Guide of the Evening

What the tradition gives him in the end is a direction. Xolotl is associated with the evening star and with the sun's nightly passage beneath the earth — the one who goes down with it and brings it up again — and with the dogs buried alongside the dead to carry them over the water on the road to Mictlan. Colonial sources record the custom plainly, and archaeology independently supports the practice of burying dogs in Mesoamerican mortuary contexts. The burials support the practice; they do not settle the meanings the texts attach to it.