THE EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF THE AZTECS
In the Extinct Civilizations of the East it was shown that the cosmogony
of the Chaldeans closely resembles that of the Hebrews and the
Phenicians, and that the account of the deluge in Genesis exactly
reproduces the much earlier one found on one of the Babylonian tablets.
Traces of a deluge legend also existed among the early Aztecs. They
believed
that two persons survived the Deluge, a man named Koksoz and his
wife. Their heads are represented in ancient paintings together
with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. A
dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of languages in
his mouth.... Tezpi, the Noah of a neighboring people, also escaped
in a boat, which was filled with various kinds of animals and
birds. After some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained
feeding on the dead bodies of the giants, which had been left on
the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming-bird was then
sent forth and returned with the branch of a tree in its mouth.
Another Aztec tradition of the deluge is that the pyramidal mound, the
temple of Cholula (a sacred city on the way between the capital and the
seaport), was built by the giants to escape drowning. Like the tower of
Babel, it was intended to reach the clouds, till the gods looked down
and, by destroying the pyramid by fires from heaven, compelled the
builders to abandon the attempt.
The hieroglyphics used in the Aztec calendar correspond curiously with
the zodiacal signs of the Mongols of eastern Asia. "The symbols in the
Mongolian calendar are borrowed from animals, and four of the twelve are
the same as the Aztec."
The antiquity of most of the monuments is proved--e. g., by the growth
of trees in the midst of the buildings in Yucatan. Many have had time to
attain a diameter of from six to nine feet. In a courtyard at Uxmal, the
figures of tortoises sculptured in relief upon the granite pavement are
so worn away by the feet of countless generations of the natives that
the design of the artist is scarcely recognizable.
The Spanish invaders demolished every vestige of the Aztec religious
monuments, just as Roman Catholic images and paraphernalia were once
treated by the "straitest sects" of Protestants, or even Mohammedans.
The beautiful plateau around the lakes of Mexico, as well as other
central portions of America, were without any doubt occupied from the
earliest ages by peoples who gradually advanced in civilization from
generation to generation and passed through cycles of revolutions--in
one century relapsing, in another advancing by leaps and bounds by an
infusion of new blood or a change of environment--exactly similar to the
checkered annals of the successive dynasties in the Nile Valley and the
plains of Babylonia. In the New World, as in the Old World, from
prehistoric times wealth was accumulated at such centers, bringing
additional comfort and refinement, and implying the practise of the
useful arts and some applications of science. As to the legendary
migrations or even those extinct races whose names still remain, Max
Mueller said:[8]
[Footnote 8: Chips from a German Workshop, i, 327.]
The traditions are no better than the Greek traditions about
Pelasgians, Aeolians, and Ionians, and it would be a mere waste of
time to construct out of such elements a systematic history, only
to be destroyed again sooner or later, by some Niebuhr, Grote, or
Lewis.
_Anahuac_ (i. e., "waterside" or "the lake-country"), in the early
centuries of our era, was a name of the country round the lakes and town
afterward called Mexico. To this center, as a place for settlement,
there came from the north or northwest a succession of tribes more or
less allied in race and language--especially (according to one theory)
the _Toltecs_ from Tula, and the _Aztecs_ from Aztlan. Tula, north of
the Mexican Valley, had been the first capital of the Toltecs, and at
the time of the Spanish conquest there were remains of large buildings
there. Most of the extensive temples and other edifices found throughout
"New Spain" were attributed to this race and the word "toltek" became
synonymous with "architect."
Some five centuries after the Toltecs had abandoned Tula, the Aztecs or
early Mexicans arrived to settle in the Valley of Anahuac. With the
Aztecs came the Tezcucans, whose capital, Tezcuco, on the eastern border
of the Mexican lake, has given it its still surviving name.
The Aztecs, again, after long migrations from place to place, finally,
in A. D. 1325, halted on the southwestern shores of the great lake.
