Dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

s have occupied a powerful place in Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

n folklore and myth since at least the Classic Period

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

 right through to modern times. A common belief across the Mesoamerican region is that a dog carries the newly deceased across a body of water in the afterlife. Dogs appear in underworld scenes painted on Maya pottery

Maya ceramics

Maya ceramics are important in the study of the Pre-Columbian Maya culture of Mesoamerica. Through the years, the vessels took on different shapes, colors, sizes, and purposes...

 dating to the Classic Period and even earlier than this, in the Preclassic

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

, the Chupicaro buried dogs with the dead. In the great Classic Period metropolis of Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...

, 14 human bodies were deposited in a cave, most of them children, together with the bodies of three dogs to guide them on their path to the underworld.

In many versions of the 20-day cycle of the Mesoamerican calendar

Mesoamerican calendars

Mesoamerican calendars are the calendrical systems devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. In addition to the basic function of a calendar—defining and organizing periods of time in a way that allows events to be fixed, ordered and noted relative to each other and some...

, the tenth day bears the name dog. This is itzcuintli in Nahuatl

Nahuatl

Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...

, the language of the Aztecs, tz'i in the K'iche' Maya language

K'iche' language

The K’iche’ language is a part of the Mayan language family. It is spoken by many K'iche' people in the central highlands of Guatemala. With close to a million speakers , it is the second-most widely spoken language in the country after Spanish...

 and oc in Yucatec Maya. Among the Mixtec

Mixtec

The Mixtec are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples inhabiting the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla in a region known as La Mixteca. The Mixtecan languages form an important branch of the Otomanguean language family....

s, the tenth day was taken by the coyote

Coyote

The coyote , also known as the American jackal or the prairie wolf, is a species of canine found throughout North and Central America, ranging from Panama in the south, north through Mexico, the United States and Canada...

, ua.

The Maya

Maya

Maya civilization

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

 burials from the Classic Period are frequently found with associated animal remains, often dogs. For example, in the ruins of the Classic Maya city of Kaminaljuyu

Kaminaljuyu

Kaminaljuyu is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization that was primarily occupied from 1500 BC to AD 1200. Kaminaljuyu has been described as one of the greatest of all archaeological sites in the New World by Michael Coe, although its remains today - a few mounds only - are far less...

 in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

, a dog was found interred with a sitting skeleton, along with grave goods offered to the deceased. The frequent finds of dog skeletons in Classic Maya burials confirms that the belief that dogs guided the souls of the departed on their journey into the underworld already existed at this time.

The dog is sometimes depicted carrying a torch in the surviving Maya codices

Maya codices

Maya codices are folding books stemming from the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, written in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark cloth, made from the inner bark of certain trees, the main being the wild fig tree or Amate . Paper, generally known by the Nahuatl word amatl, was named by...

, which may be a reference to the Maya tradition that the dog brought fire to mankind.

In the Postclassic Popul Vuh of the K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, dogs and turkeys killed the people of the second age in retaliation for the people beating them. The people who escaped this fate were transformed into monkeys.

The Aztecs and their contemporaries

In Aztec mythology

Aztec mythology

The aztec civilization recognized a polytheistic mythology, which contained the many deities and supernatural creatures from their religious beliefs. "orlando"- History :...

, the Fourth Sun disappeared in a great flood. A man and a woman survived inside a log and were washed up upon a beach, where they promptly built a fire and roasted some fish. The smoke from the fire upset the stars Citlallatonac

Citlalatonac

In Aztec mythology, Citlalatonac created the stars along with his wife, Citlalicue. This pair of gods are sometimes associated with the first pair of humans, Nata and Nena....

 and Citlalicue

Citlalicue

In Aztec mythology, Citlalicue was a goddess who created the stars along with her husband, Citlalatonac. This pair of gods are sometimes associated with the first pair of humans, Nata and Nena....

, angering the great god Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca was a central deity in Aztec religion. One of the four sons of Ometeotl, he is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty,...

. In his fury, he severed their heads and stitched them onto their rears, creating the first dogs.

