ALLOYS.
THE AGE OF BRONZE—AN INTERMEDIATE COPPER AGE—EUROPEAN COPPER
IMPLEMENTS—NATIVE SILVER AND COPPER—TIN AND COPPER ORES—THE
CASSITERIDES—ANCIENT SOURCES OF TIN—ARTS OF YUCATAN—ALLOYED
COPPER AXE-BLADES—BRONZE SILVER-MINING TOOL—PERUVIAN BRONZES—
PRIMITIVE MINING TOOLS—NATIVE METALLURGIC PROCESSES—METALLIC
TREASURES OF THE INCAS—TRACES OF AN OLDER RACE—PERUVIAN
HISTORY—THE TOLTECS AND MEXICANS—ADJUSTMENT OF CALENDAR—
BARBARIAN EXCESSES—NATIVE GOLDSMITH’S WORK—PANAMA GOLD RELICS
—MEXICAN METALLIC CURRENCY—EXPERIMENTAL PROCESSES—ANCIENT
EUROPEAN BRONZES—TESTS OF CIVILISATION—ANCIENT AMERICAN
BRONZES—THE NATIVE METALLURGIST.
The age of bronze in the archæological history of European civilisation
symbolises a transitional stage of very partial development, and
imperfect materials and arts, through which the Old World passed in its
progress towards the maturity of true historic times; but the Bronze
Period of the New World is the highest stage of its self-developed
civilisation, prior to the intrusion of European arts. Whether we regard
the bronze implements of Britain and the North of Europe as concomitant
with the intrusion of new races, or only as proofs of the discovery or
introduction of a new art pregnant with many civilising and elevating
tendencies, they constitute an important element in primitive ethnology.
For a time they necessarily coincide with many monuments and works of
art pertaining in character to the stone-period; just as the stone
implements and weapons still manufactured by the Indians and Esquimaux
are contemporaneous with many products of foreign metallurgy, but
nevertheless are the perpetuation of processes developed in a period
when metallurgic arts were entirely unknown. The evidence that the
British Bronze Period followed a simpler and ruder one of stone is such
as scarcely to admit of challenge, independent of the _à priori_
likelihood in favour of this order of succession. The question however
suggests itself whether metallurgy did not find its natural beginning
there, as elsewhere, in the easy working of the virgin copper, and so
intercalate a copper age between Europe’s stone, and its true Bronze
Period. On this subject Dr. Latham remarks, in his _Ethnology of the
British Islands_, “Copper is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state,
no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze,
or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this
hiatus; cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of
alloys.” It is a mistake, however, to say that no unalloyed British
copper relics have been found. No very special attention was directed
till recently to the distinction. Nearly all the earlier writers who
refer to the metallic weapons and tools of ancient Mexico and Central
America, apply the term “copper” to the mixed metal of which these were
made; while among European antiquaries the corresponding relics of the
Old World are no less invariably designated bronze, though in many cases
thus taking for granted what analysis can alone determine. It is an
error, however, that the later nomenclature of archæological periods has
tended to strengthen: partly from the lack of appreciation of the
importance of the argument in favour of the first use of the metals in a
condition corresponding to the most primitive arts, and the discovery of
scientific processes at later stages.
This peculiar interest attaches to the metallurgy of the New World, that
there all the earlier stages are clearly defined: the pure native metal,
wrought by the hammer without the aid of fire; the melted and moulded
copper; the alloyed bronze; and then the smelting, soldering, graving,
and other processes resulting from accumulating experience and matured
skill. But examples of British implements of pure copper have also been
noted. In a valuable paper by Mr. J. A. Phillips, on the metals and
alloys known to the ancients,[78] the results of analyses of
thirty-seven ancient bronzes are given. Among these are included three
swords, one from the Thames, the others from Ireland; a spear-head, two
celts, and two axe-heads: all of types well-known among the weapons of
the “Bronze Period.” Yet of the eight articles thus selected as examples
of “bronze” weapons, one, the spear-head, proved on analysis to be of
impure but unalloyed copper. Its composition is given as copper, 99·71;
sulphur, ·28. In 1822, Sir David Brewster described a large battle-axe
of pure copper, found at a depth of twenty feet in Ratho Bog, near
Edinburgh, under circumstances scarcely less remarkable than some of the
discoveries of works of art in the drift. The workmen dug down through
nine feet of moss and seven feet of sand, before they came to the hard
black till-clay; and at a depth of four feet in the clay the axe was
found. The author accordingly remarks: “It must have been deposited
along with the blue clay prior to the formation of the superincumbent
stratum of sand, and must have existed before the diluvial operations by
which that stratum was formed. This opinion of its antiquity is strongly
confirmed by the peculiarity of its shape, and the nature of its
composition.”[79] In 1850, my brother, Dr. George Wilson, undertook a
series of analyses of ancient British bronzes for me, and out of seven
specimens selected for experiment, one Scottish axe-head, rudely cast,
apparently in sand, was of nearly pure copper.[80] Of eight specimens of
metal implements selected for me by Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of New York, as
examples of Peruvian bronze; four of them, on analysis, proved to be of
unalloyed copper. The rich collections of the Royal Irish Academy
furnish interesting confirmation of this idea of a transitional copper
era. Dr. Wilde remarks, in his Catalogue of Antiquities, “Upon careful
examination, it has been found that thirty of the rudest, and apparently
the very oldest celts, are of red, almost unalloyed copper.” In addition
to those there are also two battle-axes, a sword-blade, a trumpet,
several fibulæ, and some rudely formed tools, all of copper; and now
that attention has been directed to the subject, further examples of the
same class will doubtless accumulate.
A very important difference, however, distinguishes the mineral
resources of the British and the North American copper regions. Copper,
as we have seen, occurs in the trappean rocks of Keweenaw and Ontonagon,
in masses of many tons weight; and detached blocks of various sizes lie
scattered about in the superficial soil or exposed along the lake shore,
ready for use without any preparatory skill, or the slightest knowledge
of metallurgy. Nature in her own vast crucibles had carried the metal
ores through all their preparatory stages, and left them there for man
to shape into such forms as his convenience or simplest wants suggested.
