoes of the K‘iche‘ Twins within the sphere of agriculture. It
was also a period of overcoming female dominance (a motif which came to the
fore in the analysis of the boys‘ conflict with their Old Adoptive Mother),
another wide-spread theme of male initiation into adulthood. Once the cave-
dwelling Stepmother and her animal lover have been killed and this first period
of learning has come to an end, the elder of the two boys has reached
marriageable age. Grudgingly, he accepts the fetters of marriage. Sun is
intimated to live for some time in the household of his Older Brother and the
latter‘s wife. The parallel to the Lacandon initiatory story above seems clear,
with Sun corresponding to one of the adolescent boys, Xulab to the Guardian of
the Woods, and Xulab‘s wife to the shadowy wife of the Lacandon Guardian.451
However, the advent of woman destroys the initial solidarity of Elder
and Younger Brother, and lays open a fundamental opposition between the two
brothers. As a result, the Older Brother disappears into the woods for good,
searching for his animals, whereas the Younger Brother takes leave of the
woods in search of a woman. By initially refusing to marry, the Older Brother
had already shown his willingness to exclude himself from the social networks
of sedentary life and the domestic sphere. His younger brother urged him to take
a woman so as to have a female cook for their household, but Xulab, as another
Guardian of the Woods, tended towards the ‗raw‘ rather than the ‗cooked‘.
Once married, Xulab spends all his love on the proto-hunters to whom he
distributes meat, rather than on his wife. By exposing his Older Brother to the

451
If we view the first episode as an initiatory period, then the fact that, according to
one of Thompson‘s four informants, Sun was only an adoptive brother of Xulab
(Thompson 1930: 136), could be interpreted as referring to the relationship between
novice and tutor.
 282

tensions of married life, the Sun hero creates the preconditions for the tame
animals‘ conversion into wild animals. In so doing, he also paves the way for
his own role as a deer hunter and ‗lover‘ of game animals conceived as female.
Xulab‘s actions thus serve as a counterpoint to the main line of what
almost amounts to a treatise on the modalities of the hunt. Xulab returns to the
woods in pursuit of his animals, whereas his Younger Brother opts for a life
outside the wilderness and becomes a maize farmer (see next chapter, section
‗Ritual Harmony Disrupted‘). Xulab is the elder, prehistoric, savage brother and
absolute hunter, while Sun is the succeeding younger, historicized, humanized
brother and domesticated hunter. In Xulab‘s case, phallic power and procreation
are subordinated to the act of killing, and woman is renounced; in the case of his
brother, phallic power and killing are subordinated to procreation, and the
overriding theme is therefore the search for a woman. In the strongest possible
of contrasts, Xulab‘s renouncement of women is set off against his younger
brother‘s exertions to have the vagina created. A value judgment tends to be
attached to these contrasts: The Older Brother is dull, the Younger Brother
intelligent. This is openly expressed in the tapir-catching episode of the
Thompson variant (TH 120-121), where ‗Lord Kin‘ – respecting the precedence
of the older brother – repeatedly asks Xulab for his advice, only to receive the
answer: ―I don‘t know.‖ He then reacts despairingly: ―O you are very stupid.‖452
Characteristically – in view of the importance that stars once held in
traditional Q‘eqchi‘ culture – Sun and Moon myth makes a concluding
statement in astronomical terms. The nocturnal hunter whose impetuous rise
frees him from the fetters of marriage and simultaneously frees his animals from
their domestic seclusion, acquires a celestial counterpart in Xulab, the Morning
Star hunter whose rise signals the awakening of the game.453 A suggestive
contrast could be construed between a Xulab whose marriage seems never to
have been consummated and who is ridiculed by his wife for his

452
Even though, in another Q‘eqchi‘ variant collected by Freeze (1976: 23-25), the
narrator could not tell who was the elder, and who the younger brother, the dull-
intelligent contrast reappears: Exposed to acute peril, one of the brothers is unconcerned
and falls asleep, while the other one is watchful and stays awake.
453
The connection between the Lord of the Forest and the ‗Red Star‘ recalls that
between the ‗Female Ensnarer‘ (another denizen of the wilderness) and the female
Moon, as recognized by the Oaxaca Chontales: ―It is said that she [the spook, EB] was
the moon‘s companion who stayed on earth when the moon went up to the sky‖
(Carrasco 1960: 110).
 283

unattractiveness, and the extreme manliness of Xulab at the very moment of

being transformed into the Morning Star, the ‗Terminator‘ whose spears are
feared by everybody.
Inevitably, the oppositions signaled above also simplify matters,
particularly as regards the contrast prehistory - hunt and present era -
agriculture; for although the Mayas had a concept of historical development
through certain stages, they also knew that hunt and agriculture remain as
contemporaneous options. Moreover, the oppositions are context-bound, and
cannot be taken as being all metaphorically related and therefore
interchangeable. With these provisos, Table 5 highlights important contrasts
explicitly or implicitly governing the Q‘eqchi‘ narrative.

Table 5: The Two Hero Brothers Contrasted

OLDER BROTHER YOUNGER BROTHER

Morning Star (Xulab) Sun (Saq‘e / Xbalanq‘e)

prehistory present era

dullness intelligence

ugliness beauty

raw meat prepared meat

wild plants and fungi cultivated plants

maize field for animals maize field for humans

renouncement of woman alliance with woman

all-male companionship male-female

companionship
phallic power and killing sexual procreation
(creation of the vagina)

In the Thompson narrative, the Older Brother‘s refusal of marriage is

followed by the narrative of the Younger Brother‘s search for a wife, and by
what amounts to the institution of marriage. In between, there is an intriguing
transitional episode found only in the Thompson variant (TH 125), one that
 284

invites a final consideration of the contrast between the two brothers, this time
from a perspective of individual development. The Older Brother essentially
remains what he was in the myth‘s first episode, a celibate hunter. Once he has
disappeared from the scene, ―Lord Kin, too, wandered away, travelling far.
When he came to a large mountain, he hurled his blowgun at it, and crawled
through the tube of the gun. Eventually he arrived at the house of his mother.‖
In several hero myths, the encounter with the lost mother represents a
significant moment, particularly in the maize myth of the Gulf Coast peoples
(for an overview and references, see López Austin 1992) and the Ch‘orti‘ myth
of the culture hero Kumix (Girard 1966, Fought 1989). There, the encounter
follows upon the defeat of the Old Adoptive Mother, and leads to a search for
the remains of the father and to a struggle with the powers responsible for his
death (represented in maize hero myth by the gods of thunder and lightning, and
in Ch‘orti‘ hero myth by the so-called ‗Bronze King‘). The hero reveals his true
nature to his mother, and, in maize hero myth, sometimes assigns her a cultic
role (e.g., Williams García 1972: 86, 92). Then, she puts him on the track to his
father‘s grave.
In sharp contrast to this, the mother of Q‘eqchi‘ myth does not
recognize her son, the son does not self-consciously reveal himself to her, or
assign her a function, and the fate of the father is not discussed. Since the Older
Brother tale is in all likelihood an insert, the encounter with the mother may
originally have followed directly on the adoption episode (as in the comparable
narratives just mentioned) and may have introduced a narrative line about the
search for the lost father. With the material at hand, this possibility cannot be
verified; one can only signal the ingenious way in which the episode has been
adapted to the main concern of the Thompson narrative. The mother invites the
unknown visitor to share her sleeping place with her.454 The hero reacts
indignantly, and his mother – obviously now recognizing him as her son –
makes amends by offering to find him a bride; but the hero refuses to make
himself dependent again and leaves to find a bride all by himself.

454
In the Ch‘orti‘ variant told by Anastasio de León (Girard 1966: 276), a hummingbird
transported the hero to his mother, and ―his mother was nude.‖ In this context, it is
worth noting that because of the Mesoamerican rule of ultimogeniture, the youngest son
usually takes the place of the deceased father as the owner of the parental home
(Robichaux 1997: 157-166).
 285

The opposition of Older and Younger Brother thus intersects with the
opposition of young men and their mothers and wives. In varying ways, both
the adoptive mother and the true mother represent the menace of domination
and loss of freedom. In the case of the Younger Brother, the adoption by an
aged pseudo-mother representative of primeval incestuous reproduction
threatens to recur as an incestuous bond with the true mother, in flagrant
contradiction of the tale‘s thrust, namely exogamous alliance. At the same time,
the phallic imagery played off against the Old Adoptive Mother‘s sexual
voracity would allow for a similar understanding of the mountain‘s penetration
by the hero‘s blowgun, with its owner passing through it like a pellet.455
Exogamous alliance carries other risks: Once Hummingbird has forced his way
into the quarters of his fiancée, he is immediately reduced to being her pet, and
is imprisoned in her weaving basket. In this developmental perspective, the
nocturnal transformation of the hummingbird back into a man is the decisive
turn of the entire narrative construction: ―He showed his manhood‖
(Wirsing).456

455
The intimate relation of the hero and his blowgun is put to different use by the Popol
Vuh (lines 3935ff): The Twins – imprisoned in the House of Bats – sleep inside their
blowguns, and are protected by them.
456
Tuctu cojyin cavua Balam Q’ue qui cut ix vuinquilal. Read quic’ut (show) for quicut
(throw, inject). Vuinquilal could also be rendered as ‗personhood‘, but the erotic context
makes ‗manhood‘ an apposite alternative.
 286

CHAPTER 11

MOON‘S LOVE AFFAIRS

The Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth is about a young man on a quest for a woman, but at
the same time it becomes the myth of Sun and Moon. This is not self-evident,
since the relation between Sun and Moon can be envisaged in quite different
ways, such as one between a boy and his mother or grandmother (Chiapas and
North-western Guatemala), or between two siblings, whether of the same (Popol
Vuh), or of the opposite gender (Oaxaca). In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the relationship
between Sun and Moon represents the prototype of a human marriage. It is
about the initial acquisition of female human fertility, but it includes the
quarrels between husband and wife and also the wife‘s adultery. Each time,
these disturbances turn out to have special effects: The quarrels lead to eclipses,
and the adulteries appear to function in such a way that through a temporary
alliance, they activate the lunar powers of the hero‘s wife in specific spheres,
such as that of rainmaking and black sorcery. The wider ramifications of a love
affair appear to be also illustrated by the young woman‘s premarital alliance
with the deer.
The narrative is concluded with two interrelated episodes, the second of
which has been embedded in the ancient tale of Sun‘s voyage to the town of the
vultures. Moon entertains an adulterous relation with her brother-in-law, a role
played by Sun‘s Older Brother Xulab (Thompson) in the Mopan tradition and
by the rain deity Chocl ‗Cloud‘ (Wirsing, Cruz Torres, King) in what appears to
be the tradition of the Q‘eqchi‘ heartland. Minor variants (Mayén, Ulrich)
mention only in general terms Sun‘s jealousy and wife beatings, which lead to
the narrative‘s final episode: Moon‘s alliance with the king of the vultures,
whose defeat by the hero is immediately followed by the celestial ascent of Sun
and Moon.457
Taken together, these two episodes are plainly part of an ancient
Mesoamerican tradition (cf. also Thompson 1939: 135-136, 142-143). Already

457
References are to the sources in Appendix A. The abbreviated author‘s name is
followed by the page number(s).
 287

in Aztec sources from the early colonial period, one finds brief references to
tales involving the same or very similar actors that offer close parallels to the
Q‘eqchi‘ myth. In his Historia de Tlaxcala, Muñoz Camargo (1978: 155) writes
about Xochiquetzal, the Aztec counterpart of the young Q‘eqchi‘ goddess:
―They say that she was the wife of the god Tlaloc, god of the waters,458 and that
Tezcatlipuca stole her from him, and that he took her to the nine heavens and
converted her into the goddess of benevolence [diosa del bien querer],‖ an
unusual epithet suggesting that she may have become a patron of prostitutes,
which, according to various sources, was indeed one of her functions.459 Like
the chief of the vultures in the Q‘eqchi‘ myth, Tezcatlipoca is the god of black
sorcery, and an early Aztec source states that he ―deceived the first woman who
sinned‖ by assuming the shape of a vulture (Cñdice Vaticano Latino 3738, in
Olivier 2004: 209). A 17th-century black sorcery ritual (Ruíz de Alarcón 1982:
109-111, Tract II-2) tells of a sorcerer, identified as Tezcatlipoca, taking away
‗Xochiquetzal‘ and transporting her, not to the nine heavens, but to the nine
underworlds, to abuse her there.

Moon‘s Adultery with the Older Brother

Adultery is a feature of traditional Mayan life that already drew the

attention of early colonial writers. Among the 16th-century Pokomes, for
instance, ―after marriage, relations between husband and wife were strained by
lovers and adultery in spite of severe penalties if the involved couple were
caught or denounced‖ (Miles 1957: 764). For the Yucatec Mayas, Landa
emphasized the jealousy with which the husbands guarded their wives, who
were submitted to all sorts of restrictions (1944: 100, 127). In the traditional
Mayan community of more recent times, where brothers, both married and
unmarried, often lived together in the paternal compound, accusations of
adultery could easily attach to the husband‘s brother. In the Tzeltal village of
Oxchuc, for example, ―the relations between spouses were saturated with

458
Accordingly, Torquemada (1975, Bk. 10 Ch. 31) has Xochiquetzal as a water
goddess.
459
For references, see Seler 1960 II: 1033. In the context of the hunt, we already met
Xochiquetzal as a seductress; in the legend of Tollan‘s fall, Xochiquetzal is the name of
a prostitute introduced into Topiltzin‘s quarters in order to ruin his reputation (Durán
1971: 68).
 288

conflicts caused by accusations of adultery, especially between the brothers of

the husband and the wife‖ (Nash 1973: 203). In nearby Cancuc, the rule
prevailed that ―a wife never looks at her husband‘s brother, nor does she address
him or glance at him‖ (Guiteras 1992: 166). Although I have no direct data
regarding the traditional Q‘eqchi‘ Mayas, there is no reason to assume that they
are fundamentally different in this regard from other Mayan groups. The rivalry
and jealousy between brothers over women is also a theme in Mayan tales
(which, needless to say, cannot always be assumed to give an undistorted view
of social reality). In a Yucatec sorcery tale about the cave of Calcehtok (Abreu
Gómez 1985: 100-101), for instance, the older brother kills the deer double of
his younger brother in order to become the lover of the latter‘s mistress; and a
Chamula Tzotzil tale (Gossen 1974: 311, Tale 111) has a wronged husband kill
his younger brother and transform both lovers into certain birds.

Ritual Harmony Disrupted

During Sun‘s absence, his wife commits adultery with his older brother.
Sun punishes his wife by beating her (WR), or he magically causes a fight
between the lovers (TH, CT). As a result, Moon flees from her husband and
falls into the claws of the king of the vultures. In the Cruz Torres variant, the
affair begins when Sun is out hunting; he realizes what is happening, but
appears to hesitate, and it is not until sowing time before he takes action.
Hunting and sowing would seem to correlate here with the dry season and the
rainy season, the affair with Chocl obviously relating to the latter period.
As has been noted earlier (Chapter Eight), an adulterous affair of the
sower‘s wife jeopardizes the germination of the maize, for the wife is intimately
connected to the land; instead, there ought to be a ritual state of harmony
(kalkab’il). In the Wirsing text (WR 71, 76), this ritual harmony – here
understood as a balance between male and female – is explicitly stated to reign
before Moon‘s adultery (calcab lac’loqueb ―in harmony they were together‖),
and to be reinstored upon Moon‘s return to her husband (aran calcab
lac’loqueb chi junelic ―there [in the sky] they were in harmony forever‖). In the
meantime, the disharmony caused by Moon threatens the first sowings of Sun.
Sun leaves for his maize field and promises to bring the lovers the customary
leftovers (xeel) of the ritual meal of the sowers. The wife of the sower has a
definite right to a share, and is likely to demand it on the return of her husband
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because, as Wilson remarks (and in the present context, rather ironically), ―it
carries the happiness of the planting home to the family‖ (1995: 112).
These symbols of planting bliss and conviviality are now turned into
instruments of punishment. According to Cruz Torres, Sun visits a crossroads –
generally associated with black sorcery – where turkey cocks are fighting.
Turkeys have a strong reputation for being quarrelsome, especially over women,
as is nicely illustrated by the following Ch‘orti‘ story (Fought 1972: 171ff). The
first turkey ever to get married became drunk at his wedding party. He and his
wife started to shout at each other, then everybody started shouting at each
other. With a head turned blood-red, the tom turkey accused his guests of being
sexually interested in his wife, and shouting turned into a fight. In Sun and
Moon myth, the hero removes the potent gall bladders from the turkey cocks
(CT), kneads them into maize wraps (tamales), and cooks them. As a result of
the consumption of the ensorcelled food, a terrible quarrel breaks out between
the lovers.460
The Thompson variant pays much attention to the preparation of the
tamales. After taking the gall from the turkey, the Sun hero visits the hut of an
old woman in order to obtain ground chile pepper and annatto, a red dye
prepared from the seeds of a tree (Bixa orellana). She kneads the ingredients
into a red-colored tamale, and Sun cooks it by heating it in his armpit.461 Chile
pepper was traditionally used to punish female sexual transgression,462 and its
heat is repeatedly connected to that of the sun.463 Perhaps one even has to
recognize in the steaming, red-colored, and peppered maize tamale an image of
Sun himself. Instead of describing the disruptive effects of the turkey gall, the

460
For the Aztecs, the turkey was a transformation of Tezcatlipoca (Olivier 2004: 210),
the arch-sorcerer whom Sahagún (1979: 32, Bk. 1 Ch. 3) calls the ‗Sower of Discord‘.
Through the turkey cocks, the rain deity (corresponding to Tlaloc) loses his woman to
the King of Vultures (corresponding to Tezcatlipoca).
461
In Tzotzil tradition (Gossen 1974: 339, Tale 169), Sun‘s armpit, removed from his
body, becomes a maize plant (ritually referred to as ‗sun beam‘).
462
In ancient Yucatan, the eyes of an adolescent girl guilty of unchaste behavior, as well
as ‗another part of her body‘, were rubbed with pepper (Landa 1944: 127). In a cruel
Chamulan Tzotzil story, the husband of an ‗overheated‘ woman puts chile on the radish
with which she masturbates, and ―the woman died amid hollers and screams‖ (Gossen
1974: 312, Tale 113).
463
In a Chamula Tzotzil tale (Gossen 1974: 327, Tale 143), chile plants originate from
the bleeding feet of a Sun fleeing the demons that pursue him; in the first episode of
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, Sun used chile pepper to cast disease on his pursuer.
 290

Thompson tale immediately jumps to the physical results of the pepper:

‗choking to death‘, and vomiting what, according to the Senahú tale, had been
desecrated by the eaters‘ previous break of ritual harmony: the maize.
The present episode, in its Thompson rendering, casts Xulab in the role
of the adulterer. In the wider framework of the Thompson narrative, Xulab has
his own myth, in which he is a renouncer of women; his erotic involvement here
thus appears to run counter to the logic of the Thompson narrative, expounded
in the previous chapter. A rationale might be sought in the fact that Xulab, as a
deity of the woods and their animals, can also protect the maize field from
predation; but this motive is not recognizable in the Thompson tale, nor would
it fully resolve the contradiction.464 In contrast, a satisfactory motive is given in
the variants that replace Xulab by Chocl ‗Cloud‘. Not only is Chocl‘s love affair
explicitly juxtaposed with his initial unwillingness to marry (CT 47), thereby
showing the strength of his infatuation, his affair is also, as will be set out
presently, intimately related to his functioning as a rain deity.

Moon’s Bathing Place

In his discussion of the aquatic functions of the Mayan moon goddess,
Thompson (1970: 244-245) paid no attention to the cohabitation of Lady Moon
with Chocl, even though elsewhere in the same book, he summarized the
Wirsing variant of the present adultery episode (id.: 367);465 nor did Susan
Milbrath in her later, detailed overview of the moon goddess‘s aquatic functions
(1999: 29, 33) refer to it. It will be shown that as a consequence of Chocl‘s
substitution for Xulab, the entire episode gets imbued with pluvial symbolism.
Already in the Thompson variant, in which Chocl is absent, an aquatic
motif shows up: ―They drank all the water that was in the house, but could not
get the horrible taste [of the pepper] out of their mouths. X‘t‘actani took the

464
Other conceivable motives would be the propagation of wild animals, or, perhaps,
some celestial event involving Venus and the moon, but again, these ideas are not
further supported by the tale.
465
This omission is also notable in Thompson‘s comparative overview, ‗The Moon
Goddess in Middle America‘. Although discussing the aquatic side of the
Mesoamerican moon goddess, Thompson (1939: 143-144) did not connect it to the
present episode of Q‘eqchi‘ myth (the corresponding space in his Table 1 is left blank).
Of course, in Thompson‘s Belizean variant, Chocl gives way to Xulab; but the Wirsing
variant is already among Thompson‘s 1939 references.
 291

water jar, and went down to the bank of the river to get more‖ (TH 129-130).
This motif of a terrible, unquenchable thirst characterizes the outcome of many
cautionary tales about illicit sexual heat and adultery (see Chapter Two) closely
connected to Old Adoptive Mother‘s ‗adultery‘ in the myth‘s first episode.
When the Older Brother is Chocl, however, this same aquatic motif acquires a
fuller significance.
In King‘s much later Belizean rendering (K 34), the adultery takes place
in the ‗house of Chocl‘, a reference casual only in appearance, since the ‗house
of Chocl‘ is likely to be a source of water: a well where water can be drawn, a
place (such as a cave) where the rains come from, or, perhaps, a mountain
shrine or other cultic place. Therefore, it is not the Sun hero who enters this
house to bring the ensorcelled maize cake, but a creature of the rain deity
himself, namely a frog.
King mentions the resulting quarrel, but only the Rubelpec variant
provides important additional details. Having eaten from the ensorcelled tamale
with turkey gall, Chocl starts to shout angrily at his mistress: ―Go and fetch
water!‖ (CT 49). The goddess refuses, but finally gives in. When she does not
reappear, the brothers go and look for her, but all they can find is an empty jar
lying on the river‘s bank. Whereas Xulab appears to resign himself to his fate,
Chocl – in the Cruz Torres variant – is invalidated by the loss of his beloved.
Weeping, he rages through the skies in search of his woman. His tears give
origin to the rain. Thus, the antagonism of Sun and Rain is exacerbated. As in
other hero myths, it is resolved in a contest,466 here the buluc (or, in the modern
spelling, b’uluk) game. A sort of halma using dice, it is often played by the
Q‘eqchi‘s on the eve of sowing the maize field, the aim being to advance on a
straight ‗path‘ laid out with maize kernels. B’uluk is close to b’uluq, a verb
meaning ‗to fill a jar with water, to immerse‘ (Sam et al. 1997 s.v.),467 and it
may well be that this meaning has favored the choice of the game to be played,
since the outcome is that Chocl plunges down into a ravine, where his tears
continue to flow and thereby create rivers. From these ravines, the rain-bringing
clouds arise and this gives the rain god his name, since Chocl means ‗Cloud‘.

466
The antagonism between the Gulf Coast maize hero and the rain deities is similarly
played out in a series of contests.
467
Cf. Haeserijn 1979: 75 s.v. buul: buuluc ‗jugar juego de azar‘, and s.v. bul: buluc
‗sumergir [algo]‘.
 292

In the earliest variant, the ‗house of Chocl‘ (King) gives way to Moon‘s
‗bathing place‘ (WR 71). Xbalanque observes Chocl‘s comings and goings
there and warns him to stay away from his wife; but the affair continues. In a fit
of jealousy and anger, he starts to kick his wife seated in her bathing place
(ratinebal). As a result of the quarrel,

―her place [is] tilting, all her bathing water was poured out over the
world, causing everywhere a great inundation.468 Lady Moon wept
bitterly, she took her jar to fetch water in compensation for the
water that had been spilled, down at the river.‖

Understanding ‗bathing place‘ (ratinebal) as ‗wash trough‘ (Sp. batea),

as Thompson (1970: 367) does (possibly on the authority of Wirsing), and ‗her
place‘ as the location of this trough, clarifies the first line of the above passage.
‗The bath(water) of Lady Po‘ (ratiil K’ana Po) is defined by Haeserijn (1979
s.v. atiil) as ‗a sudden downpour‘ and glossed as ―an allusion to the legend of
Moon, when she turned over her bath water on being beaten by Kaakwa‘
Sak‘e.‖ Thus, what at first sight seems to be a terrestrial scene, could also be
located in the skies from where the rains come. For the 17th-century
Kaqchikeles (Coto 1983: 61 s.v. bañarse), the expression ‗Sun, or Moon, is
bathing‘ (tan t’atin 3ih, iq) indicated the presence of a halo around the celestial
bodies. The present-day Ch‘orti‘s still conceive these halos as watery troughs or
basins – the very ‗bathing place‘ or ‗wash trough‘ mentioned above – that signal
impending rainstorms (Hull 2003: 176/196). The complex meteorological
observations of the Tz‘utujiles of Santiago Atitlan (neighbors of the
Kaqchikeles) both confirm, and extend the symbolism: ―A moon tilted over
Ch‘umil volcano and turning red signifies rain [will come] soon; she is bathing
in the ocean. The moon picks up water, pours it over her body, whence it falls to
earth again. […] Both the sun and moon bathe; a ring around either signifies
rain. Another image has the moon sending the first water up into the sky for
evaporation and being also the lady of stored water, as in the house water pot‖
(Tarn and Prechtel 1986: 176).
Thus, a meteorological perspective is clearly inherent in the story. The
Maiden is cohabiting with Chocl in his ‗house‘, or she is in her own ‗bathing

468
Salcusinquil ix naáj, chijunil ratil qui joyé chi ru-chi-c’hoc’h, yobanquil chamal buut
yalacabat r.
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place‘, and her jar left on the river bank is apparently a rain implement. The
adultery with the rain god amounts to a transfer of the Maiden to the pluvial
sphere, so as to make her productive as a ‗mother of rain‘.

