Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/164

158 that after the first great deluge there sprang sixteen hundred heroes, from a flint flung from heaven. These were at that time the only men on earth, and they prayed their mother, Omecihuatl, to create men to serve them. She directed them to go down to Mictlan and ask of the god of hell, Mictlanteuctli, some bones of men that had died; these they were to sprinkle with their own blood, and from them men and women would be created who would afterwards multiply. One of the heroes, Xolotl, went down to hell and begged a thigh-bone of old Mictlanteuctli, who gave it to him, but, when Xolotl turned and ran with it, pursued him in a rage. Xolotl escaped with it to his brothers, but in his haste fell and broke the bone. This is the reason why mankind are of different sizes, owing to their origin from different fragments.

There was no sun in those days, it having been extinguished in the great catastrophe. They assembled around a great fire in Teotihuacan and danced about it, and they told their servants that the one who would sacrifice himself by casting himself into the flames should become a sun. At this, an intrepid man named Nanahuatzin threw himself into the fire. True to the prediction, at the appointed time the sun rose in the east, but he had hardly emerged above the horizon when he stopped. The heroes sent a polite message, asking that he would continue on his way up the sky, as a well-behaved sun ought to do. The sun replied that he would not stir a peg until they were all put to death. One of the heroes named Citli then shot an arrow at the sun, which the luminary escaped by dodging; but at the third arrow he got enraged and cast it back, fixing it in the forehead of Citli, who fell dead. Then the brothers all fell upon one another and perished, the last one, dying by his own hand, being Xolotl. The god, Tezcatlipoca, seeing the men, now without masters, very sad, directed one of them