The native silver had undergone the like preparation, and is of frequent
occurrence as a perfectly pure metal, being found, even when
interspersed in the mass of copper, still in distinct crystals, entirely
free from alloy with it. But neither tin nor zinc occurs throughout the
whole northern region to suggest to the native metallurgist the
production of that valuable alloy which is indissolubly associated with
the civilisation of Europe’s Bronze age. In Britain it is altogether
different. The tin and copper lie together, ready for alloy, but both
occur in the state of impure ores, inviting and necessitating the
development of metallurgy before they can be turned to economic uses.
Tin is obtained in Cornwall almost entirely from its peroxide; and
copper occurs there chiefly combined with sulphur and iron, forming the
double sulphuret which is commonly called copper pyrites or yellow
copper ore. The smelting process to which it has to be subjected is a
laborious and complicated one; and if we are prepared to believe in the
civilisation of Britain’s Bronze Period as a thing of native growth, the
early discovery and use of alloys very slightly affects the question.
The ancient American miner of Lake Superior never learned to subject his
wealth of copper to the action of fire, and transfer it from the
crucible to the shapely mould. No such process was needed where it
abounded in inexhaustible quantities in a pure metallic state. If, in
the midst of such readily available metallic resources, he was found to
have used tools of bronze or brass, to have transported the tin or zinc
of other regions to his furnaces, and to have laboriously converted the
whole into a preferable substitute for the simpler metal that lay ready
for his use, it would be difficult indeed to conceive of such as the
initial stage in his metallurgy industry. But Britain presents no
analogy to this in its development of metallurgy arts. Tin, one of the
least widely-diffused of metals, is found there in the greatest
abundance, and easily accessible, not as a pure metal, but as an ore
which is readily reduced by charcoal and a moderate degree of heat to
that condition. This was the metallic wealth for which Britain was
sought by the ancient traders of Massilia, and the fleets of the
Mediterranean; and on it we may therefore assume her primitive
metallurgists to have first tried their simple arts. But alongside of
it, and even in natural combination with it, as in tin pyrites and the
double sulphuret, lies the copper, also in the condition of an ore, and
requiring the application of the metallurgist’s skill before it can be
turned to account. We know that at the very dawn of history tin was
exported from Britain. Copper also appears to have been wrought, from
very early times, in North Wales as well as in Cornwall. Both metals
were found rarely, and in small quantities, in the native state, but
these may have sufficed to suggest the next step of supplying them in
larger quantities from the ores. To seek in some unknown foreign source
for the origin of metallurgic arts, which had there all the requisite
elements for evoking them, seems wholly gratuitous; and, if once the
native metallurgist learned to smelt the tin and copper ores, and so had
been necessitated to subject them to preparatory processes of fire, the
next stage in progressive metallurgy, the use of alloys, was a simple
one. It might further be assumed that, with the discovery of the
valuable results arising from the admixture of tin with copper, the few
pure copper implements—excepting where already deposited among
sepulchral offerings,—would for the most part be returned to the
melting-pot, and reproduced in the more perfect and useful condition of
the bronze alloy. There seems, however, greater probability in the
supposition that if Britain had a copper period, or age of unalloyed
metals, it was of brief duration.
The _cassiteron_, or tin which made the British Islands famous among
Phœnician and Greek mariners, long before the Roman legions ventured to
cross the narrow seas, was derived, as has been noted, from the same
south-western peninsula, where copper is still wrought. The name of
Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, bestowed on Cornwall and the adjacent
isles, seems to imply that tin was the chief export, and was transported
to the Mediterranean, to be mixed with the copper of the Wady Maghara,
and other Asiatic mines, to form the Egyptian, Phœnician, and Assyrian
bronze. Tin, therefore, the easiest of all metals to subject to the
requisite processes, first engaged the skill of the British
metallurgist; and that mastered, the proximity of the copper ore in the
same mineral districts, inevitably suggests all the subsequent processes
of smelting, fusion, and alloy.
The practical value of the alloy of copper and tin was well-known both
to the Phœnicians and the Egyptians. Tin occurs in considerable
abundance, and in the purest state, in the peninsula of Malacca, and
thence, probably, it was first brought to give a new impetus to early
eastern civilisation. Britain is its next and its most abundant source;
and since America was embraced within the world’s sisterhood of nations,
Chili and Mexico have become known as productive sources of the same
useful metal. But the mineral wealth of Mexico and Peru was familiar to
nations of the New World long before it was made to contribute to
European commerce; and to a proximity of the metals best suited for the
first stages of human progress, corresponding in some degree to that to
which Britain’s ancient metallurgy has been traced, the curious phases
of a native and purely aboriginal civilisation may be ascribed, which
revealed itself to the wondering gaze of the first European adventurers
who followed in the steps of Columbus. Whatever doubts may arise
relative to the native origin of British metallurgy, and the works of
art of the European Bronze Period, in consequence of their most
characteristic illustrations being preserved in the mixed metal, bronze,
and not in pure copper: there is no room for any such doubts relative to
the primitive metallurgy of the New World. The American continent
appears to have had its two entirely independent centres of
self-originated metallurgic arts: its greatly prolonged but slight
progressive Copper Period; and apart from this, and in part at least
contemporaneous with it, a separate Bronze Period, with its distinct
centres of more advanced civilisation and better regulated metallurgic
industry, in which the value of metallic alloys was practically
understood.
The great copper region of North America lies along the shores of Lake
Superior, and on its larger islands between the 46th and 48th parallels
of north latitude; and from thence its metallic treasures were diffused
by primitive commercial exchanges, throughout the whole vast regions
watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries: including also the
Atlantic states, and the shores of the great lakes. But southward and
westward of this area of diffusion, the Rio Grande and its tributaries,
with the Rio Colorado, drain a country modified by very diverse
conditions of climate, and having a totally distinct centre of
metallurgic wealth and civilising influences. In this central region of
the twin continents of America, as well as independently in tropical
Peru, native civilisation had advanced a considerable way, before it was
arrested and destroyed by the aggressions of foreign intruders. The
peculiar advantages derivable from the proximity of the distinct metals
had been discovered, and metallurgy had been developed into the
practical arts of a true American Bronze Age.
