Yacateuctli and Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl: Earth-Divers in Aztec Central Mexico

Abstract

Two Aztec deities, Yacateuctli and Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, both known as patrons of the Aztec merchant class, derive from different major deity complexes yet share an association with diving waterfowl. This association originates in the pan-American tradition of the Earth-Diver, a motif previously unrecognized in the limited corpus of Aztec cosmogonical myth. By virtue of their affiliation with the Earth-Diver, Yacateuctli and Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl invoke the demiurgical powers of mediation and acquisition to promote the mission of the merchants as the vanguard of Aztec political expansion. An examination of the relationship of the two deities to so ancient and widespread a symbolic tradition allows some insight into the structure of the Aztec as a whole. Further implications of the Earth-Diver motif for Aztec ideology are suggested by the unique physical circumstances of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco, island home of the Mexica ethnic group and capital of the Aztec empire. Despite a general recognition that the pantheon of late-prehispanic central Mexico is anything but neatly partitioned, students of Aztec religion continue to attempt to reconcile the variants of given major deity complexes into more tractable single units for subsequent analysis (e.g., the recent discussion of Aztec goddesses by Durand-Forest [1984] and Graulich [1984]). This problem of properly delineating major deities derives in part from the patchwork documentation of ethnohistorical sources from the central Mexican highlands, in which concise and unequivocal descriptions of individual deities are nonexistent, and in part from the largely unstudied variation in religious beliefs across the region, where specific ethnic groups, cities, and even neighborhoods within cities held to their own versions of the broader religious tradition. Perhaps more importantly, Ethnohistory 38:1 (Winter I99I). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc 0014-I801/9I/$I.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.235 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 06:21:16 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms