MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.
BY JUSTIN WINSOR.
THE traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and
Nahuas,” says Max Müller,[785] “are no better than the Greek traditions
about Pelasgians, Æolians, and Ionians, and it would be a mere waste of
time to construct out of such elements a systematic history, only to be
destroyed again, sooner or later, by some Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.”
“It is yet too early,” says Bandelier,[786] “to establish a definite
chronology, running farther back from the Conquest than two
centuries,[787] and even within that period but very few dates have
been satisfactorily fixed.”
Such are the conditions of the story which it is the purpose of this
chapter to tell.
We have, to begin with, as in other history, the recognition of
a race of giants, convenient to hang legends on, and accounted on
all hands to have been occupants of the country in the dimmest
past, so that there is nothing back of them. Who they were, whence
they came, and what stands for their descendants after we get down
to what in this pre-Spanish history we rather presumptuously call
historic ground, is far from clear. If we had the easy faith of the
native historian Ixtlilxochitl, we should believe that these gigantic
Quinames, or Quinametin, were for the most part swallowed up in a great
convulsion of nature, and it was those who escaped which the Olmecs
and Tlascalans encountered in entering the country.[788] If all this
means anything, which may well be doubted, it is as likely as not
that these giants were the followers of a demi-god, Votan,[789] who
came from over-sea to America,[790] found it peopled, established a
government in Xibalba,—if such a place ever existed,—with the germs
of Maya if not of other civilizations, whence, by migrations during
succeeding times, the Votanites spread north and occupied the Mexican
plateau, where they became degenerate, doubtless, if they deserved
the extinction which we are told was in store for them. But they
had an alleged chronicler for their early days, the writer of the
Book of Votan, written either by the hero himself or by one of his
descendants,—eight or nine generations in the range of authorship
making little difference apparently. That this narrative was known to
Francisco Nuñez de la Vega[791] would seem to imply that somebody at
that time had turned it into readable script out of the unreadable
hieroglyphics, while the disguises of the Spanish tongue, perhaps, as
Bancroft[792] suggests, may have saved it from the iconoclastic zeal of
the priests. When, later, Ramon de Ordoñez had the document,—perhaps
the identical manuscript,—it consisted of a few folios of quarto
paper, and was written in Roman script in the Tzendal tongue, and was
inspected by Cabrera, who tells us something of its purport in his
_Teatro critico Americano_, while Ramon himself was at the same time
using it in his _Historia del Cielo y de la Tierra_. It was from a
later copy of this last essay, the first copy being unknown, that the
Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg got his knowledge of what Ramon had derived
from the Votan narrative, and which Brasseur has given us in several
of his books.[793] That there was a primitive empire—Votanic, if you
please—seems to some minds confirmed by other evidences than the story
of Votan; and out of this empire—to adopt a European nomenclature—have
come, as such believers say, after its downfall somewhere near the
Christian era, and by divergence, the great stocks of people called
Maya, Quiché, and Nahua, inhabiting later, and respectively, Yucatan,
Guatemala, and Mexico. This is the view, if we accept the theory which
Bancroft has prominently advocated, that the migrations of the Nahuas
were from the south northward,[794] and that this was the period of the
divergence, eighteen centuries ago or more, of the great civilizing
stocks of Mexico and of Central America.[795] We fail to find so early
a contact of these two races, if, on the other hand, we accept the
old theory that the migrations which established the Toltec and Aztec
powers were from the north southward,[796] through three several lines,
as is sometimes held, one on each side of the Rocky Mountains, with a
third following the coast. In this way such advocates trace the course
of the Olmecs, who encountered the giants, and later of the Toltecs.
That the Votanic peoples or some other ancient tribes were then a
distinct source of civilization, and that Palenqué may even be Xibalba,
or the Nachan, which Votan founded, is a belief that some archæologists
find the evidence of in certain radical differences in the Maya tongues
and in the Maya ruins.[797]
In the Quiché traditions, as preserved in the _Popul Vuh_, and in
the _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, we likewise go back into mistiness
and into the inevitable myths which give the modern comparative
mythologists so much comfort and enlightenment; but Bancroft[798] and
the rest get from all this nebulousness, as was gotten from the Maya
traditions, that there was a great power at Xibalba,[799]—if in Central
America anywhere that place may have been,—which was overcome[800]
when from Tulan[801] went out migrating chiefs, who founded the
Quiché-Cakchiquel peoples of Guatemala, while others, the Yaqui,—very
likely only traders,—went to Mexico, and still others went to Yucatan,
thus accounting for the subsequent great centres of aboriginal power—if
we accept this view.
