[Footnote 101: The small states into which tribes were at first

transformed have in many cases survived to the present time as

portions of great states or nations. The shires or counties of

England, which have been reproduced in the United States,

originated in this way, as I have briefly explained in my

little book on _Civil Government in the United States_, p. 49.

When you look on the map of England, and see the town of

_Icklingham_ in the county of _Suffolk_, it means that this

place was once the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of

Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of Angles known

as "South folk." So the names of Gaulish tribes survived as

names of French provinces, e. g. _Auvergne_ from the _Arverni_,

_Poitou_ from the _Pictavi_, _Anjou_ from the _Andecavi_,

_Béarn_ from the _Bigerrones_, etc.]

[Footnote 102: "It was no easy task to accomplish such a

fundamental change, however simple and obvious it may now

seem.... Anterior to experience, a township, as the unit of a

political system, was abstruse enough to tax the Greeks and

Romans to the depths of their capacities before the conception

was formed and set in practical operation." Morgan, _Ancient

Society_, p. 218.]

[Sidenote: Suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish accounts.]

[Sidenote: Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis Morgan.]

The first eminent writer to express a serious doubt as to the

correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that

sagacious Scotchman, William Robertson.[103] The illustrious statesman

and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological

Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay

which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without

very careful and critical scrutiny.[104] It is to be observed that Mr.

Gallatin approached the subject with somewhat more knowledge of

aboriginal life in America than had been possessed by previous writers.

A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis Cass, who also knew a great

deal about Indians.[105] Next came Mr. Morgan,[106] the man of

path-breaking ideas, whose minute and profound acquaintance with Indian

life was joined with a power of penetrating the hidden implications of

facts so keen and so sure as to amount to genius. Mr. Morgan saw the

nature of the delusion under which the Spaniards laboured; he saw that

what they mistook for feudal castles owned by great lords, and inhabited

by dependent retainers, were really huge communal houses, owned and

inhabited by clans, or rather by segments of overgrown clans. He saw

this so vividly that it betrayed him now and then into a somewhat

impatient and dogmatic manner of statement; but that was a slight fault,

for what he saw was not the outcome of dreamy speculation but of

scientific insight. His researches, which reduced "Montezuma's empire"

to a confederacy of tribes dwelling in pueblos, governed by a council of

chiefs, and collecting tribute from neighbouring pueblos, have been

fully sustained by subsequent investigation.

[Footnote 103: Robertson's _History of America_, 9th ed. vol.

iii. pp. 274, 281.]

[Footnote 104: "Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico,

Yucatan, and Central America," _American Ethnological Society's

Transactions_, vol. i., New York, 1852. There is a brief

account of Mr. Gallatin's pioneer work in American philology

and ethnology in Stevens's _Albert Gallatin_, pp. 386-396.]

[Footnote 105: Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," _North Amer.

Review_, Oct., 1840.]

[Footnote 106: Mr. R. A. Wilson's _New History of the Conquest

of Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish

conquerors as wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant,

uncritical, and full of wild fancies, it produced little

effect. It was demolished, with neatness and despatch, in two

articles in the _Atlantic Monthly_, April and May, 1859, by the

eminent historian John Foster Kirk, whose _History of Charles

the Bold_ is in many respects a worthy companion to the works

of Prescott and Motley. Mr. Kirk had been Mr. Prescott's

secretary.]

[Sidenote: Adolf Bandelier's researches.]

The state of society which Cortes saw has, indeed, passed away, and its

monuments and hieroglyphic records have been in great part destroyed.

Nevertheless some monuments and some hieroglyphic records remain, and

the people are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, descendants in the

eleventh or twelfth generation from the men whose bitter feuds gave such

a golden opportunity to Cortes, still dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and

speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the

furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in

Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century

following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking

administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were

working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for deceiving

mankind. From a really critical study of this literature, combined with

archæological investigation, much may be expected; and a noble beginning

has already been made. A more extensive acquaintance with Mexican

literature would at times have materially modified Mr. Morgan's

conclusions, though without altering their general drift. At this point

the work has been taken up by Mr. Adolf Bandelier, of Highland,

Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and untiring industry as a field

archæologist is joined such a thorough knowledge of Mexican literature

as few men before him have possessed. Armed with such resources, Mr.

Bandelier is doing for the ancient history of America work as

significant as that which Mommsen has done for Rome, or Baur for the

beginnings of Christianity. When a sufficient mass of facts and

incidents have once been put upon record, it is hard for ignorant

misconception to bury the truth in a pit so deep but that the delving

genius of critical scholarship will sooner or later drag it forth into

the light of day.[107]

[Footnote 107: A summary of Mr. Bandelier's principal results,

with copious citation and discussion of original Spanish and

Nahuatl sources, is contained in his three papers, "On the art

of war and mode of warfare of the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the

distribution and tenure of land, and the customs with respect

to inheritance, among the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the social

organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans,"

_Peabody Museum Reports_, vol. ii., 1876-79, pp. 95-161,

385-448, 557-699.]

[Sidenote: The Aztec confederacy.]

At this point in our exposition a very concise summary of Mr.

Bandelier's results will suffice to enable the reader to understand

their import. What has been called the "empire of Montezuma" was in

reality a confederacy of three tribes, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and

Tlacopans,[108] dwelling in three large composite pueblos situated very

near together in one of the strongest defensive positions ever occupied

by Indians. This Aztec confederacy extended its "sway" over a

considerable portion of the Mexican peninsula, but that "sway" could not

correctly be described as "empire," for it was in no sense a military

occupation of the country. The confederacy did not have garrisons in

subject pueblos or civil officials to administer their affairs for them.

It simply sent some of its chiefs about from one pueblo to another to

collect tribute. This tax consisted in great part of maize and other

food, and each tributary pueblo reserved a certain portion of its tribal

territory to be cultivated for the benefit of the domineering

confederacy. If a pueblo proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec

warriors swooped down upon it in stealthy midnight assault, butchered

its inhabitants and emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm of rage

had spent itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for

concubines, men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty as could

be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.[109] If the sudden

assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were

likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food

could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers.