Moon’s Water Jar

The jar, which plays such a conspicuous role in the denouement of the
affair with Chocl, is apt to probe more deeply into the meaning of this episode.
In daily practice, every woman hauls water and carries it home, a task which
can consume a large part of her working hours. In symbolic terms, a well or a
river is the home of the aquatic deities, and drawing and carrying water can
become imbued with aquatic symbolism. Q‘eqchi‘ myth plays with the
interaction between woman and the water, while giving it an erotic
interpretation. If the water, personified by Cloud, attracts Sun‘s wife, the
inverse is also true, with Sun‘s wife attracting Cloud. Rain originates in
consequence of Cloud‘s loss of his mistress, and Cloud thus becomes a rain god
and dispenser of rain only by virtue of her enduring attraction.469 The rain god‘s
longing for the lost Moon is what, according to the tale, starts the pluvial cycle.
Whereas the water to be drawn belongs to the rain god, the water jar
becomes identified with the belly of the goddess who attracts the water. This
identification is a well-documented fact noticeable both among Aztecs and
Mayas; it is connected especially to the lunar aspect of the Maiden. In some
way, the daily rhythm of hauling water is felt to be comparable to the
periodicity of the Moon. For the Ch‘orti‘s, for instance, the visible, full moon is
a jar full of water, and turning the jar (the waning moon) brings rain (Girard
1969: 148-149). The K‘iche‘ Achís view the lunar crescent ‗lying on its side‘
(xotolik) as a jar letting out its water, symbolizing the rainy season. The full jar
is seen as the Moon's belly, pregnant with water: ―In the dry season, her belly is
already big [...] There is rain in her belly. In the rainy season, her belly is flat,
and the Mother is lying on her side‖ (Neuenswander 1981: 146-147).470

469
Not only Chocl is stated to be weepingly searching for his woman, but the same is
said of the Ixil Hummingbird lost among the trees (Colby and Colby 1981: 182), and
also, in the short Sahaguntine ‗Song of Xochiquetzal‘ (Garibay 1958: 109), of
Piltzintecuhtli. Since the woman is needed in different spheres, separation seems to
become inevitable.
470
Sa ‘ik, nim chik u pam [...] ‘o hab chupam. Alah, ch’utin u pam, xotol i Nan.
 294

Whereas the dry season is seen as the pregnancy of the Moon, the rainy season
is equated with delivery (alah ‗deliver‘). In the context of Q‘eqchi‘ myth, such a
pregnancy would have resulted from Moon‘s cohabitation with the rain god.
Thus, she is potentially a ‗mother of rain‘ (connected to waning Moon), just as
she is a ‗mother of poison‘ and a ‗mother of herbal medicine‘ by virtue of the
evacuation of her menstrual blood (connected to waning and New Moon).
The jar left on the bank of the river in the Rubelpec variant (CT 59, also
U 177) is empty. In terms, not of seasonal succession, but of the phases of the
lunar month, the empty jar signifies the invisible moon at conjunction (or ‗New
Moon‘) to the Ch‘orti‘s (Girard 1969: 148-149). The Yucatec expression
―Moon has gone to her well‖ (benel u tu ch’een, Motul) indicates the waning
Moon at the point of disappearance (cf. Thompson 1966: 236). It would appear
that in the well, the Moon is to refill her jar, subsequently to carry it to the
nocturnal sky. That would mean that in descending, she reenters the earthly
realm associated with the fertility of animals and plants as well as with
terrestrial water; in ascending with her replenished jar, she assumes a celestial
aspect reflecting the sphere she has just left. Therefore, the Classic Mayas
visualized the Moon as a young woman seated in a crescent virtually
indistinguishable from a well, and made her into the divine patron of the month
Ch‘een ‗Well‘.

Moon‘s Alliance with the Vultures

After her involvement with the rain god and the ensuing inundations,
Sun‘s wife disappears from the scene to refill her jar, a jar soon found discarded
on the river bank. This ominous portent signals Moon‘s abduction by the
vultures. The Rubelpec variant here furnishes an interesting definition of the
vulture who kidnapped her: The adulteress was carried off by ‗the angel who
had eaten human flesh‘ (CT 59). This formula apparently refers to the bird-
emissary who, rather than reporting to the Survivor, devoured the bodies of
those drowned in the Deluge and was thereupon transformed into a vulture
(Ulrich, in Shaw 1971: 181 and 182 n. 7; cf. Horcasitas 1988: 194-203, 212-
215). That could mean that the catastrophic inundations caused by Moon‘s
quarrels with Sun and Chocl are suggested to have caused drownings and
 295

thereby to have attracted the vultures.471 It is equally relevant, however, that

‗eating human flesh‘ can describe the activity of black sorcerers.
Though the black vulture could, at least to the Yucatec Mayas, be a sign
of impending rains,472 this symbolism is not brought into play by Q‘eqchi‘
myth. To the contrary, the water symbolism connected to the Moon now recedes
in favor of the fire symbolism connected to the vultures and the Sun. Instead of
being refilled and carried to the sky, Moon‘s empty jar remains discarded on the
bank, fixing attention on an evil portent that leads over into the present episode,
in which Cloud is succeeded by the chief of the vultures.473

The Vultures as the Original Owners of Fire

To retrieve his kidnapped wife, Sun is to enter the realm of
Mausajcuink, either a high and white town inhabited by vultures, or a deep and
dark ravine called [X]balba ‗Place of Fright‘. The ‗town‘ (amaq’ [tenamit]) of
the vultures is an instance of the idea that animals live in a parallel world,
inhabiting villages of their own under their own chiefs; and since here the chief
is the head of the community of the vultures, he is stated to live in a ‗big white
house‘ made of white ‗guano droppings‘ (TH 130, WR 75). In the same vein, a
Ch‘orti‘ story (Fought 1972: 174-183) presents the ‗buzzards‘ – actually ?u’sih
‗zopilotes‘ (Pérez Martínez et al. 1996: 241 s.v.usij) – as the first masons, with
white knees and lime on their aprons. Seated on a branch, a vulture
benevolently demonstrates the process of making ‗lime‘ (i.e., excrement). As
Benson has suggested (1996: 309-310), vultures ―turn the vile into something
white that glistens in the sun (…) they are associated not only with death but
with transformation of the dead.‖ Making lime involves burning limestone, and,

471
One is also reminded of the primeval cycles of floodings (aquatic eclipses) and new
Suns mentioned in the ‗preamble‘ of the Thompson myth.
472
In the Dresden Codex (38b1), the black vulture figures as a rain bringer in the rain
deity almanacs. The bird‘s black color may relate to the Lacandon notion of ‗rain
powder‘, or soot (sabak).
473
The successive disappearances of Moon and Sun to the realm of the vultures
represent, at least metaphorically, their ‗eclipse‘, but it is doubtful if traditional eclipse
symbolism is involved. Among various Mayan groups, real eclipses are conceived as a
direct result of marital quarrels between Sun and Moon (Thompson 1970: 235, cf. 1966:
231; Milbrath 1999: 26), or, alternatively, as damage done by certain hawk-like birds of
prey (chohchohotro, Guiteras 1961: 334) – but not, as it would appear, by vultures.
 296

as will presently be shown, the motifs of fire, firewood, and burning receive
strong emphasis in this episode.
The Q‘eqchi‘ tale involves various vulture species. The vulture
kidnapping Sun‘s wife is described as either a black vulture (Coragyps atratus),
or as a black vulture with a red head (malka’an ‗widow‘), i.e., the turkey vulture
(Cathartes aura). According to Thompson and Cruz Torres, the same vulture
carries off both the hero‘s wife and, later, the hero himself. Wirsing seemingly
makes a distinction between the mamá sosol ‗very large vulture‘ carrying off
Sun‘s wife, and the xyuvail sosol ‗father of the vultures‘ carrying off Sun
himself, but he is probably referring to the same species: The ‗Father of the
vultures‘ (xyucwa’il so’sol) is defined by Haeserijn (1979: 307 s.v. so’sol) as
‗the condor‘ – not the Californian or Andean condor, that is, but the King
Vulture (Sarcoramphus papa), the largest vulture species of Central America.
As it appears from the Wirsing text, it is only by transporting the ‗hot‘ Sun hero,
that the black vulture carrying the Sun turned into a white vulture with some
black parts and feet, a description more or less fitting the King Vulture.474
Wirsing distinguishes the King Vulture from his master, the Devil, but some of
Thompson‘s informants (1930: 130, cf. 136) made no such distinction and
described the Devil and chief of the vultures as a King Vulture himself.
The portentous image of the empty lunar jar, taken from the female
sphere, now gives way to an equally ominous image, belonging to the male
sphere of the hunt. To retrieve his wife, Sun ‗borrows‘ the skin of a brocket deer
(alternatively, a leather sack filled with blood, K), turns it inside out, thus
exposing the bloody inside, hides under it, and invites flies to lay their eggs or
excrements (c’ot) in it. The flesh of the hero is thus assimilated to carrion: ―He
turned himself into a dead goat [‗cabro‘, for brocket deer]. He smelled terrible
(U 177-178).‖475 Considering the vital importance of the woman for the alliance
with the game, and of the reign of harmony between husband and wife for
acquiring the blessing of the game‘s master and thereby edible meat, the
assimilation of the hunter to a decomposing brocket appears to symbolize his
utter failure. Yet, perhaps for this very reason, the game animal which, in earlier
episodes, had already been instrumental in the hunter‘s effort to acquire a wife

474
The bird carrying off Sun is also described as a snow-white ‗buzzard‘ with a red
head (Ulrich), a combination not found in reality, and probably corresponding to a
turkey vulture burnt white by the solar heat.
475
The dividing line between deceit and transformative magic is thin here.
 297

and to restore her fertility, now again cooperates by lending the unfortunate
hunter its skin. By holding on to one of the vultures that just alighted, the hero
has himself transported to the place where his wife had gone.
In various ways, the theme of fire can be shown to belong to this
episode‘s ancient core. By three times using the qualifier sac’sac’ ‗very white‘,
the earliest variant already calls attention to the effects of heat. This occurs
when Sun‘s heat burns the hinds of the brocket deer;476 when the lime-made
houses of the vultures are signaled; and when the feathers of Sun‘s vulture
carrier are burnt (WR 73, 75). As with the initial tapir lover episode, the final
episode of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth constitutes a variation of a tale with a
considerable spread in South-America and which, as Lévi-Strauss has shown
(1964: 149-152; see also Benson 1996: 314ff), turns on the acquisition of fire
(usually, but not always, the kitchen fire). Versions to the north of this area
(from the Guyanas upwards) have modified the plot, in that ―the theme of the
theft of fire is absent from it and replaced by the capture of a vulture daughter
whose vigilance is overcome by the hero assuming the aspect of carrion‖ (id.
150). The Q‘eqchi‘ myth appears to occupy an intermediate position, since it
includes both the capture of a ‗vulture woman‘, in this case the hero‘s own wife
allied to the vultures, and the theme of the acquisition of fire.
A Kamaiura Xingú version (Villas Boas 1973: 89 – 93) provides a good
example of the South-American fire theme, especially so since it substitutes the
daylight for the kitchen fire. It starts with a terrible darkness; the only light is
that of the fireflies. Hunger reigns, since the absence of true fire precludes the
preparation of food, whether from the hunt or from agriculture. The Sun and
Moon brothers stuff a tapir with rotten manioc, wrap up some of the maggots
infesting the corpse, and send the flies off with the parcel so as to attract the
vultures. These arrive and start to pick at the carcass; the King Vulture lands
last of all, Sun grabs his feet, and is transported to his village. There, he
succeeds in getting the daylight, in the ritual shape of dancing ornaments
consisting of red macaw feathers.477 A second tale from the Kuikuru Xingú
(Villas Boas 1973: 105-110) replaces the tapir by a deer, while focusing on an
exchange of the firefly for true fire rather than for daylight.

476
The Q‘eqchi‘ word used for the white speculum of the deer, k’il, is also used for the
round griddle on which the maize bread is cooked (Haeserijn 1979: 274 s.v. q’uil).
477
The Yucatec Maya‘s, too, associated the macaw with fire, witness the Izamal deity,
Kinich Kakmo ‗Fire Macaw‘ (Thompson 1970: 240).
 298

The Tupi and Guaraní versions of the myth summarized by Lévi-

Strauss (1964: 149-152) also share the constitutive elements of the Mayan
versions: The king vulture, the carrion of a brocket deer (Fr. chevreuil), the hero
who transforms his own body into carrion (approaching the Mopan variant of
the Ulrichs), and the post-diluvial acquisition of the fire from the vultures (the
deluge paralleling the inundations from Moon‘s bathing place). In addition to
these correspondences, the South-American tales have the vultures attempt to
cook or roast the rotten meat;478 this theme of preparing rotten meat recurs in
the role assigned to Moon, namely cooking for the vultures (K, MC).479
Although Q‘eqchi‘ myth has modified the archaic tale in such a way
that the acquisition of fire is no longer the hero‘s express purpose, the
intentionality of the South-American versions is still clearly recognizable in
Sun‘s assimilation to firewood and in his final solar transformation in a bonfire
lit by the vultures (TH). The firewood episode is a constant narrative element
present in all Q‘eqchi‘ variants, and is apparently intended to acquire a
complement in the final bonfire episode, even though this is not always realized.
On arriving in Xibalba as carrion, the hero is separated from his vulture carrier,
meets a woodcutter, and hides in his load of firewood. Along with the firewood,
Sun is transported to the homestead of the King. Firewood is needed for burning
lime, but in the Cruz Torres variant, it is destined for celebrating the marriage of
the King with the hero's wife (now the vultures‘ cook),480 possibly to feed the
kitchen fires.
The association of vultures and fire recurs elsewhere in Mesoamerica
(e.g., Otomi, Galinier 1990: 596, 598, 628; Durango Nahua, Preuss 1912: 271),
although its extent is hard to estimate. The Q‘eqchi‘s have elaborated it in a
particularly dramatic fashion. When Sun has finally managed to free his wife
from the hands of the vultures, the vultures set the hut of the re-united couple on
fire (Thompson var., 1930: 136-137). The hero seizes ‗a small bush‘, puts fire to
it, and concealed by the smoke ascends into the sky together with his wife.

478
The insistency of the cooking motif might conceivably involve a parallel between
flesh exposed to the invisible fire of corruption and of wood exposed to visible fire,
both the meat and the wood turning black as a result, and falling apart.
479
The wide-spread tale of the lazy husband who changes roles with a vulture husband
equally focuses on the preparation of food.
480
The marriage is to be celebrated in nine days, possibly referring to a novena for the
dead.
 299

Alternatively, the couple throw themselves onto the pyres of Xibalba, wrapped
in the aromatic leaves of a plant (the obel, ‗Hoja de Santa María‘) which, not
being highly combustible (Cruz Torres 1965: 365), affords some protection, and
ascend in large columns of smoke (id.: 63-65).481 The procedure can be
interpreted as a culinary one, since the leaves of the obel ―serve to wrap
‗lancha‘ and zapote fruits to ripen them and give them a pleasant smell‖
(Haeserijn 1979: 241 s.v.).482 Thus, in transforming the bodies of the hero and
his wife, the firewood of the vultures no longer fuels corruption by serving the
preparation of rotten food (as in some of the South-American versions and
probably also in the dubious cookery of Moon),483 but rather serves as a
beneficial kitchen fire.

The Vultures as Assistants to the Devil

In the South-American material used by Lévi-Strauss, an identification
of the vultures surrounding the hero with black sorcerers comes to the fore. In a
Mbya version from Paraguay (Lévi-Strauss 1964: 149), sorcerers feigning
preparation for the ‗resurrection‘ and thus cure of the dead hero, instead prepare
to roast and eat his corpse. The hero, however, is not really dead, and he steals
the fire contained in their coals. ―As a punishment for their cannibalistic
endeavor, the sorcerers will remain corpse-eating vultures, ‗without respect for
the great thing (the corpse)‘, and will never reach the perfect life.‖ The same
functional re-interpretation of the vulture – the ‗angel who had eaten human
flesh‘ (Cruz Torres) – is demonstrable in the Q‘eqchi‘ case.
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the King Vulture is usually replaced by the Devil,
called Ma-us (‗Not-good, Evil‘), Mausajcuink (‗Evil Man‘), or Aj Tza‘ (‗the
Enemy‘). Significantly, the latter name recurs in a black sorcerer‘s spell (Burkitt
1902: 445): ―In his slumbers might he [the prospective victim] be taken by the

481
The final ascent in fire is missing from the Wirsing variant.
482
The reference appears to be to some Piper species such as P. auritum. Hatse and De
Ceuster (2001b: 101) tell us that the dried obel (‗Hoja Santa María‘) is also used in
firing the maize field. It is not entirely certain that obel refers to one botanical species
only.
483
Since the town of the vultures is called [Xi]balba (Cruz Torres), it may be relevant to
note that the Lacandon and Tzotzil death gods preside over an underworld where human
bones are used for firewood, in order to prepare meals consisting of rotten things
(Boremanse 1986: 88; Laughlin 1975: 28-30, Tale 9, and 395-396, Tale 173).
 300

Enemy!‖484 The corresponding figure among the Puebla Nahuas, Ahmo-Cuali

(‘Not-good‘), is a god of black sorcerers (especially shape-shifting nahuales),
and is represented by owls and vultures (Signorini and Lupo 1989: 143-145).
Owls and vultures are also the most important shapes of the Tzotzil black
sorcerer (Holland 1978: 250ff), and once flanked the statue of the grim Tzeltal
deity Hiqal Ahau (Black Lord) in 17th-century Oxchuc (Nuñez de la Vega, in
Brinton 1894: 21).485 In Q‘eqchi‘ sorcery, there is a distinct emphasis on
feeding the demons the sorcerer wants to enlist in his service, including the
offering of pieces of raw meat ―in the water in which the meat had been
washed‖ (Cabarrús 1979: 65). The offering of a dead brocket to the vulture-
sorcerers, or of a leather bag with the blood of sacrificial fowl, somewhere ‗in
the void‘ (sa yamyo) – outside the inhabited area – fits within this pattern.486
The Devil, Mausajcuink, is doubtlessly to be connected to the ‗persons‘
or personifications of objects liable to do harm, that is, to the ‗persons‘ of
darkness (xwi:inqul li q’oxyi:n; cf. Carlson and Eachus 1978: 52-62). In any
case, Ma-us is not alone: Christ (often the syncretic representative of an
indigenous hero) is persecuted on earth by thirteen ‗mausajcuinkes‘ (Cruz
Torres 1972: 293). The black, or black-and-red, vultures surrounding the dead
deer, and headed by the king vulture, thus correspond to the twelve
mausajcuinkes headed by the principal one, as well as to a deity of black
sorcery surrounded by his assistant nahuales (shape shifters), while the fire of
the vultures corresponds to the hell fire of the devils (although this is not
insisted upon).
Because of the identification of the king of the vultures with the devil,
this episode of Sun and Moon myth has its place among other Q‘eqchi‘ devil

484
Sä út xgwar!inik xk!amë tá ban l’Aj-tsa.‗The Enemy‘ (Yaotl) was also one of the
names of Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec counterpart to the King of the Vultures.
485
Nowadays, the ‗Blackmen‘ (H?Ik’aletik) are among the demons of the Tzotzil
Carnival. They ―are noted for their hypersexuality, their ability to fly, and their habit of
living in caves‖ (Bricker 1973: 150), and also for their abductions and abuse of women
(Blaffer 1972: 20ff). (The ‗hypersexuality‘ refers to the size of their genitals and to their
enormous procreative power.)
486
A man (sometimes Christ) hiding in the decaying corpse of a horse and surrounded
by vultures constitutes a narrative topic (cf. Oakes 1969: 140 and Wagley 1949: 52). In
Pokoman dream imagery (Reina 1984: 15-16), the dead horse can symbolize the
agonizing body of the dreamer, whereas the dreamer himself coincides with his soul,
captured by a witch and carried off to the Underworld.
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stories, stories that have been intertwined historically with devil dances and
performances. The description of the Evil One in the Thompson variant, a ‗big
devil with four eyes and horns‘, refers directly to the masks of the devil dances.
Also the heaviness of the Devils‘ head is rather suggestive of a wooden mask,
like that of ‗The One with Thirteen Horns‘ (aj oxlaju xukub),487 popularly
known as El Cachudo ‗The Horned One‘: ―You [Sun‘s wife] will carry my
head, because the horns don‘t allow me to sleep peacefully‖ (CT 55). In two
devil dances from Cobán – traditionally staged by indigenous Mayan groups –
there was a Chief Devil (Diablo Mayor) and a company of minor devils
personifying vices such as Lust, Greed, and Dissension (Correa 1955: 94-97),
vices which are all quite relevant to the mythical episode at hand. When
Thomas Gann (1925: 204-205) once encountered a travelling Q‘eqchi‘ devil
dance group, he learnt that the King of the Devils was ―determined to conquer
the world and its inhabitants, and make them his slaves‖, while his mother and
wife ―were to introduce dissensions and lust.‖488
Devil dances were usually rather static affairs with moralizing
recitations by each of the dancers. On the other hand, in the loa (‗praise‘)
performances, there was more drama, with a focus on the satanic seduction of
individual persons (often women) by means of riches and the promise of lust
(Correa 1955: 89-93).489 The seduction of Sun‘s wife by the vulture emissary of
the devil, her abduction to Xibalba (hell), and her subsequent impregnation by
its Master has already been shown to belong in a context of satanic seduction
(Chapter Seven). The Cruz Torres variant in particular offers a traditional
seduction scene, with the black vulture‘s promise of riches and power, and with
the woman‘s traditionally encoded consent to the vulture‘s ‗proposal‘: ―With
her big toe, and with a circular movement, she opened a hole in the sand‖
(1965: 54).490 As yet another correspondence, Moon becomes a wife to the King
of the vultures and in the end, her position thus coincides with that of the wife

487
The name is mentioned on a par with Aj Tza in the Burkitt (1902) incantation
already referred to (cf. Haeserijn 1979: 374 s.v. xuc).
488
As an anecdote, Gann adds: ―At this point I reminded the old man [a Q‘eqchi‘
informant] that there were not supposed to be any women in the Mayan hell, but he only
grinned and said [apparently in Mopan, EB], ‗Ah Tat, ma xupal ma metnal‘ [no woman,
no hell].‖
489
The colours of the devils in the dances and loa performances were red and black
(Correa 1955: 90), the same as those of the turkey vultures.
490
The sexual symbolism may have been borrowed from the context of sowing.
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of the ‗King of the Devils‘ in the Q‘eqchi‘ dancing performance described by

Gann.
A witch story as retold by Cruz Torres (1965: 151-161, cf. 344) can
serve to illustrate the same genre in narrative tradition. The chief devil, Aj Tzá,
is assisted by twelve others. At night, the twelve congregate in the shadow of a
ceiba to fill a calabash with the blood they had collected and which had been
spilled in all sorts of accidents; the blood is then drunk as a ‗broth‘ by the chief
devil.491 This Q‘eqchi‘ devil story shares two of its motifs with variants of the
myth: the collected blood and the ceiba. The calabash with blood recurs in the
King variant as the bag of blood (from turkey, chicken, or dog) in which the
hero ―wrapped himself‖ to attract the black vultures. With regard to the ceiba,
or cottonwood tree, the Thompson variant (1930: 130) relates that ―after a half-
way rest on a big cottonwood tree (yaxche) they [Sun‘s wife and the black
vulture carrying her] approached the town of the sopilotes [vultures].‖ The
cottonwood tree, or ceiba, is not only the nocturnal meeting-place of the thirteen
devils, but also the place where the Devil initiates transforming witches, or
nahuales (Pacheco 1988: 144). Clearly, one should better not rest under a ceiba
(Haeserijn 1979 s.v. inup).
The Mesoamerican connection of the Moon with black sorcery and its
deities has received relatively little attention, probably because it tends to be
ascribed to Spanish influence. The indisputably pre-Spanish traditions
concerning the interactions of Tezcatlipoca (the transformer who can also
assume the shape of a vulture) and Xochiquetzal serve as a warning, however,
that this matter should not be prejudged. In Chapter Seven, the implications of
Moon‘s transformation into snakes and insects for black sorcery have already
been traced; it was also noted that these transformations can equally be viewed
as the result of a pregnancy caused by Ma-us. A figure comparable to Ma-us in
the contemporary Nahua belief of north-western Veracruz (Báez and Gómez
2000: 87-89, 94) is Tlacatecolotl ‗Human Owl‘ (or ‗Man-Owl‘), a multi-
facetted deity partly overlapping with Tezcatlipoca, and considered to be the
inventor of black sorcery. Associated with the descent of the sun into the
underworld, Tlacatecolotl possesses all sorts of riches, is always courting

491
For a similar Ch‘orti‘ story, see Fought 1972: 314-326. It may be noted that the idea
of devils collecting blood is an indigenous one: The Q‘eqchi‘ story almost exactly
coincides with present-day K‘iche‘ tales about the father of Blood Woman in the Popol
Vuh, Cuchumaquic ‗Blood-gatherer‘ (cf. Tedlock 1996: 254, 338).
 303

women, and notably ―married a very nice girl called Meetztli‖ (id.: 88), that is,
the Moon.
Within Mesoamerica, other instances of the moon‘s connection to black
sorcery and its patrons are not hard to find. In the Northern Sierra de Puebla,
―the moon is an ambivalent spirit entity in Nahua thought, connected with
fertility and tonantsij [‗Our Venerable Mother‘] but also with a terrifying spirit
from the underworld called tlahuelilo (a Nahuatl term meaning ‗wrathful one‘).
Often, paper images of fearful disease-causing spirits are cut with horn-like
projections that are meant to portray the crescent moon‖ (Sandstrom 1991: 248).
For the Otomís, the moon, in its female aspect, ―evokes sorcery and nocturnal
evildoings‖ (Galinier 1990: 539); whereas the fly is a ‗uterine creature‘ that
―belongs to the female universe of ‗pestilence‘ ‖ (id.: 607).

