MEXICO BEFORE THE SPANISH INVASION
The Aztecs and the Tescucans were the chief races occupying the great
table-land of Anahuac, including, as we have seen, the famous Mexican
Valley. In the preceding chapter we have set forth some of the leading
points in the extinct civilization of those races, and also that of the
Mayas, who in several respects were perhaps superior to the Anahuac
kingdoms.
Several features of the early Mexican civilization will come before us
as we accompany the European conquerors, in their march over the
table-land. Meantime, we glance first at the geography of this
magnificent region, and secondly at the manners and institutions of the
people, their industrial arts, etc., and their terrible religion. The
last-mentioned topic has already been partly discussed in Chapter III.
The Tropic of Cancer passes through the middle of Mexico, and therefore
its southern half, which is the most important, is all under the burning
sun of the "torrid zone." This heat, however, is greatly modified by the
height of the surface above sea-level, since the country, taken as a
whole, is simply an extensive table-land. The height of the plain in the
two central states, Mexico and Puebla, is 8,000 feet, or about double
the average height of the highest summits in the British Isles. On the
west of the republic is a continuous chain of mountains, and on the east
of the table-land run a series of mountainous groups parallel to the
seacoast, with a summit in Vera Cruz of over 13,400 feet. To the south
of the capital an irregular range running east and west contains these
remarkable volcanoes--Colima, 14,400 feet; Jorulla, Popocatepetl,
17,800; Orizaba (extinct), 18,300, the highest summit in Mexico, and,
with the exception of some of the mountains of Alaska, in North America.
The great plateau-basin formed around the capital and its lakes is
completely enclosed by mountains.
This high table-land has its own climate as compared with the broad
tract lying along the Atlantic. Hence the latter is known as the hot
region (_caliente_), and the former the cold region (_fria_). Between
the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great
plateau, is the temperate region (_templada_), an intermediate belt of
perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of
the hot region with its "bilious fevers." Sometimes as he passes along
the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep
slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he sees
their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enameled vegetation of the
tropics." This contrast arises from the height he has now gained above
the hot coast region.
The climate on the table-land is only cold in a relative sense, being
mild to Europeans, with a mean temperature at the capital of 60 deg., seldom
lowered to the freezing-point. The "temperate" slopes form the "Paradise
of Mexico," from "the balmy climate, the magnificent scenery, and the
wealth of semitropical vegetation."
The Aztec and Tescucan laws were kept in state records, and shown
publicly in hieroglyphs. The great crimes against society were all
punished with death, including the murder of a slave. Slaves could hold
property, and all their sons were freedmen. The code in general showed
real respect for the leading principles of morality.
In Mexico, as in ancient Egypt,
the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. The
king must be an experienced warrior. The tutelary deity of the
Aztecs was the god of war. A great object of military expeditions
was to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. The soldier who
fell in battle was transported at once to the region of ineffable
bliss in the bright mansions of the sun.... Thus every war became
a crusade; and the warrior was not only raised to a contempt of
danger, but courted it--animated by a religious enthusiasm like
that of the early Saracen or the Christian crusader.
The officers of the armies wore rich and conspicuous uniforms--a
tight-fitting tunic of quilted cotton sufficient to turn the arrows of
the native Indians; a cuirass (for superior officers) made of thin
plates of gold or silver; an overcoat or cloak of variegated
feather-work; helmets of wood or silver, bearing showy plumes, adorned
with precious stones and gold ornaments. Their belts, collars,
bracelets, and earrings were also of gold or silver.
Southey, in his poem, makes his Welsh prince, Madoc, thus boast:
Their mail, if mail it may be called, was woven
Of vegetable down, like finest flax,
Bleached to the whiteness of new-fallen snow,
... Others of higher office were arrayed
In feathery breastplates, of more gorgeous hue
Than the gay plumage of the mountain-cock,
Than the pheasants' glittering pride. But what were these
Or what the thin gold hauberk, when opposed
To arms like ours in battle?
_Madoc_, i, 7.
We learn of the ancient Mexicans, to their honor, that in the large
towns hospitals were kept for the cure of the sick and wounded soldiers,
and as a permanent refuge if disabled. Not only so, says a Spanish
historian, but "the surgeons placed over them were so far better than
those in Europe that they did not protract the cure to increase the
pay."
