NATIVE AMERICAN CIVILISATION.
THE TOLTECS—IXTLILXOCHITL—THE AZTECS—AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE—
AZTALAN—THE VALLEY OF MEXICO—MONTEZUMA’S CAPITAL—ITS VANISHED
SPLENDOUR—MEXICAN CALENDAR—THE CALENDAR STONE—MEXICAN DEITIES
—TOLTEC CIVILISATION—RACE ELEMENTS—THE TOLTEC CAPITAL—
TEZCUCAN PALACES—THEIR MODERN VESTIGES—QUETZALCOATL—THE
PYRAMID OF CHOLULA—THE SACRED CITY—THE MOQUI INDIANS—THE HOLY
CITY OF PERU—WORSHIP OF THE SUN—ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE—
AGRICULTURE—THE LLAMA—WOVEN TEXTURES—SCIENCE AND ART—NATIVE
INSTITUTIONS—METALLURGY—ORIGIN OF THE MEXICANS—MINGLING OF
RACES.
The Toltecs play a part in the initial pages of the New World’s story
akin to the fabled Cyclops of antiquity. They belong to that vague era
which lies beyond all definite records, and furnish a name for the
historian and the ethnologist alike to conjure with: like the Druids or
the Picts of the old British antiquary, or the Phœnicians of his
American disciple. Yet it is not without its value thus to discover
among the nations of the New World, even a fabulous history, with its
possible fragments of truth embodied in the myth. Mr. Gallatin has
compiled a laborious digest of the successive migrations and dynasties
of Mexico, as chronicled from elder sources, by Ixtlilxochitl, Sahagun,
Veytia, Clavigero, the Mendoza Collection, the Codex Tellurianus, and
Acosta.[92] The oldest dates bring the Toltec wanderers to
Huehuetlapallan, A.D. 387, and close their dynasty in the middle of the
tenth century; when they are superseded by Chichimecas and Tezcucans,
whose joint sovereignty, by the unanimous concurrence of authorities,
endured till the sixteenth century. But, meanwhile, the same authorities
chronicle the foundation of Mexico or Tenochtitlan, variously in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, by Aztec conquerors; and profess to
supply the dynastic chronology of Aztec power. The earliest date is not
too remote for the commencement of a civilisation that has left such
evidences of its later maturity; but unfortunately the various
authorities differ not by years only, but by centuries. Ixtlilxochitl
carries back the founding of Mexico upwards of a century farther than
any other authority; and in the succeeding date, which professes to fix
the election of its king, Acamapichtli, the discrepancies between him
and other authorities vary from two to considerably more than two and a
half centuries, and leave on the mind of the critical student
impressions as unsubstantial as those pertaining to the regal dynasties
of Alban and Sabine Rome. Spanish chroniclers and modern historians have
striven to piece into coherent details the successive migrations into
the Vale of Anahuac, and the desertion of the mythic Aztalan for the
final seat of Aztec empire on the lake of Tezcuco; but their shadowy
history marshals before us only shapes vague as the legends of the
engulfed Atlantis.
There is something suggestive of doubt relative to much else that is
greatly more modern, to find the historian of the Conquest of Mexico
tracing down the migrations and conquests of the Toltecs from the
seventh till the twelfth century, when the Acolhuans or Tezcucans, the
Aztecs, and others, superseded them in the Great Valley. We turn to the
foot-notes, so abundant in the carefully elaborated narrative of
Prescott, and we find his chief or sole authority is the christianised
half-breed Don Fernando de Alva, or Ixtlilxochitl, who held the office
of Indian interpreter of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the beginning
of the seventeenth century. Compared with such an authority, Bede should
be indisputable as to the details of Hengist and Horsa’s migrations, and
Geoffrey of Monmouth may be quoted implicitly for the history of
Arthur’s reign.
But the Aztecs, at any rate, are no mythic or fabulous race. The
conquest of their land belongs to the glories of Charles V., and is
contemporary with what Europe reckons as part of its modern history. The
letters of its conqueror are still extant; the gossiping yet graphic
marvels of his campaigns, ascribed to the pen of Bernal Diaz, a soldier
of the Conquest, have been diligently ransacked for collation and
supplementary detail; and the ecclesiastical chroniclers of Mexican
conquest and colonisation, have all contributed to the materials out of
which Prescott has woven his fascinating picture of Hernando Cortes and
his great life-work. It is a marvellous historical panorama, glittering
with a splendour as of the mosques and palaces of Old Granada. But a
growing inclination is felt to test the Spanish chroniclers by surviving
relics of that past which they have clothed for us in more than oriental
magnificence; and, for this purpose, to relume that curious phase of
native civilisation which the Conquest abruptly ended. Yucatan and
Central America still reveal indisputable memorials of an era of native
architectural skill, to which attention must be directed. But,
meanwhile, it is important to note that an assumed correspondence
between the architecture of Central America and that which is affirmed
to have existed in Mexico at the time of the Conquest constitutes the
basis of many fallacious arguments on the nature and extent of Aztec
civilisation in the era of the second Montezuma. Again, the conflicting
elements apparent between the barbarous rites and cannibalism ascribed
to the Aztecs, and the evidences of their matured arts and high
civilisation, have been the plentiful source of theories as to Toltecan
and other earlier derivations for all that pertained to such
manifestations of intellect and inventive genius. It is important,
therefore, to determine the actual character of Mexican architecture.
The remains of the extinct Mound-Builders are full of wonder for us; but
the reputed magnificence of Montezuma’s capital throws their earthworks
into the shade, as things pertaining to America’s childhood. Before,
however, this conclusion can be accepted, it is indispensable that we
test, by existing evidence, the descriptions of Mexican art and
architecture handed down to us by chroniclers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
A peculiar style is recognised as pertaining to the native architecture
of America, which it has been the favourite fancy of American
antiquaries to trace to an Egyptian or Phœnician source. Alike in
general character and mode of construction, in the style of sculpture,
and the hieroglyphic decorations which enrich their walls: the ruined
palaces and temples of Mexico, as well as of Yucatan and Central
America, have been supposed to reproduce striking characteristics of the
Nile valley. But the experienced eye of Stephens saw only elements of
contrast instead of comparison; and while Prescott sums up his history
of Mexican conquest with this conclusion, “that the coincidences are
sufficiently strong to authorise a belief that the civilisation of
Anahuac was, in some degree, influenced by that of eastern Asia,” he
adds, that the discrepancies are such as to carry back the communication
to a period so remote as to leave its civilisation, in all its essential
features, peculiar and indigenous.
