The Death of the 400 Boys Through Zipacná
Table of Contents
Zipacná was bathing at the edge of a river when 400 youths passed dragging a log to support their house.
Then Zipacná came up towards the youths.
What are you doing, boys?
It is only this log which we cannot lift and carry on our shoulders.
I will carry it. Where does it have to go? What do you want it for?
For a ridge-pole for our house.
He lifted it up, he put it on his shoulders and carried it to the entrance of the house of the 400 boys.
Now stay with us, boy. Have you a mother or father?
I have neither
Then we shall hire you tomorrow to prepare another log to support our house.
The 400 boys talked together then, and said:
How shall we kill this boy? Because it is not good what he has done lifting the log alone. Let us make a big hole and push him so that he will fall into it. ‘Go down and take out the earth and carry it from the pit,’ we shall tell him, and when he stoops down, to go down into the pit, we shall let the large log fall on him and he will die there in the pit.
So they dug a large, very deep pit. Then they called Zipacná.
We like you very much. Go, go and dig dirt, for we cannot reach the bottom of the pit.
He went at once into the pit. Calling to him as he was digging the dirt, they said:
Have you gone down very deep yet?
Yes.
But the pit which he was making was to save him from danger. He knew that they wanted to kill him. So when he dug the pit, he made a second hole at one side in order to free himself.
How far [have you gone]?
I am still digging. I will call up to you when I have finished the digging
At last Zipacná called to them. But when he called, he was already safe in the second pit.
Come and take out and carry away the dirt which I have dug and which is in the bottom of the pit, because in truth I have made it very deep. Do you not hear my call? Nevertheless, your calls, your words repeat themselves like an echo once, twice, and so I hear well where you are.
So Zipacná called from the pit where he was hidden, shouting from the depths.
Then the boys hurled the great log violently, and it fell quickly with a thud to the bottom of the pit.
Let no one speak! Let us wait until we hear his dying screams
He [Zipacná] spoke then, crying out, but he called only once when the log fell to the bottom.
How well we have succeeded in this! Now he is dead. If, unfortunately, he had continued what he had begun to do, we would have been lost, because he already had interfered with us, the four hundred boys.
Now we must make our chicha within the next 3 days. Afterwards, we shall drink to the construction of our new house.
Tomorrow we shall look, and day after tomorrow, we shall also look to see if the ants do not come out of the earth when the body smells and begins to rot. Presently we shall become calm and drink our chicha.
But from his pit Zipacná listened to everything the boys said.
On the second day, multitudes of ants came, going and coming and gathering under the log. Some carried Zipacná’s hair in their mouths, and others carried his fingernails.
When the boys saw this, they said:
That devil has now perished. Look how the ants have gathered, how they have come by hordes, some bringing his hair and others his fingernails. Look what we have done!
But Zipacná was very much alive. He had cut his hair and gnawed off his fingernails to give them to the ants.
On the third day they began the orgy and all of the boys got drunk.
Then Zipacná let the house fall on their heads and killed all of them.
Not even one or two among the four hundred were saved. They were killed by Zipacná, son of Vucub-Caquix.
In this way the four hundred boys died.
It is said that they became the group of stars which because of them are called Motz,* but it may not be true.
*A mass, the Seven Little Sisters, the Pleiades. Brasseur de Bourbourg notes that Omuch qaholah, the four hundred young men who perished in an orgy, are the same as those who were worshipped in Mexico under the name Centzon-Totochtin, the four hundred rabbits who were implored as gods to protect the pulque and the drunkards.