Redaction: It is easy to understand why the boat’s bottom and sides should be “tight like unto a dish.” That unremarkable fact simply underscores the fact that the construction is mentioned at all. Above the obvious need for a watertight hull, it appears that the details of the construction were unusual for both the Jaredites and for the Nephites, else neither the Jaredites or Moroni would have had any reason to record them. Mesoamerican sea-going vessels were all dugouts made from a single tree, and hence were automatically watertight on the sides and bottom. The Jaredite barges, however, must have been constructed; although they were as long as “a tree,” the clear implication is that they were much wider.
History: Milton R. Hunter quotes a translation of a passage from Ixtlilxochitl, introducing it as a native tradition about the Jaredite voyage: “When things were at their best, their languages were changed and, not understanding each other, they went to different parts of the world; and the Toltecs, who were as many as seven companions and their wives, who understood their language among themselves, came to these parts, having first crossed large lands and seas, living in caves and undergoing great hardships, until they came to this land which they found good and fertile.”
Like all of his other references to Ixtlilxochitl, Hunter is placing too much faith in a source that is clearly mixing European and native stories. (See Ether, Part 1: Context, Chapter 2, “Chronology and Ether.”) In this case, many native elements in Ixtlilxochitl’s tale are actually part of the Chichimecas’ arrival from Chicomoztoc. The Chichimeca were the most ancient ancestors claimed by the Aztecs. They were considered to have been uncivilized desert dwellers (historically associated with the Southwest region of the United States) who entered Mexico perhaps around A.D. 1000–1200. Ixtlilxochitl conflates these uncivilized wanderers with the Toltecs, the very symbol of civilization for the Aztecs.
The number seven that Hunter finds so significant comes from the word chicomoztoc, a Nahuatl word that literally translates to “seven caves.” Anthropologists Mary Miller and Karl Taube describe the myth:
[Chicomoztoc] was a legendary mountain perforated by a single cave or by seven caves, and was considered a sacred place by the Aztecs and most other Nahuatl-speaking people of Central Mexico at the time of the Conquest. For many groups, Chicomoztoc was the place of origin from which mankind emerged; the Aztecs believed that they had sojourned there some time after their initial departure [about A.D. 1000] from the legendary Aztlan [legendary land of origin]. In the mid-15th c., Motecuhzoma I sent 60 wise men to seek out Chicomoztoc, to learn more about Motecuhzoma’s ancestors, and to find out if the mother of Huitzilopochtli was still alive. [Huitzilopochtli was the principal Aztec tribal god.]
At the time of the Conquest, most Maya peoples of highland Guatemala also recognized authority issued by a place that the Quiché called Tulan Zuyua, or “seven caves.” In the Popol Vuh the tribal lineage heads journey to Tulan Zuyua to receive their gods; Tohil, [a storm god] for example, was loaded into the pack of Balam Quitze [Jaguar Quitze, one of the Quiché lineage founders] to be carried back home.
In 1971, during excavations to install sound and lighting equipment at Teotihuacán, a cave was found under the Pyramid of the Sun. The cave features several small chambers, almost in a clover-leaf arrangement, similar to the radiating caves depicted in the picture of Chicomoztoc in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, and was used as a retreat for ritual. Caves have been found at other ancient sites, and a number may have been regarded at one time as a Chicomoztoc.
The large number of earth-emergence (autochthonous) myths from Mesoamerica as well as the American Southwest further establishes this origin myth as one relating to earth, not water-born vessels.