ad existed
it is impossible to tell. Dissension arose and division supervened, but to
the time of the Conquest the identical form of government was in force
with the remarkable difference that the title and office of the
Cihuacoatl, originally held by a woman, were held by a man, whom I do not
hesitate to identify as one of the two "supreme pontiffs," whose emblem of
office was the flint knife, the offspring of Cihuacoatl, the earth-mother.

Historical evidence shows that this alteration had not been made without
bloodshed and renewed difficulties. Thus it is related that, long after
the Mexicans had separated from the sister of Huitzilopochtli and her
adherents, they were induced to "ask the daughter of the ruler of
Culhuacan to become the Queen of the Mexicans and mother of their god. She
conformed with their request but was subsequently killed by her subjects,
who flayed her body and dressed a youth in her skin [a figure of native
speech which symbolized his assumption of her office]. Under this form she
was revered as a goddess, was named our grandmother and 'the mother of the
god,' etc." These and the following details, taken from well-known
authentic native sources, are attractively rendered in the "Newe Welt und
Amerikanische Historien" (Johann Ludwig Gottfriedt. Frankfurt-a.-M., 1613,
pp. 54 and 55).

Again, after the Mexicans had been settled at Tenochtitlan for some time,
they desired to make an alliance with the King of Culhuacan and therefore
"chose to nominate, as their ruler, Acamapichtli, who was the son of a
Mexican chieftain by a daughter of the Culhuacan ruler" and evidently
lived with the latter. For it is related that, on giving his consent, the
king of Culhuacan stated that if only a _woman_ (of his family) had been
nominated he would have refused (to trust her to the Mexicans). The
farewell words he addressed to Acamapichtli are worthy of quotation: "Go
my son, serve thy god, be his representative. Rule the creatures of the
god by whom we live; the god of day, of the night and of the winds. Go and
be the lord of the water and land owned by the Mexicans."

As it is subsequently stated that Acamapichtli _and his queen_ were
received at Tenochtitlan with great honors, it would seem as though the
Mexicans who, from some deeply-rooted religious idea, considered it
essential to have a female ruler of the line of the king of Culhuacan,
obtained their desire only by accepting a male member of her family a