Through this month of wooing and betrothing at Hilton Ranch, the
Koshare, at Alamo, never once remitted its endeavor to hearten the
despondent.
The weekly entertainments took their regular course, and were
successfully carried on, and, in due time, the fortnightly club convened
to listen to the Antiquary's account of "Montezuma and his Time."
And here the Koshare chronicle returns on its track to record that able
paper.
"As a consistent Koshare," said Mr. Morehouse, to his eager listeners,
"it behooves me to give--without that dry adherence to facts observed by
the 'Gradgrind' historian--the charming melodramatic details of that
romantic monarch's life and times afforded by the popular
Munchausen-like data of the Spanish chroniclers, albeit they have in
their entirety, all the fascination, and, sometimes, all the
unbelievableness of a fairy tale.
"The Aztec government," prefaced the Antiquary, "was an elective
monarchy, the choice always restricted to the royal family.
"The candidate usually preferred must have distinguished himself in war;
though, if (as in the case of the last Montezuma) he was a member of the
priesthood, the royal-born priest, no less than the warrior was, with
the Aztec, available as an emperor.
"When the nobles by whom Montezuma the Second was made monarch went to
inform the candidate of the result of the election, they are said to
have found him sweeping the court of the temple to which he had
dedicated himself. It is further asserted that when they led him to the
palace to proclaim him king, he demurred, declaring himself unworthy the
honor conferred on him. It is a humiliating proof of the weakness of
human nature in face of temptation, to find that, later, this pious king
so far forswore his humility as to pose before his subjects as a god;
that five or six hundred nobles in waiting were ordered to attend daily
at his morning toilet, only daring to appear before him with bared feet.
"It was not until, by a victorious campaign, he had obtained a
sufficient number of captives to furnish victims for the bloody rites
which Aztec superstition demanded to grace his inauguration,
that--amidst that horrible pomp of human sacrifice which stained the
civilization of his people--Montezuma was crowned.
"The Mexican crown of that day is described as resembling a mitre in
form, and curiously ornamented with gold, gems, and feathers.
"The Aztec princes, especially towards the close of the dynasty, lived
in a barbaric Oriental pomp, of which Montezuma was the most conspicuous
example in the history of the nation.
"Elevation, like wine, seems to have gone to the head of the second
Montezuma.
"An account of his domestic establishment reads like the veriest record
of midsummer madness. Four hundred young nobles, we are told, waited on
the royal table, setting the covers, in their turn, before the monarch,
and immediately retiring, as even his courtiers might not see Montezuma
eat. Having drunk from cups of gold and pearl, these costly goblets,
together with the table utensils of the king, were distributed among his
courtiers. Cortez tells us that so many dishes were prepared for each
meal of this lordly epicure, that they filled a large hall; and that he
had a harem of a thousand women. His clothes, which were changed four
times a day (like his table service), were never used a second time, but
were given as rewards of merit to nobles and soldiers who had
distinguished themselves in war. If it happened that he had to walk, a
carpet was spread along his way, lest his sacred feet should touch the
ground. His subjects were required, on his approach, to stop and close
their eyes, that they might not be dazzled by his effulgent majesty. His
ostentatious humility gave place to an intolerable arrogance. He
disgusted his subjects by his haughty deportment, exacting from them the
most slavish homage, and alienating their affection by the imposition of
the grievous taxes demanded by the lavish expenditure of his court.
"In his first years Montezuma's record was, in many respects,
praiseworthy. He led his armies in person. The Aztec banners were
carried far and wide, in the furthest province on the Gulf of Mexico,
and the distant region of Nicaragua and Honduras. His expeditions were
generally successful, and during his reign the limits of the empire
were more widely extended than at any preceding period.
"To the interior concerns of his kingdom he gave much attention,
reforming the courts of justice, and carefully watching over the
execution of the laws, which he enforced with stern severity.
"Like the Arabian ruler,--Haroun Alraschid, of benign memory,--he
patrolled the streets of his capital in disguise, to make personal
acquaintance with the abuses in it. He liberally compensated all who
served him. He displayed great munificence in public enterprise,
constructing and embellishing the temples, bringing water into the
capital by a new channel, and establishing a retreat for invalid
soldiers in the city of Colhuacan.
"According to some writers of authority there were, in Montezuma's day,
thirty great caciques, or nobles, who had their residence, at least a
part of the year, in the capital.
"Each of these, it is asserted, could muster a hundred thousand vassals
on his estate. It would seem that such wild statements should be 'taken
with a pinch of salt.' All the same, it is clear, from the testimony of
the conquerors, that the country was occupied by numerous powerful
chieftains, who lived like independent princes on their domains. It is
certain that there was a distinct class of nobles who held the most
important offices near the person of their emperor.