[Footnote 108: In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed

a certain precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the

central council-fire, and the Senecas, who had the two head

war-chiefs, were much the most numerous. In the Mexican

confederacy the various points of superiority seem to have been

more concentrated in the Aztecs; but spoils and tribute were

divided into five portions, of which Mexico and Tezcuco each

took two, and Tlacopan one.]

[Footnote 109: The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled

to carry the booty.]

The tributary pueblos were also liable to be summoned to furnish a

contingent of warriors to the war-parties of the confederacy, under the

same penalties for delinquency as in the case of refusal of tribute. In

such cases it was quite common for the confederacy to issue a peremptory

summons, followed by a declaration of war. When a pueblo was captured,

the only way in which the vanquished people could stop the massacre was

by holding out signals of submission; a parley then sometimes adjusted

the affair, and the payment of a year's tribute in advance induced the

conquerors to depart, but captives once taken could seldom if ever be

ransomed. If the parties could not agree upon terms, the slaughter was

renewed, and sometimes went on until the departing victors left nought

behind them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole and doorway lurid

clouds of smoke and flame upon narrow silent streets heaped up with

mangled corpses.

The sway of the Aztec confederacy over the Mexican peninsula was thus

essentially similar to the sway of the Iroquois confederacy over a great

part of the tribes between the Connecticut river and the Mississippi.

It was simply the levying of tribute,--a system of plunder enforced by

terror. The so-called empire was "only a partnership formed for the

purpose of carrying on the business of warfare, and that intended, not

for the extension of territorial ownership, but only for an increase of

the means of subsistence."[110] There was none of that coalescence and

incorporation of peoples which occurs after the change from gentilism to

civil society has been effected. Among the Mexicans, as elsewhere

throughout North America, the tribe remained intact as the highest

completed political integer.

[Footnote 110: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 563.]

[Sidenote: Aztec clans.]

The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and phratries, and the number of

clans would indicate that the tribe was a very large one.[111] There

were twenty clans, called in the Nahuatl language "calpullis." We may

fairly suppose that the average size of a clan was larger than the

average tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois; but owing to the compact "city"

life, this increase of numbers did not result in segmentation and

scattering, as among Indians in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems

to have occupied a number of adjacent communal houses, forming a kind of

precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes,

corresponding to the _estufas_ in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses

were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its

members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or

bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real

estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of

occupancy, and--as among some ruder Indians--its individual members

exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.

[Footnote 111: The notion of an immense population groaning

under the lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for

idle despots must be dismissed. The statements which refer to

such a vast population are apt to be accompanied by

incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the

burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people without

domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so

numerous (_Anc. Soc._, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe

Mr. Morgan makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in

underestimating the numbers that could be supported upon Indian

corn even under a system of horticulture without the use of the

plough. Some pertinent remarks on the extraordinary

reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Humboldt,

_Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811, tom.

iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of

the yield of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due

allowances, the yield under the ancient system must have been

well-nigh unexampled in barbaric agriculture.]

[Sidenote: Clan officers.]

The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs

(_tecuhtli_) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel

religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half

starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from

the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan

(_calpulli_) had an official head, or sachem, called the _calpullec_;

and also a military commander called the _ahcacautin_, or "elder

brother." The _ahcacautin_ was also a kind of peace officer, or

constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with

him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff

betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its

_calpullec_ and _ahcacautin_, and could depose them for cause.[112]

[Footnote 112: Compare this description with that of the

institutions of Indians in the lower status, above, p. 69.]

[Sidenote: Rights and duties of the clan.]

The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and

avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty

for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its

members. Such names were invariably significant (as _Nezahualcoyotl_,

"Hungry Coyote," _Axayacatl_, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.), and more or

less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name.

The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its

peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members

of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of

burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was,

therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted

by the clan.

[Sidenote: Aztec phratries.]

The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were

organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, as

the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had

acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides

certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the

punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for

military purposes.[113] The four phratries were four divisions of the

tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was an

arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which they

were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.

[Footnote 113: In this respect it seems to have had some

resemblance to the Roman _centuria_ and Teutonic _hundred_. So

in prehistoric Greece we may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice

to Agamemnon that a similar organization existed:--

[Greek: krin' andras kata phyla, kata phrêtras, Agamemnon,

hôs phrêtrê phrêtrêphin arêgê, phyla de phylois.]

_Iliad_, ii. 362.

But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a

development among the Greeks as among the Romans and the early

English.]

[Sidenote: The tribal council.]

The supreme government of the Aztecs was vested in the tribal council

composed of twenty members, one for each clan. The member, representing

a clan, was not its _calpullec_, or "sachem;" he was one of the

_tecuhtli_, or clan-chiefs, and was significantly called the "speaker"

(_tlatoani_). The tribal council, thus composed of twenty speakers, was

called the _tlatocan_, or "place of speech."[114] At least as often as

once in ten days the council assembled at the _tecpan_, or official

house of the tribe, but it could be convened whenever occasion required,

and in cases of emergency was continually in session. Its powers and

duties were similar to those of an ancient English shiremote, in so far

as they were partly directive and partly judicial. A large part of its

business was settling disputes between the clans. It superintended the

ceremonies of investiture with which the chiefs and other officers of

the clans were sworn into office. At intervals of eighty days there was

an "extra session" of the _tlatocan_, attended also by the twenty "elder

brothers," the four phratry-captains, the two executive chiefs of the

tribe, and the leading priests, and at such times a reconsideration of

an unpopular decision might be urged; but the authority of the

_tlatocan_ was supreme, and from its final decision there could be no

appeal.[115]

[Footnote 114: Compare _parliament_ from _parler_. These twenty

were the "grandees," "counsellors," and "captains" mentioned by

Bernal Diaz as always in Montezuma's company; "y siempre á la

contina estaban en su compañía veinte grandes señores y

consejeros y capitanes," etc. _Historia verdadera_, ii. 95. See

Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 646.]

