When the gods had been slain the wind commenced to whistle and blow with violence, so that at length the burning globe of the sun began to drift over the heavens. But the moon still remained at rest, and in this manner they became separated, so that their habit is to rise at different hours.
The Anales de Quauhtitlan, after the manner of the Book of Genesis, states that the world and all therein were created in seven days. In the sign Tochtli the earth was created, the firmament was erected in Acatl, animals came into being in Tecpatl, and man was made out of dust or ashes on Ehecatl, the seventh day, but completed and perfected by Quetzalcoatl, who appears to have played the part of a demiurgos as regards the human race. There can be little doubt that this myth has been sophisticated, or is a later invention. The Anales de Quauhtitlan, however, sustains the accounts of Olmos and Sahagun regarding the creation of the sun and moon.
Camargo, speaking of the Tlaxcaltec cosmology,19 says that the Indians did not believe that the world had been created, but that it had been produced by chance. Space, according to their philosophy, has always existed. Veytia20 states that the Mexicans believed the world and man to have been created by Tloque Nahuague (Tonacatecutli). Boturini credits the creation to the same first cause, and passages in Sahagun lead us to believe that both Tezcatlipocâ and Quetzalcoatl were regarded as sub-creative spirits, who were either partly or wholly responsible for the existence of the universe. Clavigero expressly states that the former was “the soul of the world, the creator of heaven and earth and lord of all things.”21 Mendieta,22 a much older authority, gives it as his opinion that the making and moulding of the world was the handiwork of several gods, but especially of Tezcatlipocâ, Uitzilopochtli, and an obscure deity, Ocelopuchtli, who equates with the ocelot alluded to in Sahagun’s account.