Among the Aztecs, the god Xolotl

Xolotl

In Aztec mythology, Xolotl was the god with associations to both lightning and death.Although often depicted in relation to the underworld, Xolotl was not a psychopomp in the Western sense. Xolotl did, however, aid the dead on their journey to Mictlan, the afterlife in some myths.Xolotl was also...

 was a monstrous dog. During the creation of the Fifth Sun, Xolotl was hunted by Death and escaped him by transforming himself first into a sprout of maize, then into maguey leaves and finally as a salamander in a pool of water.The third time that Death found Xolotl, he trapped and killed him. Three important foodstuffs were produced from the body of this mythological dog. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead, had the bones of man in the underworld, kept over from the previous creations. Xolotl descended to the underworld to steal these bones so that man could be reborn in the new creation of the Fifth Sun. Xolotl managed to recover the bones and brought man to life by piercing his penis and bleeding upon them. Xolotl was seen as an incarnation of the planet Venus

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

 as the Evening Star (the Morning Star was his twin brother Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent". The worship of a feathered serpent deity is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BCE or first century CE...

). Xolotl was the canine companion of the Sun, following its path through both the sky and the underworld. Xolotl's strong connection with the underworld, death and the dead is demonstrated by the symbols he bore. In the Codex Borbonicus

Codex Borbonicus

The Codex Borbonicus is an Aztec codex written by Aztec priests shortly before or after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The codex is named after the Palais Bourbon in France. It is held at the Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée Nationale in Paris...

 Xolotl is pictured with a knife in his mouth, a symbol of death, and has black wavy hair like the hair worn by the gods of death.

The fourteenth 13-day period of the tonalpohualli

Tonalpohualli

The tonalpohualli, a Nahuatl word meaning "count of days", is a 260-day sacred period in use in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, especially among the Aztecs. This calendrical period is neither solar nor lunar, but rather consists of 20 trecena, or 13-day periods...

 ritual calendar started with the day ce itzcuintli (1-dog) and people, especially rulers, were fated to be especially lucky if born on this day. The tenth day of the xiuhpohualli

Xiuhpohualli

The Xiuhpohualli was a 365-day calendar used by the Aztecs and other pre-Columbian Nahua peoples in central Mexico. It was composed of eighteen 20-day "months," called veintenas or metzli with a separate 5 day period at the end of the year called the nemontemi...

 20-day agricultural calendar, itzcuintli (dog), was governed by Mictlantecuhtli

Mictlantecuhtli

Mictlantecuhtli , in Aztec mythology, was a god of the dead and the king of Mictlan , the lowest and northernmost section of the underworld. He was one of the principal gods of the Aztecs and was the most prominent of several gods and goddesses of death and the underworld...

, the grim lord of the dead. In the Postclassic

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

, when an Aztec commoner died he had to pass through each of the nine levels of Mictlan

Mictlan

Mictlan was the underworld of Aztec mythology. Most people who died went to Mictlan, although other possibilities existed . Mictlan was located far to the north, and consisted of nine distinct levels....

, the underworld. Mictlan was only reached after four years of wandering, accompanied by a dog that had been cremated with the deceased. The first level of Mictlan was called Apanoayan (where one crosses the river), this place was also known as Itzcuintlan (the Place of Dogs) because of the many dogs that roamed the near shore. A dog that recognised its former owner would carry him across the river on its back. In some accounts, the dogs on the shore act differently according to their colour, yellow dogs would carry the soul of the deceased across the river, while white dogs refuse because they have just washed themselves and black dogs refuse because either they have just swum the river or because they are dirty.

In Aztec folklore, the ahuizotl

Ahuizotl (creature)

The ahuizotl is a legendary creature in Aztec belief.-Description:It was described as dog-like, with hands capable of manipulation and an additional hand on its tail. The ahuizotl was feared due to its liking for human flesh, especially nails, eyes, and teeth...

 was a dog-like water monster with a hand on the end of its coiled tail. It was said to dwell underwater near river banks and would drag the unwary to a watery death. The victim's soul would be carried off to Tlalocan

Tlalocan

Tlalocan is the first level of the upper worlds, or the Aztecs' thirteen heavens, that has four compartments according to the mythic cosmographies of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of pre-Columbian central Mexico, noted particularly in Conquest-era accounts of Aztec mythology...