The Vulture Lord and the New Sun

The Q‘eqchi‘ and Mopan Sun and Moon myth has a preamble (TH 119)
in which every seven years, the sun (a boy) ―refused to stand the heat anymore.
He caused a flood to cool himself and plunged into the water. Then the world
was dark and flooded.‖ Because each time, many people drowned, another,
stronger sun had to be found, the hero of the narrative. Thompson called his
string of mythical episodes ‗The Legend of the Sun, the Moon, and Venus‘, in
analogy to the Aztec ‗Leyenda de los Soles‘ with its succession of world ages or
‗Suns‘ (TH 137), in which the three just-mentioned celestial bodies had an
important role to play.492 Much later (1970: 330-373), he came with a grand
overview (rather than a synthesis) of Mayan creation myths concerning the
world and its succeeding ages, mankind and its discontinuous progress, the
maize, and Sun and Moon.
The First Sun of the Thompson tale is the son of the first human beings,
Adam and Eve; the New Sun is the son of unknown parents. Perhaps one should
interpret this contrast as that between Ladino and Mayan rule, a son of unknown

492
The ‗Leyenda de los Soles‘ (a part of the so-called Codex Chimalpopoca) received
its title from Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, whose translation appeared in the
‗Biblioteca Náuatl‘, Vol. 5, Florence 1903. Important later translations are those of
Primo Velázquez (1975 [1945]: 119ff.) and Walter Lehmann (1974 [1938]: 322ff). The
latter‘s 1906 Latin rendering was already known to Thompson at an early date (as borne
out by the References in Thompson 1939).
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parents often becoming, in Mesoamerican tales, an indigenous hero or king.

More importantly, however, the preamble implies a historical point of view:
The Sun, whether the preceding, or the present one, is not inherently a celestial
divinity, but starts as a human being, or rather, as the prototype of a powerful
human being. As such, the hero of Q‘eqchi‘ myth is on a par with legendary
heroes like Fane Kantsini, who equally had to overcome an Old Adoptive
Mother, and who finally established himself as a king. It has been shown that
‗Lord Kin‘ (Xbalanque) is another Fierce Warrior who succeeded in subverting
the king of ‗mountain and valley‘. At the very moment the hero has shown his
ability to restore fertility to his wife, he appears to be ready to become Sun.
Therefore, some tales (Owen, Wirsing) situate the protagonists‘ celestial
transformation at this point.
Becoming Sun appears to be a metaphor for becoming sovereign,493 and
domination of the sky a symbol of overlordship. From the sky, everything down
below is supervised. ―You will watch over all that is on the land‖, the Sun hero
was told by God before he actually descended to earth to meet his future wife,
and ―the sun came down to see the land and its animals‖ (WL 327). Some
informants interpreted this constant watchfulness as the need to keep the
original lord of the land, ‗Mountain-Valley‘, under control, the father-in-law
forever intent on retrieving his daughter, Moon (EM). That nothing can escape
the attention of the hero turned Sun has another concomitant as well: When a
Q‘eqchi‘ laborer, unjustly accused of theft, once swore an oath by pointing to
the sun, while at the same time invoking the name of Xbalanque (Dieseldorff
1926: 35),494 he acknowledged, by this very act, the solar hero as the ruler who
warrants justice.
In the variants discussed in this chapter, the actual transformation into
Sun and Moon is postponed. The narratives first proceed to show how the
quintessential ritual harmony gets lost, and how the fundamental duality of
husband and wife fatally loses its complementary character, and becomes
antagonistic, before the state of harmony is finally re-introduced by the

493
For the same reason, the name of one of the heroes of the Popol Vuh Twin myth,
Hunahpu, corresponds to Ahau in Yucatec: Lord or King; either he, or his Twin (the
text is not unequivocal) becomes Sun. In the context of the K‘iche‘ document, the Twin
myth functions as the foundation myth of the kingdom.
494
Adapted to modern orthography: Naxnaw li Qawa’ Xb’alamq’e ink’a xinb’anu ―Our
Lord Xbalanque knows I didn‘t do it.‖
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protagonists passing through the fire together. Nonetheless, the narrators do not
for a moment forget that the hero is predestined to become the sun, and already
possesses the required ‗heat‘, which – among the Tzotziles as among the
Q‘eqchi‘s – is at the same time a transcendent quality acquired by the very
powerful (Wilson 1995: 135-136): Sun‘s heat whitens everything it touches, be
it the hind of the brocket deer, or the feathers of the black vultures.
From the perspective of rulership, the king vulture is a logical choice
for the main antagonist of the Sun. Being the largest bird, and accustomed to
hover at great altitude, the king vulture can dominate the sky like the sun, which
in Mesoamerica is repeatedly found associated with the eagle. Outwitting and
defeating the vulture king amounts to a theatrical rite of solar renewal, as well
as to a renewal of the reign.495 Indeed, it would be hard to find among
comparable solar tales a stronger and more radical contrast between Sun‘s status
before and after the ultimate reversal of fortunes than that which is offered by
Q‘eqchi‘ myth. The adultery affair forces the myth‘s protagonist to leave his
familiar surroundings, and introduces a liminal period of uncertainty and
imminent danger. Ominously announced by the discarded water jar, this
liminality is dramatically staged by the positioning of the brocket sa yamyo ‗in a
disoccupied area‘, that is, in the void, outside the world of human conviviality.
The hero‘s hiding under the skin of a brocket that is subsequently given the
aspect of a rotting carcass is paralleled by his hiding in firewood that, on being
burnt, will turn black like a corpse in the last stages of decay. The haunting
image of Sun in the brocket not only signals the hunter‘s utter failure, but can
equally be read as an emblem of the devastating action of black sorcery and its
agents.
A first turning point is marked by the war dances (the Cortez and the
Moros) executed by the hero at the court of the king vulture (TH 136), as well
as by his counter-sorcery (which consists in disabling the ‗bite‘ of the sorcerer
by causing him a toothache).496 The next, and decisive event is the fire ordeal: It

495
Elsewhere (Braakhuis 1987), I have argued that in Classic Mayan ritual, this
antagonism was re-actualized on the 20th day Ahau ‗King‘, and more particularly on an
Ahau day ending a larger vigesimal period, such as a katun. As a day lord, Ahau could
iconographically be personified by the Vulture King as well as by the Blowgunner King
(or [Hun]ahpu).
496
The topic of the pseudo-curer intent on disabling his patient is also present in the
Popol Vuh Twin myth.
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leads to a restoration of celestial harmony, visible and audible in a general,

paradisiacal happiness of the birds and all other living creatures (CT). It is first
of all the hero‘s solar transformation in a fire – whether freely sought (CT) or
inflicted upon him (TH 136) – that makes the Q‘eqchi‘ episode comparable to
the ‗Leyenda de los Soles‘, and more particularly, to the episode of the orphan
who jumped into a blazing fire in order to become the New Sun of the last
(fourth of fifth) world age.497 The Aztec solar myth had a strongly martial
character, particularly since eagle and jaguar – representatives of the most
valiant warriors – followed in suit by jumping into the furnace (Lehmann 1974:
344). The war dances executed by the Q‘eqchi‘ hero who was to suffer the fire
ordeal testify to a similar association of fire, war, and solar status.498
Fire rituals have been described for the 16th-century Yucatecs as well as
for the contemporary Tzotziles, but what comes closest to the concluding scene
of Q‘eqchi‘ myth is an early colonial description of a Q‘eqchi‘ theatrical
performance (Estrada Monroy 1979: 172-173; cf. Coe 1989: 161-162).499 The
piece was staged in the year 1543, at the foundation of San Juan Chamelco, and
co-directed by the Dominicans and the famous Q‘eqchi‘ leader, Juan Matal
Batz. According to Estrada‘s description, the play‘s protagonist was not just
Xbalanque – the Q‘eqchi‘ hero who descended to the Underworld in the
neighborhood of Cobán – but also Hunahpu. The lords of the underworld had
already been defeated. In a wooded scenery and surrounded by pyres, the two
heroes – wearing black masks with horns – ―started to lit a multitude of burners
that were there, and in the midst of the dense smoke set fire to the bushes, the
trees, and the straw mats. Everything was converted into a great pyre. Hunahpú
and Xbalanqué, their arms spread crosswise and facing each other, threw
themselves onto the pyre, leaving those of Xibalbá bewildered, who could find
no escape from the flames.‖ Finally, the two heroes re-emerged triumphantly.
Later, this theatrical piece was apparently remodeled into a devil dance: The
Twins (with their black masks) became the Chief Devil (Diablo Mayor) and
Lust (Lujuria), finally to re-emerge as Jesus and the Virgin at the dance‘s

497
An important difference with Q‘eqchi‘ myth is the fact that the Aztec Sun hero gets
company of an unallied, male Moon.
498
In an Aztec interpretation, the singing birds surrounding the ascending New Q‘eqchi‘
Sun would probably have evoked the souls of dead warriors.
499
I have not been able to consult the facsimile of the original description of the feast to
which Estrada (1979: nn. 178 and 180) refers.
 307

conclusion. Christianizing the play thus seems to have introduced a gender

distinction, which may have rested on the transformation of Hunahpu and
Xbalanque into sun and moon, but which also made the Christianized play
homologous with the concluding episode of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth.
As a final remark, the theme of a poor hunter of dubious descent who
intrudes into a foreign realm, kidnaps the daughter of a terrestrial king, and, by
virtue of losing and retrieving his wife, becomes the first celestial sovereign, is
potentially an important paradigm for the foundation of kingship. By
comparison with the Aztec myth of the Fifth Sun and the Popol Vuh, the
originality of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth lies in the fact that the New Sun is presented
not as a solitary hero, but as the prototypical husband of Moon, and that the new
solar age is ushered in by a renewal of their marital alliance. In this respect, the
Q‘eqchi‘ myth seems to continuate a tradition reaching back as far as the time
of the Classic Mayan kingdoms, when a pair of royal ancestors could be
depicted high above the figure of their descendant (see Taube 2004: 79 and figs.
8, 10b-c), with the male ancestor being seated within a solar cartouche, and the
female one within the crescent of the New Moon.
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GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

The Q‘eqchi‘ myth of Sun and Moon consists of a series of episodes that
connect with varying degrees of coherence, unified by the presence of the male
protagonist, Sun-Xbalanque. With the exception of the adultery episode, the
myth‘s general framework is that of the hunt, both in a direct and in a
metaphorical sense. The core of the myth is the episode that has the hero change
into a hummingbird, a symbol for the blending of war into courtship. The
hummingbird‘s ensuing conversion into a love charm of the kind used by
women signals one of the myth‘s salient themes, namely the power of attraction
continually exercised by the goddess who is to become the protagonist‘s wife. It
results in all sorts of alliances and, in Q‘eqchi‘ as well as in other Hummingbird
myths, serves to connect mankind to the earth in its various manifestations.

The love magic episode belongs to a wider Mayan group of

Hummingbird tales characterized, in a sociological and historical sense, by an
opposition between a hero representative of an intrusive group, and a father-in-
law representative of a sedentary population. As a marauding military invader,
the pre-Spanish war god Xbalanque represents the general Guatemalan
Highland type of the ‗Fierce Warrior‘; the mountain spirit Tzuultaq‘a
(‗Mountain-Valley‘) a king identified with his territory; and his daughter the
potential and bounty of the soil (its fertility as manifested in its game and
crops). In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, after the abduction of the daughter and the hero‘s
solar transformation signaling his overlordship, an armed peace prevails
between the old terrestrial and the new celestial power. Since the Tzuultaq‘a is
often thought to have the outward appearance of a European plantation owner,
the provocation of the powerful mountain spirit by Xbalanque may have been
understood by indigenous workers on the late 19th-century plantations of the
Alta Verapaz as the challenging of a powerful landlord by a rebellious
indigenous leader.

Hummingbird tales vary in several respects. One such respect is how

the hero acquires his wife, specifically whether through bridal service of bridal
capture. Theoretically, the importance of this distinction resides in the legal
issue of the father-in-law‘s compensation for his daughter. The most salient
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difference between the Hummingbird tales, however, is in the nature of the

female protagonist‘s transformation. This transformation seems to vary
according to the ethnicity of the narrator. It may be the bones, the blood, or the
entire body that is transformed. The bones are transformed into wild game
animals, with varying emphasis on ‗deer and rabbit‘, honey bees, or woodland
fowl; the blood is transformed into harmful creatures, especially snakes and
insects, and into the moon; and the whole body is transformed into the maize.
These transformations of Hummingbird‘s woman are themselves ‗inter-
transformational‘, since they all represent the daughter of the mountain spirit.
The Lacandon version of Hummingbird myth constitutes a zero option, in that
the female transformation is not realized. It is argued that, theoretically, the hero
finds himself in the position of a ‗husband‘ vis-à-vis his transformed wife, and
thereby comes to prefigure the social roles of hunter, bee-hunter, and
beekeeper; curer and black sorcerer; solar king by right of conquest; and maize
farmer. In the Lacandon case, the hero returns to the wife he had had to leave in
the underworld, and is likely to have become an intermediary, and perhaps
intercessor, to the world of his father-in-law (i.e., the realm of the dead).

With the exception of the adultery episode, the common framework of

the Q‘eqchi‘ myth is the deer hunt. The hunt is one of the most neglected
aspects of Mesoamerican culture, in regard to both hunting practices and
hunting ideology, and the picture drawn up here is therefore only provisional.
Mythologically, in Mesoamerica, the game animals (especially the deer) are
seen either as consanguineous kin of the hero (his father, mother, or older
brothers), or as his affinal kin (his wife and her brothers and sisters). In
principle, the hunt sets two social groups, human beings and animals, in
opposition, with the figure of the Owner of the Game representing the latter.
The concepts of warfare and marriage function as contrasting ideological frames
for the hunt, with the seductive offer of alliance situated between the two.
Correlated with the polarity of war and marriage are two distinct images of the
Owner of the Game, one as a powerful adversary and the other as a father-in-
law. Analogously, the mythical hero can be viewed as a marauding ‗Fierce
Warrior‘ or as a son-in-law willing to do bridal service. One way to understand
the alliance of the hunt would be to view it as a system of checks and balances,
characterized by a reversal of the hunting strategies vis-à-vis the other party.
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In Hummingbird myth, the urn holding the remains of the hero‘s wife
plays a pivotal role. In the hunting version, it is likely to be a symbol for the
‗hunting shrine‘ (Brown), where the bones of the game, restored to the Owner,
await regeneration. The change of the hero‘s wife‘s bones into game animals
implicitly renders the hero an ‗anti-hero'. If he is to ‗eat‘ her and thereby gain
sustenance, he will be obliged to run after his wife forever and to find a modus
vivendi with her father. Although, in Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, the wife‘s
primary transformation is into ‗snakes and insects‘, rather than into ‗deer and
rabbits‘, her connection to the deer hunt is nonetheless critical. However, her
role with respect to the game is quite different from that in Hummingbird myths
that do not end with a celestial transformation. Instead of representing the polar
opposite of the hunters (that is, the game animals) and of making her husband
forever dependent on her father, who is the game‘s Owner, Hummingbird‘s
wife functions as an intermediary at the service of her husband. In doing so, she
facilitates two things: first, the transference of fertility to mankind; and second,
the alliance with the game animals by virtue of which her children, the ‗men
made of deer meat‘, can survive. The episode of her adultery with her brother-
in-law, who is the god of hunting and guardian of the game, is not clearly
motivated by the myth but may be related to her intermediary function. Her
final transformed state, as the moon, remains expressive of this role, especially
given that it is a deer that carries her into the sky. A similar message, wherein
all game animals stem from a deer in the moon, appears in Q‘anjob‘al myth.

Because of the specific nature of the first transformation of its female

protagonist Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth is, for the most part, best understood
from a perspective of disease casting and curing. There are strong indications
that the abduction episode concerns the origin of menstruation as a concomitant
to the female protagonist‘s final transformation into the moon. The harmful
creatures, especially snakes and flies, that are born from the blood of the hero‘s
wife thus appear to have originated from menstrual blood. Actually, there is a
double origin, since the defensive, poisonous bite of the ‗menstrual‘ creatures
represents the hero‘s gift to his transformed wife. In this part of the myth, the
hero is cast in the role of a shamanic curer who, with the aid of his animal
assistants (some of which represent celestial phenomena), recovers the
materialized soul particles of his wife lost through Fright. The canoe filled with
tobacco juice, in which he empties the jars with harmful creatures, recurs in a
shamanic text for curing snake bites that dates from the time of the earliest
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collected variants of the myth. The harmful creatures from the jars are
instrumental in black sorcery, especially by intrusion, and are born a second
time from the hero‘s wife, now impregnated by the god of black sorcerers, the
Evil One. Finally, the initial immobility of the protagonists‘ celestial
transformations is diagnosed as a paralysis and remedied by curers.

The theme of the acquisition of meat is treated from another angle in the
first episode of the myth, which sets off the consumption of the meat of the
game from that of human beings. In some form, this episode could perhaps be
inserted in every Mesoamerican hero myth, but the emphasis on the theme of
cannibalism is particularly strong in the Q‘eqchi‘ case. The tale tells of the
birth, adoption, and youth of the hero as well as his older brother, while
focusing on the brothers‘ interaction with, and eventual disposal of, their aged
adoptive mother, her lover, and their biological children. In many
Mesoamerican versions of the tale, the aged adoptive mother is conceived of as
a demon associated with the kidnapping and eating of babies. This association
could be understood as a reference to a mythological, incestuous, and endo-
cannibalistic age, in which carnality and procreation were as yet not
distinguished from the production of meat. The transformation of the Old
Adoptive Mother into the goddess of the steam bath (in Oaxaca Sun and Moon
myth) is here viewed as a socialization of her innate drive to acquire children.

Many of the heroes‘ pranks seem to be connected to the Old Adoptive

Mother‘s inability to distinguish flesh and meat, and thus, sex and cannibalism.
The sexual connotation of meat is further developed in the interaction of the
goddess and her lover, who is represented by a game animal: a deer in Oaxacan
versions of the tale, and a tapir in the Mayan versions. The lover‘s identification
as a tapir by one of Thompson‘s informants finds confirmation in a recent
Belizean variant, whereas its former spread is suggested by additional examples
from other Mayan groups. The alliance of the Aged Adoptive Mother with the
tapir is thus a variant of the alliance of the hunter‘s wife with the game, with the
game now representing a forbidden ally. The role of the tapir in the Q‘eqchi‘
tale is similar to its role in Central and in South American tales, in which the
animal is often viewed as a paradigm of egocentrism, greed, and phallic power.
In Mayan myth, the tapir more specifically symbolizes an adulterer intruding
into a nuclear hunting family, thus hazarding its quintessential relation with the
Owner of the game. In a widespread, homologous tale about a married woman
 312

and her lover, the lover is finally castrated and killed. The killing and
slaughtering of the tapir casts the quarry as a defeated enemy, in sharp contrast
to the quarry that is brought home as a desired guest and ally. The slaying of
both the tapir and his mistress establishes the codes of sociability henceforth to
be observed by the hunter and his family.

For several of the first episode‘s crucial moments, parallels have been
found with situations involving non-alliance, war, and unequal access to power.
An analogy with the legend of Ilancueitl, connected to early Aztec history,
raises the possibility that the initial adoption of the hero babies and with it the
denial of ancestry by the Old Adoptive Mother could be a useful symbol for the
acceptance of a foreign group into a dominant political order. The mythical
kidnapping and eating of infants, ascribed to the same character in her aspect of
an eagle demon, is equally ascribed to a legendary king, who, in the shape of an
eagle, terrorized his rivals. Historically, such forays may have been connected
to child kidnappings for sacrificial purposes, reported from 16th-century
Yucatan. Parallels like these suggest that, in a situation of non-alliance,
cannibalism can function as a root metaphor for subjugation. Consistent with
such a view is the Pipil version of the Q‘eqchi‘ hero myth, wherein the Old
Adoptive Mother (called Tlentepusilama) appears to have functioned as a patron
of the trophy tree. When power relations reverse, and the ‗eaters‘ are ‗eaten‘,
the myth continues as a source of imagery. The killing of the tapir and the
consumption of its member by the Old Adoptive Mother has been argued to
have informed the description of a war ritual attributed to the ancestors of the
Kaqchikeles, according to which the ancestors slaughtered, castrated, and ate
captive war chiefs. The tricking of the hero‘s step-brethren into eating the meat
of their mother (the heroes‘ Old Adoptive Mother) is reflected in Aztec semi-
historical tales that refer, as in the Ilancueitl case, to the initial phase of the
Aztec road to power. The incident at the first encounter between the Q‘eqchi‘
hero and the daughter of the powerful king Mountain-Valley (in which the hero
is humiliated by having lime water thrown at him) has a parallel in another
central-Mexican semi-historical tale dealing, once more, with a group in an
inferior position.

The acquisition-of-meat theme also includes the extreme case of rotten

meat, and more specifically, in accord with the dominant perspective of
Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the rotten meat of the game. The image of the hunter assimilated
 313

to a decomposing brocket deer signals a period of liminality, ushered in by the

catastrophic disintegration of the alliance between the hunter and his wife, and
by the establishment of a new alliance between the former wife and the king
vulture. Mythologically, the liminal period is defined as a deadly inversion of
the human hunt, the temporary reign of the vultures, and the ascendency of
black sorcery, preceding the final transformation of the protagonists into sun
and moon. The episode constitutes a Mayan version of a widespread
Amerindian myth about the acquisition of fire from the vultures, which may
once have been more widely known in Mesoamerica, judging by occasional
references to the vultures as the original owners of fire.

The general framework of the hunt is consistent with the choice of a

deity of the hunt and the game for the role of Older Brother, both in the vulture
episode and in that of the Older Brother‘s dysfunctional marriage. This deity is
identified with the Morning Star, the most important star of the hunters, among
other stars that the Q‘eqchi‘s associate with specific game animals. In several
respects, this Older Brother is like the Yucatec (and also Belizean) Lords and
Guardians of the Woods, including the sporting of beards and the holding of
animals in corrals. The most important similarity, however, resides in the theme
of the renouncement of women and marriage, which at least for the Lords of the
Woods is associated with the male bonding characteristic of hunter and warrior
bands, with initiation into the hunt, and with a focus on phallic imagery. The
hunting expeditions of the hero together with his Older Brother should probably
be viewed from this perspective. The insertion of an origin myth of the game
not only explains why the deity abjured women, but has the additional effect of
calling attention to a series of contrasts between Younger and Older Brother,
some of which pertain to the ‗culture‘ versus ‗nature‘ distinction.