It is not always easy to determine the characteristics of some of the
most famous monuments of Mexican art. The ruined city of Aztalan, on the
western prairies: after filling the imagination with glowing fancies of
a Baalbek or Palmyra of the New World, from whence the Aztecs had
transplanted the arts of an obliterated civilisation to the Mexican
plateau, shrunk before the gaze of a truthful surveyor into a mere group
of mounds and earthworks, presenting no other analogies than those which
class them with the works of the American Mound-Builders. It may be,
however, that a critical survey will reveal traits in the later Aztecs
of Anahuac, rendering such an ancestral birth-land not wholly
inconsistent with their actual condition when brought into contact with
the civilisation of Europe. Such at least seems to be the tendency of
modern disclosures; if, indeed, they do not point to the possibility
that much even of the latest phase of Mexican civilisation may present
closer analogies to the actual Aztalan of the Wisconsin prairies than to
the fancied mother-city of the Aztecs.
Midway across the continent of North America, where it narrows towards a
point between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, the civilisation of
the New World appears to have converged at the close of the fifteenth
century. Here the traveller from the Atlantic coast, after passing
through gorgeous tropical flowers and aromatic shrubs of the deadly
_tierra caliente_, emerges at length into a purer atmosphere. The
vanilla, the indigo, and flowering cacao-groves are gradually left
behind. The sugar-cane and the banana next disappear; and he looks down
through the gorges of the elevated _tierra templada_ on the vegetation
of the tropics, carpeting, and scenting with its luscious but deadly
odours, the region which stretches along the Mexican Gulf. Higher still
are regions where the wheat and other grains of Europe’s temperate zone
replace the tall native maize; until at length he enters the _tierra
fria_: climbing a succession of terraces representing every zone of
temperature, till he rests on the summit of the Cordillera. Beyond this
the volcanic peaks of the Andes tower into the regions of perpetual
snow; while the traveller crosses the once thickly-wooded table-land
into the valley of Mexico: an oval basin about sixty-seven leagues in
circumference, and elevated beyond the deadly malaria and enervating
heat of the coast, into a temperate climate, nearly seven thousand five
hundred feet above the sea. Here, encompassed by the salt marshes of the
Tezcucan Lake, stood the ancient Tenochtitlan or Mexico, “The Venice of
the Aztecs.”
In the month of October 1519, Don Diego de Ordaz effected the ascent of
the volcanic Popocatepetl, from whence he beheld the valley of Mexico
with its curious chain of lakes; and caught a glimpse of the far-famed
capital of Montezuma, with its white towers and pyramidal teocallis
reflecting back the sun from their stuccoed walls. The scene seemed to
realise such a dream of romance as Bernal Diaz reports of Cempoal: “The
Buildings,” he says, “having been lately whitewashed and plastered, one
of our horsemen was so struck with the splendour of their appearance in
the sun, that he came back in full speed to Cortes to tell him that the
walls of the houses were of silver!” The men of that generation which
witnessed the discoveries of mighty empires, and an El Dorado beyond the
known limits of the world, had their imaginations expanded to the
reception of any conceivable wonders. Sir Thomas More constructed his
_Utopia_ out of such materials; and Othello styles his wonderful
relations “of antres vast and deserts idle,” a “traveller’s history.”
The poetical imagination of Columbus was one of the sources of his
power, whereby he anticipated with undoubting faith the realisation of
his grand life-work. But from the position in which Cortes was placed,
it was his interest to give currency to the highly-coloured visions of
his first pioneers, rather than to transmit to Europe the colder
narrative of matured experience. Approaching the Mexican capital, he
exclaims in his first burst of enthusiasm: “We could compare it to
nothing but the enchanted scenes we had read of in _Amadis de Gaul_,
from the great towers and temples, and other edifices of lime and stone
which seemed to rise up out of the water.” To achieve the recognised
mastery of this scene of enchantment, he had not only to conquer its
Mexican lords, but to defeat his Spanish foes, and to win to his side
that Emperor who, while shaping Europe’s history in one of its mightiest
revolutions, could control the destinies of the New World. When reading
the accounts transmitted to Spain of the gorgeous treasures of
Montezuma’s palaces, we have to bear in remembrance that the treasures
themselves perished in the retreat of the _noche triste_, as the city
itself vanished in the final siege and capture. The very dreams of an
excited imagination could become realities of the past to the narrators
themselves, when every test of their truth had been swept away.
On the 9th of November 1519, Cortes made his first entry into the
capital of Montezuma, and from thence he wrote to the Emperor Charles
V., giving an account of the Indian metropolis, with its palaces and
stately mansions, far surpassing in grandeur and beauty the ancient
Moorish capital of Cordova. Conduits of solid masonry supplied the city
with water, and furnished means of maintaining hanging-gardens luxurious
as those of ancient Babylon. “There is one place,” says Cortes,
“somewhat inferior to the rest, attached to which is a beautiful garden
with balconies extending over it, supported by marble columns, and
having a floor formed of jasper elegantly inlaid”; and he adds, “Within
the city, the palaces of the cacique Montezuma are so wonderful that it
is hardly possible to describe their beauty and extent. I can only say
that in Spain there is nothing equal to them.” The population of ancient
Mexico, “the greatest and noblest city of the whole New World,” as
Cortes styles it, amounted, according to the lowest computation of its
conquerors, to three hundred thousand; and its streets and canals were
illuminated at night by the blaze from the altars of numberless
teocallis that reared their pyramidal summits in the streets and squares
of what Prescott fitly calls “this city of enchantment.” Vast causeways,
defended by drawbridges, and wide enough for ten or twelve horsemen to
ride abreast, attracted the admiring wonder of the Spaniards by the
skill and geometrical precision with which they were constructed. “The
great street facing the southern causeway was wide, and extended some
miles in nearly a straight line through the centre of the city. A
spectator standing at one end of it, as his eye ranged along the deep
vista of temples, terraces, and gardens, might clearly discern the
other, with the blue mountains in the distance, which, in the
transparent atmosphere of the table-land, seemed almost in contact with
the buildings.”[93] Near the centre of the city rose a huge pyramidal
pile, dedicated to the war-god of the Aztecs, the tutelary deity of the
city: second in size only to the great pyramid-temple of Cholula, and
occupying the area on which now stands the Cathedral of modern Mexico.
