Chantico

Also Known As: Nahuatl, “she who dwells in the house”, from chantli, “home”; also Xantico, Quaxolotl, and the calendar name Chicunaui Itzcuintli, “Nine Dog”
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Aztec Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: She rules the fire of the household hearth and wears the twisted water-and-fire sign of war at the back of her head.
Role in Mythos: She is the Aztec goddess of the domestic fire, patron of the stonecutters of Xochimilco, and ruler of the calendar period that begins on the day One Wind.
Relation to Humans: Every household fire fell under her care, and the lapidaries of Xochimilco honored her as their own. People born on her day, Nine Dog, were expected to have bad luck, because it was a day linked with sorcerers who took animal shape.

A fish is roasting over a fire, and the smell of chile is rising with the smoke. The woman tending it is supposed to be fasting. She knows this. The day is a holy one and the gods are meant to go hungry before the offering is made. She eats the fish anyway.

That small act is nearly the whole of the story the Aztec painted books tell about Chantico, and it is a strange thing to be remembered for when your office is the fire in every house in the Valley of Mexico. The commentary written into the Codex Ríos in the sixteenth century says that Tonacatecuhtli, the old lord of sustenance, saw what she had done and turned her into a dog. From then on she carried the calendar name Chicunaui Itzcuintli, Nine Dog. It is the ninth day of the thirteen-day period that opens with One Wind, and she presides over that whole stretch of the count. Children born on Nine Dog were thought unlucky. The day belonged to sorcerers, the kind who could put on the body of an animal.

Her own name is gentler. Chantico comes from the Nahuatl word for home, and the men who described the gods to the friar Bernardino de Sahagún glossed it as she who dwells in the house. She was the fire at the centre of the room, set among its hearthstones, giving off steady heat and the sound of cracking wood while tortillas cooked and children slept. On an ordinary evening she had no temple at all. A woman knelt, fed sticks into the coals, and the goddess was simply there, red at the heart and grey at the edges.

Nobody says where she came from. The sources give her no birth and no parents. What they give instead is a town. Chantico belonged first to Xochimilco, the lake city south of Tenochtitlan, and in particular to its lapidaries, the craftsmen who cut and polished precious stone. Sahagún’s informants name a building in the great temple precinct of Tenochtitlan called Tetlanman that was hers, where priests made ready red and black paint, sandals, a robe and small sea snails for her feast. The Franciscan Juan de Torquemada adds that Moquihuix, ruler of the neighbouring city of Tlatelolco, raised a temple to her as well. A goddess of the cooking fire had friends in high places.

The pictures explain why. In the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, painted in Mexico City around the middle of the sixteenth century, she steps forward in profile as if dancing. Her face is yellow gold, crossed with red lines, the lips red, yellow fangs showing. She wears a red blouse fringed with yellow under a turquoise shoulder cape, and a skirt of purple-brown feathers. Other manuscripts give her sandals of obsidian and pendants bearing the sign of the sun. In the Codex Borgia her face carries the two red stripes that mark a fire deity, and a butterfly-shaped ornament hangs at her nose. Sahagún’s informants list a ball of rubber on her lips, half her face painted red, gold ear ornaments, and a shield worked with eagle feathers.

And always, at the back of her head or wound through her headdress, there is a rope of blue water twisted together with a rope of red flame. This is atl tlachinolli, water and burning, and to an Aztec reader it meant one thing. War. Her headdress agrees: the forked heron-feather crest of a warrior, and a ring of cactus spines. One page of the Borgia does away with the woman altogether and shows her as an eagle’s foot wrapped in jaguar skin, set on a dish for sacrificial blood. The hearth fire and the burning town were the same substance. The Aztecs did not pretend otherwise.

That harder side produced the one tale in which she acts on history. A record from the early colonial Inquisition claims that Moctezuma kept an image of Chantico with a leg that could be taken off, and that when Hernán Cortés began his march inland the leg was used to pound the ground, to curse the road ahead of him. It did not work.

She is tangled with other gods. Fire had a lord already in Xiuhtecuhtli, and she stands beside him as its mistress. One of her names, Quaxolotl, usually read as two-headed, ties her to Xolotl, the dog-headed twin of Quetzalcoatl, and the Codex Borbonicus gives the two of them the same blue nose ornament. A colossal stone head dug up in Mexico City carries her obsidian sandals and sun signs according to the German scholar Eduard Seler, yet it also wears the bells of Coyolxauhqui, the moon sister of Huitzilopochtli. In 1985 H. B. Nicholson argued that Chantico was a form of Coyolxauhqui. Others doubt it, and no colonial writer joins the two. Even her sex wobbles in the record. One Spanish annotator calls her a lord, another hedges, while every native description dresses her in a woman’s blouse and skirt.

Her strength lay in being needed. No meal was cooked and no house was warm without her, the stonecutters worked under her eye, and she carried enough of war’s fire to be asked to stop an army. Her day could bend a life toward misfortune from the hour of birth.

Her weakness is written into her other name. She could not keep a fast. One piece of fish with chile, eaten early, and the keeper of the hearth was made into a dog by a god older than herself. The fire she tended could be covered, drowned or left to go cold. And when the Spanish came up the road from the coast, the pounding of her stone leg changed nothing at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Chantico?

Chantico is the Aztec goddess of the household hearth fire. Her name comes from the Nahuatl word for home and means “she who dwells in the house”. She was also the patron of the stonecutters of Xochimilco and carried symbols of war.

Why was Chantico turned into a dog?

Chantico was turned into a dog for breaking a religious fast. According to the commentary in the Codex Ríos, she ate roasted fish with chile before the offering, and the god Tonacatecuhtli changed her into a dog as punishment. This is why her calendar name is Nine Dog.

What does Chantico look like?

In the Aztec painted books Chantico has a yellow face marked with red lines and sometimes yellow fangs. She wears a red blouse, a feathered skirt, obsidian sandals and a warrior’s feather headdress. A band of blue water twisted with red fire, the Aztec sign for war, appears at the back of her head.

Where was Chantico worshipped?

Chantico was linked above all with Xochimilco, where the stonecutters honored her. She had a building called Tetlanman in the temple precinct of Tenochtitlan, and the ruler Moquihuix is said to have built her a temple in Tlatelolco. Her everyday place was the fire inside each home.

Is Chantico the same as Coyolxauhqui?

Chantico and Coyolxauhqui are usually treated as separate goddesses. A large stone head from Mexico City shows features of both, and in 1985 the scholar H. B. Nicholson argued that Chantico was a form of Coyolxauhqui. Other scholars doubt this, and no colonial source connects the two.