[Aztlan] Axolotl

[Robert Hall]

Colegas,
   
  I have learned much from the discussions of xolotl as an element of words in Nahuatl, axolotl and hueyxolotl in particular, but to the extent that the god Xolotl was identified with Evening Star as an aspect of Venus, whose destiny was death each 584 days, I believe that Xolotl's warrior status may be being slighted. Perhaps someone can correct me if I have strayed too far from reason.
   
  The image of Xolotl in the Codex Borgia shows him with a hand painted over his mouth area. This is a manner of face painting that in the North American Plains signified a war honor, either for reason of an action against an enemy or for reason of escaping an action by an enemy. This is recorded historically for the Sisseton Dakota, Winnebago, and Omaha and is represented on a repousse copper plate of the Mississippian period, found in Missouri, depicting a falcon warrior or impersonator. Such plates in the Southeastern United States are late prehistoric in age and probably date to between A.D. 1100 and 1400.
   
  The name guajolote (<hueyxolotl) for male turkey has struck me as a name that in the Southeastern United States would immediately invoke the image of 'warrior'. There one hears of the "turkey gobble war whoop" and of the turkey's wattle representing a human scalp. Men were ritually scratched with splinters of turkey leg bone bound with turkey feathers. 
   
  The glossing 'slave, messenger, page' for xolotl makes great sense. In the Plains there was a minor functionary known as the 'errand runner' whose station was on either side of the inside of the entrance to an earth lodge during formal events. Among the Pawnee this was a job assigned to a war captive. These stations for the Pawnee errand runner corresponded to the locations of the glyphs 1 Rain and 7 Monkey on the Aztec Sun Stone. These days occupy the positions 79 and 111 in the 260-day sacred almanac. They are thus 32 days apart but also 32 + 260 or 292 days apart because of the repeating nature of the almanac. The interval of 292 days is one-half of 584, the synodic period of Venus, during which there are two conjunctions of Venus with the sun, the inferior and the superior. This provides Venus credentials for the days 1 Rain and 7 Monkey, and their locations on the stone suggests that they are posted on either side of the entrance to the earth into which the sun sets
 each evening. The atlatl dart representing the sun's path passes between 1 Rain and 7 Monkey on the western side of the Sun Stone and emerges in the east by the glyph 13 Reed, the year-bearer for the year of the birth of the sun in Aztec cosmology.
   
  I apologize for injecting more into the Query Axolotl than anyone probably originally wanted. I just feel that there are benefits to looking deeply into the Gran Chichimeca for additional light on some Central Mexican questions. As for the axolotl being a neotenic tiger salamander, certain iconographic uses of the tiger salamander in the northern Plains will be discussed in an article by Jayme Job in a forthcoming issue of the Plains Anthropologist. RLH
   
   
   
   
  

magnus hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com> wrote: 
  Sorry but I have to correct mr. schwallers comment about the "xolotl class"
of animals. An owl is *tekolotl* not *Texolotl*. Kolotl means scorpion - or
some have argued it also means generically pointy, stingy, dangerous
animals. A *texolotl* however is the beater of a molcajete. In Hueyapan
nawatl *xolotl* means "glutton" and the etymology given for turkey (probably
a folk etymology) is "big glutton" because turkeys take a lot of feed to
raise.
Magnus
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