Even the red man of the woods, as we learn from Fenimore Cooper and
Catlin, believes reverently in the Great Spirit who upholds the
universe; and similarly his more civilized brother of Mexico or Tezcuco
spoke of a Supreme Creator, Lord of Heaven and Earth. In their prayers
some of the phrases were:
The God by whom we live, omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving
all gifts, without whom man is nothing, invisible, incorporeal, of
perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and
a sure defense.
Prescott, however, remarks that notwithstanding such attributes "the
idea of unity--of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need
of inferior ministers to execute his purposes--was too simple, or too
vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a
plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the
seasons, and the various occupations of man."
The Aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen _dii majores_ and over 200
_dii minores_. To each of these a special day was assigned in the
calendar, with its appropriate festival. Chief of them all was that
bloodthirsty monster _Huitsilopochtli_, the hideous god of
war--tutelary deity of the nation. There was a huge temple to him in
the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all
his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of
human victims was being constantly poured out.
The terrible name of this Mexican Mars has greatly puzzled scholars of
the language. According to one derivation, the name is a compound of
two words, _humming-bird_ and _on the left_, because his image has the
feathers of that bird on the left foot. Prescott naturally thinks that
"too amiable an etymology for so ruffian a deity." The other name of the
war-god, _Mexitl_ (i. e., "the hare of the aloes"), is much better
known, because from it is derived the familiar name of the capital.
[Illustration: Quetzalcoatl.]
The god of the air, _Quetzalcoatl_, a beneficent deity, who taught
Mexicans the use of metals, agriculture, and the arts of government.
Prescott remarks that
he was doubtless one of those benefactors of their species who have
been deified by the gratitude of posterity.
There was a remarkable tradition of Quetzalcoatl, preserved among the
Mexicans, that he had been a king, afterward a god, and had a temple
dedicated to his worship at Cholula[16] when on his way to the Mexican
Gulf. Embarking there, he bade his people a long farewell, promising
that he and his descendants would revisit them. The expectation of his
return prepared the way for the success of the tall white-skinned
invaders.
[Footnote 16: The ruins were referred to in chap, iv, (_v._ p. 84, also
130.)]
In the Aztec agriculture, the staple plant was of course the _maize_ or
Indian corn. Humboldt tells us that at the conquest it was grown
throughout America, from the south of Chile to the River St. Lawrence;
and it is still universal in the New World. Other important plants on
the Aztec soil were the _banana_, which (according to one Spanish
writer) was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother Eve; the
_cacao_, whose fruit supplies the valuable chocolate; the _vanilla_,
used for flavoring; and most important of all, the _maguey_, or Mexican
aloe, much valued because its leaves were manufactured into paper, and
its juice by fermentation becomes the national intoxicant, "pulque." The
_maguey_, or great Mexican aloe, grown all over the table-land, is
called "the miracle of nature," producing not only the _pulque_, but
supplying _thatch_ for the cottages, _thread_ and _cords_ from its tough
fiber, _pins_ and _needles_ from the thorns which grow on the leaves, an
excellent _food_ from its roots, and _writing-paper_ from its leaves.
One writer, after speaking of the "pulque" being made from the "maguey,"
adds, "with what remains of these leaves they manufacture excellent and
very fine cloth, resembling holland or the finest linen."
The _itztli_, formerly mentioned as being used at the sacrifices by the
officiating priest, was "obsidian," a dark transparent mineral, of the
greatest hardness, and therefore useful for making knives and razors.
The Mexican sword was serrated, those of the finest quality being of
course edged with itztli. Sculptured figures abounded in every Aztec
temple and town, but in design very inferior to the ancient specimens of
Egypt and Babylonia, not to mention Greece. A remarkable collection of
their sculptured images occurred in the _place_ or great square of
Mexico--the Aztec forum--and similar spots. Ever since the Spanish
invasion the destruction of the native objects of art has been ceaseless
and ruthless. "Two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last Montezuma and his
father," says Prescott, "cut in the solid rock, in the beautiful groves
of Chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century
[i. e., the eighteenth], by order of the government." He further
remarks:
This wantonness of destruction provokes the bitter animadversion of
the Spanish writer Martyr, whose enlightened mind respected the
vestiges of civilization wherever found. "The conquerors," says he,
"seldom repaired the buildings that they defaced; they would rather
sack twenty stately cities than erect one good edifice."