According to tradition, a heavenly vision thus announced the site of
their future capital:
They beheld perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot out
from the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal eagle of
extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in its talons, and
its broad wings opened to the rising sun. They hailed the
auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the sight of
their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into
the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water....
The place was called Tenochtitlan (i. e. "the cactus on a rock") in
token of its miraculous origin. [Such were the humble beginnings of
the Venice of the Western World.][9]
[Footnote 9: Prescott, i, I, pp. 8, 9.]
To this day the arms of the Mexican republic show the device of the
eagle and the cactus--to commemorate the legend of the foundation of the
capital--afterward called Mexico from the name of their war-god. Fiercer
and more warlike than their brethren of Tezcuco, the men of the latter
town were glad of their assistance, when invaded and defeated by a
hostile tribe. Thus Mexico and Tezcuco became close allies, and by the
time of Montezuma I, in the middle of the fifteenth century, their
sovereignty had extended beyond their native plateau to the coast
country along the Gulf of Mexico. The capital rapidly increased in
population, the original houses being replaced by substantial stone
buildings. There are documents showing that Tenochtitlan was of much
larger dimensions than the modern capital of Mexico, on the same site.
Just before the arrival of the Spaniards, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the kingdom extended from the gulf across to the
Pacific; and southward under the ruthless Ahuitzotl over the whole of
Guatemala and Nicaragua.
The Aztecs resembled the ancient Peruvians in very few respects, one
being the use of knots on strings of different colors to record events
and numbers. Compare our account of "the quipu" in Chapter X. The Aztecs
seem to have replaced that rude method of making memoranda during the
seventh century by picture-writing. Before the Spanish invasion,
thousands of native clerks or chroniclers were employed in painting on
vegetable paper and canvas. Examples of such manuscripts may still be
seen in all the great museums. Their contents chiefly refer to ritual,
astrology, the calendar, annals of the kings, etc.
Most of the literary productions of the ancient Mexicans were stupidly
destroyed by the Spanish under Cortes. The first Archbishop of Mexico
founded a professorship in 1553 for expounding the hieroglyphs of the
Aztecs, but in the following century the study was abandoned. Even the
native-born scholars confessed that they were unable to decipher the
ancient writing. One of the most ancient books (assigned to Tula, the
"Toltec" capital, A. D. 660, and written by Huetmatzin, an astrologer),
describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations,
the arrangement of time in the official calendar, with some geography,
mythology, and cosmogony. In the fifteenth century the King of Tezcuco
published sixty hymns in honor of the Supreme Being, with an elegy on
the destruction of a town, and another on the instability of human
greatness.
In the same century the three Anahuac states (Acolhua, Mexico, and
Tlacopan) formed a confederacy with a constant tendency to give Mexico
the supremacy. The two capitals looking at each other across the lake
were steadily growing in importance, with all the adjuncts of public
works--causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces, gardens, and
other evidences of wealth.
The horror and disgust caused by the Aztec sacrificial bloodshed are
greatly increased by considering the number of the victims. The kings
actually made war in order to provide as many victims as possible for
the public sacrifices--especially on such an occasion as a coronation or
the consecration of a new temple. Captives were sometimes reserved a
considerable time for the purpose of immolation. It was the regular
method of the Aztec warrior in battle not to kill one's opponent if he
could be made a captive; to take him alive was a meritorious act in
religion. In fact, the Spaniards in this way frequently escaped death at
the hands of their Mexican opponents. When King Montezuma was asked by a
European general why he had permitted the republic of Tlascala to remain
independent on the borders of his kingdom, his reply was, "That she
might furnish me with victims for my gods."
In reckoning the number of victims Prescott seems to have trusted too
implicitly to the almost incredible accounts of the Spanish. Zumurraga,
the first Bishop of Mexico, asserts that 20,000 were sacrificed
annually, but Casas points out that with such a "waste of the human
species," as is implied in some histories, the country could not have
been so populous as Cortes found it. The estimate of Casas is "that the
Mexicans never sacrificed more than fifty or a hundred persons in a
year."