Beyond the Lake of Tezcuco stood the rival capital of that name,
resplendent with a corresponding grandeur and magnificence; and the
whole Mexican valley burst on the eyes of the conquerors as a beautiful
vision, glittering with towns and villages, with rich gardens, and broad
lakes crowded with the canoes of a thriving and busy populace.
Three centuries and a half have intervened since Cortes entered the
gorgeous capital of Montezuma; and what remains now of its ancient
splendour, of the wonders of its palaces, the massive grandeur of its
temples, or the cyclopean solidity of its conduits and causeways?
Literally, not a vestige. The city of Constantine has preserved, in
spite of all the destructive vicissitudes of siege and overthrow,
enduring memorials of the grandeur that pertained to the Byzantine
capital more than a thousand years ago. Rome has been sacked by Goth,
Hun, Lombard, and Frank; yet memorials not only of three or four
centuries, but of generations before the Christian era, survive. Even
Jerusalem appears to have some stones of her ancient walls still left
one upon another. In spite, therefore, of the narrative of desolating
erasure which describes to us the final siege and capture of Mexico, we
must assume its edifices and causeways to have been for the most part
more slight and fragile than the description of its conquerors implies,
or some evidences of such extensive and solid masonry must have survived
to our time. Yet if we look in vain for its architectural remains,
evidence of another kind shows what its civilisation really was. Mr.
Tylor describes the ploughed fields around it as yielding such abundance
of obsidian arrow-heads, pottery, and clay figures, that it is
impossible to tread on any spot where there is no relic of old Mexico
within reach. He left England full of doubts as to the credibility of
the historians of the conquest; but personal observation inclines him
rather “to blame the chroniclers for having had no eyes for the
wonderful things that surrounded them.”[94]
One trustworthy memorial of this native civilisation is the famous
Calendar Stone: a huge circular block of dark porphyry, disinterred in
1790 in the great square of Mexico, which discloses evidence of progress
in astronomical science altogether wonderful in a people among whom
civilisation was in other respects so partially developed. The Mexicans
had a solar year of 365 days divided into eighteen months of twenty days
each, with the five complementary days added to the last. The
discrepancy between the actual time of the sun’s annual path through the
heavens and their imperfect year, was regulated by the intercalation of
thirteen days at the end of every fifty-second year. According to Gama,
who differs from Humboldt on this point, the civil day was divided into
sixteen parts; and he conceives the Calendar to have been constructed as
a vertical sundial. Mexican drawings also indicate that the Aztecs were
acquainted with the cause of eclipses. But beyond this our means of
ascertaining the extent of their astronomical knowledge fail; while
there is proof that their inquiries were zealously directed to the more
favoured speculations of the astrologer, which have supplanted true
science in all primitive stages of society. Mr. Stephens drew attention
to
[Illustration: FIG. 74.—Mask, Mexican Calendar Stone.]
points of correspondence between the central device on the Calendar
Stone, and a mask, with widely expanded eyes and tongue hanging out,
prominent in the curious sacrificial scene sculptured on the Casa de
Piedra at Palenque. But the correspondence amounts to little more than
this, that each is a gigantic mask with protruding tongue. That of the
Calendar Stone is engraved here from a cast brought home by Mr. Bullock,
and now in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The
statues dug up along with it on the site of the great teocalli of
Mexico, were buried in the court of the University, to place them beyond
reach of the idolatrous rites which the Indians were inclined to pay to
them. At the solicitation of Mr. Bullock they were again disinterred, to
admit of his obtaining casts; and he furnishes this interesting account
of the sensation excited by the restoration to light of the largest and
most celebrated of the Mexican deities:—“During the time it was
exposed, the court of the University was crowded with people, most of
whom expressed the most decided anger and contempt. Not so, however, all
the Indians. I attentively marked their countenances. Not a smile
escaped them, or even a word. All was silence and attention. In reply to
a joke of one of the students, an old Indian remarked, ‘It is very true
we have three very good Spanish gods, but we might still have been
allowed to keep a few of those of our ancestors!’ And I was informed
that chaplets of flowers had been placed on the figure by natives who
had stolen thither unseen in the evening.”[95]
[Illustration: FIG. 75.—Ticul Hieroglyphic Vase.]
The figure which thus reawakened patriotic sympathies in the descendants
of Montezuma’s subjects is a rude disproportioned idol, strikingly
contrasting with the elaborate hieroglyphical devices and
well-proportioned figures and decorations which accompany the grotesque
mask in the Casa de Piedra of Palenque. In the latter, the principal
human figures present the remarkable profile of the ancient Central
American race, as shown on a vase dug up among the ruins of Ticul (Fig.
75), with the prominent nose, retreating forehead and chin, and
protruding under-lip, so essentially different from the features either
of the Mexicans or northern Indians. The subject race on whom they tread
are characterised by a diverse profile, with overhanging brows, a Roman
nose, and a well-defined chin; while their costume is equally indicative
of a different origin.
But the sculpture of the Mexican Calendar Stone embodies evidence of an
amount of knowledge and skill not less interesting for us than the
mysterious hieroglyphics of the Palenque tablets; and was believed by
Humboldt to indicate unmistakable relations to the ancient science of
south-eastern Asia. Mr. Stephens has printed a curious exposition of the
chronology of Yucatan, derived from native sources by Don Juan Pio
Perez. From the correspondence of their mode of computing time with that
adopted by the Mexicans, he assumes that it probably originated with
them; but at the same time he remarks that the inhabitants of Mayapan,
as the Peninsula was called at the period of Spanish invasion, divided
time by calculating it almost in the same manner as their ancestors the
Toltecs, differing only in the particular arrangement of their great
cycles. Their year commenced on the 16th of July, an error of only
forty-eight hours in advance of the precise day in which the sun returns
there to the zenith, on his way to the south, and sufficiently near for
astronomers who had to make their observations with the naked eye. Their
calendar thus presents evidence of native and local origin. According to
Humboldt, the Mexican year began in the corresponding winter half of the
year, ranging from the 9th to the 28th of January; but Clavigero places
its commencement from the 14th to the 26th of February.