When Columbus, during his fourth voyage, landed on one of the Guanaja
islands, before making the adjoining mainland of Honduras, it was
visited by a large trading canoe, the size and freight of which equally
attracted his notice. It was eight feet wide, and in magnitude like a
galley, though formed of the trunk of a single tree. In the centre a
raised awning covered and enclosed a cabin, in which sat a cacique with
his wives and children; and twenty-five rowers propelled it swiftly
through the water. The barque is believed to have come from the province
of Yucatan, then about forty leagues distant, through a sea the stormy
violence of which had daunted the most hardy Spanish seamen. It was
freighted with a great variety of articles of manufacture, and of the
natural produce of the neighbouring continent; and among them Herrara
specifies “small hatchets, made of copper, small bells and plates,
_crucibles to melt copper_, etc.” Here, at length, was the true answer
to that prophetic faith which upheld the great discoverer, when, peering
through the darkness, the New World revealed itself to his eye in the
glimmering torch, which told him of an unseen land inhabited by man.
Here was evidence of the intelligent service of fire. Well indeed might
it have been for Columbus had he been obedient to the voice that thus
directed his way. All the accompaniments of the voyagers furnished
evidence of civilisation. They were clothed with cotton mantles. Their
bread was made of Indian corn, and from it also they had brewed a
beverage resembling beer. They informed Columbus that they had just
arrived from a country, rich, populous, and industrious, situated to the
west; and urged him to steer in that direction. But his mind was bent on
the discovery of the imaginary strait that was to lead him directly into
the Indian seas, and it was left to Cortez to discover the singular
seats of native civilisation of Mexico and Central America.
When at length the mainland was reached, the abundance and extensive use
of the metals became apparent; and as further discoveries brought to the
knowledge of the Spaniards the opulent and civilised countries of
Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru, they were more and more astonished by the
native metallic wealth. When the Spaniards first entered the province of
Tuspan, they mistook the bright copper or bronze axes of the natives for
gold, and were greatly mortified after having accumulated them in
considerable numbers to discover the mistake they had made. Bernal Diaz
narrates that “each Indian had, besides his ornaments of gold, a copper
axe, which was very highly polished, with the handle curiously carved,
as if to serve equally for an ornament, as for the field of battle. We
first thought these axes were made of an inferior kind of gold; we
therefore commenced taking them in exchange, and in the space of two
days had collected more than six hundred; with which we were no less
rejoiced, as long as we were ignorant of their real value, than the
Indians with our glass beads.”
Ancient Mexican paintings show that the tribute due by certain provinces
of the Mexican empire was paid in wedges of copper; and Dupaix describes
and figures examples of a deposit of two hundred and seventy-six
axe-heads, cast of alloyed copper, such as, he observes, “are much
sought by the silversmiths on account of their fine alloy.” The forms of
these, as well as of the chisels and other tools of bronze, are simple,
and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the
more perfect accomplishment of the artificer’s or the combatant’s
requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade, as illustrated by
Mexican paintings, are nearly all of the same rude description as are
employed by the modern savage in fitting a handle to his hatchet of
flint or stone; and, indeed, the whole characteristics of the
metallurgic and artistic ingenuity of Mexico and Peru are suggestive of
immature development; though, from the nature of Peruvian institutions,
the civilisation of the latter, like that of China, may have long
existed, with slight and intermittent manifestations of progress. It was
indeed, in many respects, the transitional Bronze Period of the New
World, in which not only the arts of an elder stone-period had been very
partially modified by metallurgic influences, but in which the sword, or
_mahguahuitl_, made of wood, with blades of obsidian inserted along its
edge, the flint or obsidian arrow-head, the stone hatchet, and other
weapons, were still in common use, along with those of metal.
Yet such traces of primitive arts are accompanied with remarkable
evidence of progress in some directions. Humboldt remarks, in his _Vues
des Cordillères_, on the surprising dexterity shown by the Peruvians in
cutting the hardest stones; and, after reference to the observations of
other travellers, he adds:—“I conjectured that the Peruvians had tools
of copper, which, mixed with a certain proportion of tin, acquires great
hardness. This conjecture has been justified by the discovery of an
ancient Peruvian chisel, found at Vilcabamba, near Cuzco, in a silver
mine worked in the time of the Incas. This valuable instrument, for
which I am indebted to the friendship of the Padre Narcisse Gilbar, is
four and seven-tenth inches long, and four-fifths of an inch broad. The
metal of which it is composed has been analysed by M. Vauquelin, who
found in it 0·94 of copper, and 0·06 of tin.” Unfortunately, the
composition of Mexican and Peruvian bronzes has hitherto attracted so
little attention, that it is impossible to obtain many accurate records
of analyses, or to procure specimens to submit to chemical tests. Dr. J.
H. Gibbon, of the United States Mint, favoured me with the analysis of
another chisel or crowbar, brought from the neighbourhood of Cuzco by
his son, Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon, who formed one of the members of the
Amazon Expedition. Through the kind services of Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of
the American Ethnological Society, I also obtained, in addition to
results determined by himself, eight specimens of such Peruvian
implements, though only a portion of them proved to be of metallic
alloys. They were submitted to careful analysis by my colleague,
Professor Henry Croft, and the results in reference to the bronzes are
given on a subsequent page. Mr. Squier, in the Appendix to his
_Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York_, engraves an implement
found with various Peruvian knives and chisels, about the person of a
mummy, taken by Mr. J. H. Blake, of Boston, from an ancient cemetery
near Arica. On analysis, it proved to contain about four per cent. of
tin. More recently I inspected a valuable collection of antiquities
brought by Mr. Blake from Peru, including a variety of bronze
implements; and he has favoured me with the following results:—“Many
years ago, I made a series of analyses of bronze instruments, knives,
chisels, hoes, etc., which I found in ancient cemeteries in Peru in
connection with embalmed bodies. I have not been able to find my notes
made at the time; but I know that they consisted of copper and tin only,
and that the proportion of the latter varied from upwards of two to four
per cent. After receiving your last letter, I made an analysis of a
small knife found by me, with many other articles, with the body of a
man, in the ancient cemetery near Arica, in South Peru. The handle is of
the same metal as the blade, and at right angles with it, being joined
at the middle. The end is fashioned to represent the head of a llama. On
analysis, the composition proves to be: Copper, 97·87; tin, 2·13.” Dr.