Notwithstanding the wholesale bloodshed before the shrines of their gory
gods, we can still assign to the Aztecs a high degree of civilization.
The history of even modern Europe will illustrate this statement,
although apparently paradoxical.
Consider "the condition of some of the most polished countries in the
sixteenth century after the establishment of the modern Inquisition--an
institution which yearly destroyed its thousands by a death more painful
than the Aztec sacrifices, ... which did more to stay the march of
improvement than any other scheme ever devised by human cunning....
Human sacrifice was sometimes voluntarily embraced by the Aztecs as the
most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise.
The Inquisition, on the other hand, branded its victims with infamy in
this world, and consigned them to everlasting perdition in the next."
The difficulty with the Aztecs is how to reconcile such refinement as
their extinct civilization showed with their savage enjoyment of
bloodshed. "No captive was ever ransomed or spared; all were sacrificed
without mercy, and their flesh devoured." The first of the four chief
counselors of the empire was called the "Prince of the Deadly Lance,"
the second "Divider of Men," the third "Shedder of Blood," the fourth
"the Lord of the Dark House."
The temples were very numerous, generally merely pyramidal masses of
clay faced with brick or stone. The roof was a broad area on which stood
one or two towers, from forty to fifty feet in height, forming the
sanctuaries of the presiding deities, and therefore containing their
images. Before these sanctuaries stood the dreadful stone of sacrifice.
There were also two altars with sacred fires kept ever burning.
All the religious services were public, and the pyramidal temples, with
stairs round their massive sides, allowed the long procession of priests
to be visible as they ceremoniously ascended to perform the dread office
of slaughtering the human victims.
Human sacrifices had not originally been a feature of the Aztec worship.
But about 200 years before the arrival of the Spanish invaders was the
beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was
considered complete without some human bloodshed.
Prescott takes as an example the great festival in honor of
Tezcatlipoca, a handsome god of the second rank, called "the soul of the
world," and endowed with perpetual youth.
A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for
his personal beauty and without a blemish on his body, was
selected.... 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.... 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.... Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the
principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to
live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who
paid him all the honors of a divinity. When at length the fatal
day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of
the royal barges transported him across a lake to a temple which
rose on its margin.... Hither the inhabitants of the capital
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 his
musical instruments. ... On the summit he was received by six
priests, whose long and matted locks flowed in disorder 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 victim 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_, and inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the
palpitating heart, and after holding it up to the sun (as
representing the supreme God), cast it at the feet of the deity to
whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated
themselves in humble adoration.
Such was an instance of the human sacrifices for which ancient Mexico
became infamous to the whole civilized world.
One instance of a sacrifice differing from the ordinary sort is thus
given by a Spanish historian:
A captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms for
single combat against a number of Mexicans in succession. If he
defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to
escape. If vanquished he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in
the usual manner. The combat was fought on a huge circular stone
before the population of the capital.
Women captives were occasionally sacrificed before those bloodthirsty
gods, and in a season of drought even children were sometimes
slaughtered to propitiate Tlaloc, the god of rain.
Borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes and
decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest
hearts to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant
of the priests who read in their tears a favorable augury for the
rain prayer.
One Spanish historian informs us that these innocent victims of this
repulsive religion were generally bought by the priests from parents who
were poor.
We may now resume the traditional settlement of the ancient Mexicans on
the region called Anahuac, including all the fertile plateau and
extending south to the lake of Nicaragua. The chief tribes of the race
were said to have come from California, and after being subject to the
Colhua people asserted their independence about A. D. 1325. Soon
afterward, their first capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on the site of
Mexico, their permanent center. For several generations they lived, like
their remote ancestors, the Red Men of the Woods, as hunters, fishers,
and trappers, but at last their prince or chief cazique was powerful
enough to be called king. The rule of this Aztec prince, beginning A. D.
