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Hummingbird
Gifted with exceptional mobility (able to fly straight up and down, backwards, upside down, and of course to hover in one place), brilliant iridescent colours, piercing, weapon-like beak, and fierce territorial fighting spirit, it’s little wonder that the hummingbird held a special place in the mythology of ancient Mesoamerica - in particular, that of the Mexica (Aztecs). Diurnal (daytime) creatures that appear most commonly in spring and summer, they have long been associated with the sun, itself often portrayed as a mythological warrior - hence the bird’s close association with Huitzilopochtli... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore).
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| Pic 1: A Mexican hummingbird hovers, ready to feed... (Click on image to enlarge) |
Despite their diminutive size, hummingbirds can be decidedly aggressive (in fact they fight as much with claws as with beak), diving at and often outmanoeuvring much larger predators such as hawks and owls. While hovering, they expend something like ten times more energy per unit of weight than a human running. As with the revered quetzal - and similarly native to the Americas - it is only the male hummingbird that sports spectacular, shining colours.
Throughout Mesoamerica, the bird has been associated with brave animal spirits, ancestors and ancestral gods, bloodletting and sacrifice, the advent of the rainy spring season, with transformation, as well as with the sun. In Maya myths, the sun becomes a hummingbird to court the moon (Benson, 2001).
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| Pic 2: What appears to be a humanoid hummingbird takes blood from the tongue of a seated Maya lord; polychrome ceramic vase, undated, ref. K5795 (Click on image to enlarge) |
What could be the bird’s connection with self-sacrifice? The answer lies in the shape of the beak - mirroring the thorns used in autosacrifice to the gods. Miller and Taube (1993: 98) explain: ‘In ancient Mesoamerica, the act of sacrificial bloodletting was commonly compared to the hummingbird sucking nectar from a flower. Among the Middle Formative Olmecs, fine jadeite perforators were frequently carved in the form of a hummingbird, with the long beak serving as the perforator blade.’
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| Pic 3: A couple of tiny, super fast bumblebee hummingbirds in a rarely seen mating ritual, Veracruz state, Mexico. They’re one of the smallest birds in the entire world. (Click on image to enlarge) |
Just as the sun can be seen shining, or not, according to prevailing atmospheric conditions, so ‘the hummingbird also shines, but its colours change and it loses its iridescence in some light conditions. The colouring and brilliancy are not caused by pigmentation, but by the structure of iridescent bands in the feather. Thus the shining miracle “can be seen only within a narrowly defined set of positions involving the bird, the sun, and the observer”’ (Hunt, 1977:67, quoting Crawford Greenwalt). The hummingbird’s shimmering blue-green reflected the sky’s brilliant daytime colour.
Gender is important in mythology. The sun god was universally considered a (young) male warrior, associated with ‘warrior birds’ such as the hawk, the eagle... and the hummingbird. The latter two were commonly believed to be avatars of the sun.
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| Pic 4: Huitzilopochtli, in his hummingbird guise (arrowed), calls the Mexica people forward on their migration journey to the Basin of Mexico; Codex Azcatitlan, fol. 2 (Click on image to enlarge) |
The souls of dead Mexica warriors who had enjoyed success in battle were believed to transform into hummingbirds (and also butterflies) and to escort - indeed to carry - the sun in its morning, rising trajectory. In Mesoamerica, whilst the sun moves daily from east to west, it also travels slowly from south to north during a full year. Huitzilopochtli, closely associated with sun and war, has a name with multiple - some would claim disputed - meanings, usually rendered as ‘Hummingbird on the left’ or ‘Hummingbird of the south’. Hummingbird in Nahuatl is huitzil(in). He was the ‘sun of the south’ - an image of the sun ‘in the ascending period of the ecliptic (that is, coming from the south to the north) - the spring equinox and summer solstice periods in the Northern Hemisphere’ (Hunt, 1977: 61).
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| Pic 5: A bird beckons from a tree to the Mexica people below, urging them to depart from Aztlan in the year 1-Flint; Codex Mexicanus fol. 18 (Click on image to enlarge) |
Some ten largely 16th century painted manuscripts refer to a greater or lesser extent to the migration story of the Mexica from their mythical homeland Aztlan, the most important being the Codex Boturini, Codex Azcatitlan, Codex Mexicanus, Codex Aubin and the Mapa Sigüenza (Boone, 1991: 122). At one point a bird features prominently in these documents, calling on the Mexica to sally forth on their long journey from Aztlan to Lake Texcoco. It can be seen atop a hill, a tree, in a cave, sometimes in ‘human’ form - embodying their patron deity Huitzilopochtli. But what bird is it? In the Codex Azcatitlan (pic 4) and in the Codex Boturini (follow link below) it’s clearly a hummingbird, representing Huitzilopochtli. In the Codex Mexicanus (pic 5) it looks more like an eagle. Either would make sense, since both creatures were avatars of the sun god.
