Red and White Dynasty
in the Colombino-Becker
The Colombino-Becker Codex is another palimpsest similar to the Selden. It also had been erased but is so badly eroded that one can barely read the story that is illustrated there. Some sections of this document were clearly erased and redrawn while some of the pages are missing. The above graphic is a pretty obvious display of the Mountain of the Moon, which is a smoking volcano and the lake attached to it, Lake Texcoco. The figure emerging from the "maw of the earth" also, is not an unknown entity. He who emerged from the lake (his mother Coatlique) was Huitzilopochtli; a story which is known all over Central America. The Mixtec group at the University of Texas at Austin's Maya Meeting of 1999 started out with grave misgivings about this codex. All were certain that nothing could be done with a manuscript in this stage of disrepair. Nevertheless, it was decided that this manuscript, cut up into several pieces, was also used in post-conquest court battles to reclaim disputed lands from the Spaniards. John Pohl and Father Robert Williams led the class through this codex and as we arrived at each barely visible section, we found that not only could it actually be verified in the other codices that we had studied previously but it also contained more information about the famous Eight Deer and his family connections than either the Bodley, the Selden, the Vindobonensis, or the Zouche-Nuttall. The history of Eight Deer ended with his murder by one thought to be an agent of the (now-grown) child called Four Wind of the Red and White Dynasty. Nine/ten-year old Four Wind was the only survivor of this Dynasty when both his parents and his two brothers were executed by Eight Deer of Tilantango. It seems Eight Deer reasoned because of Four Wind's tender age the child could be taught to honor and obey him. However, since Four Wind took over the throne after the death of Eight Deer, it seemed
to the readers that it was an assassination as the final revenge of a child
who carefully nurtured his hatred of the murderer of his parents until such
time when a coup d'etat could be carried out. It is the
Bodley Codex that contains the whole abreviated story but continues
with the saga of Four Wind until his demise. None of the participants of
the Mixtec workshop at UTA were disappointed in their quest for information.
John Pohl and Father William Roberts accomplished more than was expected
as they presented correlating sections of other codices which matched
either the dates and names or the symbols of the various locations in the
Mixtec world.