[Footnote 115: Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an

especially apt illustration of the confusion of ideas and

inconsistencies of statement amid which the early Spanish

writers struggled to understand and describe this strange

society: _op. cit._ p. 651.]

[Sidenote: The "snake-woman."]

The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in number, as was commonly

the case in ancient America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, bore

the grotesque title of _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman."[116] His relation

to the tribe was in general like that of the _calpullec_ to the clan. He

executed the decrees of the tribal council, of which he was _ex officio_

a member, and was responsible for the housing of tribute and its proper

distribution among the clans. He was also chief judge, and he was

lieutenant to the head war-chief in command of the tribal host.[117]

He was elected for life by the tribal council, which could depose him

for misconduct.

[Footnote 116: In Aztec mythology Cihuacoatl was wife of the

supreme night deity, Tezcatlipoca. Squier, _Serpent Symbol in

America_, pp. 159-166, 174-183. On the connection between

serpent worship and human sacrifices, see Fergusson's _Tree and

Serpent Worship_, pp. 3-5, 38-41. Much evidence as to American

serpent worship is collected in J. G. Müller's _Geschichte der

amerikanischen Urreligionen_, Basel, 1855. The hieroglyphic

emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a female head surmounted

by a snake.]

[Footnote 117: Other tribes besides the Aztec had the

"snake-woman." In the city of Mexico the Spaniards mistook him

for a "second-king," or "royal lieutenant." In other towns they

regarded him, somewhat more correctly, as "governor," and

called him _gobernador_,--a title still applied to the tribal

sachem of the pueblo Indians, as e. g. in Zuñi heretofore

mentioned; see above p. 89.]

[Sidenote: The "chief-of men."]

[Sidenote: Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome.]

The office of head war-chief was an instance of primitive royalty in a

very interesting stage of development. The title of this officer was

_tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men."[118] He was primarily head war-chief

of the Aztec tribe, but about 1430 became supreme military commander of

the three confederate tribes, so that his office was one of peculiar

dignity and importance. When the Spaniards arrived upon the scene

Montezuma was _tlacatecuhtli_, and they naturally called him "king." To

understand precisely how far such an epithet could correctly be applied

to him, and how far it was misleading, we must recall the manner in

which early kingship arose in Europe. The Roman _rex_ was an officer

elected for life; the typical Greek _basileus_ was a somewhat more fully

developed king, inasmuch as his office was becoming practically

hereditary; otherwise _rex_ was about equivalent to _basileus_. Alike in

Rome and in Greece the king had at least three great functions, and

possibly four.[119] He was, primarily, chief commander, secondly, chief

priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the fourth stage

and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter of dispute.

Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at so early a

date that some questions of this sort are difficult to settle. But in

all probability the office grew up through the successive acquisition of

ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military commander. The

paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities before fighting

resulted in making the general a priest competent to perform sacrifices

and interpret omens;[120] he thus naturally became the most important

among priests; an increased sanctity invested his person and office; and

by and by he acquired control over the dispensation of justice, and

finally over the whole civil administration. One step more was needed to

develop the _basileus_ into a despot, like the king of Persia, and that

was to let him get into his hands the law-making power, involving

complete control over taxation. When the Greeks and Romans became

dissatisfied with the increasing powers of their kings, they destroyed

the office. The Romans did not materially diminish its functions, but

put them into commission, by entrusting them to two consuls of equal

authority elected annually. The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the

royal functions among different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the

nine archons.[121]

[Footnote 118: This title seems precisely equivalent to [Greek:

anax andrôn], commonly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to

other chieftains, in the Iliad.]

[Footnote 119: Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_, p. 64; Hermann's

_Political Antiquities of Greece_, p. 105; Morgan, _Anc. Soc._,

p. 248.]

[Footnote 120: Such would naturally result from the

desirableness of securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had

been in sole command of the Athenian armament in the harbour of

Syracuse, and had been a _basileus_, with priestly authority,

who can doubt that some such theory of the eclipse as that

suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted, and thus one

of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, _Hist.

Greece_, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his

admirable book _La Cité antique_, pp. 205-210, makes the

priestly function of the king primitive, and the military

function secondary; which is entirely inconsistent with what we

know of barbarous races.]

[Footnote 121: It is worthy of note that the archon who

retained the priestly function was called _basileus_, showing

perhaps that at that time this had come to be most prominent

among the royal functions, or more likely that it was the one

with which reformers had some religious scruples about

interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's

priestly function in an officer called _rex sacrorum_, whose

duty was at times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then

run away as fast as legs could carry him,--[Greek: hên thysas

ho basileus, kata tachos apeisi pheugôn ex agoras] (!)

Plutarch, _Quæst. Rom._ 63.]

[Sidenote: Mediæval kingship.]

The typical kingship in mediæval Europe, after the full development of

the feudal system, was very different indeed from the kingship in early

Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages all priestly functions had passed

into the hands of the Church.[122] A king like Charles VII. of France,

or Edward III. of England, was military commander, civil magistrate,

chief judge, and _supreme landlord_; the people were his tenants. That

was the kind of king with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico were

familiar.

[Footnote 122: Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity,"

however, surrounded the king's person; and the ceremony of

anointing the king at his coronation was a survival of the

ancient rite which invested the head war-chief with priestly

attributes.]

[Sidenote: Montezuma was a "priest-commander."]

Now the Mexican _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was much more like

Agamemnon in point of kingship than like Edward III. He was not supreme

landlord, for landlordship did not exist in Mexico. He was not chief

judge or civil magistrate; those functions belonged to the

"snake-woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the "chief-of-men" as simply a

military commander; but for reasons which I shall state hereafter,[123]

it seems quite clear that he exercised certain very important priestly

functions, although beside him there was a kind of high-priest or

medicine-chief. If I am right in holding that Montezuma was a

"priest-commander," then incipient royalty in Mexico had advanced at

least one stage beyond the head war-chief of the Iroquois, and remained

one stage behind the _basileus_ of the Homeric Greeks.

[Footnote 123: They can be most conveniently stated in

connection with the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below,

vol. ii. p. 278. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised

paper on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear

that he has taken these facts into the account.]