If my ideas as to a marked inferiority in the terra-cottas and
sculptures of the Mexicans, and the very questionable proofs of their
architectural achievements, are correct, they tend to confirm the
inference, that not to the Aztecs, but to their more civilised Toltec
predecessors, must be ascribed that remarkable astronomical knowledge in
the arrangement of their calendar, which exhibits a precision in the
adjustment of civil to solar time, such as only a few of the most
civilised nations of the Old World had attained to at that date. But, so
far as an indigenous American civilisation is concerned, it matters
little whether it be ascribed to Toltec or Aztec origin. Of its
existence no doubt can be entertained; and there is little more room for
questioning, that among races who had carried civilisation so far, there
existed the capacity for its further development, independently of all
borrowed aid. The fierce Dane and Norman seemed to offer equally little
promise of intellectual progress in their first encroachments on the
insular Saxon. But out of such elements sprung the race which
outstripped the Spaniard in making of the land of Columbus a New World;
and, left to its own natural progress, the valley of Anahuac, with its
mingling races, might have proved a source of intellectual life to the
whole continent. But modern Mexico has displaced the ancient capital of
Montezuma; cathedral, convents, and churches, have usurped the sites of
Aztec teocallis; its canals have disappeared, and its famous causeways
are no longer laved by the waters of the Tezcucan Lake. It is even
denied by those who have personally surveyed the site, that the waters
of the lake can ever have overflowed the marshes around the modern
capital, or stood at a much nearer point to it than they do at
present.[96] Fresh doubts seem to accumulate around its mythic story.
The ruined masonry of its vanished palaces and temples may be assumed to
have been all swallowed up in the edifices which combine to make of the
modern capital so striking an object, amid the strange scenery of its
elevated tropical valley. But Mexico was not the only city, nor even the
only great capital, of the valley.
In attempting to trace back the history of the remarkable population
found in occupation of the Mexican territory when first invaded by the
Spaniards, we learn, by means of various sources of information already
referred to, but chiefly on the authority of Ixtlilxochitl’s professed
interpretations of picture-writings, no longer in existence; and of
traditions of old men, concerning events reaching back from seven or
eight, even to twelve centuries before their own time: that the Toltecs,
advancing from some unknown region of the north, entered the territory
of Anahuac, “probably before the close of the seventh century.” They
were, according to their historian, already skilled in agriculture and
the mechanical arts, familiar with metallurgy, and endowed with all the
knowledge and experience out of which grew the civilisation of Anahuac
in later ages. In the time of the Conquest, extensive ruins are said to
have indicated the site of their ancient capital of Tula, to the north
of the Mexican valley. The tradition of such ruined cities adds
confirmation to the inferences derived from those more recently explored
in regions to the south; and still the name of Toltec in New Spain is
synonymous with _architect_: the mythic designation of a shadowy race,
such as glances fitfully across the first chapters of legendary history
among the most ancient nations of Europe. But subsequent to those
Pelasgi of the New World, there followed from unknown regions of the
north the Chichimecas, the Tepanecs, the Acolhuans or Tezcucans, the
Aztecs of Mexicans, and other inferior tribes; so that, as we approach a
more definite period of history, we learn of a league between the States
of Mexico and Tezcuco and the kingdom of Tlacopan, under which the Aztec
capital grew into the marvellous city of temples and palaces described
by Cortes and his followers. But Don Fernando de Alva claimed descent on
his mother’s side from the Imperial race of Tezcuco; and he has not
failed to preserve, or to create the memorials of the glory of that
imperial city of the laguna. It contained upwards of four hundred
stately edifices for the nobles. The magnificent palace of the Tezcucan
emperor “extended from east to west, twelve hundred and thirty-four
yards, and, from north to south, nine hundred and seventy-eight. It was
encompassed by a wall of unburnt bricks and cement, six feet wide and
nine high for one-half of the circumference, and fifteen feet high for
the other half. Within this enclosure were two courts. The outer one was
used as the great market-place of the city, and continued to be so until
long after the Conquest. The interior court was surrounded by the
council-chambers and halls of justice. There were also accommodation
there for foreign ambassadors; and a spacious saloon, with apartments
opening into it, for men of science and poets, who pursued their studies
in this retreat, or met together to hold converse under its marble
porticoes.”[97] In this style the native historian describes the glory
of ancient Tezcuco. A lordly pile, provided for the fitting
accommodation of the sovereigns of Mexico and Tlacopan, contained three
hundred apartments, including some fifty yards square. Solid materials
of stone and marble were liberally employed both on this and on the
apartments of the royal harem, the walls of which were incrusted with
alabasters and richly tinted stucco, or hung with gorgeous tapestries of
variegated feather-work. Some two leagues distant, at Tezcotzinco, was
the favourite residence of the sovereign; on a hill, “laid out in
terraces, or hanging-gardens, having a flight of five hundred and twenty
steps, many of them hewn in the natural porphyry. In the garden on the
summit was a reservoir of water, fed by an aqueduct carried over hill
and valley for several miles on huge buttresses of masonry. A large rock
stood in the midst of this basin, sculptured with hieroglyphics
representing the years of Nezahualcoyotl’s reign, and his principal
achievements in each. On a lower level were three other reservoirs, in
each of which stood a marble statue of a woman, emblematic of the three
estates of the empire. Another tank contained a winged lion,”—but here
the modern historian grows incredulous, and appends a (?) before
proceeding in accordance with his authorities to add—“cut out of the
solid rock, bearing in his mouth the portrait of the emperor.”
The authority for all this wrote in the beginning of the seventeenth
century; but his narrative receives some confirmation from architectural
remains still visible on the hill of Tezcotzinco. They are referred to
by Latrobe and Bullock as relics of an era greatly more remote than that
of Aztec civilisation; and more recently Mr. Tylor describes the hill of
Tezcotzinco as terraced, and traversed by numerous roads and flights of
steps cut in the rock. It is connected with another hill by an aqueduct
of immense size constructed with blocks of porphyry, and with its
channel lined with a hard stucco, still very perfect. Baths also remain,
cut out of the solid rock; and on the summit of the hill, overlooking
the ancient city, sculptured blocks of stone furnish evidence that the
tales of architectural magnificence are not wholly fabulous. Mr.
Christy, his travelling companion, made excavations in the neighbouring
mounds, and was rewarded by the discovery of some fine idols of hard
stone, and “an infinitude of pottery and small objects.” But the spirit
of Spanish romance still asserts its influence. Bullock, in his _Six
Months in Mexico_, describes the remains of the royal fountain of
Tezcotzinco as a “beautiful basin, twelve feet long by eight wide,
having a well five feet by four deep in the centre”; while Latrobe, in
his _Rambles in Mexico_, reduces the dimensions of the royal bath to
“perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, not large enough for any
monarch bigger than Oberon to take a duck in!”