Within Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth, agriculture is a minor theme that
comes to the fore mainly in the episode of the Moon‘s adultery with the Older
Brother, when Sun is sowing the maize. The affair of Sun‘s wife threatens the
required ritual harmony, and thus the outcome of his labor. In this same context,
one finds a twofold origin of rain: through the quarrel between husband and
wife over the latter‘s affair with her brother-in-law, the rain deity; and through
the tears of regret of the punished adulterer. The episode is shown to be directly
related to the Moon goddess‘s general function as a bringer of rain. In other
Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird tales, the origin of the maize becomes the main theme.
 314

Sun puts his wife in the ‗storage house‘ of the maize and instructs her to hand
out the seeds upon request; or he instructs a third person to ‗store‘ her in a
mountain, where she changes into the ‗Mother of the Maize‘ – that is, the
sowing seeds. This version, current among the Poqomchi‘s, represents a fusion
with the widespread Mesoamerican tale of the opening of the Maize Mountain.
As early as the beginning of the 20th century, a prominent representative of the
Q‘eqchi‘ community of Cobán, Tiburcio Caal, put into writing a version of the
tale that, though idiosyncratic in certain respects, is evidently based on oral
tradition, and is to be valued as such. The maize version of the Hummingbird
myth turns out to be in many respects a transformation of the hunting version,
with minor motifs preserved and adapted to the predominant perspective. More
generally, basic concepts regarding agriculture run parallel to those governing
the hunt.

Finally, the position of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth respective of 16th-century,

pre-Spanish Mesoamerican mythology should be briefly considered.
Thompson‘s argument for taking the female protagonist of Q‘eqchi‘ myth as a
main counterpart to the Aztec goddess Xochiquetzal would still appear to be
essentially valid. The case for Xochiquetzal‘s lunar aspect is weak, but since,
within Hummingbird mythology as a whole, the female protagonist‘s lunar
transformation is the exception rather than the rule, this does not undermine the
main argument. If one widens the comparative data to include the principal
versions of Hummingbird myth, the daughter of Mountain-Valley can be seen
in essential respects to correspond to Xochiquetzal. They both represent human
procreation as well as the ‗flowery‘ power of sexual attraction; seduce wild
animals in the hunt; have liaisons with a series of deities, specifically including
the rain deity and the god of black sorcery in his vulture manifestation; and are
mothers of the maize. In these alliances, it are the various males who determine
the distinctiveness of the outcome, whereas the female element remains
basically the same. The just-mentioned correspondences strongly suggest that
the Q‘eqchi‘ myth represents an ancient Mesoamerican tradition existing side
by side with the tradition represented by the Popol Vuh Twin myth.

In this ancient tradition, a specific role is assigned not only to the

daughter of Mountain-Valley, but also to Xbalanque. The Q‘eqchi‘ myth
conceives Xbalanque as an adoptive child and younger brother who develops
into a Fierce Warrior in search of a woman. In doing so it focuses on the vital
 315

theme of courtship and the establishment of marital alliance. With this focus,
the myth gives expression to man‘s complicated ‗interaction with the landscape‘
(Wilson) and the powers of fertility that inhabit it. By contrast, the K‘iche‘ myth
reduces the theme of alliance to an incident in the ascending generation, and
exclusively focuses on the subjugation of hostile and destructive forces.
Xbalanque is accordingly coupled to another male hero instead of to a woman.
In this comparison, there is no need to bring up the question of authenticity:
Rather than being derivative, the Q‘eqchi‘ myth offers a perspective on
Xbalanque that complements that of the K‘iche‘ myth. And through its
emphasis on alliance, solar status, and celestial power, it may have been as
relevant to aristocratic elites of the past as it is to the peasant culture of more
recent times.
 316

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 368

APPENDIX A

SYNOPSIS OF THE Q‘EQCHI‘ SUN AND MOON MYTH

In the following overview of the sources which contain parts of the Q‘eqchi‘ and
Mopan myth of Sun and Moon, the name of the collector (not always the editor)
and its abbreviation will be given first. It is followed by the date of publication; the
region where the variant was collected; the number of variants in the source; and
the episodes presented by the variant(s). An asterisk following the abbreviation of
the collector's name indicates the presence of the original Q‘eqchi‘ text. For this
listing of the sources, I make reference only to four episodes:

(A) Adoption by the Old Woman,

(B) Abduction of the daughter of Mountain-Valley,
(C) Adultery of the hero‘s wife with the Older Brother,
(D) Elopement of the hero‘s wife with the vultures.

Sources

According to the date of publication (but with an exception made for the Pablo
Wirsing variant), the sources are as follows.

1. WR* = Wirsing 1909 (in Quirín 1966: 175-186 / 1967: 71-76; cf. amended
edition in Estrada Monroy 1990: 106 - 141). Finca Yalpemech, Halicar,
A.V. [BCD].
2. O-a/O-b = Owen (in Gordon 1915: 116-121). 500 Alta Verapaz. 2 variants. [B].
3. DD = Dieseldorff (1926: 4-5). Finca Seacté/Carchá, AV. [B].
4. DR* = Drück (in Termer 1930: 490-492). Campur/Colonia Chulac, A.V. [B].
5. TH = Thompson (1930: 119-140). San Antonio, Belize. 4 variants. [ABCD].

500
The article of Gordon is not signed. Gordon (1915: 104) states to have received the
tales from an anonymous friend in Guatemala. Thompson (1970: 365) refers to Burkitt
as the collector and author of the unsigned article, but Danien (2005) has shown that it
stems from Owen.
 369

6. CG = Curley García 1938/1939 (1980: 86-93). Cahabón, A.V. [BCD].

7. G = Goubaud (1949: 126-128). San Juan Chamelco, hamlet Salauté, A.V. [A].
8. CT = Cruz Torres (1965: 21-69). Senahú, A.V. (Rubelpec). [ABCD].
9. C/EA* = Carlson/F. Eachus (in Shaw 1971: 153-155 = 389 - 398). Poptún,
Petén. [B].
10. U = Ulrich and Ulrich (in Shaw 1971: 175-179). Mopan. San Luis, Petén.
[BCD].
11. K-a/K-b = King ([1973]: 31-36). San Antonio, Toledo District, Belize. 2
variants: a) [B], b) [CD].
12. F* = Freeze (1976: 21-25). Cobán, A.V. [A].
13. A = Avila (1977: 22-25). Alta Verapaz. [B].
14. MC = Mayén de Castellanos (1980: 130-133). San Juan Chamelco, A.V.
[BCD].
15. SCHA = Schackt (1986: 172-176). Crique Sarco, Toledo District, Belize. [B].
16. SCHU = Schumann (1988: 213-215). Civijá, Purulá/S. Juan Chamelco, A.V.
[B].
17. EM* = Estrada Monroy (1990: 106-141). Alta Verapaz.[B].
18. WL = Wilson (1990: 163, 361). Alta Verapaz. [B].
19. V* = Verbeeck (1999). Mopan. Toledo District, Belize. [BCD].
20. CC* = Cu Cab (2003). Compilation including unreferenced variants not listed
above. [ABCD].
21. GR1/GR2* = Grandia ([1] 2004: 5-7; [2] unpublished text, n.d.:13-20). Crique
Sarco, Toledo District, Belize. a) [A], b) [A].

The oldest Q‘eqchi‘ text is that of Wirsing (1909), first published by H.

Quirín (1966), and republished and retranslated, in a slightly amended form, by
Estrada Monroy (1990). Its Hummingbird episode (episode B) has recently been
re-edited by the ethnolinguist Kockelman (2007: 347-382), the first edition to
respect modern criteria of grammatical analysis and spelling, but unfortunately not
an edition without flaws.
In the above list, the most extensive and detailed texts are those of Wirsing
(no. 1), Thompson (no. 5) and Cruz Torres (no. 8); the shortest variant is that of
Wilson (no. 18). The Curley García variant (no. 6) is an adaptation of the Wirsing
variant, but adds some details from native informants; the Schackt variant (no. 15)
closely follows the Wirsing and Thompson texts, with some minor variations. The
Estrada variant (no. 17) is minimal: It consists of some lines inserted in his
translation of the Wirsing text and of a passage, given in a note, at the very end of
 370

the abduction episode (B). References to what is probably the Wirsing text
(otherwise unknown) of episode A are found in Haeserijn‘s Q‘eqchi‘ dictionary
(1979).

Synopsis

In subdividing the episodes (A to H), my principal concern has been to

respect the coherence of the tale while highlighting what appeared to be
significant events with a message of their own. The episode of the Elder
Brother‘s marriage – subsequent to the killing of the old adoptive mother and
her lover – is not included here, since it constitutes a separate tale of which the
main hero is not intrinsically a part.501

A. Destiny of the Hero

Sources: DR=Drück, TH=Thompson, W=Wilson.

The hero lives on earth with Old Adoptive Mother during the preceding
Sun. He is elected as the next Sun and already given the opportunity to cross the
skies; on his suggestion, the present landscape is formed (TH, one informant
only). In the Drück variant, ―the (sur)face of the earth did not yet exist.‖ In the
Wilson variant, events begin when ―the sun came down to see the land and its
animals.‖

B. Adoption by an Old Woman

Sources: CT = Cruz Torres, F = Freeze, G = Goubaud, GR1 =
Grandia 2004, GR2 = Grandia n.d., H = Haeserijn, TH =
Thompson.

Origins

The two hero brothers are Sun and Choc ‗Cloud‘ (CT); Sun and Xulab,
the Morning Star (TH); or Lord Thunder and Lord Morning Star (GR1). (Sun is
sometimes only a stepbrother, and a younger brother can be added, TH.) The

501
Mary Preuss (1995) gives another synopsis based on nine variants of the
Hummingbird and Vulture episodes, some of which she collected herself (but
apparently did not publish). Relevant data from Preuss‘s overview (P) have been
included in the present synopsis.
 371

heroes‘ parents are unknown (CT). The parents are dead; the father had been a
hunter (G). Sun is illegitimate (TH). The boys lept from a crevice in a mountain
(GR1). The mother puts the child in a box in a stream (TH).

Adoption

The boys are found in a box in a stream and adopted by an old woman
(GR2, TH). The two boys live with their grandmother (FR, G, TH), called
Xkitza (TH); with their stepmother, Shan Ni (CT); with an old witch (GR1).
The old woman raises and nurses Sun together with swine, white-tailed deer,
and brockets (GR2). She lives in a cave (CT).

The Old Woman’s Household

The three natural sons of Old Adoptive Mother and her lover are part of
the household (CT); or the one natural son (the heroes‘ ‗uncle‘) lives close by
(G). In addition to Sun, there are twelve small children, all orphans / poor (yal
xneb’a) (GR2).

Time of Learning

The two hero-children ―learnt to nicaragüic nahualic [to turn

themselves into winds and animals]‖, and to hunt (Cruz Torres 21). The
brothers hunt for birds with their blowguns (TH, GR1/2) and traps (F, GR2), or
hunt for larger game – exclusively deer (G) – with traps, arrows, and javelins
(CT). They bring the meat to their stepmother.

Old Adoptive Mother and her Lover

Old Adoptive Mother does not share the meat with her stepchildren, but
feeds her partner with it. The partner is her lover (TH, CT; implied by most
others), or her husband (GR2). He is old (mamá, F; G). He is a tapir (TH, GR1);
a mountain (GR2); a large monster (TH); Chishal, the devil, ‗a glowing coal
[flying] very high‘ (CT); the Mam (F). The old woman is visited by her lover
each night (F, G, TH) and leaves the house to call him forth (CT).
 372

Old Adoptive Mother’s Deceit

The boys don‘t get meat. Old Adoptive Mother only tricks her providers
into believing they shared in it. She first causes a profound sleep to the boys:
―They would be just like dead men‖ (F). Then she cooks the meat (TH). At
night, she smears fat on their lips (F, G, TH), or paints their faces with annatto
(GR1), and throws the bird bones under their hammock (TH, GR1); and she
anoints their finger-nails with the fat (CT, F, G).

Discovery of the Deceit

One boy announces he is going to watch what happens, but is overcome

with sleep; the other, ‗indifferent‘ one manages to stay awake and discovers the
truth (F). Alternatively, a bird warns the boys (TH, GR1). In the Goubaud
variant, Old Adoptive Mother‘s true son joins the two boys on the deer hunt
(like the third and youngest son in the Thompson variant), is interrogated by
them, and makes the lover responsible for the deceit. Having left for their next
hunt, the boys make a short return by surprise and find the sleeping lover; this
hunt results in four deer and three brockets (G).

The Lover Killed

On various pseudo-hunting trips, the brothers dig a pitfall; on the last

trip, they tell the old woman that they are going to catch fish in a creek (GR1).
The pitfall has sharpened sticks at the bottom (F). The boys cover it with small
branches and earth (TH); dig three pits with the spines of the wild pacaya (acté)
and other spines (quixquib ‗spiny pacaya‘) at the bottom, and cover it with
leaves (CT); or lay knives, sherds of bottles, and broken choppers on the lover‘s
path (G). Various birds are to warn the brothers on the lover‘s approach. The
thrush and singing thrush give a false alarm, but the magpie warns in time (TH).
The chuluc [ch’uluq] bird lures the lover into the pit (CT, GR2).

Old Adoptive Mother Eats Her Lover

The heroes slaughter the lover‘s body and roast it (only implied in F).
Feigning to return from a visit to their ‗uncle‘s‘ trap, they have Old Adoptive
Mother put the meat into tamales. They serve these to the woman and her son;
 373

the taste is much appreciated. Old Adoptive Mother reserves a leg for her lover
(G). Alternatively (TH), the lover‘s penis is cut off and roasted. The boys offer
it to their stepmother as a substitute for the birds they had not shot, saying it is a
‗fine fish‘.

The Boys Eat Meat for the First Time

The day after the killing of her lover, Old Adoptive Mother offers meat
to the boys; one of them refuses. It is not until the next day that both boys eat
meat for the first time (F). This concludes the Freeze variant.

Old Adoptive Mother Plans to Eat the Heroes

When the old woman swallows the ‗fish‘, birds are mocking her and she
grows suspicious (TH). Alternatively(G), a visitor discloses the truth to Old
Adoptive Mother; since the heroes trapped her lover, she now sets a trap for the
heroes, but their two hunting dogs circumvent it. She starts to make maize
wraps, because she intends to kill the boys and put their meat into the wraps and
eat the resulting maize tamales (CT, GR).

Old Adoptive Mother's Transformation Interrupted

Old Adoptive Mother takes her jar and descends to the river (CT, G,
TH). The brothers ask a toad (much) to spy on her, but are rebuked (TH). Then
they send off a lizard (baat, TH; seelemay, CT; pak’mal, GR2). The lizard finds
Old Adoptive Mother whetting her nails (on a stone, CT) and mumbling: ―Make
my nails and the bones of my fingers grow‖ (TH), or ―give me claws‖ (CT).
―When the lizard saw and heard this, he ran between the old woman‘s feet‖
(TH). Annoyed, Old Adoptive Mother throws a pottery sherd into the back of
the lizard‘s head; the brothers sharpen the sherd and turn it into the lizard‘s crest
(TH). Alternatively (CT), the lizard returns with his message and then is sent off
again to frighten Old Adoptive Mother by passing between her legs while she
squats; she throws a stone to his head. The resulting tatters are shaped into a
crest by the brothers. Or the lizard is told to creep onto her leg, and again its
head is struck (GR2).
 374

Old Adoptive Mother Caught in the Act

The Freeze variant is very short: The ‗grandmother‘ tries to choke one
of the boys, and then pretends she was just ‗tickling‘ him. The other variants are
more involved. As a precaution, the brothers put dummies in their sleeping-
places: three wooden logs (qaanche) with calabashes for heads (TH, GR1), or
two banana bunches (CT, G, GR2). Old Adoptive Mother either takes two sharp
knives (G), or she throws herself onto the dummies to slaughter the boys with
her claws (TH, CT, GR1/2), and to put their meat into tamales for her and her
true sons to eat (CT, GR2). The boys are watching her from the rafters.

The Heroes Eliminate a Brother

The youngest brother disagrees with the plan of killing Xkitza (TH), or
discloses to the old woman that she ate the testicles of her lover (GR1). He is
made to climb a tree and is changed into a spider monkey (maax, TH) or a
kinkajou (‗night walker‘, max) (GR1).

Old Adoptive Mother Killed

Alternatives: (1) Old Adoptive Mother is immediately killed upon her

cannibalistic assault: with a certain knife (CT), or with a stone from the roof
(GR2). (2) TH: The hero challenges his stepmother to a riddle contest. When
she fails to find an answer, she is shot with an arrow. (3) GR1: The heroes and
the old woman try to kill each other with magical winds; the old woman whirls
around and crashes down, breaking her head. (4) G: The heroes flee from her
house and are adopted by Old Adoptive Mother‘s son; the old woman rejoins
them and mistreats the heroes. Together with their ‗grandmother‘, the heroes
again move, now to a house on the border of a well. In desperation ―for what
she had tried to do to her grandchildren‖, Old Adoptive Mother jumps into the
well. The heroes wait three hours until she has drowned, and haul the body from
the well.

Destination of Old Adoptive Mother's Body

In the Goubaud variant, Old Adoptive Mother's head and cloth are
buried; her arms, legs, and ribs, however, are roasted. After a final move, back
 375

to the house of Old Adoptive Mother‘s son, the boys celebrate their arrival by
serving his mother‘s meat to their ‗uncle‘ (although the one eating it is not
explicitly mentioned). In the Thompson main text, Old Adoptive Mother‘s
corpse is buried, like her head and cloth in the Goubaud one; in a variant, the
cannibalistic meal is described. In the Cruz Torres variant, the hero brothers cut
off head and breasts of Old Adoptive Mother and put these in a cooking-pot on
the fire; on top of that they put tamales with the old woman‘s meat in it. The
three brothers start to eat from the meat of their mother. Haeserijn (325) has
twelve instead of three brothers. Alternatively (GR2), the old woman‘s husband
eats the meat tamales. The head of old woman is discovered in the pot lying
beneath the tamales (CT, GR2, TH var.).

Flight and Transformation of Old Adoptive Mother’s Natural Sons

The three natural sons of Old Adoptive Mother and her lover flee the
consequence of their crime by transforming themselves into respectively a hawk
(cuch), a tecolote, i.e. a large owl (cuarom), and a gopher (ba) (CT).

C. Marriage of the Older Brother

Sources: SCH=Schackt, TH=Thompson. See Chapter 10.

D. Encounter with the Mother

Sources: TH=Thompson.

The hero travels and comes to a large mountain. ―He hurled his
blowgun at it, and crawled through the tube of the gun.‖ He first arrives at the
house of his mother. She does not recognize him, and begs him to stay and sleep
with her as her husband. The hero is horrified; he equally refuses his mother‘s
offer to arrange a marriage for him, and leaves.

E. Abduction of Mountain-Valley’s Daughter

(Hummingbird Episode)
Sources: A = Avila, C/EA = Carlson/Eachus, CG = Curley
García, CT = Cruz Torres, DD = Dieseldorff, DR = Drück, EM
= Estrada Monroy, K = King, MC = Mayén de Castellanos, O-
a/O-b = Owen, SCHA = Schackt, SCHU = Schumann, TH =
 376

Thompson, U = Ulrich, V=Verbeeck, WL = Wilson, WR =

Wirsing.

First Encounter with Mountain-Valley’s Daughter

The hero comes by the house, or cave (CT, WR), of the aged mountain
deity, called ‗Mountain-Valley‘ (Tzuultaq’a, WR, DD, WL) or ‗king‘ (K, WL),
and his (grand)daughter. The wife of ‗Mountain-Valley‘ may also be present
(DR, SCHA). ―Lord Kin decided that this girl should be his wife, but he
resolved not to employ any professional match-maker to arrange the affair, but
to win the girl by himself‖; he left for the hunt (TH 126).
The Cruz Torres variant replaces the blowgun by an arrow: The hero
shoots an arrow, it falls down in the distance, and there frightens the daughter of
Mountain-Valley. He decides to win her as a hunter.
In other variants, the story opens when the hero goes out hunting and
passes by the cave of Mountain-Valley and his daughter (DD, MC, SCHA,
WR). He is accompanied by one dog (id.) or by two dogs (CG), viz. a puma
(cakcojl, paleta roja) and a jaguar (bob). Although hunting with a blowgun, he
carries a ‗goat‘, i.e. a brocket (C/EA, U).

Second Encounter

The hero finds and kills a brocket deer (yuc, chiuc, tiuc, ‗antelope‘, Sp.
cabro = ‗goat‘). Alternatively (SCHU), the order of the two last encounters gets
reversed: The hero first witnesses the daughter copulating with a stag and kills
it, and then parades in front of the hut with the game on his shoulders.

The Trick with the Dummy

The hero cannot find a brocket each day (WR), the game is scarce (TH),
he had caught nothing at all (SCHA). Therefore, he fills the hide of the brocket,
or (SCHA) alternatingly of deer, brocket, peccary, etc.: with ashes (CT), or with
ashes, dry pine-needles, and leaves (WR). In the Schumann variant, a filling is
not mentioned.
With the dummy, he parades in front of the house. The girl exclaims:
―Look at the blood on him‖ (TH). Suspicion arises, however, and the girl pours
the spoils of her maize-boiling (‗ash-water‘, ‗lime water‘) on the hunter‘s path.
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The initiative is either with Mountain-Valley (TH, WR), or, more commonly,
with the daughter herself (CT, C/EA, DD, K, MC, SCHA, SCHU, TH, U).
The further sequence is always the same. The hero slithers in the water,
the dummy bursts, and the contents are exposed (―a cloud of ashes rose up‖,
CT). The daughter has a good laugh, and the hero is filled with shame; he
temporarily changes into a tree-trunk so as not to roll downhill (SCHU), and
runs off. ―He took his empty skin with him‖ (CT).

Casting a Spell on the Daughter

In revenge, the hero casts 15 red maize-kernels on the house of

Mountain-Valley, his daughter a severe toothache. She has to stop weaving
(CT).

The Tobacco Plant

From the dry contents of the dummy, a tobacco plant has sprung up
(TH, WR). In the other variants, the tobacco plant is simply there, growing in
front of the house of Mountain-Valley and his daughter.

The Hummingbird Transformation

The hero borrows the plumage of a hummingbird. The hummingbird is

the pap tz[‘]unun ‗magpie-hummingbird‘, a large species (O-b, CT); its color is
very green-blue (WL), i.e. yax (rax) ‗green‘ or ‗green-blue‘ (Haeserijn). The
naked bird is enveloped in cotton (WR, TH) or in a cloth.
The hummingbird starts to suck nectar (xquial, A) from the tobacco-
flowers: saquil may ‗white tobacco‘ (WR); or from a (tobacco?) plant with
yellow flowers (q’antzum [q’an atz’um], WL).
The daughter admires the bird‘s colors and desires to have it as a
plaything. Thus, the father shoots the bird with the blowgun on the initiative of
his daughter (A, CT, DD, K, MC, SCHA, TH, U, WL, WR). As always, Cruz
Torres defines the blowgun as a jicbil puub, used to suck something up. The
father should not kill the bird, and use a ‗wet‘ pellet instead of a hard one (MC);
however, in the King variant, he strikes the bird hard with a stone, or (SCHA)
advises to kill it. The bird being a nahual, it makes itself invisible to the father
(CT).
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Resuscitation of the Hummingbird

Once the daughter experiences attraction to the hummingbird, and the

hovering bird touches her cheek, her toothache disappears and she is able to
resume her weaving (CT). Alternatively, she is weaving as usual and bends
down to collect the stunned hummingbird: ―As she stooped down, the strap
which passed round her waist and held the loom taut[,] slipped, and the loom
fell to the ground‖ (TH 127). By feeding the bird with chocolate and maize, she
succeeds in reviving it. Apparently, she can now resume her weaving.
The daughter puts the stunned hummingbird in a calabash (tol: MC, CT;
seel: WR) holding her cotton-threads (K, MC, WR). In the calabash, the bird is
restless (WR) or feigns agony (MC), but once put under the woman‘s shirt
(WR), on a pile of clothes (DD), or in front of her, over her work (MC), it calms
down. Otherwise, she puts the stunned bird at her side and strikes it as she
weaves (WL), or is caressed by the bird sitting on her shoulder (O-b). The
figure of the bird goes into the weft (CT), together with the events of the day
(WR).
On entering her sleeping-quarter, she takes the bird with her. The
bedroom is the innermost room (U), the innermost of thirteen rooms (TH). The
father locks the room or rooms with a number of keys: one (C/EA), three (CT),
seven (K), or – by implication – thirteen (TH).
Cohabiting with the girl, the hummingbird becomes a man again. The
girl asks if he is really Sun: ―Yes, it‘s me, when daylight comes I will again
make myself into a hummingbird‖; the girl hides the bird under her pillow
(SCHA 173).

Precautionary Measures for the Flight

The parents went to their work (SCHA). Flight imposes itself. The
daughter is full of fear for her father‘s wrath and resists; the hero for his part
wants to abduct her: ―You tricked me, now you will have to run away with me‖
(U). Three measures are taken. (1) The father has a magical mirror (lem: C/EA,
DR, SCHA, WR; caxlán lem ‗glasses, field-glasses‘: CT; sastún ‗clear stone,
crystal‘: TH). The mirror is smoked black with incense (pom) (WR), smeared
with achiote (xayau) (C/EA, CT), or blackened with charcoal (K, SCHA, U).
However, the coverage is not complete. (2) The father has a blowgun or a jicbil
puub ‗sucking tube‘ (CT, cf. K). The tube is filled with chile powder. (3) The
 379

hero spits on the ground; the spit is to answer the calls of the father until it has
dried up (CT, Estrada insert line 155, U).

