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The Mexican Indian Flying Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Rodney Gallop
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Extract

The first historical account of the JUEGO DE LOS VOLADORES of the Mexican Indians is to be found in Fr. Juan de Torquemada's De la Monarquía Indiana. The relevant passage, which internal evidence shows to have been written in 1612, is to be found in book 10 chapter 38. Preserving the complexities and angularities of the style it may be translated as follows:-

Among other forms of diversion, which these Western Indians had and with which they increased the solemnity of their festivals and gave pleasure to those present, was a manner of flying which they had, describing circles through the air, fastened by cords which hung from a stout, tall mast; and for the greater solace of the reader I will describe in words how it was done.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 43 , September 1937 , pp. 306 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1937

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References

1 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico.Translated by Maudslay, A.P. p.296.‘Let us go on and tell about the great number of dancers kept by the Great Montezuma for his amusement … and others who flew when they danced up in the air …’Google Scholar

2 Clavijero, Francisco Javier Historia Antigua de México,1780, p.236.Google Scholar

3 Madame Calderón de la Barca,Life in Mexico. (Everyman Edition, p. 47). ‘ In front of the house some Indians were playing at a curious and very ancient game, a sort of swing, resembling “ El Juego de los Voladores”—“ The game of the flyers ”, much in vogue amongst the ancient Mexicans ’.

4 Walter Krickeberg, Cf. Dr. Los Totonaca. Mexico, 1933,p.73.Google Scholar

5 I suspect the application of this name (which is said to be derived from the two alternating notes sounded by the ancient teponaztli drum) to the flyers of being relatively recent. Clavijero (op. cit., p. 236) talks of ‘ an ancient dance, popularly called tocotines, so beautiful, honest and grave, that it is done in Christian churches at their feasts ’. I have seen this dance performed in the church of Santa Catarina in the northern part of the Sierra de Puebla, and it had nothing to do with the Volador.

6 Clavijero, op. cit.. p.235.Google Scholar

7 Krickeberg, 74. This belief is far more closely symbolized in the Aztec dance, described by Durén, in which, while the young men danced round the statue of the goddess Xochiquetzalli beneath a bower of roses in the shade of flowering trees within the temple precincts, boys disguised as birds and butterflies climbed the trees and pretended to suck honey from the flowers, and other dancers disguised as gods made pretence to shoot them with blow–guns.

8 MacLeod, W.C ‘Nature, Origin and linkages of the rite of hookswinging with special reference to North America,’Anthropos (1934) 1,2, p.15.Google Scholar

9 Krickeberg, op. cit.. p.161.Google Scholar