"In Montezuma's time the Aztec religion reached its zenith. It is said
to have had as exact and burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in any
nation. 'One,' observes Prescott, 'is struck with its apparent
incongruity, as if some portion had emanated from a comparatively
refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a
spirit of unmitigated ferocity; which naturally suggests the idea of two
distinct sources, and authorizes the belief that the Aztecs had
inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was
afterwards engrafted their own mythology.' The Aztecs, like the
idolaters to whom Paul preached, declaring the 'Unknown God' of their
'ignorant worship,' recognized a Supreme Creator and Lord of the
Universe.
"In their prayers they thus addressed him: 'The God by whom we live,
that knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts;' but, as has been
observed, 'from the vastness of this conception their untutored minds
sought relief in a plurality of inferior deities,--ministers who
executed the creator's purposes, each, in his turn, presiding over the
elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various affairs of man.'
Of these there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two
hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day or appropriate
festival was consecrated.
"Huitzilopotchli, a terrible and sanguinary monster, was the primal of
these; the patron deity of the nation. The forms of the Mexican idols
were quaint and eccentric, and were in the highest degree symbolical.
"The fantastic image of this god of the unpronounceable name was loaded
with costly ornaments; his temples were the most stately and august of
their public edifices, and in every city of the empire his altars reeked
with the blood of human hecatombs.
"His name is compounded of two words, signifying 'humming-bird' and
'left;' from his image having the feathers of this bird on his left
foot.
"Thus runs the tradition respecting this god's first appearance on
earth: 'His mother, a devout person, one day, in her attendance on the
temple, saw a ball of bright-colored feathers floating in the air. She
took it and deposited it in her bosom, and, consequently, from her, the
dread deity was in due time born.' He is fabled to have come into the
world (like the Greek goddess, Minerva) armed _cap-à-pie_ with spear and
shield, and his head surmounted by a crest of green plumes.
"A far more admirable personage in their mythology was Quetzalcoatl, god
of the air; his name signifies 'feathered serpent' and 'twin.' During
his beneficent residence on earth he is said to have instructed the
people in civil government, in the arts, and in agriculture. Under him
it was that the earth brought forth flower and fruit without the fatigue
of cultivation.
"Then it was that an ear of corn in two days became as much as a man
could carry; and the cotton, as it grew beneath his fostering smile,
took, of its own accord, the rich dyes of human art.
"In those halcyon days of Quetzalcoatl all the air was sweet with
perfumes and musical with the singing of birds.
"Pursued by the wrath of a brother-god, from some mysterious cause
unexplained by the fabler, this gracious deity was finally obliged to
flee the country. On his way he is said to have stopped at Cholula,
where the remains of a temple dedicated to his worship are still shown.
"On the shores of the Mexican Gulf Quetzalcoatl took leave of his
followers, and promising that he and his descendants would revisit them
hereafter, entered his 'Wizard Skiff,' and embarked on the great ocean
for the fabled land of Tlapallan.
"The Mexicans looked confidently for the second coming of this
benevolent deity, who is said to have been tall in stature, with a white
skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. Undoubtedly, this cherished
tradition, as the chroniclers affirm, prepared the way for the reception
of the Spanish conquerors.
"Long before the landing of the Spaniards in Mexico, rumors of the
appearance of these men with fair complexions and flowing beards--so
unlike their own physiognomy--had startled the superstitious Aztecs. The
period for the return of Quetzalcoatl was now near at hand. The priestly
oracles were consulted; they are said to have declared, after much
deliberation, that the Spaniards, though not gods, were children of the
Sun; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and were only
vulnerable when his beams were withdrawn; and they recommended attacking
them while buried in slumber. This childish advice, so contrary to Aztec
military usage, was reluctantly followed by these credulous warriors,
and resulted in the defeat and bloody slaughter of nearly the whole
detachment.
"The conviction of the supernaturalism of the Spaniard is said to have
gained ground by some uncommon natural occurrences, such as the
accidental swell and overflow of a lake, the appearance of a comet, and
conflagration of the great temple.
"We are told that Montezuma read in these prodigies special
annunciations of Heaven that argued the speedy downfall of his empire.
"From this somewhat digressive account of the Aztec superstition, in
regard to the 'second coming' of their beneficent tutelar divinity,
which, as may be seen, played into the hands of Cortez, and furthered
his hostile designs upon Mexico, let us return to the time in Aztec
history when no usurping white man had set foot upon Montezuma's
territory.
