Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Quetzalcohuatl

QUETZALCOHUATL (ket-zal-co-wat'-tle), king of the Toltecs, lived about the sixth century. According to Brasseur de Bourbourg (q. v.), in his “Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique,” a personage with long hair reaching to the waist, and a pale visage, who gave his name as Cecalt-Quetzalcohuatl, landed one morning at Panuco. He pretended to come from an eastern country of which nobody had heard before, and was accompanied by a troop of architects, painters, and scientists. Proceeding immediately to Tollantzingo, he built a magnificent temple and an underground palace, and was elected king of Tollan, the nations of the Anahuac valley receiving him as a messenger of God. His reign lasted twenty years, and proved beneficial to the people, several nations asking to be admitted in the confederacy, till Huemac, king of Aculhuacan, allied with the dissatisfied priests, overthrew the monarchy. Quetzalcohuatl retired to the valley of Huitzilapan, where he founded the city of Cholula, which later became the seat of a powerful republic. Some years afterward Cholula was also taken by Huemac, and Brasseur de Bourbourg asserts that Quetzalcohuatl died during his flight from Cholula. But other historians say that, after retiring from Tollantzingo, Quetzalcohuatl reached the coast of Campeche and founded Xicalanco on an island of the lagoon de Terminos, whence, after some years, he retired again to his fabulous country, while his followers emigrated to Central America and founded the new city of Tollan near Ococingo in Chiapas.