As respects the traditions of the more northern races, there is the
same choice of belief and alternative demonstration. The Olmecs, the
earliest Nahua corners, are sometimes spoken of as sailing from Florida
and landing on the coast at what is now Pánuco, whence they travelled
to Guatemala,[802] and finally settled in Tamoanchan, and offered their
sacrifices farther north at Teotihuacan.[803] This is very likely the
Votan legend suited to the more northern region, and if so, it serves
to show, unless we discard the whole theory, how the Votanic people had
scattered. The other principal source of our suppositions—for we can
hardly call it knowledge—of these times is the _Codex Chimalpòpoca_,
of which there is elsewhere an account,[804] and from it we can derive
much the same impressions, if we are disposed to sustain a preconceived
notion.
The periods and succession of the races whose annals make up the
history of what we now call Mexico, prior to the coming of the
Spaniards, are confused and debatable. Whether under the name of
Chichimecs we are to understand a distinct people, or a varied and
conglomerate mass of people, which, in a generic way, we might call
barbarians, is a question open to discussion.[805] There is no lack
of names[806] to be applied to the tribes and bands which, according
to all accounts, occupied the Mexican territory previous to the sixth
century. Some of them were very likely Nahua forerunners[807] of the
subsequent great influx of that race, like the Olmecs and Xicalancas,
and may have been the people, “from the direction of Florida,” of
whom mention has been made. Others, as some say, were eddies of those
populous waves which, coming by the north from Asia, overflowed the
Rocky Mountains, and became the builders of mounds and the later
peoples of the Mississippi Valley,[808] passed down the trend of the
Rocky Mountains, and built cliff-houses and pueblos, or streamed into
the table-land of Mexico. This is all conjecture, perhaps delusion,
but may be as good a supposition as any, if we agree to the northern
theory, as Nadaillac[809] does, but not so tenable, if, with the
contrary Bancroft,[810] we hold rather that they came from the south.
We can turn from one to the other of these theorists and agree with
both, as they cite their evidences. On the whole, a double compliance
is better than dogmatism. It is one thing to lose one’s way in this
labyrinth of belief, and another to lose one’s head.
It was the Olmecs who found the Quinames, or giants, near Puebla and
Cholula, and in the end overcame them. The Olmecs built, according
to one story, the great pyramid of Cholula,[811] and it was they who
received the great Quetzalcoatl from across the sea, a white-bearded
man, as the legends went, who was benign enough, in the stories told
of him, to make the later Spaniards think, when they heard them, that
he was no other than the Christian St. Thomas on his missions. When
the Spaniards finally induced the inheritors of the Olmecs’ power to
worship Quetzalcoatl as a beneficent god, his temple soon topped the
mound at Cholula.[812] We have seen that the great Nahua occupation
of the Mexican plateau, at a period somewhere from the fourth to
the seventh century,[813] was preceded by some scattered tribal
organizations of the same stock, which had at an early date mingled
with the primitive peoples of this region. We have seen that there is
a diversity of opinion as to the country from which they came, whether
from the north or south. A consideration of this question involves the
whole question of the migration of races in these pre-Columbian days,
since it is the coming and going of peoples that form the basis of all
its history.
In the study of these migrations, we find no more unanimity of
interpretation than in other questions of these early times.[814]
The Nahua peoples (Toltecs, Aztecs, Mexicans, or what you will),
according to the prevalent views of the early Spanish writers, came
by successive influxes from the north or northwest, and from a remote
place called Tollan, Tula, Tlapallan, Huehue-Tlapallan, as respects the
Toltec group,[815] and called Aztlan as respects the Aztec or Mexican.
When, by settlement after settlement, each migratory people pushed
farther south, they finally reached Central Mexico. This sequence of
immigration seems to be agreed upon, but as to where their cradle
was and as to what direction their line of progress took, there is
a diversity of opinion as widely separated as the north is from the
south. The northern position and the southern direction is all but
universally accepted among the early Spanish writers[816] and their
followers,[817] while it is claimed by others that the traditions as
preserved point to the south as the starting-point. Cabrera took this
view. Brasseur sought to reconcile conflicting tradition and Spanish
statement by carrying the line of migration from the south with a
northerly sweep, so that in the end Anahuac would be entered from the
north, with which theory Bancroft[818] is inclined to agree. Aztlan, as
well as Huehue-Tlapallan, by those who support the northern theory, has
been placed anywhere from the California peninsula[819] within a radius
that sweeps through Wisconsin and strikes the Atlantic at Florida.[820]
The advocates of the southern starting-point of these migrations have
been comparatively few and of recent prominence; chief among them are
Squier and Bancroft.[821]
* * * * *
With the appearance of a people, which, for want of a better
designation, are usually termed Toltecs, on the Mexican table-land in
the sixth century or thereabouts,[822] we begin the early history of
Mexico, so far as we can make any deductions from the semi-mythical
records and traditions which the Spaniards or the later aborigines
have preserved for us. This story of the Nahua occupation of Anáhuac
is one of strife and shifting vassalage, with rivalries and uprisings
of neighboring and kindred tribes, going on for centuries. While the
more advanced portion of the Nahuas in Anáhuac were making progress
in the arts, that division of the same stock which was living beyond
such influence, and without the bounds of Anáhuac, were looked upon
rather as barbarians than as brothers, and acquired the name which had
become a general one for such rougher natures, Chichimec. It is this
Chichimec people under some name or other who are always starting up
and overturning something. At one time they unite with the Colhuas and
found Colhuacan, and nearly subjugate the lake region. Then the Toltec
tarriers at Huehue-Tlapallan come boldly to the neighborhood of the
Chichimecs and found Tollan; and thus they turn a wandering community
into what, for want of a better name, is called a monarchy. They
strengthened its government by an alliance with the Chichimecs,[823]
and placed their seat of power at Colhuacan.