Effects of the Sabotage

By inhaling the pepper, the father becomes stricken with whooping

cough (jic’) (A, O-b, C/EA, CT, Estrada insert line 182). By putting the achiote-
covered ‗mirror‘ (C/EA lem, CT caxlán lem ‗glasses‘) to his eyes, he becomes
affected with eye-sore (=b’e, CT; pink-eye, C/EA). Troubling his head about
the way to retrieve his daughter, the father gets affected by toothache (A).
However, the uncovered part of the mirror/glasses enables him to locate the
fugitives.

Mountain-Valley Enlists Thunderstorm

Mountain-Valley directly enlists Thunderstorm (Caak [O-b: Kauc]

‗Thunder‘ or ‗Lightning‘) (C/EA, CT, DD, SCHA, TH, U), or the rain god
(Chac, TH, V); or he borrows the lightning from Thunderstorm (K, WL);
throws it himself (DR); or else accepts the help spontaneously offered by
Thunderstorm (O-b). The Carlson/Eachus variant has Mountain-Valley enlisting
a volcano with its ‗lightning tongue‘, but then has Lightning(/Thunderstorm,
Caak) act as an independent entity.
Thunderstorm first protests, but then accepts (TH, WR). In the
Thompson main text, Thunderstorm is an ‗uncle‘, as in Wirsing; in a variant,
the sons, mother, and uncle of Mountain-Valley refuse, but ‗grandfather‘ Chac
accepts (TH 136). Otherwise (MC), the lightning suddenly appears over the sea
without any preamble.
Thunderstorm wraps himself in a black cloud (chocl, WR), or dresses
himself in his black clothes and takes his drum (TH) and axe (TH, WR).

Catastrophe on the Sea/Lake

The fugitives are fleeing, ―towards the Glory which is at the foot of the
darkness‖ (CT). They travel ―three days over land and three days over water‖
(CT), crossing the water in a canoe (TH, U).
When they see Thunderstorm approach, they attempt to escape by
borrowing the carapace of an animal. The hero always hides in a turtle, for the
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woman various possibilities exist: turtle (TH var.), crab (tap/cangrejo, CT; K,
SCHA, TH, U), armadillo (A, WR), or no hiding at all (A, O-b, DD). In the
Owen-a variant, she is caught under Sun‘s turtle carapace; in the Drück variant,
the woman tries to enter the turtle carapace, too, but in vain.
The fugitives insert themselves into the carapace and dive or burrow, or
else they ride on it (K, U).
The hero saves himself, his woman gets struck and fragmented. The
first Owen variant (O-a) is anomalous: Sun kidnaps the woman under a turtle,
but when the Sun is hit by the pellet of Mountain-Valley‘s blowgun, the woman
falls into the sea.
A distinction is made between her blood (O-b, SCHA, TH, WR), her
flesh (particles) (A, O-a, TH, U, WR), and her bones (U). These cover the
surface of the water, as if it were ‗dirt‘ (mul ha, WR).
In the Wirsing variant, the woman hides in the carapace of an armadillo;
in the Avila variant, no hiding is mentioned. The woman is either destroyed
close to, or ‗above‘ the shore (ix ben ul), while her blood descends on the water
(sa ix ben ha) and is gathered by dragon-flies; or, inversely, it is the ‗remains of
her body‘ that are gathered by the dragonflies, while her blood penetrates seven
layers of earth and is to be routed up by the hero (A). In two cases (A, CC), the
blood is expressly identified as menstrual blood.

Gathering the Blood

The hero either gathers the remains himself (A), or he first calls for the
assistance of insects that walk on the water (aj numx ‗swimmers‘, CC), a certain
lizard (toloc, CT), and small fishes (TH: suktan). By running over the water, the
lizard gathers the blood (CT). As to the fishes, in the Thompson case they are
valued negatively, since they start to eat the flesh and drink the blood; in the
Wirsing variant, they are not called upon to assist, but likewise start to eat the
flesh.502 In the Owen case (O-a), the fishes, though not called for, are assigned a
positive role, forming a sort of mat under the fragments and carrying their catch

502
The Wirsing variant mentions small fishes and aj bulúm: ‗tepocates‘ (tadpoles)
according to Estrada Monroy (1990: 131 line 237); small sweet water fishes according
to Haeserijn (1979: 75 s.v. bulum); aj mulum ‗cat-sharks‘, if we are to follow
Kockelman (2007: 371).
 381

into the sky, where the fishes become the Milky Way and the fragments become
the Moon.
The main – and in the other variants, the only – role, however, is for the
dragon-flies ([aj] tulux, CT, TH; tuluxul, C/EA), which appear to be sorcerers
(aj tulun, WR). By sticking their abdomens into the water (CT), they catch and
transport the blood to a series of containers.
The containers are variously described as water jars (O-b, WR: cuc),
bottles (C/EA), ribbed ceramic/stoneware bottles (CT: putixes), calabashes
(DR), boxes (DD, K, MC, TH: huhul ‗hollow wooden logs‘, U), and skin bags
(C/EA, K). If a number is given, it is usually thirteen (O-b, CT, MC, TH, U,
WR), although one also encounters four (TH var.), and four plus eight (DD) /
twelve (K). In the Wirsing text, only the thirteenth jar is called putix.
In the Curley García variant, the thirteen jars are filled in twenty-eight
days.

Storing the Containers

The hero stores the containers in a house on the shore of the water. The
host is either an old woman (CG, TH, WR), a man (CT, SCHA, U), or a couple
(C/EA, MC).

Absence and Return of the Hero

In most variants, the hero absents himself for no obvious reason; but
according to Cruz Torres, ―he went to the thirteen mountains and thirteen
valleys to plead for (rogar por) his beloved, and to do his usual work [hacer sus
habilidades]‖ (CT 40). The hero returns on the third day (DD), after a lapse of
seven or eight days (SCHA), ten days (CG), twelve days (K, also twelve
containers), thirteen days (O-b, CT, MC, TH, WR, also thirteen containers), or
three weeks (C/EA, DR).

Untimely Opening of One of the Containers

In the meantime, the contents of the jar come to life and terrify the
host(s). In two variants, a container is opened untimely: ―Inside there is a frog
covered in thousands of flies and the frog is rotten‖ (K, 33), or a cloud of
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mosquitoes rises, the keeper is stung, jumps into the water, and changes into a
frog (V).

Preparations for the Opening of the Containers

In two variants, the hero does not immediately proceed to open the
containers. He first has masons construct a fountain (O-b). Alternatively (CT),
the hero makes a canoe, fills it with water, grinds tobacco-leaves to powder, and
mixes the tobacco powder with the water.503

Opening the Containers

The hero opens all containers but one, or shatters them (DR). Each of
these containers turns out to hold a specific animal species, or a class of various
specifically mentioned species (DD, CT, SCHA, TH, WR). The species are
poisonous, blood-drinking, and destructive. Wirsing divides the creatures
successively into four groups: snakes (jar no. 1), lizards (jar no. 2), wasps (jar
no. 5), and spiders, scorpions, and worms (other jars), while skipping jars nos. 3
and 4. Dieseldorff divides four colors of bees over the first four containers. In
the other sources, there is no apparent classification of the creatures according
to the serial number of the container.
Taking the Wirsing division as a lead, the following broad classes can
be discerned:

1) Snakes: all sources except DD.

Worms: O-b, WR.
Lizards: CT, K, U, WL, WR.
Frogs/toads: CT, DR, K, SCHA, U.
Scorpions: CT, K, U, WR.
Spiders: U, WR.
2) Wasps: DD (incl. hornets), TH (incl. hornets), WR.
Flies: K, TH.
Mosquitoes: SCHA, V.

503
Instead of a canoe, CC has b’ukleb’ ‗large gourd‘, cf. Haeserijn (s.v. buc ‗batir‘):
‗recipiente para batir cacao, huacal muy grande‘ .
 383

Sand flies: SCHA.

Black lice: V.
Crickets: WL.
Caterpillars: TH, WL (butterfly).
3) Rats (MC).

Not unequivocally belonging to the category of ‗harmful creatures‘ are bees

(DD) and deer (WL). Contrasting with the harmful creatures are the medicinal
herbs encountered in the last two jars (DD).
The relative importance assigned to certain categories varies. The
snakes constitute the most important class, and sources which do not give real
lists, still mention the snakes (C/EA, MC). In Cruz Torres, seven out of twelve
containers have snakes. Snakes, frogs and toads make up the short list of the
Drück variant. Bees and wasps predominate in the Dieseldorff list, flies and
wasps in the Thompson one (four containers with wasps, four with flies).

Action of the Hero on the Contents

Various possibilities exist. (1) The hero empties the containers into a
fountain (O-b), or he immerses the creatures in the tobacco-juice of a canoe,
thereby gives them their proper dosage of poison, and sets them free (CT). What
each creature eats, is to be the medicine for its poison or bite (U). (2) The hero
throws all creatures into the sea, where they turn into aquatic creatures (MC).
(3) The hero and his resuscitated wife manage to kill part of the creatures, the
rest escapes (U). (4) The hero hands the containers to a man (a woodcutter,
Estrada insert line 296) who is to discard them in the sea, but disobeys: the
creatures escape (TH, WR). ―Before this there had been none of these pests‖
(TH 129). (5) The hero orders the old woman who had guarded the jars to throw
them into the lake. Instead, the old woman throws them on the shore and
shatters them; the creatures escape (CG).

The Last Container

The woman had not yet reappeared, ―because she was hiding herself,
she did not like Sun as her husband‖ (EM insert, lines 288 - 289). On opening
the last container, the hero‘s wife is found inside, or emerges. In the Mayén
variant, she is ―a crescent [medialuna] that revived and disappeared again, as
 384

the moon is now‖ (132). Otherwise, her completeness, luminescence and

whiteness are particularly emphasized (O-b, WR), together with her abundant
silky hair (CG).
The woman has nonetheless various defects: she is very small (C/EA,
U); has no feet (DR) and cannot stand (U); no power of speech (U); and no
genitals (all sources which give the corresponding amendment) – in this, she is
like a frog (pelpel, CT).

Origin of the Female Genitals

The solution to the problem of the lacking genitals is suggested by the

old woman who guarded the containers (TH), or by a man the hero happens to
meet (C/EA). In the last case, the man serves as the mouthpiece of the hero‘s
wife: ―Your wife still wants you to speak to the deer.‖ Alternatively, the
solution is found by the hero himself (SCHA, WR). It consists in laying the
woman down in a ‗narrow defile between two hills‘ (TH), i.e. in a valley (taq’a)
in between the mountains (tzuul) (WR), and having the brocket (yuc) and the
deer (quej; mam’á quej ‗chief of the deer‘ or ‗large deer‘, CT) successively
cover the woman; they are to mold her small and large labia with their
differently-seized hooves.
Two sources invert the order and have the large deer try first and then
the brocket (DD, K). The first of the two deer is only making a shallow imprint
because of its fear that its foot might get stuck (DD, WR). Schackt has the
sequence cow (hooves too big) - antelope (hooves too small) - deer. Two
sources (C/EA, U) only mention the large deer. Alternatively, the hero slits his
wife‘s abdomen with an antler (WL 163).
The hero mates with his wife (TH, WL 163). In order to diminish the
sexual attraction of the female genitals and the ensuing male jealousy, a rat
(cho) is made to urinate in the vagina (CT, K, TH, WR); next, a frog (amoch)
also urinates in the vagina, causing the woman‘s need to urinate more
frequently (CT).

Ascent into the Sky

This is the point where some variants end. The woman is taken into the
sky by the hero and there she becomes the Moon, while her husband becomes
the Sun. The Wirsing variant has a celestial ascent both on this place and after
 385

the conclusion of the next episode. The first Owen variant (O-a) ends
immediately upon the destruction of the fugitive woman: The fishes carry the
female blood over into the sky. In the second Owen variant (O-b), a stag carries
the woman reborn in the fountain into the sky.

Continued Hostility of Mountain-Valley

Sun is always ahead and Moon cannot catch up with him (O-a); since
then, the husband goes ahead and his wife follows in suit (EM insert, lines 344 -
345). This is further explained thus: ―Balamk‘e surveys the earth and sends his
light into the ravines, abysses, mountains and valleys, to make sure that Tzuul
Tak‘a is not hiding somewhere, ready to take Kana‘ Po with him into the sky.
When he has ascertained that he is not there, he informs Moon, so that she may
continue her course in the midst of the nocturnal darkness, while sending his
light for her to reflect it‖ (EM n. 197). For this reason, the Sun always comes
forth first to reconnoiter, and Moon follows only afterwards (EM var., n. 197).

F. Adultery with the Elder Brother

Sources: CT = Cruz Torres, K = King, MC = Mayén de
Castellanos, TH = Thompson, U = Ulrich, WR = Wirsing.

Nature of the Adulterer

The adulterer is the elder brother (as, WR) of the hero, either Xulab, the
original owner of the animals (TH only), or Choc(l) ‗Cloud‘, the rain deity (CT,
K, WR).

Circumstances of the Adultery

The hero and his wife rejoin Cloud, who is waiting for them (CT); or
they build a house and Xulab comes to live with them (TH). The hero urges his
elder brother (Choc, Xulab) to marry, but the brother does not feel the need for
a spouse. The elder brother is, however, sexually attracted to his sister-in-law
(CT, TH).
The actual adultery is occasioned by the hero‘s regular absence. He is
off on the hunt (CT, U: with blowgun). The elder brother ‗plays‘ with his sister-
in-law, either in his own house (K), or in that of his brother (WR).
The hero grows suspicious.
 386

Punishment of the Adulterers

The hero resorts to beating his wife (MC, U) – in the bathing-place of

his wife (WR) – or enters upon a more elaborate procedure (CT, K, TH). The
Cruz Torres variant is the most complete one. The hero goes to the crossroads
where turkey cocks are fighting and takes the gall (g’a) from their chests. He
presents the gall to the adulterers shaped like the left-over of the meal
concluding collective sowing (sheel). As a result, the lovers start to quarrel.
King omits the underlying motive and has the hero borrow ‗a turkey-chest‘
which he wraps into a tamale (maize wrap). A frog brings the gift to the house
of Cloud, and again, a quarrel results. Thompson has the hero take the gall of
turkey and fowl and bring it to an old woman, who spices it with ground chile
and a red dye (anatto) and wraps it in two tamales. The hero cooks the tamales
under his armpit. The heat of the tamales makes the lovers choke, weep and
vomit.

The Adulteress Leaves to Fetch Water

Water is spilt in the quarrel, either between the lovers (CT), or between
husband and wife (WR); alternatively, water is needed because of thirst (TH).
In the Cruz Torres variant, Cloud shouts angrily at his mistress: ―Go
and fetch water!‖ The woman leaves with her jar, but does not return. When the
two brothers go and search for her, they only find an empty jar on the shore (as
in the Ulrich variant). Cloud rages through the sky in search of her; his tears
make the rain fall. In the Mayén variant, the adulterer is not mentioned. The
beaten woman descends to a well to fetch water; a certain bird imitates the
wheezing (―juy-juy‖) of women carrying a load, and so misleads the husband.
When the hero finally searches for her, he cannot find her.
In the Wirsing variant, the hero‘s beatings make the bath of his wife
turn over, and inundate the earth. Weeping, she descends to the river to fetch
new water. She does not return, however, and the hero only finds her foot-
prints.
In the Thompson variant, it is the thirst provoked by the hot tamales
which makes the woman descend to the river to fetch water.
 387

A Game of Dice

Before going after his wife, the hero plays a game of dice (buluc) with
Cloud on a board bridging a ravine. Cloud looses and tumbles down into the
ravine. There, his tears turn into a river (CT only).

G. Elopement and Marriage with the Devil

CT = Cruz Torres, K = King, MC = Mayén de Castellanos,
P=Preuss,504 TH = Thompson, U = Ulrich, V=Verbeeck, WR =
Wirsing.

First Descent of the Vulture

The adulteress is weeping on the shore of the water. A carrion-bird

alights: a black vulture (ch’om, TH; John Crow vulture = ch’om505, K; mamá
sosol, WR), a black vulture with a red head (maalkaan ‗widow‘, CT), a white
buzzard with a red head (U). The vulture is ‗the angel that had eaten human
flesh‘ (CT). Alternatively (U), a young boy who is ‗an angel of the devil‘ comes
along, and when the adulteress complains that her husband believes her to be ‗a
bad woman‘, answers : ―My Father knows all about this‖ (177).
The vulture, full of understanding, offers her an escape to the town
(amac’, WR) of his master. The town is in a deep ravine, called [X]balba (CT),
or high on a cliff (TH), with houses whitened by the droppings of the vultures
(TH, WR). The master is the King Vulture, a devil with horns (V), a ‗big devil
with four eyes and horns‘ (TH), called Mausajcuink ‗Evil Man‘ (CT, WR), Aj
Tzá ‗The Enemy‘ (WR), or Kisin ‗devil‘ (V). He offers her many riches (CT).
She is to become his wife. The woman accepts and is carried off. One stop-over
is made on a cotton-tree (TH).

Tracing the Adulteress

The blue-green flies had already informed the hero of the quarrel; now,
they again inform him of the whereabouts of his wife (CT). Otherwise, he is

504
Preuss 1995: 33.
505
So defined by Thompson 1930: 35.
 388

informed by the adulterous Cloud (K), who had already initiated his own search
for his mistress in the Cruz Torres variant; or he finds the traces of his wife and
the vulture (WR), and ‗suspects‘ where she has gone (TH).

The Hero’s Stratagem

The stratagem decided upon is either invented by the hero himself, or

suggested to him by the adulterous Cloud (K). In the first case, it consists in
borrowing a deer skin, posing as a deer carcass, and attracting the vultures. The
deer is again the brocket (CT, TH, U, V, WR). The hero puts his arm between
its fore-legs and tears the skin loose starting from the belly; the belly turns
white (CT).
The naked brocket is wrapped in a cloth, but the hinds are still
uncovered and get exposed to the solar heat: they also turn white (TH, WR).
The hero turns the bloody inside of the skin out (TH, WR). Next, he
orders the flies (MC), more specifically the blue-green flies (rax chia, CT; yax
kach, TH; rax-yat, WR) either to put ‗salt‘ on the skin (CT, V), beginning on
the hinds, over the anus (CT); or to put on it ‗the stuff [...] that turns into
worms‘ (TH), i.e. their eggs (c’ot, WR), and thus to ‗excrete worms‘ (MC).
In one case (MC), the animal is a dog. Alternatively (K), Cloud
suggests to the hero that he present the crow with a bag of blood from a dead
turkey, chicken or dog; the hero wraps himself in it.

Second Descent of the Vulture(s)

Informed by the blue-green flies, the ‗widow(er)‘ alights (CT), or

―animals came after the bloody sack and John Crow [the black vulture] came
along to collect all the insects‖ (K). Alternatively, a swarm of vultures comes
down and waits for the descent of the Father of the vultures (WR), the one
which had carried off the adulteress (TH); or thirteen vultures descend, one after
the other, and get caught, the last one being the vulture that transported the
woman (V). The Father-vulture starts to feed on the intestines (WR); more
specifically, it either sticks its head into the brocket's anus (CT), or it attempts
to pluck out the brocket‘s eye (TH). It gets caught and is forced to pull the hero
out of the ‗carcass‘ and to carry him to the town of the vultures. Due to the solar
heat, the black vulture turns into a white one, except for the legs and the back
(WR).
 389

The Hero Transported as Firewood

In the woods close to the town of the vultures, the hero encounters a
man cutting firewood (aj sí, WR). He inserts himself in his load (CT, TH, V,
WR), or is tied to it (MC), and is carried to the town. The firewood is for the
marriage of the Evil Man nine days later (CT).

Obstinacy of the Adulteress

The hero‘s wife lives in the King‘s house as his cook (K, MC). The
hero goes to the house of the King to retrieve her, but she rebukes him. In order
to lure her outside, he performs the Cortez and Moros dances, but his wife
prefers to stay inside with her new husband (TH var.).

The Hero as a Sorcerer and Curer

The adulteress suffers from toothache (K). Alternatively, the hero sends
the King himself a severe (‗red‘, CT, V) toothache by throwing one (V), seven
(TH), thirteen (U), or fifteen (CT) red maize kernels on his thatch. The kernels
are perforated (TH, U), or a worm has been inserted in the kernels which are
subsequently eaten by the King (MC).
The hero transforms himself into an old man with white hair and a large
white beard (MC). He starts to play a flute and drum he had found on the rafters
of his lodging (TH), a violin (V), violin and marimba (U), or a harp (MC).
Thereby, he makes himself known as a curer (MC, U), although he also appears
to reinforce the effect of the toothache. Sun advises all the devil‘s family to
come together because their father may die (P).

Defeat of the King and Repossession of the Wife

Ushered in the King‘s inner quarters as a curer, he cures the toothache

of his wife (K). Alternatively, he negotiates for his wife in exchange for curing
the King‘s toothache (TH var.). He makes the Devil fall asleep, by blowing
three times over him (CT), or cuts his throat (V). Then he invites his wife to
come with him (CT, TH, V, WR). She obstinately refuses and consents only
after much entreaty (TH); or her arm carrying the heavy head of the Devil has
first to be freed (CT).
 390

Escape from the Town of the Vultures

Various alternatives are given. (1) The couple makes two vultures carry
them back to the riverbank (TH, U). Back home, Sun‘s wife turns out to be
pregnant. When Sun kicked her belly, she began to give birth to vultures (V), or
to snakes, toads, lizards, and scorpions (U). ―They killed them all‖ (U). The
celestial ascent is omitted. Alternatively (TH), however, they ascend into the
sky together with Xulab, who becomes the Morning Star (TH). (2) Sun puts rats
in the house supports; the rats eat the supports and the house falls down on the
congregated family of the devil (P). (3) The vultures set the hut of the couple on
fire; the hero seizes ‗a small bush‘, puts fire to it, and concealed by the fire
ascends into the sky together with his wife (TH var.). (4) The couple throws
itself onto the pyres of Xibalba, wrapped in protective obel leaves, and ascends
in large columns of smoke (CT).

H. Orbiting Sun and Moon

CT = Cruz Torres, TH = Thompson.

Curing Sun and Moon

Sun and Moon are defective as yet, since they can speak nor move.
Many curers congregate, bathing the patients in herbs and smoking them with
incense. Only the chief curer, Cosmas, succeeds by having the patients smell the
fragrance of the flowers of certain trees and lianas (semem, sacsa). Sun and
Moon start on their courses, and 400 birds ascend to become stars. Two song
birds make Sun and Moon rise higher in the skies, and together with another
bird demarcate their time schedule (CT only).

The Mirror in the Sky

―Lord Kin placed a mirror in the center of the sky, and every morning
he used to start out from his home in the east and travel till he got to the center.
Then he used to turn back home, but the mirror reflected his light, and it
appeared as though he were continuing his journey. When he got home,
X‘t‘actani, as the moon, used to walk across the heavens in the same manner‖
(TH 132).
 391

Dimming the Moon

The luminescence of Sun and Moon being equal, a solar day is followed
by a lunar day. Moon wishes to bestow night upon mankind. Therefore, Sun
gouges out one of Moon‘s eyes (TH).
 392

APPENDIX B

SYNOPSES OF HUMMINGBIRD MYTHS

This appendix contains three synopses of Hummingbird myths: (I) those dealing
with the female transformations into animals and (II) into maize seeds, and (III)
the Lacandon Hummingbird myth, which has no such transformation. Not
included among the synopses is the main Q‘eqchi‘ version of Hummingbird
myth, which will be found among the other Q‘eqchi‘ episodes listed in
Appendix A.

I. Female Transformation into Wild Animals

Several of the tales below stem from highland communities in the

Sololá district speaking closely related Mayan languages: Panajachel and San
Antonio Palopó, on the north-eastern borders of Lake Atitlan; San Pablo de la
Laguna; and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan.506 Since it remains so close to the bridal
service variants, the bridal capture variant from Panajachel has also been
included, inserted between square brackets. The presence of the vernacular text
has been indicated by an asterisk.

1. R* = Redfield (1944: 292 – 370; cf. Thompson 1970: 365 – 366).

Cakchiquel, San Antonio Palopó.
2. P = Palomino (1972: 22 – 24; 129-149 = Apéndice A). Ixil, Chajul.
3. M* = Maxwell (1980: 60 – 66). Ixil, Nebaj.

506
I have left out a Tz‘utujil Hummingbird bridal capture tale from Santiago Atitlan
published as a sort of philosophical fairy tale by Martin Prechtel (2001), an author with
considerable inside knowledge of the Tz‘utujil way of life. Although the story is in
some respects close to the Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan bridal service tale, its presentation
by Prechtel does not allow a judgment of its overall authenticity. In the chapter about
the hunt, certain elements of the tale are discussed that do appear to belong to local oral
tradition.
 393

4. CC = Colby and Colby (1981: 180 – 183). Ixil, especially Chajul (Colby
1981: 311, Ch.5 n. 8).
5. K = Klüssmann (1988, in: Asturias de Barrios 1997: 77 – 78). Ixil, Chajul.
6. XP* = Xajil Piy (in Petrich and Ochoa 2001b: 148-159). Tz‘utujil, San Pablo
de la Laguna.
7. TT* = Tepaz Tuy (in Ajpacaja Sohom 2004: 26-34, 30-41). K‘iche‘, Santa
Catarina Ixtahuacan.
8. [T = Tax (1951: 2554 = Tale no. 26). Cakchiquel, Panajachel.]