"We are told that this people, in their comparative ignorance of the
material universe, sought relief from the oppressive idea of the endless
duration of time by breaking it up into distinct cycles, each of several
thousand years' duration. At the end of each of these periods, by the
agency of one of the elements, the human family, as they held, was to be
swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be
again freshly rekindled. With later theologians, who have less excuse
for the unlovely superstition, they held that the wicked were to expiate
their sins everlastingly in a place of horrible darkness. It was the
work of a (so-called) Christianity to add to the Aztec place of torment
the torture of perpetual fire and brimstone. The Aztec heaven, like the
Scandinavian Valhalla, was especially reserved for their heroes who fell
in battle. To these privileged souls were added those slain in
sacrifice. These fortunate elect of the Aztecs seem to have been
destined for a time to a somewhat lively immortality, as they at once
passed into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs
and choral dances in his bright progress through the heavens. After
years of this stirring existence, these long-revolving spirits were
kindly permitted to take breath; and thereafter it was theirs to animate
the clouds, to reincarnate in singing birds of beautiful plumage, and to
revel amidst the bloom and odors of the gardens of Paradise.
"Apart from this refined Elysium and a moderately comfortable hell, void
of appliances for the torture of burning, the Aztecs had a third place
of abode for immortals. Thither passed those 'o'er bad for blessing and
o'er good for banning,' who had but the merit of dying of certain
(capriciously selected) diseases. These commonplace spirits were fabled
to enjoy a negative existence of indolent contentment. 'The Aztec
priests,' says Prescott, 'in this imperfect stage of civilization,
endeavored to dazzle the imagination of this ignorant people with
superstitious awe, and thus obtained an influence over the popular mind
beyond that which has probably existed in any other country, even in
ancient Egypt.'
"Time will not permit here a detailed account of this insidious
priesthood; its labored and pompous ceremonial; its midnight prayers;
its cruel penance (as the drawing of blood from the body by
flagellation, or piercing of the flesh with the thorns of the aloe),
akin to the absurd austerities of Roman Catholic fanaticism. The Aztec
priest, unlike the Roman, was allowed to marry, and have a family of his
own; and not _all_ the religious ceremonies imposed by him were austere.
Many of them were of a light and cheerful complexion, such as national
songs and dances, in which women were allowed to join. There were, too,
innocent processions of children crowned with garlands, bearing to the
altars of their gods offerings of fruit, ripened maize, and odoriferous
gums. It was on these peaceful rites, derived from his milder and more
refined Toltec predecessors, that the fierce Aztec grafted the loathsome
rite of human sacrifice.
"To what extent this abomination was carried cannot now be accurately
determined. The priestly chroniclers, as has been shown, were not above
the meanness of making capital for the church, by exaggerating the
enormities of the pagan dispensation. Scarcely any of these reporters
pretend to estimate the yearly human sacrifice throughout the empire at
less than twenty thousand; and some carry the number as high as fifty
thousand. A good Catholic bishop, writing a few years after the
conquest, states in his letter that twenty thousand victims were yearly
slaughtered in the capital. A lie is brought to absolute perfection when
its author is able to believe it himself.
"Torquemada, another chronicler, often quoted by Prescott, turns this
into twenty thousand _infants_!
"These innocent creatures, he tells us, were generally bought by the
priests from parents poor enough and superstitious enough to stifle the
promptings of nature, and were, at seasons of drought, at the festival
of Haloc, the insatiable god of the rain, offered up, borne to their
doom in open litters, dressed in festal robes, and decked with freshly
blown flowers, their pathetic cries drowned in the wild chant of the
priests. It is needless to add that this assumption has but the
slightest groundwork of likelihood.
"Las Casas, before referred to, thus boldly declares: 'This is the
estimate of brigands who wish to find an apology for their own
atrocities;' and loosely puts the victims at so low a rate as to make it
clear that any specific number is the merest conjecture.
"Prescott, commenting on these fabulous statements, instances the
dedication of the great temple of the 'Mexican War God' in 1486, when
the prisoners, for years reserved for the purpose, were said to have
been ranged in files forming a procession nearly two miles long; when
the ceremony consumed, as averred, several days, and seventy thousand
captives are declared to have perished at the shrine of this terrible
deity. In view of this statement, Prescott logically observes: 'Who can
believe that so numerous a body would have suffered themselves to be led
unresistingly, like sheep, to the slaughter? Or how could their remains,
too great for consumption in the ordinary way, be disposed of without
breeding a pestilence in the capital? One fact,' he adds, 'may be
considered certain. It was customary to preserve the skulls of the
sacrificed in buildings appropriate to the purpose; and the companions
of Cortez say they counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand skulls in
one of the edifices.'