Of the great pyramid or teocalli of Huitzilopotchtli in old Mexico, no
vestige now remains, unless such as is reputed to lie buried under the
foundations of the cathedral which occupies its site. But time and fate
have dealt more tenderly with the scarcely less famous pyramid of
Cholula. The ancient city of that name, when first seen by Cortes, was
said to include, within and without its walls, about forty thousand
houses, or according to ordinary rules of computation, two hundred
thousand inhabitants. But whatever its ancient population may have been,
while the fruits of Spanish conquest have advanced it to the rank of
capital of the republic of Cholula, they have left only sixteen thousand
as the number of its occupants. Still, Cholula was unquestionably one of
the most famous of the cities of the New World: a sacred Mecca for the
pilgrims of Anahuac.
Quetzalcoatl, the milder god of the Aztec pantheon, whose worship was
performed by offerings of fruits and flowers in their season, was
venerated as the divine teacher of the arts of peace. His reign on earth
was the golden age of Anahuac, when its people learned from him
agriculture, metallurgy, and the art of government. But their
benefactor, according to the tradition handed down to the Aztecs by an
elder people whom they had superseded, incurred the wrath of another of
the gods. As he passed on his way to abandon the land to the rule of the
terrible Huitzilopotchtli, he paused at the city of Cholula; and while
he tarried there, the great teocalli was reared and dedicated to his
worship. But the benevolent deity could not remain within reach of the
avenger. After spending twenty years among them, teaching the people the
arts of civilisation, he proceeded onward till he reached the ocean; and
there embarking in a vessel, made of serpents’ skins, his followers
watched his retreating bark on its way to the sacred isle of Tlapallan.
But the tradition lived on among the Mexicans that the bark of the good
deity would revisit their shores; and this fondly cherished belief
materially contributed to the success of the Spaniards, when their
huge-winged ships bore the beings of another world to the mainland of
the Mexican Gulf. The legend bears all the marks of anciently derived
hero-worship, in which love for a lost benefactor framed for itself a
deified embodiment of his virtues. This, however, is important to note,
that Aztec traditions assigned the pyramid of Cholula to an older race
and era than their own. It was there when they entered the plateau; and
the arts of the divine metallurgist were taught, not to them but to the
Toltecs, whom they superseded. Nevertheless, the deity shared in their
worship; his image occupied a shrine on the summit of the pyramid of
Cholula when the Spaniards first visited the holy city; and the undying
flame flung its radiance far into the night, to keep alive the memory of
the good deity, who was one day to return and restore the golden age.
The present appearance of the great teocalli very partially justifies
the reference made by Prescott to it as “that tremendous mound on which
the traveller still gazes with admiration as the most colossal fabric in
New Spain, rivalling in dimensions, and somewhat resembling in form, the
pyramidal structures of ancient Egypt.” If it ever was a terraced
pyramid, time and the elements have nearly effaced the traces of its
original outline. On the authority of Humboldt, it is described as a
pyramidal mound of stone and earth, deeply incrusted with alternate
strata of brick and clay, which “had the form of the Mexican teocallis,
that of a truncated pyramid facing with its four sides the cardinal
points, and divided by the same number of terraces.” But the _adobe_ of
the Mexican, which is frequently styled brick, is nothing more than a
mass of unbaked clay, or even mud. If such, therefore, is the supposed
brick which alternated with the other materials of the mound, we can the
more readily reconcile the seeming contradictions of observers. One of
the latest thus describes the impression produced on his mind: “Right
before me, as I rode along, was a mass of trees, of evergreen foliage,
presenting indistinctly the outline of a pyramid, which ran up to the
height of about two hundred feet, and was crowned by an old stone
church, and surmounted by a tall steeple. It was the most attractive
object in the plain; it had such a look of uncultivated nature in the
midst of grain fields. It would have lost half its attractiveness had it
been the stiff and clumsy thing which the picture represents it to be.”
It is accordingly described by Mr. R. A. Wilson, in his _Mexico and its
Religion_, as no more than “the finest Indian mound on this continent,”
rising to a height of about two hundred feet, and crowned by an old
stone church. But careful examination satisfied Mr. Tylor that it still
retains the traces of a terraced teocalli. The church on its summit,
dedicated to Our Lady _de los Remedios_, is served by a priest of the
blood of the Cholulans; and the masonry and architectural skill which it
displays have no doubt somewhat to do with their absence elsewhere; for
if the clergy found the teocalli cased like the pyramidal terraces of
Central America, with cut stone steps and facings, there can be little
doubt they would go no further for a quarry for their intended church.
To the north of the Mexican valley ancient ruins arrest the gaze of the
traveller, onward even to California. On the Rio Colorado and its
tributaries, ruins of great extent, surveyed by recent exploring
parties, are described as built with large stones, nicely wrought, and
accurately squared. But nothing in their style of architecture suggests
a common origin with the ruins of Mexico or Central America. They are
large and plain structures, with massive walls, evidently built for
defence, and with no traces of the ornamentation which abounds on the
ruins of Yucatan. The Moqui Indians, the supposed remnant of the ancient
builders, still construct their dwellings of stone with considerable art
and skill. They are a gentle and intelligent race, small of stature,
with fine black hair; and differ essentially from the Indians of the
North-west. Their villages are included in one common stone structure,
generally of a quadrangular form, with solid, unpierced walls
externally, and accessible only by means of a ladder. These hive-like
colonies are usually placed, for further defence, on the summits of the
lofty plateaus, which in the region of New Mexico are detached by the
broad cañons with which that remarkable region is intersected. By such
means this ingenious people seek protection from the wild tribes with
which they are surrounded. Thus permanently settled, while exposed to
the assaults of marauders, the Moquis cultivate the soil, raise corn,
beans, cotton, and more recently vegetables derived from intercourse
with the Mexicans. They have also their flocks of sheep and goats; and
weave their dyed wools into a variety of substantial and handsome
dresses. But only a small remnant now survives, occupying seven villages
on the range of the Rio del Norte.[98]
Throughout New California ruined structures of stone, and sometimes of
clay abound. The _Casas grandes_, as they are called, appear to have
been defensive structures like the Moqui villages. Captain Johnston
describes one, called the Casa de Montezuma, on the river Gila, which
measured fifty feet by forty, and had been form storeys high. It is
indeed worthy of note that while we find throughout the continent, from
the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, scarcely a vestige of
ante-Columbian stone architecture: traces of it increase upon us with
every new exploration of the country that lies between the Rocky
Mountains and the Pacific, and merges towards the south into the seats
of ancient native civilisation and matured architectural skill.