C. T. Jackson communicated another analysis of a “Chilian bronze
instrument, probably a crowbar,” to the Boston Natural History Society.
It contained 7·615 parts of tin, and is described by him as a bronze,
well adapted for such instruments as were to be hammer-hardened.[81] The
general results indicate a variable range of the tin alloy, from 2·130
to 7·615 per cent.; which, in so far as any general inference can be
drawn from so small a number of examples, shows a more indeterminate and
partially developed metallurgy than the analyses of primitive European
bronzes disclose.
Such is all the evidence I have been able to obtain relative to the
composition of Peruvian alloys, and the progress indicated thereby in
scientific metallurgy. It accords with other evidence of their mining
operations. During a recent visit to Peru Mr. James Douglas obtained for
me a set of primitive stone mining implements recovered from an ancient
shaft, exposed in working the Brillador mine, in the Province of
Coquimbo, Chili. They consist of a maul of granite, eight inches long,
with a groove wrought round the centre and over the thicker end; one of
diorite, also with a groove about one-third from the thicker end; a
conical hammer of granite; and another implement made of diorite,
apparently designed for pounding the copper ore. It has indentations
worked in the sides for the fingers and thumb; and when found was
covered at one end with green oxide of copper, as if from use in
pounding the ore. Near the mine are ancient graves indicated by circles
of stones; within which the skeletons are disposed in a sitting posture,
accompanied by conical bones and rude pottery. Such mining implements
were, no doubt, supplemented with others of metal; but so far as they
illustrate the progress of the ancient miners of Chili, the evidence
fully accords with the ideas otherwise formed of the Peruvians as a
people who had discovered for themselves the rudiments of civilisation,
but who had as yet very partially attained to any mastery of the arts
which have been matured in modern centuries for Europe. This agrees with
the description furnished by Dr. Tschudi of some of the metallurgic
processes still practised in Peru. “The Cordillera, in the neighbourhood
of Yauli,” he remarks, “is exceedingly rich in lead ore containing
silver. Within the circuit of a few miles above eight hundred shafts
have been made, but they have not been found sufficiently productive to
encourage extensive mining works. The difficulties which impede
mine-working in these parts are caused chiefly by the dearness of labour
and the scarcity of fuel. There being a total want of wood, the only
fuel that can be obtained consists of the dried dung of sheep, llamas,
and huanacos. This fuel is called _taquia_. It produces a very brisk and
intense flame, and most of the mine-owners prefer it to coal. The
process of smelting, as practised by the Indians, though extremely rude
and imperfect, is adapted to local circumstances. All European attempts
to improve the system of smelting in these districts have either totally
failed, or in their results have proved less effective than the simple
Indian method. The Indian furnaces can, moreover, be easily erected in
the vicinity of the mines, and when the metal is not very abundant the
furnaces may be abandoned without any great sacrifice. For the price of
one European furnace the Indians may build more than a dozen, in each of
which, notwithstanding the paucity of fuel, a considerably greater
quantity of metal may be smelted than in one of European construction.”
At the village of Yauli, near the mines referred to, situated at an
elevation of 13,100 feet above the sea, from twelve to fourteen thousand
Indians are congregated together, chiefly engaged in mining, after the
fashion handed down to them from generations before the Conquest. Their
processes correspond with the imperfect results disclosed by the
analysis of native alloys; as well as by other proofs that the Peruvians
were also accustomed to work the native copper into tools and personal
ornaments for common use, very much in the same fashion as the ancient
metallurgists of the Ohio valley.
The contrast which the civilisation alike of Mexico and Peru presents,
when compared with the highest arts pertaining to any of the tribes of
North America, is well calculated to excite admiration. But the wonder
of the Spanish conquerors at their gems and gold, the ready credulity of
the missionary priests in their anxiety to magnify the gorgeous paganism
which they had overthrown, and the patriotic exaggeration of later
chroniclers of native descent, have all tended to overdraw the picture
of the beneficent despotism of the Incas of Peru; or the crueller but
not less magnificent rule of the Caciques of Mexico. With a willing
credulity Spanish historians perpetuated what the Peruvian Garcilasso
and the Mexican Ixtlilxochitl related, in their adaptations of native
history and traditions to European conceptions. Religious, political,
and social analogies to European ideas and institutions, accordingly,
strike the modern student with wonder and admiration; nor has the gifted
author of the _Conquests of Mexico and Peru_ always sufficiently
discriminated between the glowing romances begot by an alliance between
the barbarous magnificence of a rude native despotism and the associated
ideas of European institutions. The metallic treasures of the Incas of
Peru are probably not exaggerated; and if so, the precious metals with
which their palaces and temples were adorned would have been the index,
in any European capital, of a wealth sufficient to employ the
merchant-navies of Venice, Holland, or England in the commerce of the
world. But in Peru this was the mere evidence of the abundance of the
precious metals in a country where they were as little the
representatives of a commercial currency as the feathers of the
coraquenque, which were reserved exclusively for the decoration of
royalty.
