which suspends its tiny, web-like nest from the leaves of the plant in question. The connection of Uitzilopochtli with the maguey -plant is also proved by at least two of his subsidiary titles. Thus in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas he is alluded to as Magueycoatl, “Serpent of the Maguey,” and he was also known as Mexitli, or “Hare of the Maguey,” a title from which one of the quarters of Tenochtitlan, and later the entire city, took its name of Mexico. At the panquetzaliztli festival held in his honour, the warriors who skirmished on his side in mimicry of his combat with the Centzonuitznaua were said to take the part of Uitznauatl, or “Thorn that speaks oracularly.” In certain of the place-names which are hieroglyphically figured in the codices, too, the element of his name is depicted as a maguey -plant. Sahagun further states that the proprietors of the maguey plantations and the publicans who sold octli or pulque cut their plants so that they might yield their juice during the sign ce tecpatl , the movable feast of Uitzilopochtli, in the belief that, were they tapped at this time, they would yield abundantly.
Etymologically, there is good evidence that Uitzilopochtli originally represented the maguey . The word uitztli means “thorn,” and appears in such compounds as Uitzlampa , “Place of Thorns” (the South), and Uitznauatl , “The Thorn that speaks,” which, as we have seen, was another, and probably an older, title of the god. Uitzoctli , too, as Seler has indicated, means “pricking pulque,” newly fermented octli . It would seem, then, that the name Uitzilopochtli, until now generally translated as “Humming-bird-to-the-left,” and rendered by Seler “Humming-bird of the South,” must possess another significance for us. Opochtli certainly means both “south” and “left,” but it also means “wizard,” as in the