But the Southern Continent had also its seat of a remarkable native
civilisation; which, like that of Mexico, derived some of its most
striking characteristics from the physical aspects of the country in
which it originated. The peculiar natural advantages of Peru resulted
from the settlement of a people on the lofty plateaus of the Andes, but
within the tropics, where at each successive elevation a different
climate was secured. Such products as the mercantile navies of Northern
Europe gather from many distant shores, were there brought within the
compass of an industrious population: who fed their flocks on the cold
crests of the sierra; cultivated their gardens and orchards on its
higher plateaus; and gathered the luxuriant products of the tropics from
the country that for them lay, for the most part, beneath the clouds,
and spread away from the lowest slopes of the Andes to the neighbouring
shores of the Pacific. The character of the people, and the nature of
the civilisation of this remarkable country, presented many striking
contrasts to the customs and institutions of the Mexicans, and they have
generally been assumed as of totally independent origin.
Peru has her historic traditions, no less than Mexico; and her native
historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, a descendant, through his mother, from
the royal line of the Incas: who plays for them the part which Fernando
de Alva did for his Tezcucan ancestry. Seen through such a medium, the
traditions of the Inca race expand into gorgeous pages of romance; and
the institutions of European chivalry and medieval polity are grafted on
the strange usages of an Indian nation, remarkable for its own
well-matured commonwealth, and unique phases of native-born
civilisation. Sabaism constituted the essential element of Peruvian
religious faith, and gave form and colour to the national rites and
traditions. Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, their mythic instructors
in the arts of agriculture, weaving, and spinning, were the Children of
the Sun; their high religious festivals were determined by the solstices
and equinoxes; and Quito, the holy city, which lay immediately under the
Equator, had within it the pillar of the sun, where its vertical rays
threw no shadow at noon, and they believed the god of light to seat
himself in full effulgence in his temple. The sacred pillar stood in the
centre of a circle described within the court of the great temple,
traversed by a diameter drawn from east to west, by means of which the
period of the equinoxes was determined; and both then, and at the
solstices, the pillar was hung with garlands, and offerings of fruit and
flowers were made to the divine luminary and parent of mankind. The
title of the sovereign Inca was the Child of the Sun; and the territory
of the empire was divided into three portions, of which one,
constituting the lands of the Sun, maintained the costly ceremonial of
public worship, with the temples and their numerous priests and vestal
virgins. The national traditions pointed to the Valley of Cuzco as the
original seat of native civilisation. There their mythic Manco Capac
founded the city of that name; on the highlands around it a number of
columns were reared which served for taking azimuths, and by measuring
their shadows the precise time of the solstices were determined.
Besides the divine honours paid to the sun, the Peruvians worshipped the
host of heaven, and dedicated temples to the thunder and lightning, and
to the rainbow, as the wrathful and benign messengers of the supreme
solar deity. It might naturally be anticipated that a nation thus
devoted to astronomical observations, and maintaining a sacred caste
exclusively for watching solar and stellar phenomena, would have
attained to considerable knowledge in that branch of science.
Apparently, however, the facilities which their equatorial position
afforded for determining the few indispensable periods in their
calendar, removed the stimulus to further progress; and not only do we
find them surpassed in this respect by the Muyscas, occupying a part of
the same great southern plateau, who regulated their calendar on a
system presenting considerable points of resemblance to that of the
Aztecs; but they remained to the last in ignorance of the true causes of
eclipses, and regarded such phenomena with the same superstitious and
apprehensive wonder as has affected the untutored savage mind in all
ages. One historian, indeed, affirms that they recognised the actual
length of the solar year, and regulated their chronology by a series of
cycles of decades of years, centuries, and decades of centuries, the
last of which constituted the grand cycle or great year of the sun.[99]
This is only confuted by a reference to the silence of earlier
authorities, and the absence of all evidence on the subject; and may
serve to remind us how partial is the knowledge we possess of the
intellectual development of this singularly interesting people, among
whom science was essentially esoteric.
Prescott seeks to account for the very imperfect nature of the
astronomical science of Peru, by the fact, that the Peruvian priesthood
were drawn exclusively from the body of the Incas: a privileged order of
nobility who claimed divine origin, and were the less tempted to seek in
superior learning the exclusive rights of an intellectual aristocracy.
But other reasons help to explain this singular intellectual condition
of a nation, which had in so many other directions made remarkable
progress in civilisation. The very fact that astronomy constituted, as
it were, the national religion, placed it beyond the reach of scientific
speculation, among a people with whom blasphemy against the sun, and
malediction of the Inca, were alike punished with death. The impediments
to Galileo’s astronomical discoveries were trifling compared with those
which must have beset the presumptuous Inca priest who ventured to deny
the diurnal revolution of the sun round the earth; or to explain, by the
simple interposition of the moon between themselves and the sun, the
mysterious and malign infirmities with which it constituted a part of
the national creed to believe their supreme deity was afflicted during a
solar eclipse. But another cause also tended to retard the progress of
the Peruvians in the intelligent solution of astronomical phenomena.
Among the ancient Egyptians we find the division of the year determined
by the changes of the Nile; and their year regulated by applications of
astronomical science, minutely interwoven with their sacred and civil
institutions. But the phenomena of the seasons, which have fostered with
every other civilised nation the accurate observation of the
astronomical divisions of time, and the determination of the recurring
festivals dependent on seed-time and harvest, were almost inoperative,
where, among a people specially devoted to agriculture, each season and
every temperature could be commanded by a mere change of elevation under
the vertical sun of the equator.
The Peruvians, however, must be tried by their own standards of
excellence. Manco Capac, their mythic civiliser, was no war-god, like
the Mexitli of the ferocious Aztecs. Agriculture was the special art
introduced by him; and husbandry was pursued among them on principles
which modern science has only recently fully developed in Europe. There
alone, in all the New World, the plough was in use; and the Inca
himself, on one of the great annual festivals, consecrated the labours
of the husbandman by turning up the earth with a golden ploughshare.
