Page 300 - The Secret Museum

We stopped to look closely at a Seneca Iroquois log cabin built on the Tonawanda

reservation in New York state. Pat isn’t sure it will ever be reassembled, but it’s
being stored as lumber because it is the only one that still exists.

We also saw a Tli’cho (Dogrib) tipi – one of only two known to be in existence –
made from 42 caribou and thousands of other things packed away in boxes.

Pat unlocked the high-security vault containing the Mixtec turquoise sun shield.
There were lots of beeps as alarms were turned off. We walked inside and carefully
lifted the shield down from its shelf, on to a table. It is stunning.

Thousands of tiny pieces of turquoise have been carefully shaped and polished,
then glued, using resin or gum, on to a round wooden base, to create an intricate
mosaic made from ripples of greens and blues.

A few little pieces of turquoise that have fallen off are stored in a glass vial
nearby.

In the mosaic, I could make out the sky, the sun, the sun’s rays and a person – a
warrior or a god (no one is sure which) – falling from the sun, towards a hill, with
two warriors flanking the falling being on either side. The hill stands for the ancient

town of Culhuacán, the mythical homeland of the Aztec people.

There is a lot of debate about what is going on in the scene depicted. It seems to
be an Aztec creation myth, and it has been suggested that the falling figure is a
female, one of the warrior goddesses who descend with the sun from noon to sunset.
The two figures beside her are males, holding staffs and blowing on conchshell
trumpets.

For the Aztecs, the sun was the symbol of their ruler and the state, and it is
represented in turquoise, a stone that was as precious in Mexico as gold was in

Europe. They called it teoxihuitl – turquoise of the gods. The Aztec ruler Moctezuma
II wore a turquoise nose plug, a loincloth made with turquoise beads and a turquoise
diadem when sacrificing humans to the Aztec gods.

There are some turquoise mosaics in the British Museum, including a shield a
little like this one but with shell and beads, not just glittering turquoise. The British
Museum’s shield is on display. It shows a solar disc, created from red shell, with
four rays beaming out, dividing the world into quarters. Inside each quarter is a sky
bearer with its arms in the air; these are the gods who support the sky. There is also a

tree made from mosaic with a snake wrapped around it. The tree represents a point of
union between the underworld, the Earth and the celestial realms.
The British Museum think the Aztecs gave their shield to Hernán Cortés (1485–

1547) as tribute when he arrived in the New World and took control of their empire.
The Aztecs were accustomed to demanding tribute from their dominions so, when the
strange Spaniards arrived, they imagined that this was what they would want as well
and packed up boats full of turquoise and gold and silver treasures to send back to
Europe. The Spanish accounts say that Moctezuma believed Cortés was an