[Sidenote: Mode of succession to the office.]

The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was elected by an assembly

consisting of the tribal council, the "elder brothers" of the several

clans, and certain leading priests. Though the office was thus elective,

the choice seems to have been practically limited to a particular clan,

and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 1375 to 1520 a certain

principle or custom of succession seems to be plainly indicated.[124]

There was a further limit to the order of succession. Allusion has been

made to the four phratry-captains commanding the quarters of the city.

Their cheerful titles were "man of the house of darts," "cutter of men,"

"bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus." These captains were

military chiefs of the phratries, and also magistrates charged with the

duty of maintaining order and enforcing the decrees of the council in

their respective quarters. The "chief of the eagle and cactus" was chief

executioner,--Jack Ketch. He was not eligible for the office of

"chief-of-men;" the three other phratry-captains were eligible. Then

there was a member of the priesthood entitled "man of the dark house."

This person, with the three eligible captains, made a quartette, and one

of this privileged four _must_ succeed to the office of "chief-of-men."

[Footnote 124: I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting

Clavigero's statement that the office of _tlacatecuhtli_

"should always remain in the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as

the eleven who were actually elected were all closely akin to

one another. In point of fact it _did_ remain "in the house of

Acamapitzin."]

The eligibility of the "man of the dark house" may be cited here as

positive proof that sometimes the "chief-of-men" could be a

"priest-commander." That in all cases he acquired priestly functions

after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated

by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he

ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god

Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black

ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become

consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as

his first official act offered incense to the war-god.[125]

[Footnote 125: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific

States_, vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent

demeanour of the people toward Montezuma, though perhaps

overcoloured, are not so absurd as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr.

Morgan was sometimes too anxious to reduce Montezuma to the

level of an Iroquois war-chief.]

[Sidenote: Manner of collecting tribute.]

As the "chief-of-men" was elected, so too he could be deposed for

misbehaviour. He was _ex officio_ a member of the tribal council, and he

had his official residence in the _tecpan_, or tribal house, where the

meetings of the council were held, and where the hospitalities of the

tribe were extended to strangers. As an administrative officer, the

"chief-of-men" had little to do within the limits of the tribe; that, as

already observed, was the business of the "snake-woman." But outside of

the confederacy the "chief-of-men" exercised administrative functions.

He superintended the collection of tribute. Each of the three

confederate tribes appointed, through its tribal council, agents to

visit the subjected pueblos and gather in the tribute. These agents were

expressively termed _calpixqui_, "crop-gatherers." As these men were

obliged to spend considerable time in the vanquished pueblos in the

double character of tax-collectors and spies, we can imagine how hateful

their position was. Their security from injury depended upon the

reputation of their tribes for ruthless ferocity.[126] The tiger-like

confederacy was only too ready to take offence; in the lack of a decent

pretext it often went to war without one, simply in order to get human

victims for sacrifice.

[Footnote 126: As I have elsewhere observed in a similar

case:--"Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the

dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and

down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons

and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the

savage council at Onondaga." _Beginnings of New England_, p.

121.]

Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were directed by the "chief-of-men."

The tribute was chiefly maize, but might be anything the conquerors

chose to demand,--weapons, fine pottery or featherwork, gold ornaments,

or female slaves. Sometimes the tributary pueblo, instead of sacrificing

all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of them up to

Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the horrible deities

was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the blackmail, but by the

power that extorted it, and thus the latter obtained a larger share of

divine favour. Generally the unhappy prisoners were forced to carry the

corn and other articles. They were convoyed by couriers who saw that

everything was properly delivered at the _tecpan_, and also brought

information by word of mouth and by picture-writing from the _calpixqui_

to the "chief-of-men." When the newly-arrived Spaniards saw these

couriers coming and going they fancied that they were "ambassadors."

This system of tribute-taking made it necessary to build roads, and this

in turn facilitated, not only military operations, but trade, which had

already made some progress albeit of a simple sort. These "roads" might

perhaps more properly be called Indian trails,[127] but they served

their purpose.

[Footnote 127: See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the

Council of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 696.

The letter recommends that to increase the security of the

Spanish hold upon the country the roads should be made

practicable for beasts and wagons. They were narrow paths

running straight ahead up hill and down dale, sometimes

crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.]

[Sidenote: Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted.]

The general similarity of the Aztec confederacy to that of the

Iroquois, in point of social structure, is thus clearly manifest. Along

with this general similarity we have observed some points of higher

development, such as one might expect to find in traversing the entire

length of an ethnical period. Instead of stockaded villages, with houses

of bark or of clay supported upon a wooden framework, we have pueblos of

adobe-brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, the most advanced

of which present the appearance of castellated cities. Along with the

systematic irrigation and increased dependence upon horticulture, we

find evidences of greater density of population; and we see in the

victorious confederacy a more highly developed organization for adding

to its stock of food and other desirable possessions by the systematic

plunder of neighbouring weaker communities. Naturally such increase in

numbers and organization entails some increase in the number of officers

and some differentiation of their functions, as illustrated in the

representation of the clans (_calpulli_) in the tribal council

(_tlatocan_), by speakers (_tlatoani_) chosen for the purpose, and not

by the official heads (_calpullec_) of the clan. Likewise in the

military commander-in-chief (_tlacatecuhtli_) we observe a marked

increase in dignity, and--as I have already suggested and hope to

maintain--we find that his office has been clothed with sacerdotal

powers, and has thus taken a decided step toward kingship of the ancient

type, as depicted in the Homeric poems.

[Sidenote: Aztec priesthood: human sacrifices.]

