Centzon Huitznahua

Also Known As: Nahuatl Centzonhuītznāhua, also Centzon Huitznauhtin; the Four Hundred Southerners, where centzon, four hundred, is the Nahuatl way of saying a number past counting
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Aztec Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: The Centzon Huitznahua are a host of four hundred divine brothers who march as one army and are widely read as the stars of the southern sky.
Role in Mythos: They are the elder sons of Coatlicue who set out to kill their pregnant mother and are destroyed by their newborn brother Huitzilopochtli on Coatepec.
Relation to Humans: Their defeat gave the Mexica the founding victory of their patron god, and the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan was built as the mountain where it happened. Each year in the feast of Panquetzaliztli, captives fought and died under their name.

Four hundred men are tying bells to their legs. They do it in the dark below a hill called Coatepec, Serpent Mountain, and when they stand up and move off in column the sound goes with them, a dry shiver of metal at every step. Their sister walks in front. They are going up the hill to kill their mother.

They are the Centzon Huitznahua, the Four Hundred Southerners. The number is not a head count. Nahuatl speakers counted in twenties, and four hundred, twenty twenties, was their word for more than anyone would bother to number, in the way an English speaker says a thousand. A second host shares the form of the name: the Centzon Mimixcoa, the four hundred cloud serpents of the north. The southerners are the sons of Coatlicue, She of the Serpent Skirt, and the brothers of the formidable Coyolxauhqui. Where their father is, the story never says.

The story was written down in Nahuatl in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Nahua elders dictated it to the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún for the third book of the work now called the Florentine Codex. It begins quietly. Coatlicue is doing penance on Coatepec, near Tula, and her penance is sweeping. A ball of fine feathers drifts down as she works. She picks it up and tucks it in at her waist, and when the sweeping is done the feathers are gone and she is with child.

Her sons take it as a disgrace. Coyolxauhqui works on them until the anger is general, and the verdict is that the mother must die. Coatlicue hears of it and is terrified. Then the child speaks to her from the womb and tells her not to be afraid, because he knows what he has to do.

So the brothers arm. Sahagún’s informants cared about the kit, and they list it with a quartermaster’s attention: the hair twisted and bound on the crown as seasoned warriors wore it, the paper ornaments, the bells on the calves, the darts with their barbed points. They form up in good order and march. It is the most disciplined matricide on record.

It also has a leak. One of the four hundred, Cuahuitlicac, has gone over to the other side. He climbs ahead and reports to the unborn god, and the god keeps asking the same question: where are they now? At the skull rack. Where now? At the place of the serpent sands. And now? On the terrace. Halfway up. At the top. Coyolxauhqui is leading them.

At that moment Huitzilopochtli is born. He comes out fully grown and fully armed, with a shield, darts and a blue spear thrower, his face striped with paint, his arms and thighs coloured blue, feathers stuck to the sole of one foot. A companion lights the fire serpent for him, the weapon called Xiuhcoatl. With it he strikes Coyolxauhqui and takes off her head. The head stays on the rim of the hill. The body rolls to the bottom and comes apart on the way down.

Then he turns on the four hundred, and what follows is a rout. He drives them off the summit and down the slope and chases them four times around the mountain. They shout and clatter their shields at him, and it does no good. They beg him to stop, and he does not stop. The air is full of dust and the noise of bells going the wrong way. He kills nearly all of them. A few get clear and run for the south, the direction that carries their name. He strips the dead of their gear, and he takes their emblem, the anecuyotl, for his own. He wore his brothers’ badge from then on.

That is the version everyone knows. There is another, set down around 1600 by Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, a grandson of Moctezuma, and it has less starlight in it. Here Coatepec is a stop on the long Mexica march out of Aztlán. The people dam a river, the valley turns into a lake full of fish and reeds, and a faction called the Huitznahua want to stay for good. Huitzilopochtli will not have it. At midnight on the sacred ball court he kills them and eats their hearts, and Coyolxauhqui’s with them. In the morning the dam is broken, the water is gone, and the march goes on. In this telling the southerners are simply the people who said no to a god.

Their best known meaning comes from outside the texts. Around the start of the twentieth century the German scholar Eduard Seler read the Coatepec story as the sky acted out each dawn: the sun is born armed out of the earth, cuts down the moon and scatters the stars. On that reading the four hundred are the stars of the southern sky, and most books now say so as plain fact. The Nahuatl account does not. It calls them brothers and warriors and leaves the heavens out of it.

The Mexica kept the story in stone and in the calendar. The southern half of the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan was Coatepec rebuilt, with serpent heads at the foot of the stair and the great carved disc of the broken Coyolxauhqui lying where a body thrown from the top would land. A quarter of the city and one of its temples carried the name Huitznahuac. And in Panquetzaliztli, the feast of raising banners, the god’s birth was run through again. A swift priest raced a circuit of the lakeside towns, and men marked for sacrifice were set to fight in earnest, one side of them called the Huitznahua.

Their strength was their number and their order. Four hundred armed gods moving as one body is a force that should carry any hill, and until the last step it did. Their weaknesses are all in the story. They had a traitor. They followed a sister’s anger where their own judgement might have stopped. They made a great deal of noise coming. And they were matched against the one enemy who is born every morning and has never yet lost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Centzon Huitznahua?

The Centzon Huitznahua are the Four Hundred Southerners of Aztec mythology, the elder sons of the earth goddess Coatlicue and brothers of Coyolxauhqui. They marched to kill their pregnant mother and were destroyed by their newborn brother Huitzilopochtli. The number four hundred means countless in Nahuatl.

What happened to the Centzon Huitznahua at Coatepec?

Huitzilopochtli was born fully armed as the Centzon Huitznahua reached the top of Coatepec. He killed Coyolxauhqui with the fire serpent Xiuhcoatl, then chased the four hundred around the mountain four times and killed nearly all of them. A few escaped to the south, and he took their emblem, the anecuyotl, as his own.

Are the Centzon Huitznahua stars?

The Centzon Huitznahua are commonly described as the stars of the southern sky. That reading comes from the scholar Eduard Seler, who saw the Coatepec story as the sun defeating the moon and stars at dawn. The Nahuatl account recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún calls them brothers and warriors and does not call them stars.

Who betrayed the Centzon Huitznahua?

Cuahuitlicac, one of the Centzon Huitznahua, betrayed his brothers. He went ahead of the army and told the unborn Huitzilopochtli where they were at each stage of the climb. Because of his reports, Huitzilopochtli was born at the moment they reached the summit.

Is there another version of the Centzon Huitznahua story?

Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc recorded a different version around 1600. In it the Huitznahua are a faction of the migrating Mexica who want to settle at Coatepec beside a dammed lake. Huitzilopochtli kills them on the ball court at midnight, eats their hearts, and the dam is broken so the migration continues.