The Peruvians occupied a long extent of sea-coast, but no commercial
enterprise tempted them to launch their navies on the Pacific, excepting
for the most partial coasting transit. The great mass of the people
patiently wrought to produce from their varied tropical climates and
fertile soil the agricultural produce on which the entire community
depended; resembling in this, as well as in the vast structures wrought
by a patiently submissive people at the will of their absolute rulers,
the great oriental despotisms when in their earliest and least
licentious forms. Their own traditions traced the dawn of their
government no further back than the twelfth century; and the
characteristics of their imperfect and unequally developed civilisation
confirm the inference that they have not in this respect departed from
the invariable tendency of historic myth and tradition to exaggerate the
national age. Extensive ruins still existing on the shores of Lake
Titicaca are affirmed by the Peruvians to have existed before the Incas
arrived. But slight importance can be attached to the traditions of an
unlettered people concerning events of any kind dating four or five
centuries back. The authority of Bede is of little value relative to
Jute or Anglo-Saxon colonisation less than three centuries before his
time; and the modern New Englander, with deeds and parchments, as well
as abundance of printed history to help his tradition, cannot make up
his mind as to whether the famous Newport Round Tower was built by a
Norse viking of the eleventh, or a New England miller of the seventeenth
century. “No account,” says Prescott, “assigns to the Inca dynasty more
than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether
too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry
back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation,
beyond two centuries and a half—an antiquity not incredible in itself,
and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a
century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico.” Humboldt, in
his _Vues des Cordillères_, indicates the borders of Lake Titicaca, the
district of Callao, and the high plains of Tiahuanaco, as the theatre of
ancient American civilisation; and Prescott, in view of the apparently
recent origin of the Incas, assumes that they were preceded in Peru by
another civilised race, which, in conformity with native traditions, he
would derive from this same cradle-land of South American arts. Beyond
this, however, he does not attempt to penetrate into that unchronicled
past. Who this people were, and whence they came, may afford a tempting
theme for inquiry to the speculative ethnologist; but it is a land of
darkness lying beyond the domain of history. The same mists that hang
round the origin of the Incas continue to settle on their subsequent
annals; and so imperfect were the records employed by the Peruvians, and
so confused and contradictory their traditions, that the historian finds
no firm footing on which to stand till within a century of the Spanish
conquest.
In reality only a very small portion of what is called Peruvian history
prior to that conquest can be regarded as anything but a historical
romance; and the exaggerated conceptions relative to the completeness
and consistent development alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation,
are based on the old axiom which has so often misled the archæologist,
_ex pede Herculem_.
Viewed, however, without exaggeration, the progress in mechanical skill
and artistic ingenuity attained by both of the semi-civilised American
nations, is very remarkable; and seems to find its nearest analogy among
the modern Chinese and Japanese. Small mirrors of polished bronze now in
use in Japan exactly reproduce some of those found in the royal tombs of
Peru. These tombs of the Incas, and also their royal and other
depositories of treasure, have disclosed many specimens of curious and
elaborate metallurgic skill: bracelets, collars, and other personal
ornaments of gold, vases of the same abundant precious metal, and also
of silver; mirrors of burnished silver and bronze, as well as of
obsidian; polished masks, rings, and cups of the same intractable
material; finely adjusted balances made in silver; bells both of silver
and bronze; and numerous commoner articles of copper, or of the more
useful alloy of copper and tin, of which their tools were chiefly made.
But while the arts of civilisation were being fostered on those southern
plateaux of the Andes, another seat of native American civilisation had
been founded on the corresponding plateaux of the northern continent,
and the Aztecs were building up an empire even more marvellous than that
of the Incas. The site of the latter is among the most remarkable of all
the scenes consecrated to such memories. On the lofty table-land which
lies between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, at an elevation
of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, the valley of Mexico lies
engirdled by its ramparts of porphyritic rock, like a vast fortress
provided by nature for guarding the infancy of American civilisation.
Here was the scene of the heroic age of Toltec Art, where the
foundations of all later progress were laid, and architecture achieved
its earliest triumphs in the New World on the temples and towers of
Tula, the ruined remains of which attracted the attention of the
Spaniards at the time of the Conquest. But the history of the Toltecs
and their ruined edifices stands on the border lines of romance and
fable, like that of the Druid builders of Carnac and Avebury. To them,
according to tradition and such historical evidence as is accessible,
succeeded their Aztec or Mexican supplanters, along with the Acolhuans,
or Tezcucans, as they were latterly called from their capital Tezcuco.
Mr. Edward B. Tylor describes an ancient arch which still stands there.
It is a skew-bridge of twenty feet span, built with slabs of stone set
on edge in the form of a roof resting on two buttresses; and is an
ingenious approximation to the true arch.[82] On the opposite shores of
the same Mexican lake, the largest of five inland waters that
diversified the surface of that great table-land valley, stood Tezcuco
and Mexico, the capitals of the two most important states within which
the native civilisation of the North American continent developed
itself. From the older Toltecans, the encroaching Tezcucans are believed
to have derived the germs of that progress, which is best known to us in
connection with the true Aztec or Mexican state. Legends of the golden
age and heroic races of Anahuac abound, and have been rendered into
their least extravagant forms by the patriotic zeal of Ixtlilxochitl, a
lineal descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco. But the true Mexicans
are acknowledged to be of recent origin, and the founding of Mexico is
assigned to A.D. 1326. Among the special evidences of their civilisation
is their calendar. By the unaided results of native science the dwellers
on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar
time, so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast,
their own reckoning, according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was
nearly eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation
whose civilisation they so speedily effaced. But the difference thus
noted represented in the European calendar the accumulated error of
upwards of sixteen centuries; so that the approximation of Mexican
computation to true solar time is probably only a proof of the recent
adjustment of their calendar; and so confirms the probability of the
founding of the Mexican capital within two centuries of its overthrow.
But the founders of Tenochtitlan, as the new capital was called, were a
vigorous, enterprising, and ferocious race. The later name of Mexico was
derived from the Aztec war-god Mexitli, whose favours to his votaries
enabled them to form a powerful state by conquest, to enrich themselves
with spoil, and to replace the rude structures of their city’s founders
with substantial and ornate buildings of stone.
