TEMPLES
Mixcoatl’s temples in Mexico were the Mixcoapan tzompantli and the Mixcoateopan. In the first were preserved the heads of the victims sacrificed to the god. The ceremony of quecholli was commenced in the latter.
NATURE AND STATUS
Mixcoatl was primarily the great god of the Chichimecs and the Otomies, a god of the wild hunting tribes of the plains to the north. Numbers of these had settled in Mexico City and elsewhere within Anahuac, to which they had carried his worship with them. The tribal legends connected with him seem to imply that he was regarded in one of his phases, that of Iztac Mixcoatl, as the Chichimec Adam or Abraham, and he is even alluded to as the “father” of Quetzalcoatl and “brother” of Uitzilopochtli. The probabilities are that he was the god of a section of the Nahua who entered Mexico proper before the advent of the worshippers of Uitzilopochtli, and as he had similar characteristics to the latter deity, he became connected with him in the popular imagination.