Artificial irrigation was carried out on a gigantic scale by means of
aqueducts and tunnels of great extent, the ruins of which still attest
the engineering skill of their constructors. The virtues of _guano_,
which are now so well appreciated by the agriculturists of Europe, were
familiar to the Peruvian farmer; and as the country of the Incas
included, at its various levels, nearly all varieties of climate and
production, from the cocoa and palm that fringed the borders of the
Pacific, to the pasture of their mountain flocks on the verge of the
high regions of perpetual snow: a systematic succession of public fairs,
regulated, like all else, by the supreme government, afforded abundant
opportunities for the interchange of their diverse commodities.
Such a country, if any, could dispense with commerce, and attain to
considerable advancement without a representative currency or
circulating medium. Gold, which was so abundant, served only for
barbaric pomp and decoration. Silver was accessible in such quantities,
that Pizarro found in it a substitute for iron to shoe the horses of his
cavalry. Copper and tin in like manner abounded in the mountains; and
the Peruvians had learned to alloy the copper both with tin and silver,
for greater utility in its application to the useful arts. Bartholomew
Ruiz, it will be remembered, found on board the _balsa_ first met by him
off the Peruvian coast, a pair of balances for weighing the precious
metals; and the repeated discovery of well-adjusted silver balances in
tombs of the Incas, confirms the evidence that they made use of weights
in determining the value of their commodities. The Peruvians were thus
in possession of a mode of exchange, which, for their purposes, was
superior to that of the currency of the Mexicans, in the absence of any
such means of ascertaining the exact apportionment of commodities
produced for sale.
Progress in agriculture was accompanied by a corresponding development
of the resources of a pastoral people. Vast flocks of sheep ranged the
mountain pastures of the Andes, under the guidance of native shepherds;
while the Peruvians alone, of all the races of the New World, had
attained to that important stage in civilisation which precedes the
employment of machinery, by their use of the lower animals in
economising human labour. The llama, trained as a beast of burden,
carried its light load along the steep paths of the Cordilleras, or on
the great highways of Peru.
[Illustration: FIG. 76.—Peruvian Web.]
As the mythic Manco Capac was the instructor of the nation in
agriculture, so also the divine daughter of the Sun introduced the arts
of weaving and spinning. Such traditions serve at least to indicate the
favourite directions of the national taste and skill, which were
displayed in the manufacture of a variety of woollen articles of
ingenious patterns and the utmost delicacy of texture. Numerous examples
of the woven textures of the Peruvians have been recovered from their
ancient graves at Atacama and elsewhere; though it cannot be assumed
that in these we have specimens of the rare and costly fabrics which
excited the wondering admiration of the early Spaniards. In the arid
soil and tropical climate of the great desert of Atacama, articles which
prove the most perishable in northern latitudes are found, after the
lapse of centuries, in perfect preservation. Of these I had an
opportunity of examining a collection recovered by Mr. J. H. Blake from
ancient huacas explored by him, and now preserved in his cabinet at
Boston. They include specimens of cloth, wrought in dyed woollen thread,
and sewed in regular and ornamental designs. Each piece is woven of the
exact size which was required for the purpose in view, and some of them
furnish proofs of ingenious skill in the art of weaving. The threads
consist of two or more strands of dyed llama-wool twisted together; and
elaborate patterns are woven into a soft and delicate web. The
accompanying figure, though grotesque, is a good specimen of a
complicated feat achieved in dyed woollen threads on the ancient
Peruvian loom. It was found in a grave at Atacama, along with many other
relics described in a subsequent chapter. Mr. Blake remarks, in
reference to the discoveries of this class which rewarded his
researches:—“In forming an opinion of the degree of skill displayed in
the arts of spinning and weaving, by these specimens, it should be borne
in mind that the implements in use were of the simplest contrivance. The
only ones which have been discovered are simple distaffs; and among the
articles obtained from the Atacama graves were several formed of wood
and stone, such as are still in use among the Indians of Peru at the
present day. Weaving on the loom has not been introduced among them. The
warp is secured by stakes driven into the ground, and the filling-in is
inserted by the slow process of passing it by hand over and under each
thread alternately.” It would be a grave error, however, to assume that
we possess in such relics, recovered from the ordinary graves formed in
the loose sand of the desert, the highest achievements of Peruvian
skill. On the contrary, regarding them, as we must, as fair specimens of
the common woollen tissues of the country, they confirm the probability
that the costly hangings, and beautifully wrought robes of the Inca and
his nobles, fully justified the admiration with which they are referred
to by Spanish writers of the sixteenth century.
Marvellous specimens of ceramic art are also noted among the
manufactures ascribed to the Peruvians before the conquest, surpassing
anything found in the common cemeteries of the race; but the proofs
which exist of the ingenuity expended by the ancient potter on utensils
in daily use, render probable the accounts of such rare _chef-d’œuvres_
executed by their cunningest workmen for the imperial service. So also
we read of animals and plants wrought with wonderful delicacy, in gold
and silver; and scattered with profuse magnificence about the apartments
of the Peruvian nobles. Such specimens of goldsmiths’ work no longer
survive; but still the huacas of the ancient race are ransacked for
golden ornaments, which prove considerable metallurgic skill, and leave
no room to doubt that gold and silver were moulded and graven into many
ingenious forms. Science and art had indeed made wonderful advances
among this remarkable people; though with them, as with the Chinese,
they were more frequently expended in the gratification of a craving for
display, than in realising triumphs of much practical value.
Nevertheless, Peruvian civilisation had wrought out for itself many
elements of progress adapted to its native soil. Its astronomical
science admits, indeed, of no comparison with that of Mexico; and in
lieu of the artistic picture-writing of the Mexicans, it employed the
quipus, an artificial system of mnemonics not greatly superior to the
Red Indian wampum, to which it bears considerable resemblance. In this
it contrasts with the matured hieroglyphical inscriptions of Central
America and Yucatan, which preserve evidences of progress in advance of
the highest civilisation of the Aztecs and the Incas, and indeed of all
but the most civilised nations of ancient or modern centuries. But this
higher phase of intellectual development must be reserved for
consideration in its relations to the psychology of the whole continent.
