“O, she has become a goddess of the melon cactus,
Our Mother Itzpapalotl, the obsidian butterfly.
Her food is on the Nine Plains,
She was nurtured on the hearts of deer,
Our Mother, the earth-goddess.”
The inference in these lines seems to be that whereas Itzpapalotl was formerly a goddess of the Chichimec nomads of the steppes, who sacrificed deer to her, she has now become the deity of the melon-cactus patch and an agricultural community. Her first human victim is also mentioned by Camargo,33 who states that the Chichimec, coming to the province of Tepeueuec, sacrificed a victim to her by shooting him with arrows. Itzpapalotl has more than one cervine attribute.34
Mexican tradition makes it very plain that obsidian, because of its blood-procuring properties, came to be regarded as the source of all life, as the very principle of existence. Tonacaciuatl, the creative goddess, as we shall see, gave birth to an obsidian knife from which sprang sixteen hundred demigods who peopled the earth,35 and the infant which the goddess Ciuacoatl leaves in the cradle in the market-place undergoes metamorphosis into an obsidian knife.36 As the Codices show, grain is often pictured in the form of the obsidian knife of sacrifice. Just as in