To my idea the foregoing data, with circumstantial evidence too diffuse to be conveniently produced, clearly indicate that at one time, in the early history of the Aztec race, it had been governed jointly by a male and a female ruler on a footing of perfect equality, the one being the living representative of the Above or masculine elements and the other personifying the Below or feminine elements. The fact that Cihuacoatl is named "the sister" of Huitzilopochtli shows that the female ruler was not necessarily his wife, although she was his coadjutor in her own right. Both rulers were respectively served by four persons presumably of their respective sex. Besides these Duran (chap. 3) records that "there were also other seven teotls=lords, who were much reverenced on account of the seven caves out of which the seven tribes had come."
We thus perceive that at one time the chief authority was vested in a man and a woman, his sister, who enjoyed a perfect equality. Four persons administered the government of each ruler and each of the seven tribes had "its honoured representative." For how long this organization had existed it is impossible to tell. Dissension arose and division supervened, but to the time of the Conquest the identical form of government was in force with the remarkable difference that the title and office of the Cihuacoatl, originally held by a woman, were held by a man, whom I do not hesitate to identify as one of the two "supreme pontiffs," whose emblem of office was the flint knife, the offspring of Cihuacoatl, the earth-mother.
Historical evidence shows that this alteration had not been made without bloodshed and renewed difficulties. Thus it is related that, long after the Mexicans had separated from the sister of Huitzilopochtli and her adherents, they were induced to "ask the daughter of the ruler of Culhuacan to become the Queen of the Mexicans and mother of their god. She conformed with their request but was subsequently killed by her subjects, who flayed her body and dressed a youth in her skin [a figure of native speech which symbolized his assumption of her office]. Under this form she was revered as a goddess, was named our grandmother and 'the mother of the god,' etc." These and the following details, taken from well-known authentic native sources, are attractively rendered in the "Newe Welt und Amerikanische Historien" (Johann Ludwig Gottfriedt. Frankfurt-a.-M., 1613, pp. 54 and 55).