In his account of the Aztecs, the
sixteenth-century Dominican friar Diego Durán wrote about two different
tree-raising rituals. One of these concerned a tree put up during rituals Durán
calls the Feast of the Waters (Figure 6.4). In this tree raising, ritualists
did not climb the tree; instead, the tree served a more visual, symbolic
purpose. According to Durán (1971 [1574–1579]:160–167), on Tlaloc’s feast day,
men of all ages set up an elaborate artificial landscape in the main plaza in
front of the Templo Mayor. The most important feature of this imitation forest
was a central, perfect tree and four smaller trees, one at each of the four
corners. The central tree was called Tota, or Our Father. The men found this
tree by going to the Hill of the Star, the same hill where they drilled the new
are every fifty-two years, further confirming the calendrical nature of the
event. On that hill they chose the largest and most perfect tree, especially
favoring a tree with lush, verdant branches. As they cut the tree, they used a
series of ropes to keep it from ever touching the ground, which continued as
they carried it back to the ceremonial center. Once in town, the celebrants
raised the tree in the main plaza of Tenochtitlan. In his illustration and
text, Durán (1971 [1574– 1579]:160–165) explained that ropes connected the
central Tota tree to the other four trees. Thus, symbolically, the central
world tree was connected by cords to the four cardinal directions. Underneath
the trees, the people of Tenochtitlan were said to have held a festival,
including song, dance, and games.
The event culminated when the men took
down the tree, bound its branches, and placed it on a raft in Lake Texcoco.
Simultaneously, the priests and lords carried a sacrificial young girl in a
litter to the lake’s edge where they boarded canoes and took the girl and the
tree to a place in the middle of the lake called Pantitlan. Because a great
whirlpool often formed there, they spoke of Pantitlan as the drain for the lake.
In the final acts of the Tota celebration, the Aztecs plunged the tree into the
“drain” and unbound the branches so that it was full once again. They next slit
the girl’s throat, let her blood flow into the water, and then threw the girl
and offerings of stone and jewelry into the lake (Durán 1971
[1574–1579]:163–165). (Annabeth Headrick, “Gardening with the Great Goddess at
Teotihuacan,” in Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of
Linda Schele, ed. Andrea Stone [Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama
Press, 2002], 89-90)
The
following image appears on p. 90:
