Aztec (Nahuatl)

(map)

People in three previous ages were destroyed by being devoured by jaguars, swept away by the wind and turned into monkeys, and transformed into birds in a rain of fire. The sun of 4 Water lasted 676 years; then the heavens came down in one day, and the people were inundated and transformed into fish. In the next age, Titlacahuan (Tezcatlipoca) told a man known as Nata ("Our Father") and his consort Nene to hollow out an aheuhuetl (cypress?) log and enter it during the vigil of Toçoztli, when the heavens would come crashing down. He sealed them in with a single ear of corn apiece to eat. When they had finished eating all the kernels, they heard the water declining. They exited the log, found a fish, and made a fire to cook it. The gods Citlallinicue and Citlallatonac complained that someone was smoking up the heavens. Tezcatlipoca descended, struck off the people's heads, and reattached them over their buttocks; they became dogs.

Frazer, 1919, 274-275; Markman, Roberta H. & Markman, Peter T. The Flayed God (HarperCollins, 1992), 132-133.

The deluge overwhelmed mankind. Only a man named Coxcox (some call him Teocipactli) and a woman named Xochiquetzal survived in a small bark. They landed on a mountain called Colhuacan and had many children. These children were all born dumb until a dove from a lofty tree gave them languages, but different languages so that they couldn't understand each other.

Horcasitas, 1953, 191; Vitaliano, 1973, 176; Frazer, 1919, 274.

When the great flood came, some people escaped into a cave. Afterwards they repopulated the world.

Horcasitas, 1953, 191.

A man cleared his milpa for planting but found one morning that all the trees he had cut were standing again. He cleared the land again, but again the trees arose overnight. After clearing the field a third time, he hid and watched, and that night he saw a rabbit raising the trees. When confronted, the rabbit told the man that his work was in vain and gave him instructions on how to survive.

Following the rabbit's directions, the man got a big box and closed himself inside with a chicken and his dog, and with a parrot on top to tell him how high the box has risen. When the flood came, the box floated. After four days, the parrot said, "The water has climbed halfway to heaven and is still rising." After another four days, the box hit heaven with a sound like striking glass. The parrot said, "The water has reached heaven and is dropping now." After another eight days, the box rested on the ground.

Jesus knew that the world was clean, that nothing was left, but after a while he smelled smoke. He told the buzzard to find its source, but the buzzard stopped to eat the dead meat that was all around. God next sent an angel, who did the same. Next God sent the hummingbird, who quickly went out and returned to report that a man had survived with a dog and a chicken, as well as what the buzzard and angel were doing.

The man went to work in a milpa. Always when he returned home, tortillas had been prepared for him. He noticed that the dog went out with him but soon left him, and one day he returned early to look. Approaching his home quietly, he saw a woman grinding tortilla dough, with a dog's hide lying nearby. He quickly threw ashes on the hide. The woman complained but consented to remain a woman and become his wife.

James M. Taggart, Nahuat Myth and Social Structure (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 194-197.