The remarkable system of national polity doubtless originated in part
from the docile nature still manifested by the descendants of the
Peruvian people; and, when viewed in this connection, it furnishes some
key to the peculiar characteristics of their civilisation. Their
government was a sacerdotal sovereignty, with an hereditary aristocracy,
and a system of castes more absolute seemingly than that of the
Egyptians or Hindus. Something of the partial and unprogressive
development of the Chinese mingled in the ancient Peruvians along with
numerous other traits of resemblance to that singular people. Unlike the
Mexicans, we see in their whole polity, arts, and social life,
institutions of indigenous growth. It would be difficult to limit the
centuries during which such a people may have handed on from generation
to generation the slowly brightening torch. Their own traditions,
preserved with the help of quipus and national ballads, are valueless on
this point. But their institutions reveal some remarkable evidences of a
people preserving many traits of social infancy, alongside of such
matured arts and habits as could only grow up together around the
undisturbed graves of many generations. Offerings of fruits and flowers
took the place of the bloody human sacrifices of Aztec worship; but the
suttee rites, which disclose their traces everywhere in the sepulchral
usages of primitive nations, were retained in full force. The simple
solidity of megalithic art gave an equally primitive character to their
architecture, notwithstanding its application to many practical purposes
of life; and the precious metals, though existing in unequalled
profusion, were retained to the last solely for their contribution to
barbaric splendour. The habits of pastoral life, by means of which the
foremost nations of the Old World appear to have emerged out of
barbarism, were with them modified by the haunts of flocks peculiar to
the strange region of mountain and plateau, where also they carried the
next step in human progression, that of agriculture, to a degree of
perfection probably never surpassed. They had advanced metallurgy
through all its stages, up to that which preceded the use of iron; and
with the help of their metal tools, displayed a remarkable skill in many
mechanical arts. They did no more, because, under their peculiar local
circumstances and the repressive influences of the mild despotism of
Inca rule, they had achieved all that they required.
A gentle people found abundant occupation in tilling the soil, without
being oppressed by a labour which was lightened by the frequently
recurring festivals of a joyous, and, in some respects, elevating
national faith. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such a people
continuing to pursue the even tenor of their way, with scarcely
perceptible progression, through all the subsequent centuries since
their discovery to Europe: had not the hand of the conqueror ruthlessly
overthrown the structure reared by many generations, and quenched the
lamp of native civilisation. The conquerors of the sixteenth century
have given expression to the astonishment with which they beheld
everywhere evidences of order, contentment, and prosperity; and while
the architectural magnificence of Montezuma’s capital has so utterly
disappeared as to suggest the doubt if it ever existed: the traveller
along the ancient routes of Peruvian industry still sees on every hand
ruins, not only of temples, palaces, and strongholds, but of terraced
declivities, military roads, causeways, aqueducts, and other public
works, that astonish him by the solidity of their construction and the
grandeur of their design. But between these two great divisions of the
western hemisphere, in the curiously insulated region of Central
America, traces of ancient civilisation abound, with evidences of a
higher, if not longer enduring development than either. The closing
annals both of Mexico and Peru have acquired a vivid interest from the
incidents of Spanish conquest; and retain many romantic associations
connected with the lustre of their conquerors. But the interest which
attaches to Central America and Yucatan derives little value from
history. There, under the luxuriant forests of that tropical region, may
still be studied the monuments of a lettered people, and the sculptures
and symbolic inscriptions of an extinct faith, amid ruins which appear
to have been already abandoned to decay before Cortes explored the
peninsula in his lust of conquest. Their basso-relievos preserve the
physiognomy of a race essentially diverse from the Mexicans; and their
sculptured hieroglyphics show a process of inscription very far in
advance of the picture-writing of the Aztecs. The magnitude and solidity
of the ruins of Peru still attest the practical aim of works wrought
there on a grand scale, and for purposes of more obvious utility than
those of the Central American peninsula; and the characteristics of some
of the Peruvian crania suggest striking analogies with the peculiar
physiognomy of the northern basso-relievos, such as are no longer
recognisable when we turn to the Mexican race.
Nothing pertaining to the northern continent east of the Rocky Mountains
presents any counterpart to Peruvian architecture, sculpture, or the
ingenious modelling of the potter’s art; or suggests affinities in
language or astronomical science, to Peru or Central America; unless it
be the remarkable remains of the Mound-Builders. But with Mexico it is
otherwise. In the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic
the stock is to be sought, from which on many grounds it appears most
reasonable to trace the predominant Mexican race of the era of the
Conquest. They were inheritors, not originators of the civilisation of
the plateau. But while the traditions of the Aztecs appear to point to a
migration from the north, the Toltecs whom they displaced can be
assigned on no tangible evidence to a similar origin. Amid many
diversities recognisable among the nations of the New World, the forest
and prairie tribes, now clustering chiefly in the North-west, are the
representatives of one great subdivision, the source of which may be
sought in that northern hive stretching westward towards Behring Strait
and the Aleutian Islands, with possible indications of an Asiatic
origin. But for the more intellectual nations whose ancient monuments
lie to the south of the Rio Grande del Norte, the most probable source
appears to be the southern plateaus of the Peruvian Cordilleras. In the
copper regions of the north the abundant metal supplied all wants too
readily to stimulate to further progress; but the southern region rises
through every change of climate under the vertical rays of the equator;
and its rocky steeps are veined with exhaustless treasures of metallic
ores, in such a condition as to lead man on step by step from the
infantile perception of the native metal as a ductile stone, to the
matured intelligence of the metallurgist, mingling and fusing the
contiguous ores into his most convenient and useful alloys. A branch of
the same race, moving northward along the isthmus, may account for the
abundant architectural remains of the central peninsula, consistently
with its ethnographic traces; while beyond this, to the northward, we
see in the conflicting elements of Mexican civilisation, the confluence
of races from north and south, and the mingling of their diverse arts
and customs under the favouring influences which the vale of Anahuac
supplied.
-----
[92] _American Ethnological Society’s Transactions_, vol. i. p. 162.
[93] Prescott’s _Conquest of Mexico_, B. III. ch. ix.
[94] _Anahuac_, p. 147.
[95] Bullock’s _Six Months in Mexico_, p. 111.
[96] Topographical View of the Valley, Wilson’s _New History of Mexico_,
p. 452.
[97] Prescott’s _Conquest of Mexico_, B. I. chap. vi.
[98] Dr. Latham speaks of the Moquis as a people that “no living writer
seems to have seen.”—_Varieties of Man_, p. 394. But the above
information communicated to me by Professor Newberry, is the result of
his own personal observations. He showed me also specimens of their
woven dresses, manifesting considerable skill, and exhibiting great
taste in the arrangement of their bright colours. They have recently
been greatly reduced by small-pox.
[99] Montesino’s _Mém. Antiquas MS._, lib. ii. cap. 7; cited by
Prescott.