No feature of the advance is more noteworthy than the development of

the medicine-men into an organized priesthood.[128] The presence of this

priesthood and its ritual was proclaimed to the eyes of the traveller in

ancient Mexico by the numerous tall truncated pyramids (_teocallis_), on

the flat summits of which men, women, and children were sacrificed to

the gods. This custom of human sacrifice seems to have been a

characteristic of the middle period of barbarism, and to have survived,

with diminishing frequency, into the upper period. There are abundant

traces of its existence throughout the early Aryan world, from Britain

to Hindustan, as well as among the ancient Hebrews and their

kindred.[129] But among all these peoples, at the earliest times at

which we can study them with trustworthy records, we find the custom of

human sacrifice in an advanced stage of decline, and generally no longer

accompanied by the custom of cannibalism in which it probably

originated.[130] Among the Mexicans, however, when they were first

visited by the Spaniards, cannibalism flourished as nowhere else in the

world except perhaps in Fiji, and human sacrifices were conducted on

such a scale as could not have been witnessed in Europe without going

back more than forty centuries.

[Footnote 128: The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it

form a caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient

Mexico, nor were there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans,"

"merchants," etc. See Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 599.]

[Footnote 129: See the copious references in Tylor's _Primitive

Culture_, ii. 340-371; Mackay, _Religious Development of the

Greeks and Hebrews_, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, _The Bible

for Young People_, i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170,

316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, _Die Menschenopfer der

alten Hebräer_, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the subject with much

learning.]

[Footnote 130: Spencer, _Princip. Sociol._, i. 287; Tylor, _op.

cit._ ii. 345.]

The custom of sacrificing captives to the gods was a marked advance upon

the practice in the lower period of barbarism, when the prisoner, unless

saved by adoption into the tribe of his captors, was put to death with

lingering torments. There were occasions on which the Aztecs tortured

their prisoners before sending them to the altar,[131] but in general

the prisoner was well-treated and highly fed,--fatted, in short, for the

final banquet in which the worshippers participated with their savage

deity.[132] In a more advanced stage of development than that which the

Aztecs had reached, in the stage when agriculture became extensive

enough to create a steady demand for servile labour, the practice of

enslaving prisoners became general; and as slaves became more and more

valuable, men gradually succeeded in compounding with their deities for

easier terms,--a ram, or a kid, or a bullock, instead of the human

victim.[133]

[Footnote 131: Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with

details, refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's

Inferno, _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 64.]

[Footnote 132: See below, vol. ii. p. 283.]

[Footnote 133: The victim, by the offer of which the wrath of

the god was appeased or his favour solicited, must always be

some valued possession of the sacrificer. Hence, e. g., among

the Hebrews "wild animals, as not being property, were

generally considered unfit for sacrifice." (Mackay, _op. cit._

ii. 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott, _loc. cit._) on certain

occasions of peculiar solemnity the clan offered some of its

own members, usually children. In the lack of prisoners such

offerings would more often be necessary, hence one powerful

incentive to war. The use of prisoners to buy the god's favour

was to some extent a substitute for the use of the clan's own

members, and at a later stage the use of domestic animals was a

further substitution. The legend of Abraham and Isaac

(_Genesis_, xxii. 1-14) preserves the tradition of this latter

substitution among the ancient Hebrews. Compare the Boeotian

legend of the temple of Dionysos Aigobolos:--[Greek: thyontes

gar tô theô proêchthêsan pote hypo methês es hybrin, hôste kai

tou Dionysou ton hierea apokteinousin; apokteinantas de autika

epelabe nosos loimôdês; kai sphisin aphiketo hama ek Delphôn,

tô Dionysô thyein paida hôraion; etesi de ou pollois hysteron

ton theon phasin aiga hiereion hypallaxai sphisin anti tou

paidos.]

Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress was the substitution of a

mere inanimate symbol for a living victim, whether human or brute, as

shown in the old Roman custom of appeasing "Father Tiber" once a year by

the ceremony of drowning a lot of dolls in that river. Of this

significant rite Mommsen aptly observes, "Die Ideen göttlicher Gnade und

Versöhnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar gemischt mit der frommen

Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht den gefährlichen Herrn durch

scheinhafte Befriedigung zu berücken und abzufinden." _Römische

Geschichte_, 4e Aufl., 1865, Bd. i. p. 176. After reading such a remark

it may seem odd to find the writer, in a footnote, refusing to accept

the true explanation of the custom; but that was a quarter of a century

ago, when much less was known about ancient society than now.]

[Sidenote: Aztec slaves.]

The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this stage, which in the Old

World characterized the upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, however,

made a beginning among the Aztecs. The nucleus of the small

slave-population of Mexico consisted of _outcasts_, persons expelled

from the clan for some misdemeanour. The simplest case was that in which

a member of a clan failed for two years to cultivate his

garden-plot.[134] The delinquent member was deprived, not only of his

right of user, but of all his rights as a clansman, and the only way to

escape starvation was to work upon some other lot, either in his own or

in some other clan, and be paid in such pittance from its produce as the

occupant might choose to give him. This was slavery in embryo. The

occupant did not own this outcast labourer, any more than he owned his

lot; he only possessed a limited right of user in both labourer and lot.

To a certain extent it was "adverse" or exclusive possession. If the

slave ran away or was obstinately lazy, he could be made to wear a

wooden collar and sold without his consent; if it proved too troublesome

to keep him, the collared slave could be handed over to the priests for

sacrifice.[135] In this class of outcasts and their masters we have an

interesting illustration of a rudimentary phase of slavery and of

private property.

[Footnote 134: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 611.]

[Footnote 135: There was, however, in this extreme case, a

right of sanctuary. If the doomed slave could flee and hide

himself in the _tecpan_ before the master or one of his sons

could catch him, he became free and recovered his clan-rights;

and no third person was allowed to interfere in aid of the

pursuer. Torquemada, _Monarquía indiana_, ii. 564-566.]

[Sidenote: The Aztec family.]

At this point it is worthy of note that in the development of the family

the Aztecs had advanced considerably beyond the point attained by

Shawnees and Mohawks, and a little way toward the point attained in the

patriarchal family of the ancient Romans and Hebrews. In the Aztec clan

(which was exogamous[136]) the change to descent in the male line seems

to have been accomplished before the time of the Discovery. Apparently

it had been recently accomplished. Names for designating family

relationships remained in that primitive stage in which no distinction

is made between father and uncle, grandchildren and cousins. The family

was still too feebly established to count for much in the structure of

society, which still rested firmly upon the clan.[137] Nevertheless the

marriage bonds were drawn much tighter than among Indians of the lower

status, and penalties for incontinence were more severe. The wife became

her husband's property and was entitled to the protection of his clan.