Whatever gloze of mild paternal absolutism may linger around our
conceptions of the prehistoric chronicles of Peru, a clearer light
illuminates the harsh realities of Mexican sovereignty. The god of war
was the supreme deity of the Aztecs, worshipped with hideous rites of
blood. Their civil and military codes, according to the narrative of
their conquerors, were alike cruel as that of Draco; and their religious
worship was a system of austere fanaticism and loathsome butchery, which
seemed to refine the cruelties of the Red Indian savage into a ritual
service fit only for the devil. But besides their hideous war-god, the
Mexican mythology was graced by a beneficent divinity, named
Quetzalcoatl, the instructor of the Aztecs in the use of metals, in
agriculture, and in the arts of government. This and similar elements of
Mexican mythology have been regarded as traces of a milder faith
inherited from their Toltecan predecessors. The idea is one supported by
many probabilities, as well as by some evidence. The early history of
the Northmen, however, in which we witness the blending of a rich poetic
fancy, wherein lay the germ of later Norman romance and chivalry, with
cruelties pertaining to a creed little less bloody than that of the
Mexican warrior, shows that no such theory is needed to account for the
incongruities of the religious system of the Aztecs. In truth, the
ferocity of a semi-barbarous people is often nothing more than its
perverted excess of energy; and, as has been already noted in reference
to the Caribs, is more easily dealt with, and turned into healthful and
beneficent action, than the cowardly craft of the slave. It is only when
such hideous rites are consciously engrafted on the usages of a people
already far in advance of such a semi-barbarous childhood, as in the
adoption of the Inquisition by Spain at the commencement of its modern
history, that they prove utterly baneful; because the nation is already
past that stage of progress in which it can naturally outgrow them.
Hideous, therefore, as were the human sacrifices, with their annual
thousands of victims; the offerings of infants to propitiate Tlaloc,
their rain-god; and the loathsome banquets on the bodies of their
sacrificed victims:—if indeed this be not an exaggeration of Spanish
credulity and fanaticism;—it is nevertheless difficult to concur in the
verdict of the gifted historian of _The Conquest of Mexico_, that “it
was beneficently ordered by Providence that the land should be delivered
over to another race who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions
that daily extended wider and wider, with extent of empire.” The rule of
the conquerors, with their Dominican ministers of religion, was no
beneficent sway; and its fruits in later times have not proved of such
value as to reconcile the student of that strange old native
civilisation of the votaries of Quetzalcoatl, to its abrupt arrestment,
at a stage which can only be paralleled by the earlier centuries of
Egyptian progress.
Metallurgic arts were carried in some respects further by the Mexicans
than by the Peruvians. Silver, lead, and tin were obtained from the
mines of Tasco and Pachuca; copper was wrought in the mountains of
Zacotollan, by means of galleries and shafts opened with persevering
toil where the metallic veins were imbedded in the solid rock; and
there, as at the Lake Superior copper regions, the traces of such
ancient mining have proved the best guides to modern searchers for the
ores. The arts of casting, engraving, chasing, and carving in metal,
were all practised with great skill. Vessels both of gold and silver
were wrought of enormous size: so large, it is said, that a man could
not encircle them with his arms; and the abundant gold was as lavishly
employed in Mexico as in Peru, in the gorgeous adornment of temples and
palaces. Ingenious toys, birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs,
fish with alternate scales of silver and gold, and personal ornaments in
great variety, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths of the precious
metals, with such curious art, that the Spaniards acknowledged the
superiority of the native workmanship over anything they could achieve.
When Cortes first entered the capital of Montezuma in 1513, the Mexican
ruler received him in the palace built by his father Axayacatl, and hung
round his neck a decoration of the finest native workmanship. The shell
of a species of craw-fish, set in gold, formed the centre, and massive
links of gold completed the collar, from which depended eight ornaments
of the same metal, delicately-wrought in imitation of the prized
shell-fish.
The arts thus practised on the great plateau extended to the most
southern limits of the North American continent. The ancient graves of
the Isthmus of Panama have been ransacked by thousands in recent years,
from the temptation which the gold relics they contain hold out to their
explorers. Those include representations of beasts, birds, and fishes,
frogs, and other objects, imitated from nature, often with great skill
and ingenuity. One gold frog which I examined had the eyes hollow, with
an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, which
appeared to have been executed in a single casting. This insertion of
detached balls is frequently met with in the pottery, as well as in the
goldsmith’s work of the Isthmus, and is singularly characteristic of a
peculiar phase of local art. Human figures, and monstrous or grotesque
hybrids wrought in gold, with the head of the cayman, the eagle, and
other animals, attached to the human form, are also found in the same
graves; but, so far as my own opportunities of observation enable me to
judge, the human figure generally exhibits inferior imitative skill and
execution to the representations of other animate subjects. But all
alike display abundant metallurgic art. Soldering as well as casting was
known to the ancient goldsmith, and the finer specimens have been
finished with the hammer and graving-tool. Judging from the condition of
the human remains found in those huacas of the peninsula, they are
probably of a much higher antiquity than the era of Mexican
civilisation; and lying as they do in the narrow isthmus between the
twin continents, they suggest the probability of a common source for the
origin of Peruvian and Aztec arts.
But while the Mexicans wrought their ingenious toys, lavished their
inexhaustible resources of gold and silver in personal decoration, and
adorned their public edifices with scarcely less boundless profusion
than the Peruvians, they had learned to some extent the practical value
of gold and other metals as a convenient currency. By means of this
equivalent for the gold and silver coinage of Europe, the interchange of
commodities in the great markets of Mexico was facilitated, and an
important step in the progress towards a higher stage of civilisation
secured. This metallic currency consisted of pieces of tin cut in the
form of a =T= or stamped with a similar character, and of transparent
quills filled with gold dust. These were apparently regulated to a
common standard by their size: for the use of scales and weights, with
which the Peruvians were familiar, appears to have been unknown in
Mexico.
