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Updated: June 28, 2025
Stand up in teocalli, look on kill-stone. Wait; you see, hear, all dat, now!" Thanks to the close association of that night, with all its attendant perils, Bruno was growing fairly skilful in interpreting the broken sentences of his copper-hued chum, and he now knew they were moving about within the hollow image of the Aztecan war-god, Huitzilopochtli, while
'The gods have delivered you into our hands at last! they said. 'Huitzilopochtli has long cried for his victims. The stone of sacrifice is ready the knives are sharpened.
Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl fled from him, and their hideous priests, draped and masked in skins fresh flayed from beasts or men, vanished at his coming, as Isis, Osiris, and the dog Anubis fled from the folding star of Bethlehem.
The Aztecs worshipped thirteen principal gods, and more than two hundred of less importance, each of whom, however, had his day of festival, which was duly observed. At the head of all stood the war-god, the terrible Huitzilopochtli, whose fantastic image was loaded with costly ornaments, and whose temples, in every city of the empire, were the most splendid and stately.
Later in the struggle Tetlapan appears as the associate of Quauhtemoctzin, the "King of Mexico." Both this and the following are war songs, and have marked similarity in thought and wording. The introduction of the Spanish Dios was doubtless substituted by the scribe, for the name of some native god of war, perhaps Huitzilopochtli.
The place was thereafter called Tenochtitlan, or "the place of the cactus-rock," but the name under which it afterward came to be best known was taken from Mexitl, one of the names of the war god Huitzilopochtli. The device of the rock, the cactus, with the eagle and the serpent, formed a tribal totem for the Aztecs, and has been adopted, as the coat-of-arms of the present Republic of Mexico."
When the unhappy men about to be sacrificed had reached the lofty level space on which these abominations were wont to be committed, it was discerned by their friends and late companions that plumes of feathers were put upon the heads of many of them, and that men, whose movements in the distance appeared like those of winnowers, made the captive dance before the image of Huitzilopochtli.
Opposite to the Spanish quarters stood the great teocalli of Huitzilopochtli, rising to a height of nearly a hundred and fifty feet, and thus completely commanding the palace occupied by the Spaniards.
We hold up our hands in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did Augustine worship?
And this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices, whereby the priestly caste maintained the prestige of its divinities: At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486, the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two miles long.
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