The pre-Columbian Mexicans inherited a practical knowledge of mechanics
and engineering. The Calendar Stone, for example (spoken of in the
preceding chapter), a mass of dark porphyry estimated at fifty tons
weight, was carried for a distance of many leagues from the mountains
beyond Lake Chalco, through a rough country crossed by rivers and
canals. In the passage its weight broke down a bridge over a canal, and
the heavy rock had to be raised from the water beneath. With such
obstacles, without the draft assistance of horses or cattle, how was it
possible to effect such a transport? Perhaps the mechanical skill of
their builders and engineers had contrived some tramway or other
machinery. An English traveler had a curious suggestion:
Latrobe accommodates the wonders of nature and art very well to
each other, by suggesting that these great masses of stone were
transported by means of the mastodon, whose remains are
occasionally disinterred in the Mexican Valley.
The Mexicans wove many kinds of cotton cloth, sometimes using as a dye
the rich crimson of the cochineal insect. They made a more expensive
fabric by interweaving the cotton with the fine hair of rabbits, and
other animals; sometimes embroidering with pretty designs of flowers and
birds, etc. The special art of the Aztec weaver was in feather-work,
which when brought to Europe produced the highest admiration:
With feathers they could produce all the effect of a beautiful
mosaic. The gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds, especially of
the parrot tribe, afforded every variety of color; and the fine
down of the humming-bird, which reveled in swarms among the
honeysuckle bowers of Mexico, supplied them with soft aerial tints
that gave an exquisite finish to the picture. The feathers, pasted
on a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy,
hangings for apartments, and ornaments for the temples.
When some of the Mexican feather-work was shown at Strasbourg: "Never,"
says one admirer, "did I behold anything so exquisite for brilliancy
and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. No European
artist could have made such a thing."
Instead of shops the Aztecs had in every town a market-place, where
fairs were held every fifth day--i. e., once a week. Each commodity had
a particular quarter, and the traffic was partly by barter, and partly
by using the following articles as money: bits of tin shaped like an
Egyptian cross (T), bags of cacao holding a specified number of grains,
and, for large values, quills of gold-dust.
The married women among the Aztecs were treated kindly and respectfully
by their husbands. The feminine occupations were spinning and
embroidery, etc., as among the ancient Greeks, while listening to
ballads and love stories related by their maidens and musicians
(Ramusio, iii, 305).
In banquets and other social entertainments the women had an equal share
with the men. Sometimes the festivities were on a large scale, with
costly preparations and numerous attendants. The Mexicans, ancient and
modern, have always been passionately fond of flowers, and on great
occasions not only were the halls and courts strewed and adorned in
profusion with blossoms of every hue and sweet odor, but perfumes
scented every room. The guests as they sat down found ewers of water
before them and cotton napkins, since washing the hands both before and
after eating was a national habit of almost religious obligation.[17]
Modern Europeans believe that tobacco was introduced from America in
the time of Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth, but ages before that
period the Aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to
the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the
form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." The
smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the _siesta_ or nap of
"forty winks." It is not known if the Aztec ladies, like their
descendants in modern Mexico, also appreciated the _yetl_, as the
Mexicans called "tobacco." Our word came from the natives of Hayti, one
of the islands discovered by Columbus.
[Footnote 17: Sahagun (vi, 22) quotes the precise instructions of a
father to his son: he must wash face and hands before sitting down to
table, and must not leave till he has repeated the operation and
cleansed his teeth.]
The tables of the Aztecs abounded in good food--various dishes of meat,
especially game, fowl, and fish. The turkey, for example, was introduced
into Europe from Mexico, although stupidly supposed to have come from
Asia. The French named it _coq d'Inde_,[18] the "Indian cock," meaning
American, but the ordinary hearer imagined _d'Inde_ meant from
Hindustan. The blunder arose from that misapplication of the word
"Indian," first made by Columbus, as we formerly explained.
[Footnote 18: The Spanish named this handsome bird _gallopavo_ (Lat.