The Father-in-Law's Household

The head of the household is a King (XP) called Mataqtani (P,CC) /

Mataktani (R), or Padre Junto (P), i.e., Kub’aal ‗Our Father‘ (K). He lives in a
dark cave (P). [Referred to as ‗the Devil‘, he may be accompanied by a shrewd
wife (T), as in some Q‘eqchi‘ variants.] The daughter is called Marikita (P),
Maria Markaao (CC), San Maarko (M), or Markao (K). There is a second
daughter as well (R, XP; TT: elder daughter).[Two daughters (T).]

Refusal of Courtship Procedures

If he is not anonymous, the hero is called Oyeb’ ‗Fierce One‘ (K), Oyew
Achi ‗Fierce Warrior‘ (CC, M), Rey Achi (P), or just Tz’unun ‗Hummingbird‘
throughout (R) [T]. The father forbids the ‗Fierce Warrior‘ to visit his daughter
(CC, K), or rebukes a formal marriage proposal by the Fierce Warrior‘s father
(M).

The Boy’s Father Sends Spies

The Fierce Warrior‘s father sends off a tick, a flea, and a firefly to spy
on the household. There is a short exchange: ―They found us‖ – ―[You] better
give us the girl now‖ (M).

Hummingbird Transformation

The warrior‘s father advises his son to change into a hummingbird (M),
or it is the boy (P) or the couple (K) which decides upon this stratagem.
Alternatively (TT), a boy comes upon two sisters doing their washings on the
 394

shore of a river and changes into a small singing bird; the younger sister invites
him to visit her at home. In front of the girl‘s house, the hummingbird (or
singing bird) sips from the nectar of a flower and is shot with the father-in-law‘s
blow-gun (M, C, R, TT). [During his pursuit, Grandfather does not recognize
the intruder‘s transformation into a hummingbird sucking from two white lilies
(T).]

Resuscitation of Hummingbird

The hummingbird is tended by the daughter. She weaves its image into
a shawl (sut) for her father (XP). ―When Maria asked for the bird to use as a
pattern for her weaving, the bird was gathered up in her basket and brought into
her room‖ (Colby 180). There, the bird rests on her belly, inside her clothes
(M). The couple cohabits. The second daughter joins in the sexual play (R, XP).

Informal Courtship

Only one source (XP) inserts an informal courtship.

The Father-in-Law Sends Spies

Once the hero has entered the female quarters, the wily father
successively sends a louse and a flea (K) - or a group of flees called ‗the
Commission‘ (P)507 - and finally a firefly (CC, M, XP) or a rat (R) to spy upon
the couple and verify their ‗sin‘. The first emissaries only suck blood (K) or get
killed (XP); contrarily, they (the ‗Commission‘) bring proof (P). The firefly
duly reports; the rat brings proof consisting of two hairs of the culprits‘ heads
(R). Alternatively, the father-in-law discovers the cohabiting couple himself (P,
K). [In the Panajachel variant, Hummingbird captures two daughters and flees
(T).]

507
Palomino 1972: 135 n. 12.
 395

Acceptance as a Marriage Candidate

Grandfather is desolate, but resigns himself to the apparent desire of his

daughter (CC, M, R). He has the couple go to mass and be baptized (CC). Since
one of the girls is pregnant of a baby ‗hummingbird‘, the young father asks for
pardon (XP).

Bridal Service

The intrusive suitor is set to his bridal tasks, all to be accomplished

within an impossibly short time. In the Cakchiquel tale (R), these are: gathering
firewood, catching sea fish, and collecting ‗pacayas de ahuacate‘. In the K‘iche‘
tale (TT): adorning the entrance to the steam bath, bringing firewood for the
steam bath, bringing the father-in-law his breakfast, slashing and burning the
wild vegetation, sowing the maize field, and guarding the ripening stalks. In the
Ixil tales: constructing a pole-and-thatch house (with many rooms: K, with
twelve rooms: P), bringing a field under cultivation, gathering dry firewood for
the steam bath in the midst of the rainy season (K only), and (CC only) building
the steam bath. Generally, it is only through the daughter‘s assistance that her
suitor succeeds. In the Tz‘utujil tale (XP), however, the suitor acts alone in
clearing and sowing a maize field; picking up an immense quantity of grains of
rice; and gathering firewood.

Different Reactions of the Father-in-Law

In the Ixil and K‘iche‘ tales, the Father-in-law suspects the intervention
of his daughter (K), discovers the lovers‘ plan to flee (AP), or is just terribly
envious of the suitor (TT). In one of the Ixil variants (M), the father invites the
boy to join him in burning his field (one of the bridal tasks). Making him
believe that the field is to be lighted in the centre first, he sets fire to its edges.
The hero only escapes by covering himself with mud. In the K‘iche‘ tale (TT),
the same stratagem is used; the hero escapes by hiding in a well he had made.
Next, the father-in-law sends a two-headed eagle to the maize field guarded by
the boy; instead of the boy, a turkey gets caught. In the Cakchiquel tale (R), the
father is satisfied with the work and gives his daughter to the suitor; in one of
the Ixil tales (P), he intends to have them stay with him as his workers. In the
 396

Tz‘utujil tale (XP), the two sisters criticize their father for his harshness and ask
Hummingbird to kidnap them.

The Murderous Sweat Bath

The Ixil tales assign a pivotal role to the father-in-law‘s steam bath. The
daughter invites her father to enter the newly-constructed steam bath (CC).
However, the old man has the couple enter the steam bath and seals the bath off
(CC, P). Or it is the father who enters (M, K); the bath is again sealed off (M).
The various captives manage to escape; a ‗mole‘ digs a tunnel for the couple
(CC).

The Father-in-Law Misled

Now that the father-in-law‘s murderous intentions have become

obvious, the couple installs a roadrunner and an owl in their sleeping quarter for
substitutes (TT). The birds answer the morning call of the Father-in-law, while
the couple flees.

Sabotage of the Blowgun and Elopement

Although the father-in-law of Cakchiquel myth (R) has consented in the

marriage, the suitor decides upon elopement. [The suitor captures the two
daughters (T).] The daughter instigates Hummingbird to sabotage her father‘s
blowgun with smut, chalk, and chile pepper. With the gun, the father-in-law
tries to suck them back, and looses consciousness (R).

Magical Flight

The fleeing couple is persecuted by the K‘iche‘ Father-in-law (TT).

They assume various misleading shapes: a rock with a zapote shell lying on it, a
hog and a dog, a photo picture lying on a table with a man standing in the
entrance to the room. Each time, the old man returns to his wife to learn that he
has been deceived. In the Tz‘utujil tale (XP), the two girls hide in the horns of a
cow, the boy also enters the animal. [The three fugitives are persecuted by the
Grandfather, who does not recognize their successive disguises: First the hero
together with the girls become a hummingbird and two white lilies, and then -
 397

when the abductor has absented himself - the girls become two doves and two
stones (T).]

The Father-in-Law Enlists Lightning(s)

Whether suffocated by his blowgun (R) or by the steam of his steam

bath (Ixil var.), or just terribly defeated and deceived (TT), the father-in-law
now becomes fierce. He either sends a lightning bolt (K), enlists an ‗Angel‘
(XP) or Saint Gabriel TT) with his lightning bolts, calls upon his 'Captain(s)' (R,
M), or variously named ‗Angels‘ (P), i.e., the Lightning(s), or pursues the
fugitive couple himself, armed with a lightning bolt (C). [The couple is attacked
by Lightning (T).]

The Daughter's Destruction and Transformation

The boy hides in a blue well and escapes, the girl hides in a crystalline
well and is spotted and hit. A hair (or her hair) is all that remains. The hero
returns to his parents‘ house and puts the hair under a large, inverted water jar.
The mother lifts the jar untimely, and a beautiful bird escapes (TT).
Alternatively, a sea turtle is suggested to have evacuated the couple (P).508 The
fugitive woman is reduced to bones, which her husband collects in a container.
An ‗aunt‘ (C, K) or grandmother (P) guarding the container opens it untimely.
In Ixil myth, deer - rabbits, doves - pigeons, and ‗all manner of animals‘ escape,
including bees which finally have to be searched for (P, C, K, M). The bees
originated from the woman‘s eyes (P). Cakchiquel myth (R) has only bees sally
forth: ‗bees of the woods‘ and ‗bees of the house‘. In the Tz‘utujil tale (XP),
lightning reduces the girls to ashes, which, collected in a jar and guarded by
Hummingbird‘s mother, change into two doves (palamax) on being untimely
opened. Hummingbird remains alone, saddened. [Lightning reduces the two
daughters to ashes and a Wind transforms them into bees (T).]

508
―Y así se fue la blanca tortuja, roja tortuja y así se vino el Padre Junto, Mataqtani. El
vino a mirarlo, vino a verlo. ‗Malaya pucha vos, ya se fue el patojo, ya se fue la patoja‘
‖ (Palomino 1972: 142 lines 471-474).
 398

II. Female Transformation into Maize

Eight of the variants below are from the Verapaz. Apart from the idiosyncratic
Tiburcio Caal version (Burkitt 1918, 1920), there is an overall uniformity up to the
kidnapper‘s crossing of the water (with the exception of the very short, somewhat
anomalous El Estor tale). In the sequel, there are considerable differences. The
remaining Ixil variant sticks more closely to the animal transformation model. The
synopsis includes the following variants (* with Mayan text):

1. TC* = Tiburcio Caal (in Burkitt 1920; first part also in Quirín 1974: 105 - 113).
Cobán, A.V. Q‘eqchi‘.
2. M = Mayers (1973: 88-94), consisting of M1 from San Cristóbal [Verapaz], M2
from Tamahu, and M3 from Tactic (Opening of the Maize Mountain) . M1 and
M2 are identical to the first two bilingual tales in Mayers 1958 (3-11). Poqomchi‘.
3. SCH = Schumann (1988: 213 – 215). Civija, mun. Purulá, B.V., and San Juan
Chamelco, A.V. Q‘eqchi‘.
4. BM = Búcaro Moraga (1991: 69 – 72). Santa Cruz Verapaz, A.V. Poqomchi‘.
5. MR/B = Marín/Bak (1993: 136 – 145, in Preuss 1993: 125). El Estor, mun.
Cabonicto, A.V. Q‘eqchi‘.
6. C* = Cuz (2002: 31-34). Q‘eqchi‘.
7. Y = Yurchenco (2006: 87-88). Chajul. Ixil.

[BM=Búcaro Moraga, C=Cuz, MR/B=Marín/Bak, M1/M2/M3=Mayers,

SCH=Schumann, TC=Tiburcio Caal, Y = Yurchenko.]

The Household

The head of the household is the Poqomchi‘ xajal mamá 509 in the Santa
Cruz Verapaz variant (BM) or Matagtanic in the Chajul variant (Y). The woman is
called Qana‘ Po, the Moon (C), or Marikita (Y); the maize seed is in Marikita‘s
belly. The woman can also appear as a ‗princess‘ with shiny white teeth (MR/B).

509
Xajal could be a geographical name (there is a Xajal river to the North-west, not far
from Nebaj in Ixil territory); but compare also Cakchiquel chahal ‗guardian‘ (Smailus),
specifically used for the idol guarding the house (Orellana 1984: 97-98).
 399

[TC: The household is presented as if it were a royal court. The Father-in-law is

identified with the predominant mountain of the Alta Verapaz, Xucaneb,
surrounded by his counselors and captains, all mountains; the daughter is the hill
Suqk‘im.]

Humiliation, Love-magic, Bridal Capture

The intruder, although usually anonymous (M1, M/B, SCH), is a hunter

called Saq‘e ‗Sun‘ (C), Hummingbird (Y), or the Quiche Uinac warrior who
finally becomes Sun (BM). There is the nixtamal incident (C, M1, SCH), with the
fallen hero becoming an ‗old‘ or withered‘ man (rejeb)510 and changing into a tree
trunk (M1). Initial seduction scene: The princess denudes herself to take a bath
(MR/B). In other variants (C, BM, M1, SCH), this scene is replaced by the
stereotypical images for reciprocal love-magic; one variant (BM) substitutes an
orange tree for the usual tobacco stalk. Hummingbird‘s love-making should
fertilize the maize seed (Y). The action taken by the maiden‘s father follows the
familiar pattern (see synopsis of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth). [TC: Xucaneb
awakes to find the room of his daughter empty. The abductor is the lord of the
mountain Q‘uix Mes.]

Flight and Pursuit

The warrior and his woman have to flee for days (SCH). The Father-in-
law‘s blowgun is sabotaged (SCH).511 While crossing the water (M1, SCH), the
‗sea number Thirteen‘ (BM), or lake/sea (palaw, C), they are attacked by
Lightning. Hummingbird talks to three turtles (C); the woman hides in a turtle
carapace (C, M1, M1, SCH). She escapes destruction; but to mislead the Father-in-
law, red flowers are strewn into the water (BM). They continue, following the river
upstream (C). The Quiche Uinac is further pursued by the old man and his two

510
The connotation is unclear to me. In the 18th century (Miles 1957: 763, quoting
Zuñiga), rijib denoted, besides old men, also old plants and trees, possibly emphasizing
dryness. As a verb, rejeb can refer to the waning of the moon (Mayers 1958: 39 line 9).
511
The Schumann rendering of the blowgun sabotage, which states that the father
―succeeded in getting them out of the turtle carapace and so wounded the man; he
[Hummingbird, EB] received various loads in his face, which began to swell‖ (1988:
214), is probably mistaken.
 400

Hawks; he erects stone walls on three mountains (BM). Alternatively, no mention

is made of a war (M/B). In one case (M2), no water is crossed. [TC: Xucaneb
sends his Jaguars and Pumas twice into the domain of the abductor, Q‘uix Mes.]

The Woman Killed and Transformed

In the Ixil variant, a flight is not explicitly mentioned. The woman is killed
by her father, and changes into the maize: ―The maize grew lavishly and in
abundance‖ (Y). In the other variants, the transformation is postponed.

The Woman Put inside a Mountain

By whistling, Sun assembles stones into a ‗stone house‘, i.e., a cave, and
tells his pregnant bride to stay there (C). Hummingbird and his woman seek refuge
in a mountain cave (M1, SCH) or ―within the thirteen doors‖ (M2). The Quiche
Uinac leaves the captured woman in the house of ‗a man from Rabinal‘. He
instructs the man to live with her for seven years, and then enclose her in a
mountain strategically located in between Poqomchi‘ and Rabinal territory (BM). -
Alternatively, the woman with the shiny teeth follows someone‘s footsteps and
hears a voice directing her to the cave of a ‗very special man‘, where she remains
for some time (M/B). [TC: While the daughter is with her abductor, the mountain
Q‘uix Mes, Xucaneb stores his maize with the formal suitor of his daughter,
another mountain deity.]

The Abductor Triumphant

Having put his woman in the hands of another man, the Quiche Uinac now
ascends into the sky to become the Sun (BM). The other abductors stay on earth.

The Abductor Repentant

On hearing that famine reigns in her father's realm, the princess returns to
him – not to stay there, however, but again to rejoin her partner in his mountain
cave and ask him a great service: the permission to return to her father's land
(M/1B). The daughter has got pregnant (like Moon in the Cuz variant) and
persuades her abductor to go to her father and have their marriage blessed (M1,
SCH). [TC: Xucaneb sends a female marriage broker who persuades Q‘uix Mes to
 401

leave his mountain and come to court together with the daughter.]

The Mountain Obstinate

The mountain left by the repentant abductor encloses on the King's

daughter (M1, SCH). The woman abducted by the Quiche Uinac is enclosed in the
mountain by his Rabinal ally (BM). The woman becomes the maize; alternatively,
she (the Moon) is not changed into the maize, but is instructed to give the seeds of
the maize to those in need of it (C).[TC: When Q‘uix Mes, too, repents and leaves
his mountain with the abducted daughter to become the King's official ‗son-in-
law‘, the mountain of the rejected suitor turns hostile and imprisons the maize.]

The Fugitives are Being Searched for

First the woodpecker and then the oriole are searching for the fugitives,
even before these have reached their mountain refuge. At the thirteen doors, ―the
sound of the making of tortillas was heard‖ (M2).

Attack on the Maize Mountain

God orders the Maize Mountain split (M1, SCH). Twelve Lightnings
attack the Maize Mountain; the smallest, thirteenth one succeeds (BM, M1, M3);
or the four directional Lightnings attack, and the fifth, and youngest one succeeds
(SCH). They free the maize. [TC: Xucaneb mobilizes his Lightnings. Three young
bachelor Lightnings try; the fourth one, an aged and married Lightning, succeeds.]
 402

III. No Female Transformation

The Lacandon variants are remarkably similar, including details,512 which allowed
Boremanse (1986) to incorporate the tale transmitted by Bruce (1974) into the two
tales collected by himself without noticeable distortion, and with due references
given. The main variants are the following ones.

1. S = G. Soustelle (1961: 49 - 50, cf. J. Soustelle 1935: 339).

2. BR* = R.D. Bruce (1974: 224 - 274). A slightly different, and much shorter
variant recorded by the same author can be found in McGee (1990: 106-107).
3. BO1/BO2 = D. Boremanse (1986, [1] northern variant: 78-96, [2] southern
variant: 293-304).

Boremanse‘s northern variant, being the most extensive one, has served as a basis
for the following synopsis.

Nuxi Exterminates the Gophers

Nuxi is a married hunter called ‗Gopher Trapper‘ (äh lehi käh bah) and
‗great man‘ (nukuch uinik), i.e., ancestor (BR); or (S) K‘in Kobo. Nuxi only eats
gophers and ―places a trap wherever he sees a gopher hill‖ (BO1).

Nuxi Follows the Daughter of Kisin into the Underworld

Nuxi loses his way and meets an attractive young woman seated under a
nantse tree. She is called X-Baakè (BO1). Nuxi assumes the shape of a White-
crowned parrot (Pionus senilis) and throws the tree‘s cherry-like yellow fruits on
her head; she takes off her wig and shows her naked skull. He follows her along a
path that descends into the earth: the western entrance of the underworld.

512
An exception is the variant given by Georgette Soustelle. It is less reliable (possibly
due to an insufficient knowledge of Lacandon) and omits many essential passages. As
an example of this unreliability, G. Soustelle has, contrary to the logic of the tale, K'in
Kobo [Nuxi] instead of Xbaake taking off a wig to reveal the naked skull.
 403

Nuxi is Received by Our True Lord’s Elder Brother and his Wife

In Our True Lord‘s Elder Brother‘s house, he is hidden under a cooking

pot to protect him from the visiting children of the death god, Kisin; he is
instructed to wash his clothes so as the remove his human smell; and is given Elder
Brother‘s loincloth.[meets Kisin and his daughter, BR]

Elder Brother Initiates Nuxi into the Destiny of the Dead

Nuxi watches how spectral game passes by (the souls of killed animals);
how dogs, chickens, and fleas attack the dead; and how the dead cross the
underworld river on a dog. Elder Brother scrutinizes and judges the souls. Nuxi
witnesses their punishment by Kisin through fire and cold water and, as a result of
this treatment, their transformation into Kisin‘s ‗cattle‘ and ‗poultry‘.

Elder Brother’s Wife Humanizes Kisin’s Daughter

Elder Brother summons Kisin‘s daughter (BR). Kisin‘s daughter receives

instruction from her ‗mother-in-law‘: She learns how to prepare food and to
weave. Kisin‘s Daughter stays with Elder Brother, learns to eat human food, but
turns home after a while.

Elder Brother Gives Hummingbird his Feather Cloak

Elder Brother gives Nuxi‘ and old, violet garment of his and wings (xik’),
i.e., a feather cloak (BR); or he persuades the hummingbird to lend its feather
cloak (BO2). Nuxi changes into the Violet Sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileu-
curus), is shot by Kisin, and ‗tamed‘ by Bone Woman; they sleep together. Kisin
awakens and vomits; but he is glad that Nuxi‘ has slept with his daughter (BR),
and accepts him for a son-in-law.

Main Bridal Task

The decisive bridal service consists in cutting firewood (really bones) for
the hearth of Kisin (BR).
 404

Nuxi Replaces the Killed Gophers

Kisin‘s daughter gives birth to four pairs of gophers (BO1); or he should

engender as many gophers as he had killed (BO2). The gophers are to be set out in
the four directions there to multiply.

Nuxi Performs further Bridal Tasks

He cleans the gardens and sweeps the house of his father-in-law. The
kisinob or agents of decay change into crawling serpents as the sweeping proceeds
(BO2). He also brews honey beer (balche).

A Drinking Bout and its Consequences

With the beer brewed by Nuxi, a drinking contest between Elder Brother
and Kisin is organized. When Kisin is drunk, Nuxi, instructed by Elder Brother,
plucks the flower of immortality from the pubic hair of Kisin.

Escape and Loss of the Wife

Everybody is dead drunk. Nuxi was drunk, too (BO2). Nuxi tries to escape
with Kisin‘s daughter. Some of the dust left in Kisin‘s house (the excrement of a
cat, BO), enables Kisin to sniff his daughter back. The earth closes itself.

Nuxi Returns Home

Nuxi is again lost in the woods. He is led home by a small wildcat

(margay) and meets his daughters. He is first taken for a specter by his wife (BO2),
since it was three years since he left. In the meantime, she has found another man,
but she now returns to Nuxi.