All matrimonial arrangements were controlled by the clan, and no member

of it, male or female, was allowed to remain unmarried, except for

certain religious reasons. The penalty for contumacy was expulsion from

the clan, and the same penalty was inflicted for such sexual

irregularities as public opinion, still in what we should call quite a

primitive stage, condemned. Men and women thus expelled went to swell

the numbers of that small class of outcasts already noted. With men the

result, as we have seen, was a kind of slavery; with women it was

prostitution; and it is curious to see that the same penalty, entailing

such a result, was visited alike upon unseemly frailty and upon refusal

to marry. In either case the sin consisted in rebellion against the

clan's standards of proper or permissible behaviour.

[Footnote 136: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_,

vol. ii. p. 251.]

[Footnote 137: Bandelier, _op. cit._ pp. 429, 570, 620.]

[Sidenote: Aztec property.]

The inheritance in the male line, the beginnings of individual property

in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the

condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are

phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are

germs of the upper status of barbarism, as well as of the earliest

status of civilization more remotely to follow. The common cause, of

which they are the manifestations, is an increasing sense of the value

and importance of personal property. In the Old World this sense grew up

during a pastoral stage of society such as the New World never knew, and

by the ages of Abraham and Agamemnon[138] it had produced results such

as had not been reached in Mexico at the time of the Discovery. Still

the tendency in the latter country was in a similar direction. Though

there was no notion of real estate, and the house was still

clan-property, yet the number and value of articles of personal

ownership had no doubt greatly increased during the long interval which

must have elapsed since the ancestral Mexicans entered upon the middle

status. The mere existence of large and busy market-places with regular

and frequent fairs, even though trade had scarcely begun to emerge from

the stage of barter, is sufficient proof of this. Such fairs and markets

do not belong to the Mohawk chapter in human progress. They imply a

considerable number and diversity of artificial products, valued as

articles of personal property. A legitimate inference from them is the

existence of a certain degree of luxury, though doubtless luxury of a

barbaric type.

[Footnote 138: I here use these world-famous names without any

implication as to their historical character, or their precise

date, which are in themselves interesting subjects for

discussion. I use them as best symbolizing the state of society

which existed about the northern and eastern shores of the

eastern Mediterranean, several centuries before the

Olympiads.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan's rules.]

It is at this point, I think, that a judicious critic will begin to part

company with Mr. Morgan. As regards the outward aspect of the society

which the Spaniards found in Mexico, that eminent scholar more than once

used arguments that were inconsistent with principles of criticism laid

down by himself. At the beginning of his chapter on the Aztec

confederacy Mr. Morgan proposed the following rules:--

"The histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to

the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics

of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and

utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character.

"But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social

relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they

learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to

reject them in these respects and commence anew; using any facts they

may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society."[139]

[Footnote 139: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 186, note.]

Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been

somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society

and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of

valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been

impossible. It is not so much the _facts_ as the _interpretations_ of

the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their

misinterpretations are interesting and instructive when once we rightly

understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the truth.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's

Dinner."]

The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules,

is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish

discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to

utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and

their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted. Very good.

But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of

the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the

senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly

illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."[140] When

Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table

covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have

been so,--there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will

admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool,

but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his

despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence

of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "Since cursive writing

was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an

amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for

two reasons: firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was

but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars

impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine.

An acid beer (_pulque_), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was

a common beverage of the Aztecs; but it is hardly supposable that even

this was used at dinner."[141]

[Footnote 140: _North Amer. Review_, April, 1876. The substance

of it was reproduced in his _Houses and House-Life_, chap. x.]

[Footnote 141: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 241.]

To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from

which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon

which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive

characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any

other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by

the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative.

From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of

theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why

notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As

for the place where the _pulque_ was kept, it was a venial slip of the

pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The

language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a

crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he

was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's

hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And

really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides

Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on

to call it "beer"? The _pulque_ was neither the one nor the other; for

want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard

would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable"

that _pulque_ was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined

with Montezuma, know so much more about _such things_ than Cortes and

Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]

[Footnote 142: Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in

his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a

tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr.

Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.]

[Sidenote: The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.]

The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted

uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the

walls of a room, we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be

cut with flint or copper chisels,[143] and are ready to entertain the

suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for

porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the

less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed

in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000

men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to

reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such

unconscionable yarns as about the size of the armies they have

thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent;

things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with

most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made

it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a

wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined

to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of

rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full

liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw

and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of

Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of

Indian society which he knew more minutely and profoundly than any other

man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He

overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of

barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference

between Aztecs and Iroquois.[144] In this way he did injustice to his

own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in

particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which

he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his

attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.

[Footnote 143: For an excellent account of ancient Mexican

knives and chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar

and Crescent-Shaped Tools," in _Proceedings of Amer. Antiq.

Soc._, New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very

interesting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint

chisels in Clavigero, _Historia antigua_, tom. i. p. 242;

Mendieta, _Historia ecclesiastica indiana_, tom. iv. cap. xii.]

[Footnote 144: It often happens that the followers of a great

man are more likely to run to extremes than their master, as,

for example, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described

as "a collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and

dignified with the name of a city." _Smithsonian Report_, 1887,

part i. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the middle period of barbarism.]

In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important

periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the

student, as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of

literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such

society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more

such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron

and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led

to the age that could _write_ the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful

productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind

that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as

near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish

historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the

lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the

upper end. Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the former; perhaps if

he had lived long enough to profit by the work of Schliemann and

Bandelier, he might have found equally apt ones in the latter. Mr.

Bandelier's researches certainly show that the ancient city of Mexico,

in point of social development, stood somewhere between the two.

How that city looked may best be described when we come to tell what its

first Spanish visitors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon a

reasonable estimate of their testimony, pleasure-gardens, menageries and

aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought

pottery, exquisite featherwork, brilliant mats and tapestries, silver

goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of highly

seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats, ballad

singers and dancing girls,--such things were to be seen in this city of

snake-worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a tree-fern

simulates a tree.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal.]

