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"The Birth of Huitzilopochtli," can be found in The Flayed God: The Mythology of Mesoamerica, by Roberta and Peter Markman. The Markman's translation begins, "The Aztecs greatly revered Huitzilopochtli..." (Markman, 381). Their source is Sahagun's Florentine Codex. A study of Sahagun's work reveals that the original sources refer to the "Mexica." The Nahuatl text does not contain the word "Aztec" (Sahagun, Book 3; pg 1). back

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"The Birth of Huitzilopochtli," can be found in The Flayed God: The Mythology of Mesoamerica, by Roberta and Peter Markman. The Markman's source is Miguel Leon Portilla's Native Mesoamerican Spirituality. Leon Portilla cites Sahagun's Florentine Codex (Book 3) as the source for his translation. Leon Portilla interprets the Nahuatl term Centzonuitznaua to mean "the four hundred gods of the south," thus giving a Eurocentric spin to the story. The Florentine Codex does not refer to either Huitzilopochtli or the Centzonuitznaua as "gods." In his book, The Aztecs: People of the Sun, Alfonso Caso defines Centzonuitznahuac as "the unnumbered ones from the south," a reference to the numberless stars in the sky (Caso, 37). The translation found on this website uses the Nahuatl term Centzonhuitznahua, and is most likely a metaphorical reference to the stars. back

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