The nature of the Mexican currency accords with the knowledge and
experience of a people among whom metallurgic arts were of comparatively
recent origin. The easily fused tin, and the attractive and accessible
gold-dust, supplied ready materials for schooling the ingenious
metallurgist in the use of the metals. Copper was probably first
employed when found in a pure metallic state, as among the old miners of
Lake Superior; while the art of fusing, taught by the Aztec Tubal-Cain,
was tried only on the readily-yielding tin. By this means the arts of
smelting and moulding the ores would be acquired, and applied to copper,
silver, and gold, as well as to tin. Accident might suggest the next
important stage, that of metallic alloys; but under the circumstances
alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, progressing in regions
abounding with the most attractive and easily-wrought metals, it is not
difficult to conceive of the independent discovery of the useful bronze
alloy. Yet by the standard composition of their bronze, far more than by
the ingenious intricacy of their personal ornaments, utensils, and
architectural decorations, the actual progress of the Incas or of the
Aztecs may fairly be tested. The delight of the savage in personal
adornment precedes even the needful covering of his nakedness, and the
same propensity long monopolises the whole inventive ingenuity of a
semi-barbarous people; while the useful bronze tools embody the true
germs of incipient civilisation. Tested by such a standard, the
metallurgic arts of Peru furnish evidence of very partial development.
The alloy of copper and tin, when destined for practical use in
manufacture, is found to possess the most serviceable qualities when
composed of about ninety per cent. of copper to ten of tin; and so near
is the approximation to this theoretical standard among the bronze
relics of the ancient world, that the archæologists of Europe have been
divided in opinion as to whether they should assume a Phœnician or other
common origin for the weapons, implements, and personal ornaments of
that metal found over the whole continent; or that the mixed metal,
derived from a common centre, was manufactured in various countries of
Europe into the objects of diverse form and pattern abounding in their
soil, or deposited among their sepulchral offerings.
But the approximation to a uniform alloy is no more than would
inevitably result from the experience of the extreme brittleness
resulting from any undue excess of the tin. Accident, or the natural
proximity of the metals or ores, as they occur in the mineral regions of
England, may have furnished the first disclosure of the important
secret. But that once discovered, the subsequent steps were inevitable.
Having ascertained that he could produce a harder and more useful
compound than the pure copper by alloying it with tin, the native
metallurgist would not fail to vary the proportions of the latter till
he had obtained a sufficiently near approximation to the best bronze, to
answer the purposes for which it was designed. No interchange of
experience was necessary to lead the metallurgists of remote regions to
similar results; nor would a closer correspondence between the
proportionate ingredients of the native American and European bronze
than has yet been detected, indicate more than common aims, and the
inevitable experience, consequent on the properties of the varying
alloy, leading to corresponding results.
The following table of analyses of ancient European bronze relics will
suffice to show how little foundation there is for the assumption of any
common origin for the alloy of which they were made; and the
corresponding evidence of proportionate ingredients disclosed by
analyses of native American bronzes, disproves the theory of any
European or other foreign source for the metallurgic arts of the New
World.
ANALYSES OF ANCIENT BRONZES.
No.│ │Coppe│Tin. │Lead.│Iron.│Silve
│ │ r. │ │ │ │ r.
1.│Caldron, Berwickshire, │92·89│ 5·15│ 1·78│ │
2.│Sword, Duddingston, │88·51│ 9·30│ 2·30│ │
3.│Kettle, Berwickshire │88·22│ 5·63│ 5·88│ │
4.│Axe-head, Mid-Lothian, │88·05│11·12│ 0·78│ │
5.│Caldron, Duddingston, │84·08│ 7·19│ 8·53│ │
6.│Palstave, Fifeshire, │81·19│18·31│ 0·75│ │
7.│Vessel, Ireland, │88·00│12·00│ │ │
8.│Wedge, ” │94·00│ 5·09│ │ 0·01│
9.│Sword, ” │88·63│ 8·54│ 2·83│ │
10.│Sword, ” │83·50│ 5·15│ 8·35│ 3·00│
11.│Lituus, Lincolnshire, │88·00│12·00│ │ │
12.│Roman patella, ” │86·00│14·00│ │ │
13.│Spear-head, ” │86·00│14·00│ │ │
14.│Scabbard, ” │90·00│10·00│ │ │
15.│Axe palstave, Cumberland, │91·00│ 9·00│ │ │
16.│Axe-head, ” │88·00│12·00│ │ │
17.│Vessel, Cambridgeshire, │88·00│12·00│ │ │
18.│Axe-head, Ireland, │91·00│ 9·00│ │ │
19.│Sword, Thames, │89·69│ 9·58│ │ 0·33│
20.│Sword, Ireland, │85·62│10·02│ │ 0·44│
21.│Celt, ” │90·68│ 7·43│ 1·28│ │
22.│Axe-head, ” │90·18│ 9·81│ │ │
23.│Axe-head, ” │89·33│ 9·19│ │ │
24.│Celt, ” │83·61│10·79│ 3·20│ 0·58│
25.│Celt, King’s Co., Ireland,│85·23│13·11│ 1·14│ │
26.│Drinking-horn, ” ” │79·34│10·87│ 9·11│ │
27.│Celt, Co. Cavan, ” │86·98│12·57│ │ │ 0·37
28.│Celt, ” │98·74│ 1·09│ │ 0·08│ 0·06
29.│Celt, Co. Wicklow, ” │88·30│10·92│ 0·10│ │
30.│Celt, Co. Cavan, ” │95·64│ 4·56│ 0·25│ │ 0·02
31.│Spear-head, ” │86·28│12·74│ 0·07│ 0·31│
32.│Spear-head, ” │84·64│14·01│ │ │
33.│Scythe, Roscommon, ” │95·85│ 2·78│ 0·12│ 1·32│
34.│Sword-handle, ” │87·07│ 8·52│ 3·37│ │
35.│Sword, ” │87·94│11·35│ 0·28│ │
36.│Dagger, ” │90·72│ 8·25│ 0·87│ │
37.│Chisel, ” │91·03│ 8·39│ │ │
38.│Caldron, ” │88·71│ 9·46│ 1·66│ 0·03│
39.│Sword, France, │87·47│12·53│ │ │
40.│Spear-head, Northumberland, │91·12│ 7·97│ 0·77│ │
Nos. 1-6. Dr. George Wilson.