_pavo_, the "peacock"). The wild turkey is larger and more beautiful
than the tame, and therefore Benjamin Franklin, when speaking
sarcastically of the "American Eagle," insisted that the wild turkey was
the proper national emblem.]
The Aztec cooks dressed their viands with various sauces and condiments,
the more solid dishes being followed by fruits of many kinds, as well as
sweetmeats and pastry. Chafing-dishes even were used. Besides the
varieties of beautiful flowers which adorned the table there were
sculptured Vases of silver and sometimes gold. At table
the favorite beverage was the _chocolatl_ flavored with vanilla and
different spices. The fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture
of sweets and acids, supplied also various agreeable drinks, of
different degrees of strength.
When the young Mexicans of both sexes amused themselves with dances, the
older people kept their seats in order to enjoy their _pulque_ and
gossip, or listen to the discourse of some guest of importance. The
music which accompanied the dances was frequently soft and rather
plaintive.
The early Mexicans included the Tezcucans as well as the Aztecs proper;
and since their capitals were on the same lake and both races were
closely akin, we may devote some space to these Alcohuans or eastern
Aztecs. Their civilization was superior to that of the western Aztecs in
some respects, and Nezahual-coyotl, their greatest prince, formed
alliance with the western state, and then remodeled the various
departments of his government. He had a council of war, another of
finance, and a third of justice.
A remarkable institution, under King Nezahual-coyotl, was the "Council
of Music," intended to promote the study of science and the practise of
art.
Tezcuco, in fact, became the nursery not only of such sciences as could
be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and
ornamental arts. "Its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated
throughout the country.... Its idiom, more polished than the Mexican,
continued long after the conquest to be that in which the best
productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco was the Athens of
the Western World.... Among the most illustrious of her bards was their
king himself." A Spanish writer adds that it was to the eastern Aztecs
that noblemen sent their sons "to study poetry, moral philosophy, the
heathen theology, astronomy, medicine, and history."
[Illustration: Ancient Bridge near Tezcuco.]
The most remarkable problem connected with ancient Mexico is how to
reconcile the general refinement and civilization with the sacrifices of
human victims. There was no town or city but had its temples in public
places, with stairs visibly leading up to the sacrificial stone, ever
standing ready before some hideous idol or other--as already described.
In all countries there have been public spectacles of bloodshed, not
only as in the gladiators in the ancient circus--
butchered to make a Roman holiday,
or the tournays of the middle ages, but in the prize-ring fights and
public executions by ax or guillotine, of the age that is just passing
away. The thousands who perished for religious ideas by means of the
Holy Roman Inquisition should not be overlooked by the Spanish writers
who are so indignant that Montezuma and his priests sacrificed tens of
thousands under the claims of a heathen religion. The very day on which
we write these words, August 18th, is the anniversary of the last
sentence for beheading passed by our House of Lords. By that sentence
three Scottish "Jacobites" passed under the ax on Tower Hill, where
their remains still rest in a chapel hard by. So lately as 1873, the
Shah of Persia, when resident as a visitor in Buckingham Palace, was
amazed to find that the laws of Great Britain prevented him from
depriving five of his courtiers of their lives. They had just been found
guilty of some paltry infringement of Persian etiquette. During the last
generation or the previous one, both in England and Scotland, the
country schoolmaster on a certain day had the schoolroom cleared so that
the children and their friends should enjoy the treat of seeing all the
game-cocks of the parish bleeding on the floor one after another, being
either struck by a spur to the brain, or else wounded to a painful
death. When James Boswell and others regularly attended the spectacles
of Tyburn and sometimes cheered the wretched victim if he "died game,"
the philosopher will not wonder at the populace of some city of ancient
Mexico crowding round the great temple and greedily watching the bloody
sacrifice done with full sanction of the priesthood and the king.
The primitive religions were derived from sun-worship, and as fire is
the nearest representative of the sun, it seemed essential to _burn_ the
victim offered as a sacrifice. At Carthage, the great Phenician colony,
children were cruelly sacrificed by fire to the god Melkarth of Tyre.