1440, marked the beginning of their greatness as a race. It became a
rule of their kingdom that every new king must gain a victory before
being crowned; and thus by the conquest of a new nation furnish a supply
of captives to gratify their tutelary deity by the necessary human
sacrifices. In 1502 the younger Montezuma ascended the throne. He is
better known to us than the previous kings, because it was in his reign
that the Spanish conquerors appeared on the scene. From the time of
Cortes the history of the Aztecs becomes part of that of the Mexicans.
They were easily conquered by the European troops, partly because of
their betrayal by various of the neighboring nations whom they had
formerly conquered. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, according
to Prescott, the Aztec king ruled the continent from the Atlantic to the
Pacific.
From the scientific side of their extinct civilization it is their
knowledge of astronomy that chiefly causes astonishment (see also p.
85). As in the case of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a motive
for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of
accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus
ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's
transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early
period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican
aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their
farming was naturally of a rude and imperfect sort.
"The degree of civilization," says Prescott, "which the Aztecs reached,
as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps,
not much short of that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred."
In a passage comparing the Aztecs to the American Indians, we read:
The latter has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature. He
shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. Even
when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization he
seems to sink and pine away beneath it. It has been so with the
Mexicans. Under the Spanish domination their numbers have silently
melted away. Their energies are broken. They no longer tread their
mountain plains with the conscious independence of their ancestors.
In their faltering step and meek and melancholy aspect we read the
sad characters of the conquered race.... Their civilization was of
the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce
virtues of the Aztec were all his own.
Humboldt found some analogy between the Aztec theory of the universe, as
taught by the priests, and the Asiatic "cosmogonies." The Aztecs, in
explaining the great mystery of man's existence after death, believed
that future time would revolve in great periods or cycles, each
embracing thousands of years. At the end of each of the four cycles of
future time in the present world, "the human family will be swept from
the earth by the agency of one of the elements, and the sun blotted out
from the heavens to be again rekindled."
The priesthood comprised a large number who were skilled in astrology
and divination. The great temple of Mexico, alone, had 5,000 priests in
attendance, of whom the chief dignitaries superintended the dreadful
rites of human sacrifice. Others had management of the singing choirs
with their musical accompaniment of drums and other instruments; others
arranged the public festivals according to the calendar, and had charge
of the hieroglyphical word-painting and oral traditions. One important
section of the priesthood were teachers, responsible for the education
of the children and instruction in religion and morality. The head
management of the hierarchy or whole ecclesiastical system, was under
two high priests--the more dignified that they were chosen by the king
and principal nobles without reference to birth or social station. These
high priests were consulted on any national emergency, and in precedency
of rank were superior to every man except the king. Montezuma is said to
have been a priest.
The priestly power was more absolute than any ever experienced in
Europe. Two remarkable peculiarities were that when a sinner was
pardoned by a priest, the certificate afterward saved the culprit from
being legally punished for any offense; secondly, there could be no
pardon for an offense once atoned for if the offense were repeated.
"Long after the conquest, the simple natives when they came under the
arm of the law, sought to escape by producing the certificate of their
former confession." (Prescott, i, 33.)
The prayer of the priest-confessor, as reported by a Spanish historian,
is very remarkable:
"O, merciful Lord, thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let
thy forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of heaven,
to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor
man has sinned, _not from his own free will_, but from the
influence of the sign under which he was born...."
After enjoining on the penitent a variety of minute ceremonies by
way of penance, the confessor urges the necessity of instantly
procuring a slave for sacrifice to the Deity.
In the schools under the clergy the boys were taught by priests and the
girls by priestesses. There was a higher school for instruction in
tradition and history, the mysteries of hieroglyphs, the principles of
government, and certain branches of astronomical and natural science.