, one of the three Aztec paradises. A similar belief existed among the neighbouring Tarascans, their dog-god was called Uitzimengari and he saved the souls of drowned people by carrying them across to the Land of the Dead.

Modern folklore

In modern times, the Chinantec

Chinantec

The Chinantecs are an indigenous people that live in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan.The Chinantec languages belong to the Chinantecan branch of the Oto-Manguean family...

s and Mixe

Mixe

The Mixe or Mije is an indigenous group inhabiting the eastern highlands of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. They speak the Mixe languages which are classified in the Mixe–Zoque family, and are more culturally conservative than other indigenous groups of the region, maintaining their language to this...

s of Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

 believe that a black dog will help the newly dead to cross a body of water, either a river or a sea, to the land of the dead. The Huitzilan believe that a dog carries the dead across the water to reach the underworld home of the Devil

Devil

The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

.

Across much of Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, evil sorcerers are believed to be able to transform themselves into a black dog

Black dog (ghost)

A black dog is the name given to a being found primarily in the folklores of the British Isles. The black dog is essentially a nocturnal apparition, often said to be associated with the Devil, and its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. It is generally supposed to be larger than a normal...

 in order to prey upon the livestock of their neighbours. In the states of central Mexico (such as Oaxaca, Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Tlaxcala is one of the 31 states which along with the Federal District comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipalities and its capital city is Tlaxcala....

 and Veracruz

Veracruz

Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...

) such a sorcerer is known as a nahual

Nagual

In Mesoamerican folk religion, a Nagual or Nahual is a human being who has the power to magically turn him- or herself into an animal form: most commonly a donkey, turkey, or dog, but also other and more powerful animals such as the jaguar and puma.Such a Nagual is believed to use his powers for...

, in the Yucatan Peninsula

Yucatán Peninsula

The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...

 they go by the name of huay chivo

Huay chivo

The Huay Chivo is a legendary Mayan beast. It is a half-man, half-beast creature, with burning red eyes, and is specific to the Yucatán Peninsula. It is often said to be an evil sorcerer who can transform himself into a supernatural animal, usually a goat, dog or deer, in order to prey upon...

. Another supernatural dog in the folklore of Yucatan is the huay pek (witch-dog in Yucatec Maya), an enormous phantom black dog

Black dog (ghost)

A black dog is the name given to a being found primarily in the folklores of the British Isles. The black dog is essentially a nocturnal apparition, often said to be associated with the Devil, and its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. It is generally supposed to be larger than a normal...

 that attacks anybody that it meets and is said to be an incarnation of the Kakasbal, an evil spirit.

A folktale from Tlaxcala tells how some hunters saw an enormous black dog one night and decided to capture and keep it. It fled at their approach, so one hunter shot at it, wounding it in one leg. Following the blood trail they came to a richly furnished peasant hut, whose owner was tending a wound in his leg. They gave up the chase and headed for the nearest village, where the locals told them that the peasant had been a nahual who could transform into a dog to steal riches.

The Tzeltal

Tzeltal people

The Tzeltal people are the largest indigenous group mostly located in the highlands or Los Altos region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. They are one of many Mayan ethnic groups and they speak a a language which belongs to the Tzeltalan subgroup of Mayan languages...

 and Tzotzil Maya of highland Chiapas

Chiapas

Chiapas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutierrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las...

 in Mexico say that a white dog mated with Eve

Eve (Bible)

Eve was, according to the creation of Abrahamic religions, the first woman created by God...

 in the Third Creation, producing Ladinos, while a yellow dog fathered the indigenous peoples.

A Jakaltek

Jakaltek people

The Jakaltek people are a Mayan people of Guatemala. They have lived in the foothills of the Cuchumatanes Mountains in the Department of Huehuetenango in northwestern Guatemala since pre-Columbian times, centered around the town of Jacaltenango...

 tale from the Guatemalan Highlands

Guatemalan Highlands

The Guatemalan Highlands is an upland region in southern Guatemala, lying between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas to the south and the Petén lowlands to the north....

 relates how the first dog witnessed the creation of the world and ran everywhere telling everyone the secrets of creation. Hunab' Kuh, the Creator-God, was furious and swapped the dog's head for its tail and its tail for its head. Now, whenever a dog wants to talk and give away its secrets, it cannot speak, instead it may only wag its tail.