"Religious ceremonials were arranged for the Aztec people by their
crafty and well-informed priesthood, and were generally typical of some
circumstances in the character or history of the deity who was the
object of them. That in honor of the god called by the Aztecs 'the soul
of the world,' and depicted as a handsome man endowed with perpetual
youth, was one of their most important sacrifices. An account of this
sanguinary performance is gravely given by Prescott and other writers.
Though highly sensational and melodramatic, since our betters have found
it believable, we transcribe it for the New Koshare; thus runs the
tale:--
"'A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his
personal beauty, and without a single blemish on his body, was selected
to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and
instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and
dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and
with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans
were as fond as are their descendants at the present day. When he went
abroad he was attended by a train of the royal pages; and as he halted
in the streets to play some favorite melody the crowd prostrated
themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their
good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life until within a
month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls were then given him as
concubines; and with these he continued to live in idle dalliance,
feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the
honors of a divinity. At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The
term of his short-lived glories was at an end.
"'He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair
partners of his revelry. One of the royal barges transported him across
the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the
city. Hither the inhabitants flocked to witness the consummation of the
ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the
unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in
pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of
his captivity.
"'On the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted
locks flowed disorderedly over their sable robes, covered with
hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial
stone, a huge block of jasper with its upper surface somewhat convex. On
this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and
limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his
bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with
a sharp razor of _itzli_ (a volcanic substance hard as flint), and,
inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The
minister of death, first holding the heart up towards the sun (also an
object of their worship) cast it at the feet of the god, while the
multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration.'
"The tragic circumstances depicted in this sanguinary tale were used by
the priests to 'point a moral.' The immolation of this unhappy youth was
expounded to the people as a type of human destiny, which, brilliant in
its beginning, often closes in sorrow and disaster.
"In this loathsome manner, if we may believe the account given, was the
mangled body disposed of. It was delivered by the priests to the warrior
who had taken the captive in battle, and served up by him at an
entertainment given to his friends.
"This, we are told, was no rude cannibal orgy, but a refined banquet,
teeming with delicious beverages, and delicate viands prepared with
dainty art, and was attended by guests of both sexes, and conducted with
all the decorum of civilized life. Thus, in the Aztec religious
ceremonial, refinement and the extreme of barbarism met together.
"The Aztec nation had, at the time of the Conquest, many claims to the
character of a civilized community. The debasing influence of their
religious rites it was, however, that furnished the fanatical conquerors
with their best apology for the subjugation of this people. One-half
condones the excuses of the invaders, who with the cross in one hand and
the bloody sword in the other, justified their questionable deeds by the
abolishment of human sacrifice.
"The oppressions of Montezuma, with the frequent insurrections of his
people," concluded the Antiquary, "when in the latter part of his reign
one-half the forces of his empire are said to have been employed in
suppressing the commotions of the other, disgust at his arrogance, and
his outrageous fiscal exactions, reduced his subjects to that condition
which made them an easy prey to Cortez, whose army at last overpowered
the emperor and swept the Aztec civilization from the face of the
earth."
"I find it strange," said the Journalist (in the little talk that
followed Mr. Morehouse's able paper), "that civilized nations have held
an idea so monstrous as the necessity of vicarious physical suffering of
a victim to appease the wrath of a divine being with the erring
creatures who, such as they are, are the work of his hands.
"That unenlightened races, from time immemorial, should have supposed
that the shedding of blood propitiated their angry god, or gods, is but
the natural outcome of ignorance and superstition; but, that in this
twentieth century, civilized worshippers should sing--
'There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains'--
passes my understanding."
"In the ruins of Palenque there is," said the Antiquary, "a scene
portrayed on its crumbling walls, in which priests are immolating in a
furnace placed at the feet of an image of Saturn the choicest infants of
the nation, while a trumpeter enlivens the occasion with music, and in
the background a female spectator, supposed to be the mother of the
victim, looks on."
"The sacrifices to Moloch (or Saturn)," interpolated the Minister, "were
marked features of the Phoenician idolatry. In the Bible account we read
that even their kings 'made their children to pass through the fire to
Moloch.'"
"Well," commented the Grumbler, "it may be said of a portion of this
evening's entertainment that it is distinguished by the charm found by
'Helen's' sanguinary-minded 'baby,' in the story of 'Goliath's
head,'--it is 'all bluggy.'"
"Right you are," responded the star boarder with a shudder. "Cold
shivers have meandered along my poor back until it has become one
dreadful block of ice; and, judging by the horror depicted on these
ladies' faces as they listened to the details of the Aztec sacrifice, I
fancy that they too have supped o'er-full of horrors."
The Minister's eye rested for a moment affectionately on his stanch
little wife. He sighed, and looked with mild rebuke on these godless
triflers.
And now the Koshare (some of them stoutly orthodox) wisely put by the
question of vicarious atonement, and summarily adjourned.