Then we read of a power springing up at Tezcuco, and of various
other events, which happened or did not happen, according as you
believe this or the other chronicle. The run of many of the stories
of course produces the inevitable and beautiful daughter, and the
bold princess, who control many an event. Then there is a league
of Colhuacan, Otompan, and Tollan. Suddenly appears the great king
Quetzalcoatl,—though it may be we confound him with the divinity of
that name; and with him, to perplex matters, comes his sworn enemy
Huemac. Quetzalcoatl’s devoted labors to make his people give up human
sacrifice arrayed the priesthood against him, until at last he fell
before the intrigues that made Huemac succeed in Tollan, and that drove
his luckless rival to Cholula, where he reigned anew. Huemac followed
him and drove him farther; but in doing so he gave his enemies in
Tollan a chance to put another on the throne.
Then came a season of peace and development, when Tollan grew splendid.
Colhuacan flourished in political power, and Teotihuacan[824] and
Cholula were the religious shrines of the people. But at last the end
was near.
The closing century of the Toltec power was a frightful one for
broil, pestilence, and famine among the people, amours and revenge
in the great chieftain’s household, revolt among the vassals; with
sorcery rampant and the gods angry; with volcanoes belching, summers
like a furnace, and winters like the pole; with the dreaded omen of
a rabbit, horned like a deer, confronting the ruler, while rebel
forces threatened the capital. There was also civil strife within the
gates, phallic worship and debauchery,—all preceding an inundation of
Chichimecan hordes. Thus the power that had flourished for several
hundred years fell,—seemingly in the latter half of the eleventh
century.[825] The remnant that was left of the desolated people went
hither and thither, till the fragments were absorbed in the conquerors,
or migrated to distant regions south.[826]
Whether the term Toltec signified a nation, or only denoted a dynasty,
is a question for the archæologists to determine. The general opinion
heretofore has been that they were a distinct race, of the Nahua stock,
however, and that they came from the north. The story which has been
thus far told of their history is the narrative of Ixtlilxochitl, and
is repeated by Veytia, Clavigero, Prescott, Brasseur de Bourbourg,
Orozco y Berra, Nadaillac, and the later compilers. Sahagún seems to
have been the first to make a distinct use of the name Toltec, and
Charency in his paper on _Xibalba_ finds evidence that the Toltecs
constituted two different migrations, the one of a race that was
straight-headed, which came from the northwest, and the other of a
flat-headed people, which came from Florida.
Brinton, on the contrary, finds no warrant either for this dual
migration, or indeed for considering the Toltecs to be other than a
section of the same race, that we know later as Aztecs or Mexicans.
