Chimalman- Aztec FigureMortal"Mother of Quetzalcoatl"

The Fearless Woman

Chimalman, "Shield Hand" or "She Who Laid Down Her Shield," was a woman of the Huitznahua people when the great hunter-god Mixcoatl came upon them during his campaigns. The other women fled or hid, but Chimalman stood her ground. She laid down her shield and faced the god bare and unflinching. Mixcoatl raised his bow and shot four arrows at her, one after another. Every arrow missed or passed around her body without drawing blood. The god who never missed had met a woman he could not strike. He took her as his consort, and she conceived.

The Leyenda de los Soles tells a different version: Chimalman conceived after swallowing a precious jade bead, the chalchihuitl, a motif of miraculous conception that marked the child as something more than mortal. The child in her womb would become Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the future priest-king of Tula.

Warrior Fallen in Birth

Chimalman died giving birth. In Aztec belief, women who died in childbirth were honored as warriors fallen in the hardest battle. They became the cihuateteo, fierce spirits who accompanied the sun during its westward descent each afternoon. The woman who had laid down her shield before a god's arrows could not be shielded from the cost of bearing his son.

The child was raised by his grandparents in some accounts. In others, he grew to discover and avenge his father Mixcoatl's murder.