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| Pic 6: A large bird perched on a hilltop tree showers the wandering Mexica tribe with calls; Mapa Sigüenza (upper right quadrant, detail) (Click on image to enlarge) |
In the Mapa Sigüenza (pic 6), it’s ‘a large, white bird’, which ‘commands a crowd of Aztecs to go forth, its fulsome speech carried by the waves of speech scrolls that roll from its mouth’ (Boone 2000: 166-7).
Whichever bird it was, and however its cries may have sounded, legend has it that the bird’s call ‘Tihui, tihui’ may be the origin of the Nahuatl word Tiahue, meaning ‘Let’s go...’ There is some historical evidence to support this idea. In his classic work Diccionario de Mitología Nahuatl (1951) Cecilo Robelo quotes the 16th century Franciscan friar and historian Juan de Torquemada:-
’Dicen fabulosamente, que un Pájaro se les apareció sobre vn Arbol muchas veces: el qual cantando, repetía vn chillido, que ellos se quisieron persuadir, á que decía: Tihui, que quiere decir: Yá vamos: y como esta repitición, fue por muchos días, y muchas veces, vno de los mas Sabios de aquel Linage, y Familia, llamado Huitziton, reparó en ello, y considerando el caso, parecióle asir de este Canto, para fundar su intención, diciendo, que era llamamiento, que alguna Deidad oculta, hacía, por medio del canto de aquel Pajaro...’
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| Pic 7: Hummingbird on the look-out (Click on image to enlarge) |
Torquemada goes on to write that Huitziton (whose name itself evokes a hummingbird) and another Mexica leader ’los dos juntos, lo dieron á entender al Pueblo; los quales, persuadidos á la ventura grande que los llamaba, por lo mucho, que de ella supieron encarecer los dos, movieron las Casas, y dejaron el Lugar [Aztlan] y siguieron la fortuna, que en lo por venir, les estaba guardada.’
Robelo suggests there are at least two other birds in the Valley of Mexico that emit a cry similar to tihui, and a third called Tihuitochan, which calls out the Nahuatl words tihui and tochan which combined translate as ‘Let’s go to our home’. We’ve been informed by friends and colleagues in Mexico* that, whilst they don’t ‘sing’ as such, hummingbirds emit all kinds of sounds - including the fabled tihui, and that they call with their beaks open (see main picture, above).
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| Pic 8: Quetzalcóatl as the Wind God, with a hummingbird feeding from a flower emanating from his headdress; Codex Magliabechiano, fol.61r (Click on image to enlarge) |
Whilst few Nahuatl dictionaries include an entry for the word tiahue or tihui, we feel that it’s highly likely that tiahue (our favourite Nahuatl word, emblazoned in the number plate of our team van - follow link below) is indeed derived from the call of a hummingbird...
* Special thanks to Karel Baresh and Tisha Perez, who live on a ranch in Veracruz state, named Hummingbird Hill; they generously supplied all the live photos for this article as well as their local expertise and knowledge of Mexican flora and fauna.
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| Pic 9: The cover of Karel Baresh’s book ‘Hummingbird Hill’ (Click on image to enlarge) |
Sources:-
• Benson, Elizabeth P. (2001): ‘Hummingbirds’, in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, vol. 2, editor-in-chief Davíd Carrasco, OUP
• Boone, Elizabeth Hill (1991): ‘Migration Histories as Ritual Performance’, in To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, edited by Davíd Carrasco, University Press of Colorado
• ----- (2000): Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs, University of Texas Press
• Codex Azcatitlan: Commentaire (1995: facsimile edition and commentary by Robert H. Barlow with Michel Graulich, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
• Diel, Lori Boornazian (2018): The Codex Mexicanus, University of Texas Press
• Hunt, Eva (1977): The Transformation of the Hummingbird, Cornell University Press, London
• Miller, Mary & Taube, Karl (1993): The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London
• Robelo, Ceclio A. (1951): Diccionario de Mitología Nahuatl, Mexico.
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| Pic 10: Hummingbird eating nectar, Florentine Codex Book 11 fig. 52 (Click on image to enlarge) |
Image sources:-
• Main pic and pix 1, 3, 7 & 9: photos by, courtesy of and thanks to Tisha Perez
• Pic 2: photo by, courtesy of and © Justin Kerr (mayavase.com)
• Pic 4: image scanned from our own copy of the Codex Azcatitlan facsimile edition (see above)
• Pic 5: image from the Codez Mexicanus from the Mexicolore archives/public domain (original in the Bibliothèque National de France, Paris)
• Pic 6: image from the Mapa Sigüenza downloaded from https://www.amoxcalli.org.mx/codice.php?id=091_b
• Pic 8: image from the Codex Magliabechiano scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1970
• Pic 10: image from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.
This article was uploaded to the Mexicolore website on Oct 31st 2021
Aztec limerick no. 30 (ode to hummingbirds):-Hummingbirds hover and dive,
Suck nectar, on sunlight they thrive;
Brave, fierce, yet so tiny,
Iridescent and shiny -
Sun god’s warriors, spirits strong and alive.
Click on ‘Codex Boturini’ to see Huitzilopochtli with hummingbird mask