[Sidenote: Mexicans and Mayas.]

In its general outlines the account here given of Aztec society and

government at the time of the Discovery will probably hold true of all

the semi-civilized communities of the Mexican peninsula and Central

America. The pueblos of Mexico were doubtless of various grades of size,

strength, and comfort, ranging from such structures as Zuñi up to the

city of Mexico. The cities of Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala, whose

ruins, in those tropical forests, are so impressive, probably belong to

the same class. The Maya-Quiché tribes, who dwelt and still dwell in

this region, were different in stock-language from their neighbours of

Mexico; but there are strong reasons for believing that the two great

groups, Mexicans and Mayas, arose from the expansion and segmentation of

one common stock, and there is no doubt as to the very close similarity

between the two in government, religion, and social advancement. In some

points the Mayas were superior. They possessed a considerable

literature, written in highly developed hieroglyphic characters upon

maguey paper and upon deerskin parchment, so that from this point of

view they stood upon the threshold of civilization as strictly

defined.[145] But, like the Mexicans, they were ignorant of iron, their

society was organized upon the principle of gentilism, they were

cannibals and sacrificed men and women to idols, some of which were

identical with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no conception of property

in land; their buildings were great communal houses, like pueblos; in

some cases these so-called palaces, at first supposed to be scanty

remnants of vast cities, were themselves the entire "cities;" in other

cases there were doubtless large composite pueblos fit to be called

cities.

[Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned

Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything

found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de

ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas,

_Historia apologética_, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the

hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, _A

Study of the Manuscript Troano_, Washington, 1882; "Notes on

certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," _Third Report of the Bureau of

Ethnology_, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices,"

_Sixth Report_, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends

with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the

stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a

pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of

North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect

and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming

daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from

Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by

the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American

Picture-Writing," _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,

pp. 205-245; Brinton, _Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan_,

New York, 1870; _Essays of an Americanist_, Philadelphia, 1890,

pp. 193-304; Léon de Rosny, _Les écritures figuratives_, Paris,

1870; _L'interprétation des anciens textes Mayas_, Paris, 1875;

_Essai sur le déchiffrement de l'écriture hiératique de

l'Amérique Centrale_, Paris, 1876; Förstemann, _Erläuterungen

der Maya Handschrift_, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as

yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing

is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it

could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter

might well have been a further development of the Mexican

system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters

with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the

alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must

remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded

further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the

Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted

to be alphabetic" (Taylor, _The Alphabet_, vol. i. p. 24); this

statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of

writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that

employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its

greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego

de Landa, whose work (_Relation des choses de l'Yucatan_, ed.

Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.]

[Sidenote: Ruined cities of Central America.]

These noble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the

publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146]

An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were

propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited

with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was

responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not

humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age,

they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,--who

still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted

civilization,--but by some wonderful people long since vanished. Now as

to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza tell their

own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and these

hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the Dresden Codex and other

Maya manuscripts still preserved are written; though their decipherment

is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt as to their being written

in the Maya characters. Careful inspection, moreover, shows that the

buildings in which these inscriptions occur are not so very ancient. Mr.

Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well as sanest explorers,

believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a comparatively recent

period.[148] The notion of their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the

belief that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over

the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de

Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace"

cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and

when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a sturdy growth of young

mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years.

Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate

zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month;

their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from

this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been

more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]

[Footnote 146: Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in Central

America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]

[Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist

Fréderic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but

whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr.

Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to

improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so

as we have them in the final publication they have not been

accepted as wholly trustworthy." _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.

194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a

certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place

three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in

giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a

prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained

fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on

the American continent. It is needless to add that neither

Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor

myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man,

ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the

mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers

it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments

would deprive them of all interest. It would have been

fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and

gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have

known the truth with regard to these ruins long since."

Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_, London, 1887,

p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite

pardonable.]

[Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail,

especially in view of the time when they were written: "I

repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to

any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these

cities; that they are not the work of people who have passed

away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong

reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who

inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or

some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we

began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some

are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been

inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others,

perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to

Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and

inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards."

Stephens, _Central America_, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.]

[Footnote 149: Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_,

p. 260.]

[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.]

These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe

have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high

civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew

Lang says, "throw Mycenæ into the shade, and rival the remains of

Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay,

after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that

as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which

belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which,

notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found

in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr.

Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenæ,

instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the

mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenæ, did not understand

the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152]

And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we

follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture

shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the

New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable

mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains

the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large

blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged

by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood,

yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations

it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of

the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth

century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient

city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.

[Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p.

348.]

[Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that

[the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being

destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros

tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable,

do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]

[Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare

portions of Schliemann's _Mycenæ_ and M. de Charnay's book,

just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.]

[Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque

may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen

into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]

[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]

But we are no longer restricted to purely archæological evidence. One of

the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is

regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent

times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and

among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country,

written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about

1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous

and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt

of gratitude,--Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several

things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most

explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time

that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have

been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens,

Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous documentary testimony dispels

it once for all.[154]

[Footnote 154: Brinton, _The Maya Chronicles_, Philadelphia,

1882, "Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of

great importance, and for the ancient history of Guatemala

Brinton's _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, Philadelphia, 1885, is

of like value and interest.

Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein,

"the convents are rich in manuscripts and documents written by

the early fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon

acquired the knowledge of Spanish and the art of writing. These

have never been examined with the slightest reference to this

subject; _and I cannot help thinking that some precious

memorial is now mouldering in the library of a neighbouring

convent, which would determine the history of some one of these

ruined cities_." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course,

is mine.]

[Sidenote: Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.]

The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other,

they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in

common, and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so

that, since we are now assured that such cities as Izamal and

Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall

probably not go very far astray if we assume that the elaborately carved

and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things

might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque

carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to

attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with

mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with

gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The

visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious

meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange

people worshipped the Devil.