In the education of their children the Mexican community were very
strict, but from a letter preserved by one of the Spanish historians, we
can not doubt the womanly affection of a mother who thus wrote to her
daughter:
My beloved daughter, very dear little dove, you have already heard
and attended to the words which your father has told you. They are
precious words, which have proceeded from the bowels and heart in
which they were treasured up; and your beloved father well knows
that you, his daughter, begotten of him, are his blood and his
flesh; and God our Lord knows that it is so. Although you are a
woman, and are the image of your father, what more can I say to you
than has already been said?... My dear daughter, whom I tenderly
love, see that you live in the world in peace, tranquillity, and
contentment--see that you disgrace not yourself, that you stain not
your honor, nor pollute the luster and fame of your ancestors....
May God prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to God, who is
in every place.[10]
[Footnote 10: Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva Espana, vi, 19.]
Some trace of a "natural piety," which will probably surprise our
readers, is also found in the ceremony of Aztec baptism, as described by
the same writer. After the head and lips of the infant were touched with
water and a name given to it, the goddess Cioacoatl was implored "that
the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might
not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live
and be born anew." In Sahagun's account we read:
When all the relations of the child were assembled, the midwife,
who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was
summoned. When the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in
her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water.... To
perform the rite, she placed herself _with her face toward the
west_, and began to go through certain ceremonies.... After this
she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, "O my child!
receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and
is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash
and to purify." ... [After a prayer] she took the child in both
hands, and lifting him toward heaven said, "O Lord, thou seest here
thy creature whom thou hast sent into this world, this place of
sorrow, suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and
thine inspiration."
The science of the Aztecs has excited the wonder of all competent
judges, such as Humboldt (already quoted) and the astronomer La Place.
Lord Kingsborough remarks in his great work:
It can hardly be doubted that the Mexicans were acquainted with
many scientifical instruments of strange invention;... whether the
telescope may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the
thirteenth plate of M. Dupaix's Monuments, which represents a man
holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to
suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision.
References to the calendar of the Aztecs should not omit the secular
festival occurring at the end of their great cycle of fifty-two years.
From the length of the period, two generations, one might compare it
with the "jubilee" of ancient Israel--a word made familiar toward the
close of Queen Victoria's reign. The great event always took place at
midwinter, the most dreary period of the year, and when the five
intercalary days arrived they "abandoned themselves to despair,"
breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the
temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their
furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes to rags. This
disorder and gloom signified that figuratively the end of the world was
at hand.
On the evening of the last day, a procession of priests, assuming
the dress and ornaments of their gods, moved from the capital
toward a lofty mountain, about two leagues distant. They carried
with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an
apparatus for kindling the _new fire_, the success of which was an
augury of the renewal of the cycle. On the summit of the mountain,
the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of
the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by
the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The
flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of
the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up toward
heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless
multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and
the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing
beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country.... A new
cycle had commenced its march.
The following thirteen days were given up to festivity. ... The
people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands
and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up
their oblations and thanksgivings in the temples. Dances and games
were instituted emblematical of the regeneration of the world.
[Footnote 11: A famous group of seven small stars in the Bull
constellation. The "seven sisters" appear as only _six_ to ordinary
eyesight: to make out the seventh is a test of a practised eye and
excellent vision.]
Prescott compares this carnival of the Aztecs to the great secular
festival of the Romans or ancient Etruscans, which (as Suetonius
remarked) "few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to witness
again." The _ludi saeculares_ or secular games of Rome were held only at
very long intervals and lasted for three days and nights.
The poet Southey thus refers to the ceremony of opening the new Aztec
cycle, or Circle of the Years.
On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid,
On his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums,
Laid ready to receive the sacred spark,
And blaze, to herald the ascending sun,
Upon his living altar. Round the wretch
The inhuman ministers of rites accurst
Stand, and expect the signal when to strike
The seed of fire. Their Chief, apart from all,
... eastward turns his eyes;
For now the hour draws nigh, and speedily
He look's to see the first faint dawn of day
Break through the orient sky.
_Madoc_, ii, 26.