Nuxi Cures the Dead

Nuxi descends into the burial pit, arranges the skeleton, and by holding the
flower under their noses, or by using certain small sticks (BO2), Nuxi makes the
dead alive.
 405

Nuxi Dies and Returns to Elder Brother

His wife breaks the taboo and touches the flower, Nuxi dies, and returns to
his otherworldly wife and to Elder Brother. His earthly wife is made to bury Nuxi,
and is then brutally killed (BO2).
 406

APPENDIX C

AGRICULTURE AND RAIN IN THE TAPIR EPISODE

There are reasons to reconsider the tapir (or adoption) episode from the
perspective of agriculture and rain, more particularly the onset of the rainy
season. Specific transpositions of the episode related to these two themes are
found not only in hero myths that have a maize deity or rain deities as
protagonists, but also in Mesoamerican Sun and Moon myth. Certain elements
of Q‘eqchi‘ Sun and Moon myth may possibly find their explanation here.
The hero babies of the initial episodes of several hero myths are usually
found in the water, but they can also be encountered in the field. A Huaxtec
maize hero myth (Martínez 2000: 150) initially has the old woman working
there. Her adoptive motherhood begins when she cuts off a pumpkin (the vines
of which could easily evoke umbilical cords), takes it home, slices it, and within
discovers a girl, the future mother of the maize hero. This is a variation on the
finding of the maize hero himself, lying in the maize field in the shape of an egg
(e.g., García de León 1976: 80). Instead of harvesting a pumpkin, her Pipil
counterpart (Tlentepusilam) cuts a calabash from a tree and chops it up to
release her adoptive children (see Chapter Three, section ‗Guarding the Trophy
Tree‘). The large, fleshy fruits may well pertain to the nature of the foundlings:
the maize mother, the maize child, and the rain children.513
When, towards the conclusion of the maize hero myth, the hero ‗sows‘
the ashes from Old Woman‘s vulva, the images of cucumber and calabash
recur: From the earth fertilized by the ashes, a species of cucumber (chayote,
Sechium edule) and calabash vines sprout (Münch 1983: 166). This same
ending occurs in Kaqchikel and Tz‘utujil hero myth. As we have seen earlier,
the Sun and Moon brothers abstained from working the earth; instead, the work
was done by their hoes. This infuriated their grandmother, and she made the
hoes stop doing their work.514 Assuming that the grandmother represents a

513
Besides the rain children, the 1907 Hartmann variant also includes the tobacco girl
among those born from a tree calabash.
514
The Popol Vuh (PV lines 2909ff) has the same incident with the magical hoes and
the undoing of their effects.
 407

goddess closely connected to the soil and its tillage (see also Appendix D,
section ‗Agricultural Labor‘), the meaning of the episode could be that the
Twins – not destined for a life of working the soil – had refused to enter into a
personal relationship with, and become dependent on, the earth. Sun and Moon
avenged themselves by burning the old woman in the steam bath, putting a cane
(possibly a planting stick) into her anus, and cutting off her vulva. Buried in the
earth, the vulva changed into a vine producing the fleshy and wrinkled guisguil
cucumber, a surrogate for the maize515 (Redfield 1946: 254; Tarn and Prechtel
1986: 178).
The interaction of Old Adoptive Mother and her deer or tapir lover in
particular can take on a meaning readily assimilated within an agricultural
context. Here, it is important to realize that in Mesoamerica, the deer is
associated with the rain deities.516 In a Totonac variant of Sun and Moon myth
(Münch Galindo 1992: 288-289), the Sun and Moon brothers spy on Old
Adoptive Mother as she brings food to her lover. They ―saw how she jumped
onto a large white deer and, after frolicking for some time, with another jump,
on falling to the ground, on that very moment, a large resplendent lightning fell,
with such a noise that it made the earth crack.‖ The deer ‗grandfather‘ is said to
have been the transformation of a ‗lightning man‘ (‗hombre rayo‘), or
rainmaker; and ―therefore, during a thunderstorm, the lightning appears against
the dark sky in the shape of the antlers of a deer.‖ Since the love play apparently
made the lightning man discharge, it would appear that lightning is phallic and
rain is seminal, both equations being common within Mesoamerica.517 In a
parallel Mixe Sun and Moon tale (Loo 1987: 145), the lover‘s deer carcass is
supported by a planting-stick; when the old woman kicks it, the chalk powder

515
As in Huaxtec maize hero myth, the Grandmother is associated with food antedating
the maize. It may be because of this association, that young maize ears were put into her
anus, rather than into her mouth: She had no use for them.
516
The rain deity can be the Owner of the deer (e.g., Lipp 1991: 30, 37). Among the
Tzotziles, ―thunder and lightning are believed to be off mounted on deer collecting
gunpowder for use in the rainy season‖ (Laughlin 1975: 111 s.v. chauk].
517
E.g., phallic lightning: Taggart 1983: 92, seminal rain: Monaghan 1995: 111, 204.
 408

springing from the carcass changes into clouds,518 ―and from this comes the rain
and the thunderclap of lightning.‖519
The old woman‘s violent jumping and kicking could be taken as
signaling the onset of the rainy season. In many variants, she kicks a stuffed
deer that she believes to be her sleeping partner. The rising of the clouds would
then represent the deer‘s ‗awakening‘. Probably connected to the beginning of
the rainy season are the sandals and weaving sticks that she finally throws after
the rising Sun and Moon; these are said, in a Trique variant (Hollenbach 1977:
131), to represent Taurus and the Pleiades.520 Since the deer carcass and the
steam bath are metaphorically related (Moedano 1977: 19-20, quoting
Carrasco), a further implication of the above is that the steam of the steam bath
could also be viewed as rain clouds. It has already been noted that the Old
Adoptive Mother of the Yucatec hero, Ez, is accompanied by a snake living in a
subterranean well whom she feeds children. Called Conhaa Xnuc ‗Old Woman
who sells water‘ (Ligorred 1990: 109-110), she gives water in exchange for the
children brought by visitors.521 Her counterpart in a Popoluca maize hero myth
documented by Elson (1947) also has for a partner a fat snake who likes to eat
children, and who again may represent an aquatic force.
If we view Q‘eqchi‘ myth against this background of rain-making and
water-selling, it becomes significant that the tapir spends a large part of his life
in the mud near the water, or in the water itself. He likes to sink to the bottom of
a pool or a river and be among the fishes, even though he is herbivorous
(Álvarez del Toro, in Navarrete 1987: 241). The Golonton Tzeltal believe that
the rains are announced by a tapir stamping the earth (Navarrete 1987: 242).
When, in the myth, the tapir trap has been dug, the brothers tell the old woman

518
This chalk powder is thus comparable to the soot (sabak) used by the Lacandon rain
deity and to the ‗gunpowder‘ (sibak) of the Tzotzil thunder and lightning deity
(Laughlin 1975 s.v. chauk).
519
Where the old woman uses a stick to kick the deer (as in the Van der Loo tale), the
stick could (similar to the lightning stick of the Huaxtec Mam) be taken to represent
lightning.
520
In a Popoluca maize hero myth, too, the old woman‘s sandals, buried in the hearth,
are brought into focus (Elson 1947: 200-201). Also among the Chiapas Mayas, the
Pleiades are called ‗Sandals‘ (Milbrath 1999: 38).
521
This snake has been argued to correspond to the Hapai Can known from early
sources (Helfrich 1973: 63, 128), but also invites comparison with a giant serpent living
in a subterranean cenote and connected to the canicula (cf. Bassie-Sweet 2008: 148;
Burns 1983: 244-257; Jong 1999: 156).
 409

that they have found ―a creek with lots of fish and [want] to stay overnight in
the bush to fish there‖ (Grandia 2004: 6); instead, they go off to kill the tapir in
the pitfall. Because the tapir was trapped in his normal habitat, near a creek full
of fish, its member is presented to Xkitza, not as a piece of deer meat, but as ‗a
fine fish‘ (Thompson). However, considering that the tapir‘s phallic power is
even more strongly marked than that of the Totonac deer-shaped ‗lightning
man‘, the fish may also refer to the tapir‘s association with rain and rain-
making. Whereas the lover‘s penis is a fish, the vagina of Xkitza‘s Pipil
counterpart, Tantepusilama, is viewed as a water source, her urine as streaming
water. The Old Adoptive Mother herself, in the Goubaud Q‘eqchi‘ variant, dies
by jumping into a deep well (Sp. pozo) where she used to go and fetch water,
and where she now drowns. This well could be seen as equivalent to the pool
inside the limestone hole where the Yucatec water-selling Conha Xnuc
resides.522 The table below summarizes the discussion thus far.

522
The narrator explained her act as a form of suicide out of remorse. Her jumping into
a deep well, together with the fact that she was purposely left to drown there, is also,
however, reminiscent of the young men and women who, in the 16th century, were
lowered into the great karstic hole of Chichen Itza to drown there. In such a way, they
became part of the realm of the rain deities, and could ask its rulers specific favors
(Helfrich 1973: 125-129).
 410

Table: Meteorological Transpositions

OLD
ETHNIC PARTNER‘S OLD WOMAN‘S
WOMAN‘S
GROUP ASSOCIATION ACTION
PARTNER
filled with cloud
Mixe deer provokes rain clouds
powder
makes Taurus and
Trique deer
Pleiades rise
cloud powder; first
provokes lightning and
Totonac deer lightning of rainy
clouds
season; rainmaker
Popoluca fat snake eating children (snake‘s partner)
lives in cave at well;
snake living
Yucatec eating children exchanges water for
in a well
children
urinates = makes
Pipil giant
terrestrial water flow
lives in or near water;
jumps into deep well
Q‘eqchi‘ tapir severed penis =
where she hauled water
caught ‗fish‘

In the Freeze variant of Q‘eqchi ‗myth, the lover is ‗the Mam‘, a fact
that now also acquires additional significance. The Mam not only is a greatly
feared, murderous, and cannibalistic mountain deity, but is specifically
associated with such violent natural phenomena as subterranean rumblings and
thunderstorms ending in floods. As early as the 16th-century, the dictionaries of
Zuñiga and Morán (in Miles 1957: 749) attribute to ‗the Mam who dreams‘, ―a
sound like a distant thunder which he makes under the earth, and which you will
hear sometimes coming from the east in San Cristobal.‖523 After the first heavy
rains in June and July, a distant rumbling of the earth (‗Erdrollen‘) is interpreted

523
―El Mam que sueña‖ (dreams); Feldman (1988 s.v. Mam) reads ―suena‖ (resounds)
instead.
 411

as the hissing and roaring (‗das Blasen oder Getöse‘) of the Mam, restless and
angry because his sleeping place is getting wet (Dieseldorff 1926: 28, cf. 1922:
50). These threatening rumblings, audible at the beginning of the rainy season,
are not volcanic or otherwise seismological, but are probably produced by
subterranean water movements in the karstic crust.524 Because of his excessive
strength, the Mam is envisioned as tied inside the earth (Dieseldorff) or
imprisoned in a cave situated far in the East (Villacorta Vidaúrre 1970: 3); but
apparently he is sometimes able to leave this prison. As we shall presently see,
the troubled and disturbed sleep of the Mam seems to modulate the ‗sleep‘ and
rude awakening of the stuffed Oaxacan deer lover.
Dieseldorff (1926: 28) adds, in general terms, an important piece of
information: Were the Mam to be informed about a local feast day, he would
arrive to devour everybody (Dieseldorff 1926: 28). Villacorta Vidaúrre (1970:
3), however, focuses on the feast of Saint John the Baptist on June 24th:
According to some Q‘eqchi‘s, the rumblings and shakings of the earth are
caused by the Mam‘s anger on being informed (by the newly-arrived dead) that
he had missed the feast. These accounts sharpen Taube‘s argument (1992: 97)
that the Q‘eqchi‘ Mam corresponds to ‗the old thunder god‘, who, in addition to
various local names, is known along the entire Gulf Coast as ‗Saint John the
Baptist‘.
Stereotypically, this Old Thunder is to be misinformed about the exact
day on which the feast of Saint John the Baptist (his own feast day) falls. If he
knew, he would organize a drunken orgy that would cause huge thunderstorms
and flood the entire world (Ichon 1969: 112-115; Taggart 1983: 211-212;
Williams Garcia 1972: 77). Whereas the Q‘eqchi Mam is tied and imprisoned in
a cave, his Gulf Coast counterpart is pinned down in the middle of the ocean
(Ichon 1969: 113) or confined to an island (Taggart 1983: 212-213) to keep the
world from drowning. That he is also a cannibal appears from the very words
with which he is soothed on being confined: ―You‘ll always have meat. The
water will bring fish, or drowned animals, or even human beings. You won‘t

524
Haeserijn (1979: 219) defines the Mam as follows: (1) god of the earth (myth.), tapir
(PW); (2) rumblings (not volcanic nor of earthquakes); (3) grandchild (said by the
grandfather).
 412

have to eat tortillas‖ (Taggart 1983: 212). These human beings are the drowned,
their souls becoming the Old Thunder‘s workers (Ichon 1969: 114).525

Table (cont.)

ETHNIC OLD WOMAN‘S PARTNER‘S OLD WOMAN‘S

GROUP PARTNER ASSOCIATION ACTION
thunderstorm,
Q‘eqchi‘ ‗the Mam‘ flooding, subterranean exciting the Mam
rumblings
thunderstorm,
Gulf Coast flooding, first
Old Thunder
peoples lightning of rainy
season

Among the Huaxtec Mayas, the Q‘eqchi‘ Mam corresponds to Mam

Mushilam, the Old Thunder, also called Muxi‘(Alcorn) and Mushik (Hooft and
Cerda 2003: 63): ―The first lightning, initiating the rain cycle, is sent by
Mushik‖ (id.: 131). Thus, still assuming that Old Adoptive Mother‘s sexual
interaction with the deer provokes the beginning of the rainy season, the phallic
lightning produced by the Totonac deer lover and rainmaker appears to
correspond to the lightning with which the Huaxtec Mam opens the rainy
season (see Table cont.). In sum, it would appear that by calling him ‗the Mam‘,
the tapir lover‘s intimidating and destructive, cannibalistic virility, tickled by
his aged mistress, could in principle be translated into meteorological terms.

525
This Old Thunder is called Nawewet or Nanawatzin in Nahua (Taggart 1983), the
name also given to the youngest rain hero of Pipil myth.
 413

APPENDIX D

THE OLD ADOPTIVE MOTHER: AZTEC PARALLELS

The name given to the Pipil counterpart of the Q‘eqchi‘ Old Adoptive Mother is
Tlantepusilam, which, as Olivier (2005) has shown, refers back to the time of
the conquest and the decades following upon it. The historical Tlantepusilam
shares important features with Aztec earth goddesses such as Tlaltecuhtli,
Cihuacoatl, Tocî, Coatlicue, and especially - as Olivier argues (2005: 253-255) -
Itzpapalotl. If, however, one attempts to match the Old Adoptive Mother
(regardless of her ethnic affiliation) with an Aztec earth goddess, then
Cihuacoatl stands out among her colleagues. The complex of traits which make
up this goddess‘s character produces the recognizable picture of a cannibalistic
adoptive mother who was not only a goddess of war, but also a goddess of
midwifery on a par with the goddess of the steam bath.526

War Goddess, Demon, Cannibal

As well as being a war woman (yaocihuatl) whose nocturnal wailing

and crying was considered an omen of war (yaotetzahuitl), Cihuacoatl527
Quilaztli was an aggressive ‗eagle woman‘ (quauhcihuatl), demon woman
(tzitzimicihuatl), and cannibal (tecuani) (Torquemada 1975: 117, Bk.II Ch. II).
The Huaxtec Grandmother of the Maize Hero (Alcorn 1984: 166), transformed
into a terrorist eagle, unmistakably acts as such a Quauhcihuatl ‗Eagle Woman‘.
Being a female demon (tzitzimitl) and cannibal, Cihuacoatl Quilaztli was
believed to have ‗a huge open mouth and ferocious teeth‘ with which she
devoured human flesh (Durán 1971: 210). These ferocious teeth - the metallic
teeth of a tzitzimitl - also characterize the Pipil Old Adoptive Mother,
Tlentepusilama; they are like the teeth of K‘uxb‘akme‘el, strong enough to be

526
Here, I will leave out of consideration the homonymous Cihuacoatl ‗Female
Associate‘, the Aztec ‗minister of the interior‘, and those of his functions related to
warfare and human sacrifice; for an exploration of this connection, see Klein 1988.
527
Actually, Torquemada has Cohuacihuatl rather than Cihuacoatl as an alternative
name for the eagle transformation of Quilaztli.
 414

sharpened with a stone. Cihuacoatl‘s nocturnal crying and wailing for human
flesh (Sahagún 1979: 33, Bk.I Ch. VI) is perhaps the most spooky aspect of her
cannibalistic urge; to appease her, offerings were made consisting of breads
shaped like human hands and limbs (Durán 1971: 217).
To prompt human sacrifice, she would at times appear on the market
place (where sacrificial victims could be bought) with a cradle for carrying a
child on her back; when she left the cradle standing somewhere, it was
discovered to hold a swaddled sacrificial knife (Sahagún 1979: 33, Bk. 1 Ch. 6):
Her ‗child‘ starving for fresh blood, or, an appeal to give her sacrificial
captives.528

Adoptive Mother

That Cihuacoatl fulfilled the role of an aged Adoptive Mother is

evidenced by the birth story of Ce-Acatl, that is, Quetzalcoatl, in the ‗Historia
de los Reynos‘: ―And when he was born, his mother immediately dies. But the
(young) Ce Acatl is raised by Quilaztli, Cihuacoatl. And when he had become a
man, he accompanied his father on his conquests. And he proved himself in the
war in Xihuacan. There he made prisoners‖ (Lehmann 1974: 365-366; my
transl.). Through the intermediary of this war goddess functioning as an
adoptive mother, Quetzalcoatl may have became a warrior himself. According
to the version in the Histoyre du Mechique, the hero had been born in a place
called Nichatlanco, an unclear toponym which has quite plausibly been read as
Michatlauco ‗Fish Gorge‘ (Jonghe 1905: 36), a stereotype place for the Old
Adoptive Mother to make her first appearance.

Midwife of War

The two Old Adoptive Mothers types represented by Xkitza (origin of

war cannibalism) and the Oaxacan goddess of the steam bath (origin of
midwifery) recur in the two Aztec goddesses of midwifery, Cihuacoatl and Tocî
Yoalticitl. The latter (Tocî ‗Our Grandmother‘), was also the goddess of the
steam bath, or Temazcaltecî ‗Grandmother of the Steam Bath‘ (Sahagún 1979:

528
When the Trique solar brother violates the Old Adoptive Mother with a sacrificial
knife tied to his penis (Hollenbach), this somehow seems to respond to the Aztec tale.
 415

33, Bk. 1 Ch. 8), since before and after birth giving, a mother used to go into the
steam bath every day. Her colleague was the war goddess, Cihuacoatl
Quauhcihuatl ‗Eagle Woman‘ Quilaztli. Both goddesses were invoked in the
rhetorical dialogues between the mother and the midwife recorded by Sahagún
(1979: 374ff , Bk. 6). Ideologically, the mother was deemed to have made a new
‗captive‘: the child, still tied to the umbilical cord of its ‗captor‘. Birth giving,
with its spasms, cries, sometimes blood loss, and the very real risk of dying,
was apparently equated with a battlefield.
Just as cannibalistic and sanguinary Old Adoptive Mothers could
become goddesses of the steam bath, the Aztec goddess of the steam bath could,
inversely, show warlike behavior. The concept of a sanguinary ‗midwifery of
war‘, characteristic of Cihuacoatl, thus comes to embrace Tocî Temazcalticitl
‗Physician of the Steambath‘ as well. On the Ochpaniztli feast dedicated to the
latter, she - or rather her impersonators - behaved like her alter ego Cihuacoatl:
She tasted from sacrificial blood (Graulich 1981: 63), displayed the aggressive
behavior of a warrior woman (id.: 65-66), and sported the eagle-attributes of
Cihuacoatl, the ‗Eagle Woman‘ (65).529 Perhaps one should connect her escort
of ithyphallic Huaxtec warriors (74) with Old Adoptive Mother‘s mythological
tapir lover, with his excessive sexual power.530

Bone Grinder

Cihuacoatl Quilaztli is associated with the grinding of human bones.

She grinds the bones taken from the underworld by Quetzalcoatl on her metate
(Historia de los Reynos, Lehmann 1974: 334, 337). In Tz‘utujil Sun and Moon
myth, the grandmother figure, B‘atzb‘al, is symbolically associated with the
grinding stone (Tarn and Prechtel 1986: 177); in the Tzotzil Jaguar Slayer myth,
the grinding stone of K‘uxbakme‘el ‗Old Woman Bone Cruncher‘ is implicitly
equated with a sacrificial stone.

529
Another act of Ochpaniztli had Tocih standing over a container with chalk powder
and white feathers (adornments of sacrificial victims) and uttering war cries (Sahagún
1979: 135-136, Bk. 2 Ch. 30). There might be some connection with the deer dummy
filled with chalk powder.
530
In his treatment of Ochpaniztli, Graulich (1981: 74-75) signaled various ritual
moments suggestive of sexual intercourse with, and fecundation of, the aged goddess of
midwifery.
 416

‗Female Ensnarer‘

Cihuacoatl could change into a seductive young woman to madden and

kill young men (Mendieta 1973: 56, Bk.II Ch. IX). According to Popoluca hero
myth, it was Old Stepmother‘s desire to avenge herself for the death of her lover
and her own violation which led to the same transformation. This female demon
is known in Nahuatl as Matlaccihuatl (corresponding to Xtabay in Yucatec)
‗Female Ensnarer‘.531 The Ch‘orti‘ Old Adoptive Mother is designated with the
synonymous siguanaba.

Child Eater

Characteristically, Cihuacoatl‘s cannibalistic hunger coalesced with a

terrible desire for babies. An incident which had Cihuacoatl devouring a small
boy in his cradle in Azcapotzalco was apparently considered ominous enough to
be included in a concise overview of the reigns of the lords of Tlatelolco
(Sahagún 1979: 452, Bk. 8 Ch. 1); it may have been taken to forebode war. The
primary victims of the Grandmother transformed into an eagle are again babies
(Alcorn 1984: 166).

Goddess of the Cradle

In connection with the adoption episodes, it is relevant to note that Toci

Yoalticitl ‗Nocturnal Midwife‘ was also the goddess of the cradle. Indeed, the
cradle was personally addressed as ‗Old One‘, and conjured not to harm the
child it was about to receive (Sahagún 1979: 373-379, 400-401, Bk. 6 Ch.26-27
and 37); in the Tz‘utujil community of San Pedro la Laguna, it is even thought
necessary to whip the child‘s hammock into obeisance (Paul 1975: 709-710).
These ritual precautions refer us directly to the Huaxtec Old Adoptive Mother
as a baby-sitter.

531
In an ancient Nahua ritual for hunting deer (Coe and Whittaker 1982: 135), the noose
was called Cihuacoatl Cihuatequihuâ, i.e. ‗Cihuacoatl the Female Taskmaster [or
Warrior?]‘. Again, the war goddess is ensnaring persons and making captives.
 417

Goddess of Agricultural Labor

The imagery of war associated with Cihuacoatl can also be transposed to

the field of agriculture, with hoes substituting for obsidian swords and, perhaps,
the products of the earth (especially fleshy ones such as calabashes and
cucumbers) for parts of human bodies. The song dedicated to Cihuacoatl
Quauhcihuatl (Seler 1960: 1048-1058; Garibay 1958: 134-149) makes this
transposition entirely explicit by having the goddess work the divine maize
field. This refers us directly to the Old Adoptive Mother of Maize Hero myth.
The goddess (especially in her quality of patron of midwifery and
adoptive mother) often wears the epitheton Quilaztli, with an approximate
meaning of ‗instrument for generating edible plants‘. The key to this epitheton‘s
meaning would appear to lie in Sahagún‘s statement (1961: 11, Bk. 1 Ch. 6) that
it was Cihuacoatl who gave ‗the digging stick, the tumpline‘ to mankind. If we
take this metaphorical expression for burdening people literally, then it makes
Cihuacoatl Quilaztli directly comparable to the grandmother of Tz‘utujil,
Cakchiquel, and K‘iche‘ Sun and Moon myth. The latter stopped the
automatism of the hoes which had effortlessly been slashing the vegetation.
Thus, this grandmother had indeed, as literally stated by Sahagún, obliged
mankind to handle their agricultural implements themselves, and labor the earth.
 418

APPENDIX E

A NOTE ON THE SPELLING OF MAYAN WORDS

There are many Maya languages, eight in Southeastern Mexico and Yucatán,
about twenty in Guatemala. Until quite recently, these existed chiefly as spoken
languages, with Spanish serving (as it still does) as the lingua franca. The
missionaries of early colonial times rendered Maya words in the Spanish
spelling, while adopting various conventions for rendering phonemes not
occurring in Spanish. Later spelling practices continued to be modeled on the
Spanish. They were often idiosyncratic, not to say bewildering, as renderings of
the name of the dominant Maya language of Guatemala‘s Alta Verapaz
immediately show: Cacchi = Gkec-chi = Kekchi = K‘ekchi = Q‘eqchi‘.
Towards the early 1990‘s, Maya linguists, united in the Academia de Lenguas
Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) and assisted by North-American scholars,
devised a now official system that marks a break with Spanish spelling
conventions. It is nearly identical with the modern system for rendering
Yukatec.
The following remarks may give some idea of the pronunciation of
Q‘eqchi‘ words. Like most other Maya languages, Q‘eqchi‘ makes phonemic
distinctions between short and long vowels, between k and q (the latter a
consonant pronounced at the back of the mouth), and between normal and
glottalized consonants (for example, k and k‘, the latter a ‗clicking‘ sound). The
glottal stop is indicated by an apostrophe. X is pronounced as ‗sh‘ (xul
‗animal‘), and ch as the ‗ch‘ in ‗child‘ (ch’ool ‗heart, mind‘). The guttural
consonant j is sounded much as a very short gargle and coincides with the
Spanish j. The w is, at least in the dominant Cobán dialect, pronounced ‗kw‘
(wa’ ‗bread‘), while the y sounds more or less as ‗ch‘ in ‗child‘ (yeq’ok ‗tread
upon‘).532
In keeping with modern scholarly usage, I have rendered the names of
Maya language groups according to the ALMG-system; thus, Q‘eqchi‘, not
Kekchi, and K‘iche‘, not Quiché (or, as an adjective, Quichean), even though

532
Unlike the ALMG, the Summer Institute of Linguistics Spanish-based orthography
spells these dialectical pronunciations out (e.g., cuanc for wank ‗to be‘).
 419

these ‗apostrophic‘ spellings are unlikely to aid the average reader. The oft-
recurring name of the dominant Q‘eqchi‘ mountain spirit is likewise given a
modern spelling: Tzuultaq‘a. In the case of historical names no longer in use, I
have steered another course, since a modern spelling would entail an
interpretive choice that can not readily be verified. For the names of the Twin
Heroes of the Popol Vuh, I use the Spanish spelling of the Popol Vuh
manuscript: Xbalanque and Hunahpu (with the h representing a soft guttural
sound). In other cases, I have followed the spelling of the source being referred
to or quoted.
 420