"Melkarth" being simply _Melech Kiriath_ (i. e., "King of the City"),
and therefore identical with the "Moloch" or "Molech" of the Ammonites,
Moabites, and Israelites. In the earliest prehistoric age the children
of Ammon, Moab, and Israel were apparently so closely akin that they had
practically the same religion and worshiped the same idols. The tribal
god was originally the god of Syria or Canaan. In more than a dozen
places of the Old Testament we find the Hebrews accused of burning their
children or passing them through the fire to the sun-god, but the
ancient Mexicans did not burn their victims, and _in no case were the
victims their own children_. The victims were captives taken in war, or
persons convicted of crime; and thus the Mexicans were in atrocity far
surpassed by those races akin to the Hebrews who are much denounced by
the sacred writers, e. g.:
Josiah ... defiled Topheth that no man might make his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings xxiii, 10).
They have built also the high places to burn their sons with fire
for burnt-offerings (Jer. xix, 5).
Yea, they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of
their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan (Ps.
cvi, 37).
That a father should offer his own child as a sacrifice to the sun-god
or any other, would to the mild and gentle Aztec be too dreadful a
conception. It is the enormous number who were immolated that shocks the
European mind, but to the populace enjoying the spectacle the victims
were enemies of the king or criminals deserving execution.
Perhaps it is a more difficult problem to explain how so civilized a
community as the Aztec races undoubtedly were could look with
complacency upon any one tasting a dish composed of some part of the
captive he had taken in battle. It is not only repulsive as an idea, but
seems impossible. Yet much depends on the point of view as well as the
atmosphere. According to archeologists, all the primeval races of men
could at a pinch feed on human flesh, but after many generations learned
to do better without it. We may have simply outgrown the craving, till
at last we call it unnatural, whereas those ancient Mexicans, with all
their wealth of food, had refined upon it. Let us again refer to the Old
Testament:
Thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters and these hast thou
sacrificed to be devoured (Ezek. xvi, 20).
... have caused their sons to pass for them through the fire, to
devour them (Ezek. xxiii, 37).
We may therefore infer that to the early races of Canaan (including
Israel), as well as to the primeval Aztecs, it was a privilege and
religious custom to eat part of any sacrifice that had been offered.
There can be little doubt, to any one who has studied the earliest human
antiquities, that all races indulged in cannibalism, not only during
that enormously remote age called Paleolithic, but in comparatively
recent though still prehistoric times. "This is clearly proved by the
number of human bones, chiefly of women and young persons, which have
been found charred by fire and split open for extraction of the marrow."
Such charred bones have frequently been preserved in caves, as at
Chaleux in Belgium, where in some instances they occurred "in such
numbers as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal feasts."
The survival of human sacrifice among the Aztecs, with its accompanying
traces of cannibalism, was due to the savagery of a long previous
condition of their Indian race; just as in the Greek drama, when that
ancient people had attained a high level of culture and refinement, the
sacrifice of a human life, sometimes a princess or other distinguished
heroine, was not unfrequent. We remember Polyxena, the virgin daughter
of Hecuba, whom her own people resolved to sacrifice on the tomb of
Achilles; and her touching bravery, as she requests the Greeks not to
bind her, being ashamed, she says, "having lived a princess to die a
slave." A better known example is Iphigenia, so beloved by her father,
King Agamemnon, and yet given up by him a victim for purposes of state
and religion.
[Illustration: Teocalli, Aztec Temple for Human Sacrifices.]
From the Greek drama, human sacrifices frequently passed to the Roman;
nor does such a refined critic as Horace object to it, but only suggests
that the bloodshed ought to be perpetrated behind the scenes. In
Seneca's play, Medea (quoted in our Introduction), that rule was grossly
violated, since the children have their throats cut by their heroic
mother in full view of the audience. In the same passage (Ars Poet.,
185, 186) Horace forbids a banquet of human flesh being prepared before
the eyes of the public, as had been done in a play written by Ennius,
the Roman poet. The religious sacrifice of human victims by the "Druids"
or priests of ancient Gaul and Britain seems exactly parallel to the
wholesale executions on the Mexican _teocallis_, since the wretched
victims whom our Celtic ancestors packed for burning into those huge
wicker images, were captives taken in battle, like those stretched for
slaughter upon the Mexican stone of sacrifice.
Human sacrifice was so common in civilized Rome that it was not till the
first century B. C. that a law was passed expressly forbidding
it--(Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxx, 3, 4).