Eagle and jaguar

The road in

How a man became a knight

A boy of common blood trained in the telpochcalli — house of youth. A noble boy trained in the calmecac. Both houses taught war. Rank was not a uniform you bought. It was captives.

In the xochiyaoyotl — the flower wars — the point was not only to kill. It was to take a living man. One captive made a warrior. Four could open the jaguar or eagle house. The Codex Mendoza paints that ladder. The suits — eagle beak-helm, jaguar pelt — were issued by the tlatoani. They were the city’s cloth, not a private costume.

Arms: macuahuitl (obsidian-edged oak), chimalli (the round shield), atlatl (spear-thrower), tepoztopilli (the long spear). Amanteca — feather-mosaic artists — dressed the knights.

Cuāuhtli

Eagle knights

Cuāuhpipiltin. The sun’s house. Day, fire, the road of Huitzilopochtli. They wore the eagle helmet — the beak over the face — and a yellow-and-red body of feathers. Chimalli in the left hand, macuahuitl in the right. Their animal is the highland golden eagle. That is the bird on the nopal.

Ocēlōtl

Jaguar knights

Ocēlōpipiltin. The night house. Earth, the forest, Tezcatlipoca’s animal. They wore the spotted pelt — head, claws, and tail. Equal rank with the eagles. One house is day, one is night. Together they are the two animals that entered the fire so this sun would move.

The story

They entered the fire

At Teotihuacan the gods needed a sun. Nanahuatzin — the humble, the pimpled one — entered the pyre and became Tonatiuh, this sun. Tecuciztecatl followed and became the moon. Eagle and jaguar are told as the ones who leapt after. That is why those two animals are the knights of Nahui Ollin, the Fifth Sun.

Chimalli

The shields

Chimalli: the round war-shield. Cane or wood, hide, then feather mosaic by the amanteca. A device on a chimalli named the house — eagle, jaguar, sun, hummingbird, serpent, or the G-stair.

Feather chimalli

Amanteca work. Feathers glued in mosaic on a round face, with a feather fringe. A few of these shields survived in European collections — not a pectoral, not a tattoo, not store cloth.

Sun chimalli

The solar chimalli carries the face of this sun — Tonatiuh. Eagle knights walked under that disk. Huitzilopochtli is the sun’s war god. A sun on the arm is his house. The G-stair chimalli is a different device; it sits below, not here.

Eagle chimalli and jaguar chimalli

Each order carried its animal. An eagle chimalli named the sun house. A jaguar chimalli named the night house. Some devices put both animals on one face.

The G — xicalcoliuhqui

Xicalcoliuhqui: the gourd-stair, the step-fret. On a chimalli it reads as a G made of stairs. Cuexyo-style chimalli carry that stair around a sun-disc. It is a real war-device.

The Mixtec turquoise piece from Tomb 7 at Monte Albán uses the same G. That piece is a pectoral — worn on the chest — not a Mexica chimalli. We name it Mixtec so the two are not mixed.

Huitzilin chimalli

Huitzilopochtli wears the hummingbird. Huitzilin is his bird and the form of a dead knight after four years with the sun. A hummingbird on a chimalli is that road. The gold lizard in the beak is the fire-tongue of the south.

Quetzalcoatl chimalli

Feathered serpent on the arm. Quetzalcoatl in the highland tongue, Kukulkán in Yucatán.

Huitzilin

Hummingbird — the knight after death

Men who died in battle or on the stone went to the sun for four years. Then they returned as huitzilin — hummingbirds — and as butterflies, drinking flower. That is why the hummingbird is not a mascot. It is the knight after the body.

The living bird

Golden eagle of Mexico

Cuāuhtli. Aquila chrysaetos. Brown body, gold nape, dark flight feathers. No white head. That is the highland golden eagle — the bird on the nopal, the bird of the flag, the bird of the eagle knights. A bald eagle is a different bird. A harpy is a different bird.

What it represents: the sun, the day, Huitzilopochtli’s road. Eagle knights are the sun’s house.

Harpy eagle — the forest crown

Harpia harpyja. Grey and white, a double crest like a crown, a face-disk, a dark gorget. It hunts the rainforest canopy. It is not the bird on the nopal. Mexica knights of Tenochtitlan did not wear it.

What it represents: the forest sky of the Maya world. Maya kings wore crests like this bird. A different people, a different sky.