SUMMARY

The subject of this thesis is an extensive myth from the Q‘eqchi‘-speaking areas
of the Alta Verapaz (Guatemala) and of Belize, the oldest variant of which dates
from around 1900. The core of this Q‘eqchi‘ myth is a tale that treats the
alliance between a deer hunter (called Xbalanque in the earliest variants) and
the daughter of a mountain deity. The daughter of the mountain deity is
kidnapped by Xbalanque, undergoes transformation into snakes and insects, and
finally regains her human form before changing into the moon, while her
kidnapper changes into the sun. This tale (here called ‗Hummingbird myth‘)
also circulates in various parts of Guatemala and Belize beyond the Q‘eqchi‘
area.
The thesis is intended as a detailed commentary of the entire Q‘eqchi‘
narrative of Sun and Moon and situates its various episodes within the
Mesoamerican narrative tradition. The central theme is marriage alliance, a
concept that in certain versions of the myth, and especially of its Hummingbird
episode, can be seen as a model for relations between unequal partners, such as
hunter and quarry. I argue that the myth can be placed within a Mesoamerican
ideology that views the hunt as a metaphor for marriage and marriage as a
metaphor for the hunt.
Chapter 1 introduces the myth, the central characters and narrative
structure. Chapter 2, which treats the first episode of the Q‘eqchi‘ narrative,
presents a dark contrast to the subsequent alliances of Xbalanque with the
daughter of the mountain deity and with the game. In this part of the myth,
sexual alliance comes to the fore in a primitive and unsocial mode. This
negative alliance is symbolized by an aged adoptive mother, a complex
character recurring in many hero myths, and by a tapir. Both the old woman and
the tapir appropriate the meat of the animals captured by Xbalanque and his
brother and both are subsequently killed. The Old Adoptive Mother is cast as a
cannibal specialized in young children and is associated with stories about an
early epoch when parents produced children only to serve as food. At times she
assumes the role of a fearsome midwife; at other times her aggressive
cannibalism symbolizes war. On the basis of new data it is argued that the
mythological tapir can be viewed as the counterpart of the game. Whereas the
game surrenders itself and is carried dead to the homestead of the hunter to be
 421

received as if it were a living guest, the tapir appropriates everything without

reciprocating, and is therefore killed as an enemy. In many areas of the
Amerindian tropics, the tapir is viewed as an embodiment of both greed and
excessive sexuality. As such, the animal is directly comparable to the male lover
who, in a widespread Mayan tale, interferes in a marriage and is fed with the
meat hunted by the husband and with the living flesh of the husband‘s wife,
whereupon the husband kills both adulterers.
I suggest that the negative alliance of the Old Adoptive Mother and the
tapir symbolizes an earlier stage in the development of mankind, but one to
which one may still regress. In this early stage, the spheres of procreation and of
food acquisition, both vital to the marriage alliance, have not yet been entirely
disentangled, and the use of human flesh and of game meat not yet fully
separated. Old Adoptive Mother‘s occasional transformation into the goddess of
the steam bath is here viewed as a socialization of her primeval cannibalism.
Chapter 3 considers the tapir episode as part of an earlier Mesoamerican
tradition. It presents evidence of the tapir episode within early-16th century
Mayan and Pipil rituals of war and sacrifice, and notes a connection with Aztec
historical traditions.
Chapters 4 and 5 discuss two contrasting roles of the deer hunter of the
Hummingbird myth. Chapter 4 calls attention to Xbalanque‘s role as an invader
and historical war god, corresponding to that of the legendary ‗Fierce Warrior‘
of many highland Mayan tales. The deer hunter of Hummingbird myth is
sometimes called by this very title, ‗Fierce Warrior‘, suggesting that the deer
hunt can be seen as a military campaign. However, the purpose of
Hummingbird myth is to present the hunt as an alliance. The ‗Fierce Warrior‘
becomes a son-in-law, a role discussed in Chapter 5. At the beginning of the
Hummingbird myth, Xbalanque transforms into a hummingbird, a bird used in
traditional Mesoamerican love magic, thus signaling a switch from war and
pillage to the establishment of alliance. The Hummingbird episode‘s various
versions continue either with a bridal service, in which the marriage candidate
has to work for his father-in-law, or, as in the Q‘eqchi‘ version, with bridal
capture. The bridal service is concluded with flight from the realm of the
mountain deity and the bridal capture with ‗armed peace‘.
In Chapter 5, the two forms of bridal acquisition (bridal service and
bridal capture) are described and related to their mythical depictions. The
exposition of bridal service highlights a motif recurring in many Mesoamerican
tales, namely the threat of the marriage candidate‘s drastic loss of status and
 422

autonomy, a threat which the main actor of the Q‘eqchi‘ myth barely eludes.
The chapter concludes by showing how easily the indigenous workers on the
Alta Verapaz plantations could have recognized themselves in this mythical
escape from an unbending mountain deity.
In addition to the mode of bridal acquisition, the versions of the
Hummingbird myth show remarkable variation among regions and among
Mayan language groups in the destiny of the abducted woman. This variation
comes to the fore in what constitutes the nucleus of the dissertation, namely the
analysis in Chapters 6 to 9 of the various versions of Hummingbird myth. As
shown in these chapters, the woman may or may not suffer a transformation,
and if there is a transformation it may take any of a number of forms and may or
may not be followed by the woman‘s recovery of her original human form. An
extensive analysis of metaphoric language and ritual behavior reveals a
correspondence between the nature of the female transformation and specific
spheres of human activity. It thus underscores the importance of the hunt as a
metaphor for alliance: Just as the hunter views the game as a desirable woman,
so the bee-keeper is married to the bees, the farmer to the maize, and the
conqueror (symbolized by the sun) to the moon. Within the framework of this
marriage model, the mountain deity, being the father of the bride, has a
controlling power that only the strongest can resist.
Chapter 6 reconstructs an important Mesoamerican hunting ideology
and develops the idea of the hunt as marriage. This view of the hunt is most
directly represented by those Hummingbird myths in which the hunter‘s wife
changes into game. The case of the Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth is different, in
that the wife does not become game. Instead, her alliance with the deer is made
subservient to human procreation, and her alliance with Xbalanque serves as an
example of how sexuality and food acquisition should relate to each other if
mankind – that is, the ‗man made of deer meat‘ – is to survive. Chapter 7
demonstrates the decisive importance of the rituals of traditional curers and
disease throwers for Q‘eqchi‘ Hummingbird myth, with Xbalanque cast in these
roles and with his wife changing into snakes and insects for use in black magic.
Chapter 8 examines the fusion of the Hummingbird myth with the Maize
Mountain myth: The hunter‘s wife changes into sowing seeds and is enclosed in
a mountain granary. The hunter wooing the game then gives way to the farmer
metaphorically married to the maize. Chapter 9 explores the extent to which the
unusual case of the Lacandon Hummingbird myth fits within the framework
sketched in the preceding paragraph. The alliance between the hunter and his
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wife appears once again to stand for a specific area of human activity, namely
the interactions of shamanic curers with the world of the dead.
In Q‘eqchi‘ myth, the theme of alliance also occurs in more negative
ways, namely as marriage refusal and marriage failure. This aspect of the myth,
analyzed in Chapter 10, concerns an inserted tale about a hunting deity who, in
the tapir episode, also plays the role of the hero‘s elder brother. Whereas,
following the final breakdown of his unwanted marriage, the hunting deity
abjures women and rejoins his escaping animals in the woods, his younger
brother begins searching for a woman with whom he can form an enduring
bond. Here, another strongly marked contrast with Xbalanque‘s marriage comes
to the fore. Analysis shows that the opposition between elder and younger
brother can be expressed in a variety of ways, most notably as an interest in men
versus an interest in women. Male exclusivism appears to have been
characteristic of Mesoamerican hunting deities and is likely connected to the
practice of hunting in bands. In any event, a woman has no place in a context
of male bonding. Particularly in stories regarding the initiation into hunting
magic, the relationships of the hunting deity and his novices is eroticized while
their weapons and the killing of the game acquire a corresponding sexual
meaning. The marriage alliance with the game thus temporarily recedes into the
background.
The Q‘eqchi‘ narrative ends by describing yet another marriage failure,
namely the dissolution of the alliance between Xbalanque and the daughter of
the mountain deity itself. This theme is the subject of Chapter 11. The
dissolution is ascribed to the adultery of the elder brother, a role played by
either the hunting deity or the rain deity. (There are some indications that within
the Mayan kinship structure, the relation between the wife and her brother-in-
law is viewed as particularly threatening to the integrity of the marriage bond.)
The disrupted alliance immediately gives way to another one, in that
Xbalanque‘s wife allows herself to be kidnapped by a vulture king connected to
black sorcery. The loss of the marital bond is presented as a disturbance of the
ritual order, and gives rise to a series of negative images whose dramatic effect
derives from the fact that Xbalanque and his wife are on the verge of being
changed into sun and moon. The triumph over the black sorcerer and the
retrieval of the spouse restore the ritual balance, and the ultimate transformation
of the reunited spouses into sun and moon confirms the alliance principle as a
life-giving, cosmic force.
 424

The dissertation concludes with two remarks concerning the roles

played by the two principal actors of the Q‘eqchi‘ narrative. The myth shows
the daughter of the mountain deity in a series of mostly transient alliances, the
significance of which appears to be that she thereby becomes productive and
fertile in the distinct areas symbolized by her male partners, animals as well as
deities. This investigation confirms and further develops the correspondence
already noted by Thompson between the main female actor of the Q‘eqchi‘
myth and the Aztec goddess Xochiquetzal, especially in regard of the goddess‘s
similar role in the erotic attraction of the hunt. As regards the main male actor,
it is well-known that his name, Xbalanque, is also the name of one of the Twin
heroes in the Popol Vuh. Notwithstanding a tendency in Mayanist research to
reduce distinct hero myths to bastard forms of this ancient K‘iche‘ narrative, it
has, in the course of this analysis, become clear that one and the same figure can
serve as a principal actor in very different myths. Thus, the war deity Xbalanque
can as well be coupled to a female companion in a myth that explores the theme
of war‘s transformation into alliance, as to a male companion in a myth that
chiefly addresses the theme of war and subjugation. The interplay of these two
basic themes, war and alliance, recurs throughout the dissertation.
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DUTCH SUMMARY / SAMENVATTING

Het onderwerp van dit proefschrift is een omvangrijke mythe uit de Q‘eqchi‘-
sprekende gebieden van de Alta Verapaz (Guatemala) en van Belize, waarvan
de oudst-bekende variant teruggaat tot omstreeks 1900. De kern van deze
Q‘eqchi‘-mythe bestaat uit een verhaal dat de verbintenis van een hertenjager
(in de oudste varianten Xbalanque genoemd) met de dochter van een berggod
tot onderwerp heeft. De dochter van de berggod wordt door Xbalanque
ontvoerd, ondergaat een transformatie in slangen en insecten, en hervindt dan
haar menselijke vorm alvorens in de maan te veranderen, terwijl haar
ontvoerder in de zon verandert. Dit verhaal (hier als ‗Kolibrimythe‘ aangeduid)
is ook in delen van Guatemala en Belize die buiten de Q‘eqchi‘-gebieden liggen
in omloop.
Het proefschrift is als een de gehele mythe van Zon en Maan
omvattend, gedetailleerd commentaar gedacht en tracht de plaats van de
verschillende episodes binnen de Mesoamerikaanse verteltraditie te bepalen.
Het centrale thema is de huwelijksverbintenis of alliantie, een begrip dat in
bepaalde versies van de mythe, en vooral in de Kolibri-episode, als een model
gezien kan worden voor relaties tussen ongelijke partners, zoals jager en wild.
Betoogd wordt dat de mythe thuishoort in een Mesoamerikaanse ideologie die
de jacht als een metafoor voor het huwelijk en het huwelijk als een metafoor
voor de jacht opvat.
In hoofdstuk 1 worden de Q‘eqchi‘-mythe, de belangrijkste handelende
personen en de vertelstructuur geïntroduceerd. Hoofdstuk 2 behandelt de eerste
episode van de mythe. Hier komt een primitieve en onsociale vorm van de
seksuele alliantie naar voren die een duister contrast vormt met de latere
allianties van Xbalanque met de dochter van de berggod en met het jachtwild.
Deze negatieve verbintenis wordt gesymboliseerd door een bejaarde
pleegmoeder – een complex karakter dat in veel heldenmythen terugkeert – en
door een tapir. Beiden eigenen zich het jachtvlees van Xbalanque en diens broer
toe en worden vervolgens gedood. De figuur van de bejaarde pleegmoeder
wordt gekarakteriseerd als een in jonge kinderen gespecialiseerde menseneetster
die in verband staat met verhalen over een oertijd waarin ouders hun kinderen
slechts voortbrachten om tot voedsel te dienen. Nu eens vertoont zij trekken van
een vervaarlijke vroedvrouw, dan weer wordt haar agressieve kannibalisme
 426

dienstbaar gemaakt aan de symboliek van de oorlog. Op grond van nieuwe

gegevens lijkt het zinvol de tapir als tegenbeeld van het gewone jachtwild te
zien. Terwijl het jachtwild zichzelf wegschenkt en, eenmaal gedood en naar het
huis van de jager vervoerd, wordt ontvangen als ware het een levende gast,
eigent de tapir zichzelf alles toe zonder wederkerigheid en wordt hij daarom
gedood als een vijand. Bovendien wordt de tapir op vele plaatsen in tropisch
Indiaans Amerika niet alleen als een belichaming van inhaligheid gezien, maar
ook van excessieve seksualiteit. In beide hoedanigheden is het dier rechtstreeks
vergelijkbaar met de minnaar die, in een bekend Mayaans verhaaltype, inbreekt
in een huwelijk om zich te laten voeden zowel met de jachtbuit van de
echtgenoot als met het lichaam van de echtgenote zelf, waarna beide overspel-
plegers door de echtgenoot gedood worden.
De interpretatie die hier wordt voorgestaan is dat de negatieve alliantie
van oude pleegmoeder en tapir een stadium in de menselijke ontwikkeling
vertegenwoordigt dat overwonnen is, maar waarin men niettemin kan
terugvallen. In dit oerstadium zijn voortplanting en voedselverwerving –
wezenlijke doelen van de alliantie – nog niet op de juiste wijze begrensd, het
gebruik van menselijk vlees (het lichaam) en van jachtvlees nog onvoldoende
gescheiden. De soms optredende transformatie van de bejaarde pleegmoeder tot
godin van het zweetbad wordt geduid als een socialisering van haar
oorspronkelijk kannibalisme. Hoofdstuk 3 beziet de tapirepisode als deel van
een oudere Mesoamerikaanse traditie. Betoogd wordt dat verschillende
momenten van de tapirepisode terugkeren in krijgs- en offerrituelen van Maya‘s
en Pipiles uit het begin van de zestiende eeuw en in overleveringen van de
Azteken.
De hoofdstukken 4 en 5 behandelen twee contrasterende rollen van de
hertenjager uit de Kolibrimythe. Hoofdstuk 4 vestigt de aandacht op
Xbalanque‘s rol als binnendringer in vreemd gebied en historische oorlogsgod,
een rol welke overeenkomt met die van de legendarische ‗Woeste Krijger‘
bekend van vele verhalen uit de Mayaanse hooglanden. De hertenjager van de
Kolibrimythe draagt soms dezelfde titel van ‗Woeste Krijger‘, zodat de
hertenjacht ook de connotatie van een krijgstocht verkrijgt. Het doel van de
Kolibrimythe is echter juist om de jacht als alliantie voor te stellen. De ‗Woeste
Krijger‘ wordt daarom een schoonzoon, een rol die in hoofdstuk 5 wordt
behandeld. Aan het begin van de Kolibrimythe verandert Xbalanque in een
kolibri, een vogeltje dat in de traditionele Mesoamerikaanse liefdesmagie wordt
gebruikt. Zo doende signaleert hij een omslag van krijg en plundering naar het
 427

aanknopen van een alliantie. De versies van de Kolibri-episode geven

vervolgens hetzij een bruidsdienst te zien, waarin de huwelijkskandidaat voor
zijn schoonvader diensten moet verrichten, of, zoals in het geval van de
Q‘eqchi‘-versie, een bruidsroof. De bruidsdienst eindigt tenslotte met een vlucht
uit het gebied van de berggod en de bruidsroof wordt gevolgd door een
‗gewapende vrede‘.
In hoofdstuk 5 wordt een beeld geschetst van deze twee vormen van
bruidsverwerving (bruidsdienst en bruidsroof), steeds in directe samenhang met
hun uitbeelding in de mythe. Nadrukkelijk wordt gewezen op het in allerlei
verhalen telkens terugkerend motief van de dreiging van drastisch statusverlies
en zelfstandigheid in de bruidsdienst, waaraan de hoofdfiguur van de Q‘eqchi‘-
mythe juist weet te ontkomen. Het slot van dit hoofdstuk laat zien hoe
gemakkelijk deze mythische ontsnapping aan een hardvochtige berggod door de
inheemse arbeiders op de plantages van de Alta Verapaz op de eigen situatie
betrokken kon worden.
Naast het bruidsverwervingsaspect vertonen de versies van de
Kolibrimythe een opmerkelijke specialisatie naar regio en Mayaanse taalgroep
ten aanzien van de bestemming van de ontvoerde vrouw. Deze variatie komt
naar voren in wat de kern van het proefschrift uitmaakt, de analyse van de
verschillende versies van de Kolibrimythe in de hoofdstukken 6 tot en met 9.
Zoals deze hoofdstukken laten zien, ondergaat de vrouw al dan niet een
gedaanteverandering, en als er een gedaanteverandering plaatsvindt, kan deze
verschillende vormen aannemen en al dan niet een vervolg krijgen in het
hervinden van de menselijke gedaante. Een uitgebreide analyse van beeldspraak
en ritueel brengt een overeenstemming aan het licht tussen de aard van de
vrouwelijke gedaanteverandering en bepaalde terreinen van menselijke
activiteit. Op deze wijze bevestigt de analyse het belang van de jacht als een
metafoor voor de alliantie: zoals de jager het wild als een begeerlijke vrouw
waarneemt, zo huwt ook de imker met de bijen, de akkerbouwer met de mais,
en de zon (die de vorst symboliseert) met de maan (die de vorstin symboliseert).
Binnen dit huwelijksmodel bezit de berggod als vader van de bruid een
controlerende macht waaraan alleen de allersterksten zich enigszins kunnen
onttrekken.
In hoofdstuk 6 wordt een belangrijke Mesoamerikaanse ideologie van
de jacht gereconstrueerd en het idee van de jacht als huwelijk uitgewerkt. Deze
opvatting van de jacht komt het meest onmiddellijk naar voren in die
Kolibrimythen waarin de vrouw in het jachtwild verandert. De Q‘eqchi‘
 428

Kolibrimythe wijkt af doordat de vrouw niet in het jachtwild verandert. In plaats

daarvan wordt haar alliantie met de herten dienstbaar gemaakt aan de
menselijke voortplanting, terwijl haar alliantie met Xbalanque demonstreert hoe
seksualiteit en voedselverwerving zich dienen te verhouden wil het mensdom –
dat is de ‗mens van hertenvlees‘ – voortbestaan. In hoofdstuk 7 wordt
aangetoond dat voor de invulling van de Q‘eqchi‘- mythe de rituelen van de
traditionele genezers en ziekteverwekkers van doorslaggevende betekenis zijn
geweest. In de mythe neemt Xbalanque hun rol op zich, terwijl zijn vrouw in de
slangen en insecten verandert die in de zwarte magie gebruikt worden. In
hoofdstuk 8 wordt het versmelten van de Kolibrimythe met de Maisbergmythe
onderzocht: de vrouw van de jager verandert in het zaaigoed en wordt
opgesloten in een berg die tot voorraadschuur dient. De jager die het wild het
hof maakt krijgt als opvolger de akkerbouwer die in overdrachtelijke zin
gehuwd is met de mais. In hoofdstuk 9 wordt onderzocht in hoeverre het
afwijkende geval van de Lacandoonse Kolibrimythe binnen het in de vorige
alinea geschetste kader past. Ook hier lijkt de band tussen de hoofdfiguur en
zijn vrouw een afzonderlijk terrein van menselijke werkzaamheid te betreffen,
namelijk de interacties van sjamanistische genezers met de wereld van de
doden.
Vervolgens komt de alliantie ook negatief in de mythe voor, als
huwelijksweigering en huwelijksmislukking. Dit aspect van de mythe,
geanalyseerd in hoofdstuk 10, betreft een ingelaste vertelling omtrent een
jachtgod die al in de tapirepisode als de oudere broer van de held wordt
opgevoerd. Terwijl de jachtgod na de definitieve mislukking van zijn
opgedrongen huwelijk de vrouwen afzweert om zich te voegen bij zijn
ontsnappende en verwilderende dieren in het bos, gaat zijn jongere broer op
jacht naar een vrouw om zich definitief met haar te verbinden. Er ontstaat dus
opnieuw een sterke contrastwerking met het huwelijk van Xbalanque. De
analyse laat zien dat de tegenstelling tussen de oudere en de jongere broer door
de mythe op allerlei manieren wordt uitgedrukt, met name als een belangstelling
voor mannen tegenover een belangstelling voor vrouwen. Een uitsluitende
gerichtheid op mannen lijkt vanouds kenmerkend te zijn voor Mesoamerikaanse
jachtgoden en staat waarschijnlijk in verband met het jagen in groepen. In de
daarbij behorende sfeer van mannelijke kameraadschap is voor de vrouw geen
plaats. Vooral in verhalen betreffende de inwijding in de jachtmagie wordt de
verhouding tussen de jachtgod en de inwijdelingen geërotiseerd en ondergaan
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de jachtwapens en het doden van het wild een daarbij passende seksualisering.
Daardoor raakt de huwelijksalliantie met het wild tijdelijk op de achtergrond.
Tenslotte stelt de Q‘eqchi‘-mythe nog een andere huwelijksmislukking
aan de orde, namelijk de verbreking van de alliantie tussen Xbalanque en de
dochter van de berggod zelf. Dit thema wordt in hoofdstuk 11 behandeld. De
breuk wordt toegeschreven aan overspel met de oudere broer, hetzij de
jachtgod, hetzij de regengod. (Er zijn aanwijzingen dat binnen de Mayaanse
verwantschapsstructuur de betrekking van de echtgenote tot haar zwager bij
uitstek als een gevaar voor de integriteit van de huwelijksverbintenis geldt.) Het
verbreken van de alliantie leidt onmiddellijk tot het ontstaan van een nieuwe
alliantie, doordat Xbalanque‘s vrouw zich laat schaken door een gierenkoning
die in verband staat met zwarte toverij. Het verlorengaan van de huwelijksband
wordt in eerste instantie gepresenteerd als een verstoring van de rituele orde en
uitgedrukt in een reeks negatieve beelden, die hun dramatiek ontlenen aan het
feit dat Xbalanque en zijn vrouw de aanstaande zon en maan zijn. De
overwinning op de zwarte tovenaar en het hervinden van de echtgenote
herstellen de rituele orde, en de uiteindelijke gedaanteverandering van de
herenigde echtgenoten in zon en maan bevestigt het alliantieprincipe als
levengevende, kosmische kracht.
De dissertatie wordt besloten met twee opmerkingen betreffende de rol
die de beide hoofdfiguren in de Q‘eqchi‘-vertelling spelen. De mythe toont de
dochter van de berggod in tal van meest tijdelijke verbintenissen, waarvan de
kennelijke zin is dat zij zo productief en vruchtbaar kan worden op de
verschillende terreinen die gesymboliseerd worden door haar mannelijke
partners, dieren zowel als goden. Het onderzoek bevestigt de reeds door
Thompson gesignaleerde overeenkomst tussen de vrouwelijke hoofdfiguur van
de Q‘eqchi‘-mythe en de Azteekse godin Xochiquetzal en werkt deze nader uit,
vooral wat betreft de rol die beiden spelen in de erotische aantrekking tijdens de
jacht. Wat tenslotte de mannelijke hoofdfiguur betreft, diens naam, Xbalanque,
is zoals bekend ook die van een van de tweelinghelden in de Popol Vuh.
Niettegenstaande een neiging binnen het Mayanistisch onderzoek om
uiteenlopende heldenmythen te reduceren tot bastaardvormen van deze
zestiende-eeuwse K‘iche‘mythe, is in de loop van dit onderzoek duidelijk
geworden dat een en dezelfde figuur hoofdpersoon kan zijn van uiteenlopende
mythen. Aldus kan de oorlogsgod Xbalanque even gemakkelijk gekoppeld
worden aan een vrouwelijke metgezel in het kader van een mythe die de
overgang van oorlog naar alliantie thematiseert, als aan een mannelijke
 430

metgezel in het kader van een mythe die zich eerder richt op oorlog en
onderwerping. De wisselwerking tussen deze twee elementaire thema‘s, oorlog
en alliantie, keert in vele onderdelen van dit proefschrift terug.
 431

Curriculum Vitae

H.E.M. (Edwin) Braakhuis werd geboren op 22 januari 1952 te Haarlem. Hij

doorliep het gymnasium ‗Paulinum‘ te Driehuis-Velsen en behaalde daar in
1970 het einddiploma van de alpha-richting. Met onderbrekingen studeerde hij
van 1970 tot 1981 culturele anthropologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam,
met bijzondere aandacht voor taalkunde, symbolische anthropologie en de
ethnohistorie van Mesoamerika en de Andes. In 1976 maakte hij in Chiapas,
Mexico, kennis met de Tzotzil-Maya‘s in het kader van een veldwerkstage. Van
1990 tot 1994 was hij als onderzoeksassistent (AIO) verbonden aan de
Universiteit Utrecht onder begeleiding van Rudolf van Zantwijk. Sedert eind
jaren ‘80 is hij werkzaam als docent Nederlands voor anderstaligen aan het
James Boswell Instituut van de Universiteit Utrecht. Hij is lid van de European
Association of Mayanists.
432