* * * * *

We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from

the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can

form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its

discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have

been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch,

but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan

of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus

of Darien, because this preliminary chapter is already disproportionately

long, and after this protracted discussion the reader's attention may be

somewhat relieved by an entire change of scene. Enough has been set

forth to explain the narrative that follows, and to justify us

henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The outline description

of Mexico will be completed when we come to the story of its conquest by

Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to describe some principal

features of Peruvian society and to understand how the Spaniards

conquered that country.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The "Mound-Builders."]

[Sidenote: The notion that they were like the Aztecs;]

[Sidenote: or like the Zuñis.]

There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity

which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few

words before we close this chapter. I refer to the mounds that are

scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and

more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the

Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing,

and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were

the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their

wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite

different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own,

and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of the

mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that there

ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no relic of

the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates

the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely

approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head

cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are

scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies,

there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of

white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of European

manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which

the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of Shawnees

or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little higher.

With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a distinct

race of "Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began to seem

probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were tribes of

Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and

consequently in density of population, and perhaps in political and

priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the

size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often covering more than a

hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was

planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red

men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were

explained as places for human sacrifice, like the pyramids of Mexico and

Central America. It was thought that the "civilization" of the

Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended northward and eastward

into the Mississippi valley, and might after a while have been pushed

back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further

modification and reduction of this theory likened the mound-builders to

the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan,

who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at

High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo.[156]

Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound-builders

practised irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi

valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them

into his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and

chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the apparent

superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance upon it. He

suggested that a people somewhat like the Zuñis might have migrated

eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered

conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt for several

centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they retired to the

Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion just the reverse

of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily defensible,--namely, that the

ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits

somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits became modified

in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and

supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds

in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed to place their

mound-building period before their pueblo period.

[Footnote 155: For original researches in the mounds one cannot

do better than consult the following papers in the _Reports of

the Bureau of Ethnology_:--1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of

the Ancient Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of

the Mississippi Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile

Fabrics of the United States," iii. 397-431; followed by an

illustrated catalogue of objects collected chiefly from mounds,

iii. 433-515;--2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal Carvings from the

Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;--3. Cyrus

Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United

States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by

Dr. Thomas, "The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular,

Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound

Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology;" also two articles by

Dr. Thomas in the _Magazine of American History_:--"The Houses

of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian Tribes in

Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale, "Indian

Migrations," in _American Antiquarian_, v. 18-28, 108-124; M.

F. Force, _To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong?_

Cincinnati, 1875; Lucien Carr, _Mounds of the Mississippi

Valley historically considered_, 1883; Nadaillac's _Prehistoric

America_, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii., iv. The earliest work of

fundamental importance on the subject was Squier's _Ancient

Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, Philadelphia, 1848, being

the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to

Knowledge.--For statements of the theory which presumes either

a race connection or a similarity in culture between the

mound-builders and the pueblo Indians, see Dawson, _Fossil

Men_, p. 55; Foster, _Prehistoric Races of the United States_,

Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir Daniel Wilson,

_Prehistoric Man_, chap. x. The annual _Smithsonian Reports_

for thirty years past illustrate the growth of knowledge and

progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The

bibliographical account in Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.

397-412, is full of minute information.]

[Footnote 156: _Houses and House-Life_, chap. ix.]

[Sidenote: The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the

lower status of barbarism;]

[Sidenote: by Cherokees;]

[Sidenote: and by Shawnees, and other tribes.]

Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the

mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zuñis or similar

to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the

mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than 2,000

mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have been

gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone

axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving,

and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat

like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral

urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this

investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by

Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but

by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one another as

Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These mound-building

tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the

Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be classified

with Zuñis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but

with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,--some of them _were_ Shawnees and

Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago published the

Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who have left

their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.[158] The Tallegwi

have been identified with the Cherokees, who are now reckoned among the

most intelligent and progressive of Indian peoples.[159] The Cherokees

were formerly classed in the Muskoki group, along with the Creeks and

Choctaws, but a closer study of their language seems to show that they

were a somewhat remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long

time they occupied the country between the Ohio river and the Great

Lakes, and probably built the mounds that are still to be seen there.

Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth century they were gradually

pushed southward into the Muskoki region by repeated attacks from the

Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably also the builders of the

mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained

their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the

scene. On the other hand the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of

Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were probably the work of

Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed

to the Lenape. There are many reasons for believing that the mounds of

northern Mississippi were constructed by Chickasaws, and the burial

tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by Winnebagos. The Minnitarees

and Mandans were also very likely at one time a mound-building people.

[Footnote 157: _Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of

Ethnology_, Washington, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of

objects gathered from the mounds, one should visit the Peabody

Museum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Institution at

Washington.]

[Footnote 158: Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations of

Pennsylvania_, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier,

_Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins_, a

paper read before the New York Historical Society in June,

1848; also Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_,

Philadelphia, 1885.]

[Footnote 159: For a detailed account of their later history,

see C. C. Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," _Reports of Bureau of

Ethnology_, v. 121-378.]

If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our

imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and

henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the

ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of

sundry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as

sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or

burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own

forefathers in England when circumstances led them to build moated

castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion

for assuming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for

assuming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached

stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty

or sixty centuries earlier.]

Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we

find scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the

conclusion that its people and their culture were indigenous. One of the

most important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative

mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under

the influence of similar circumstances, develop similar ideas and clothe

them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political

institutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs,

with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted from Sir

John Lubbock,--and it is well worth repeating,--"Different races in

similar stages of development often present more features of resemblance

to one another than the same race does to itself in different stages of

its history." When the zealous Abbé Brasseur found things in the history

of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to the

conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived" from that of

Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such methods of

explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture was no more

Egyptian culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an outgrowth of

peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal American mind,

and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or prehistoric

Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had not reached,

the standard attained in those Old World countries. From this point of

view the resemblances become invested with surpassing interest. Ancient

America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic world than the world

of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of Columbus forms of

society that on the shores of the Mediterranean had been outgrown before

the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and peculiar fascination

of American archæology, and its profound importance to the student of

general history.