lready explained this personage bore in Mexico the
female title, Cihuacoatl=Woman-serpent; but we also find this name for the
earth-mother alternating with Chicome-coatl=literally, seven serpents. In
Beltran de la Rosa's "Arte Maya" we find the word "Ahaucchapat,"
translated as "Serpent with seven heads" and are thus led to infer that
the Mexicans and Mayas had conceived the image of a "serpent with seven
heads" as an allegory of the seven tribal divisions united in one body and
bestowed this title to the representative of the Earth-cult, the high
priest of the Below. It follows that, just as the number 13 resolves
itself into 12+1, so the mystic number 7 proves to have been considered as
6+1, precisely what might be expected as the natural sequence of the
derivation of the number from a circumpolar constellation, consisting of
seven stars, one of which was Polaris. Nunez de la Vega and Boturini's
testimony teaches us that the Tzendals were organized into twenty
divisions and that thirteen of these were embodied in one chief, while the
seven others, associated with black, were personified by the high priest.
The information that one individual was thus believed to unite in his
person the attributes of several classes and that the lords of the four
quarters and each of the twenty divisions bore names which were also
calendar-signs, gain in value when it is realized that, in the opinion of
Drs. Schellhas and Brinton, the invention of the native Calendar system
may probably be assigned to the ancient inhabitants of Chiapas, where the
Tzendals now dwell.(46) In treating of the ruins of Palenque situated in
this region, I shall again refer to the Tzendals.

Meanwhile, let us examine the Cakchiquel tradition about Cucumatz, the
sorcerer chief of the Quiches, since it also treats of the 7-day period.
We are told that he "ascended to heaven for seven days and descended into
the under world for seven days and then assumed, in rotation, four
different animal forms during as many periods of seven days."

It is impossible not to recognize from this that, like the Zunis of
to-day, the Quiches "symbolized the terrestrial sphere by referring to the
four cardinal points, to the zenith and nadir, the individual himself
making the seventh number," and that Cucumatz, who was evidently the high
priest and head of the seven tribes, assumed the totemistic attributes of
each of these, in rotation, for periods of seven days each. In this case