7-8. Dr. J. H. Gibbon, U.S. Mint.
9-10. Professor Davy.
11-18. Dr. Pearson, _Philosoph. Trans._ 1796.
19-24. J. A. Philips, _Mém. Chem. Soc._, iv. p. 288.
25, 26. Dr. Donovan, _Chem. Gazette_, 1850, p. 176.
27-38. Mr. J. W. Mallet, _Transactions R. I. A._ vol.
xxii. p. 325.
39. Mongez, _Mém. de l’Institut_.
40. Dr. E. Macadam, _Proceed. S. A. Scot._ viii. 300.
In No. 31 is also Cobalt, ·09; in No. 37, Antimony, ·04; and in
No. 41, Arsenic, ·03.
From the varied results which so many analyses disclose, ranging as they
do from 79 to 98 per cent. of copper; as well as from the diversity of
the ingredients: it is abundantly obvious that no greater uniformity is
traceable, than might be expected to result from the operations of
isolated metallurgists, very partially acquainted with the chemical
properties of the standard alloy, and guided for the most part by the
experience derived from successive results of their manufacture. It is
thus apparent that the various exigencies of the metallurgist, under the
control of a very ordinary amount of practical skill, would lead to the
determination of the best proportions for this useful alloy; though it
would only be after the accumulated fruits of isolated experiment had
been combined, that anything more than some crude approximation to the
best composition of bronze would be determined. Hence the value of
analytical evidence in determining the degree of civilisation of Mexico
and Peru, as indicated by their metallurgic arts. For the general
requirements of a tool, or weapon of war, where a sufficient hardness
must be obtained without any great liability to fracture, the best
proportions proved to be about 90 per cent. of copper to 10 of tin; or
with a small proportion of lead in lieu of part of the tin: which, as
further experience taught the primitive worker in bronze, communicates
to the cutting instrument a greater degree of toughness, and
consequently diminishes its liability to fracture. But where great
hardness is the chief requisite, as in certain engraving, carving, and
gem-cutting tools, the mere increase of tin in the alloy supplies the
requisite quality: until the excessive brittleness of the product gives
warning that the true limit has been exceeded. In this, I doubt not,
lies the whole secret of Mexican and Peruvian metallurgy, which has
seemed so mysterious, and therefore so marvellous to the most sagacious
inquirers.
The following table furnishes the results of analyses of various ancient
American bronzes. Few as the examples are, they afford definite
illustration of the subject under review, and supply some means of
comparison with the data already furnished relative to the ancient
bronzes of Europe.
ANALYSES OF ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES.
No.│ │Copper. │ Tin. │ Iron.
1.│Chisel from silver mines,│94· │6· │
│Cuzco, │ │ │
2.│Chisel from Cuzco, │92·385 │7·615 │
3.│Knife from grave, │97·87 │2·13 │
│Atacama, │ │ │
4.│Knife ” ” │96· │4· │
5.│Crowbar from Chili, │92·385 │7·615 │
6.│Knife from Amaro, │95·664 │3·965 │0·371
7.│Perforated axe, │96· │4· │
8.│Personal ornament, │95·440 │4·560 │
│Truigilla, │ │ │
9.│Bodkin from female grave,│96·70 │3·30 │
│do., │ │ │
Nos. 1. Humboldt.
2. Dr. J. H. Gibbon.
3, 4. J. H. Blake, Esq.
5. Dr. T. C. Jackson.
6, 7. Dr. H. Croft.
8, 9. T. Ewbank, Esq.
The comparison of this with the previous table indicates a smaller
amount of tin in the American bronze than in that of ancient Europe. For
some Egyptian spear-heads Gmelin gives, copper 77·60, tin 22·02; and the
composition of ancient weapons, armour, vessels, and coins, seems to
indicate such a systematic variation of proportions as implies the
result of experience in adapting the alloy for the specific purpose in
view. A much larger number of analyses would be desirable as data from
which to generalise on the metallurgic skill developed independently by
native American civilisation; but the examples adduced seem to show that
there is no lost secret for Europe to discover.
The native metallurgist had learned the art of alloying his ductile
copper with the still softer tin, and producing by their chemical
admixture a harder, tougher metal than either. But he does not appear to
have carried his observation so far as to ascertain the most efficient
proportions of the combining metals; or even to have made any very
definite approximation to a fixed rule, further than to use with great
moderation the alloying tin. He had discovered, but not entirely
mastered, a wonderful secret, such as in the ancient world had proved to
lie at the threshold of all higher truths in mechanical arts. He was
undoubtedly advancing, slowly but surely, on the direct course of
national elevation; and the centuries which have followed since the
conquests of Cortes and Pizarro might have witnessed in the New World
triumphs not less marvellous in the progress of civilisation than those
which distinguish the England of Victoria from that of the first Tudor.
But native science and art were abruptly arrested in their progress by
the Spanish conquistadors; and it is difficult to realise the conviction
that either Mexico or Peru has gained any adequate equivalent for the
loss which thus debars us from the solution of some of the most
interesting problems connected with the progress of the human race. Amid
all the exclusiveness of China, and the isolation of Japan, there is
still an unknown quantity among the elements of their civilisation
derived from the same sources as our own. But the America of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was literally another world, securely
guarded from external influences. Nevertheless while all appears to have
been self-originated, we meet everywhere with affinities to the arts of
man elsewhere, and trace out the processes by which he has been guided,
from the first promptings of a rational instinct to the intelligent
development of many later steps of reason and experience.
-----
[78] _Méms. Chemical Society_, vol. iv. p. 288.
[79] _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, vol. vi. p. 357.
[80] _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_ (2d ed.), vol. i. p. 319.
[81] _Proceedings_, _B. N. H. S._, vol. v., p. 63.
[82] Anahuac, p. 153.