#14thcenturyce

Xiuhtecuhtli

Xiuhtecuhtli or 'Turquoise Lord' was the Aztec god of fire and also closely associated with young warriors and rulers. To the Maya he was known as Chac Xiutei. Xiuhtecuhtli was the patron of the day Atl (water) and the trecena period 1 Coatl (Snake). He was the 1st Aztec Lord of the Night and 1st of the Lords of the Day. His nagual or animal spirit was Xiuhcóatl or the Fire Serpent and his special number was three because in traditional Mesoamerican homes there were three hearths. In Mesoamerican mythology the fundamental element of fire was thought to run through the entire universe and wherever there was fire, so too was Xiuhtecuhtli.

The name of the god derives from the Nahuatl word for turquoise xihuitl, which also means 'year' suggesting the god also represented time. Xiuhtecuhtli was often identified or equated with the older god of fire Huehueteotl (usually portrayed in stark contrast to the youthful Xiuhtecuhtli as a wrinkled old man with no teeth) who was himself a possible reincarnation of the still older Olmec God I. The equivalent fire deity for the Otomί was Otontecuhtli.

Toxiuhmolpilia

One of Xiuhtecuhtli's most important roles was as overseer of the Toxiuhmolpilia festival or New Fire Ceremony (also called Binding of the Years). Held once every 52 years on the completion of one full cycle of the Aztec calendar (xiuhmolpilli), the primary function of the festival was to ensure the successful renewal (or re-occurrence) of the sun.

During the festival all fires, from temples to household hearths, were symbolically extinguished and idols were cleansed with water, streets swept and old cooking implements and hearth stones thrown away. Then, atop Mt. Uixachtecatl (or Citlaltepec), near the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, priests gathered at midnight and awaited a precise alignment of the stars. Only when the Tianquiztli (Pleiades) reached the zenith and the Yohualtecuhtli star shone brightly in the very centre of the sky was a sacrifice made to Xiuhtecuhtli by cutting out the heart of a sacrificial victim. Fire was then kindled inside the open chest cavity and if the fire lit successfully then all was well and the fire was taken to re-light all of the city's fires. If the flame had not lit successfully then it was believed to signal the coming of terrible monsters, the Tzitzimime, who would roam the darkness eating all mankind.

Wako

Wako (aka wokou and waegu) is a term used to refer to Japanese (but also including Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese) pirates who plagued the seas of East Asia from Korea to Indonesia, especially between the 13th and 17th centuries CE. Besides the disruption to trade, the devastation which befell coastal communities, and the many thousands of innocents who found themselves sold as slaves, the pirates caused significant tensions in diplomatic relations between China, Korea, and Japan throughout this period. Indeed, the pirates seriously damaged the reputation of Japan in the eyes of their East Asian neighbours in the medieval period. It was only after the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1582-1598 CE) had unified central Japan that the government was finally strong enough to effectively deal with the pirate scourge and put an end to their reign of terror.

Piracy on the High Seas

Wako translates as 'dwarf pirates' and although many were from Japan, the term was also indiscriminately applied to any mariners up to no good on the high seas and so could include pirates based on the coasts of Korea, Taiwan, and China, as well as Portuguese adventurers, to name but a few. There is even evidence that some pirates disguised themselves as Japanese to avoid detection as to where they sailed from. The Chinese called these pirates wokou and the Koreans waegu. Pirates had plundered ships across East Asia since at least the 8th century CE but it was the wako of the 13th century CE onwards that reached new depths of robbery, helped by the disruption in legitimate maritime trade which followed the Mongol invasions of Korea between 1231 and 1259 CE.

The most notorious pirate base was Japan's Tsushima Island (which also had legitimate ports) where there were plenty of easily-defended inlets. The island is rocky and mountainous so that residents struggled to provide enough food for themselves while the local feudal lords, the So, gained handsomely from sponsoring the marauders who seized goods on the high seas. Other important pirate bases in Japan were at Iki Island and Matsura.

At their peak in the 14th century CE, hundreds of pirate ships plagued the straits between Korea and southern Japan and made four or five major raids on the southern Korean peninsula each year. Many pirates even made it their business to plunder ships and coastal ports on the western side of the Korean peninsula, right up the northern island of Kanghwa. In the 15th and 16th century CE the coast of China became another target area. Pirates stole anything of value (for example, precious metals, swords, armour, and lacquerware) but especially bulk goods like cloth, grain and rice being shipped as tribute to the Chinese emperor.

Pirates would raid ports and coastal settlements with fleets of up to 400 ships carrying raiding parties of 3,000 men. Although they were only lightly armed - the preferred weapon being swords - they did form disciplined armies and they met little organised opposition. As the wako often seized innocents to be sold as slaves to feudal lords or Portuguese slave-traders, many farming communities withdrew further inland, even if this meant that the best agricultural land was abandoned. The risks to the wako, aside from a vigorous defence by rightful owners, included execution if they were caught by the authorities in China, Korea, or Japan.