This sweeping denial of their ethnical independence had been
forestalled by Gallatin;[827] but no one before Brinton had made it a
distinct issue, though some writers before and since have verged on his
views.[828] Others, like Charnay, have answered Brinton’s arguments,
and defended the older views.[829] Bandelier’s views connect them with
the Maya rather than with the Nahua stock,[830] if, as he thinks may
be the case, they were the people who landed at Pánuco and settled at
Tamoanchan, the Votanites, as they are sometimes called. He traces back
to Herrera and Torquemada the identification for the first time of the
Toltecs with these people.[831] Bandelier’s conclusions, however, are
that “all we can gather about them with safety is, that they were a
sedentary Indian stock, which at some remote period settled in Central
Mexico,” and that “nothing certain is known of their language.”[832]
The desolation of Anáhuac as the Toltecs fell invited a foreign
occupation, and a remote people called Chichimecs[833]—not to
be confounded with the primitive barbarians which are often so
called—poured down upon the country. Just how long after the Toltec
downfall this happened, is in dispute;[834] but within a few years
evidently, perhaps within not many months, came the rush of millions,
if we may believe the big stories of the migration. They surged by the
ruined capital of the Toltecs, came to the lake, founded Xoloc and
Tenayocan, and encountered, as they spread over the country, what were
left of the Toltecs, who secured peace by becoming vassals. Not quite
so humble were the Colhuas of Colhuacan,—not to be confounded with the
Acolhuas,—who were the most powerful section of the Toltecs yet left,
and the Chichimecs set about crushing them, and succeeded in making
them also vassals.[835] The Chichimec monarchs, if that term does not
misrepresent them, soon formed alliances with the Tepanecs, the Otomis,
and the Acolhuas, who had been prominent in the overthrow of the
Toltecs, and all the invaders profited by the higher organizations and
arts which these tribes had preserved and now imparted. The Chichimecs
also sought to increase the stability of their power by marriages with
the noble Toltecs still remaining. But all was not peace. There were
rebellions from time to time to be put down; and a new people, whose
future they did not then apprehend, had come in among them and settled
at Chapultepec. These were the Aztecs, or Mexicans, a part of the great
Nahua immigration, but as a tribe they had dallied behind the others on
the way, but were now come, and the last to come.[836]
Tezcuco soon grew into prominence as a vassal power,[837] and upon
the capital city many embellishments were bestowed, so that the great
lord of the Chichimecs preferred it to his own Tenayocan, which
gave opportunity for rebellious plots to be formed in his proper
capital; and here at Tezcuco the next succeeding ruler preferred to
reign, and here he became isolated by the uprising of rebellious
nobles. The ensuing war was not simply of side against side, but
counter-revolutions led to a confusion of tumults, and petty chieftains
set themselves up against others here and there. The result was that
Quinantzin, who had lost the general headship of the country, recovered
it, and finally consolidated his power to a degree surpassing all his
predecessors.
[Illustration: CLAVIGERO’S MEXICO.[838] (Ed. of 1780, vol. iii.)]
[Illustration: CLAVIGERO’S MAP. (Ed. of 1580, vol. i.)
Clavigero speaks of his map “per servire all storia antica del
Messico.” A map of the Aztec dominion just before the Conquest is given
in Ranking (London, 1827). See note in Vol. II. p. 358.]
Meanwhile the Aztecs at Chapultepec, growing arrogant, provoked
their neighbors, and were repressed by those who were more powerful.
But they abided their time. They were good fighters, and the Colhua
ruler courted them to assist him in his maraudings, and thus they were
becoming accustomed to warfare and to conquest, and were giving favors
to be repaid. This intercourse, whether of association or rivalry, of
the Colhuas and Mexicans (Aztecs), was continued through succeeding
periods, with a confusion of dates and events which it is hard to make
clear. There was mutual distrust and confidence alternately, and it
all ended in the Aztecs settling on an island in the lake, where later
they founded Tenochtitlan, or Mexico.[839] Here they developed those
bloody rites of sacrifice which had already disgusted their allies and
neighbors.
[Illustration: THE LAKE OF MEXICO.
A map which did service in different forms in various books about
Mexico and its aboriginal localities in the early part of the
eighteenth century. It is here taken from the _Voyages de Francois
Coreal_ (Amsterdam, 1722).]
Meanwhile the powers at Colhuacan and Azcapuzalco flourished and
repressed uprisings, and out of all the strife Tezozomoc came into
prominence with his Tepanecs, and amid it all the Aztecs, siding here
and there, gained territory. With all this occurring in different parts
of his dominions, the Chichimec potentate grew stronger and stronger,
and while by his countenance the old Toltec influences more and more
predominated. And so it was a flourishing government, with little to
mar its prospects but the ambition of Tezozomoc, the Tepanec chieftain,
and the rising power of the Aztecs, who had now become divided into
Mexicans and Tlatelulcas. The famous ruler of the Chichimecs, Techotl,
died in A.D. 1357, and the young Ixtlilxochitl took his power with
all its emblems. The people of Tenochtitlan, or their rulers, were
adepts in practising those arts of diplomacy by which an ambitious
nation places itself beside its superiors to secure a sort of reflected
consequence. Thus they pursued matrimonial alliances and other acts of
prudence. Both Tenochtitlan and its neighbor Tlatelulco grew apace,
while skilled artisans and commercial industries helped to raise them
in importance.
The young Ixtlilxochitl at Tezcuco was not so fortunate, and it
soon looked as if the Tepanec prince, Tezozomoc, was only waiting an
opportunity to rebel. It was also pretty clear that he would have the
aid of Mexico and Tlatelulco, and that he would succeed in securing the
sympathy of many wavering vassals or allies. The plans of the Tepanec
chieftain at last ripened, and he invaded the Tezcucan territory in
1415. In the war which followed, Ixtlilxochitl reversed the tide and
invaded the Tepanec territory, besieging and capturing its capital,
Azcapuzalco.[840] The conqueror lost by his clemency what he had gained
by arms, and it was not long before he was in turn shut up in his own
capital. He did not succeed in defending it, and was at last killed.
So Tezozomoc reached his vantage of ambition, and was now in his old
age the lord paramount of the country. He tried to harmonize the varied
elements of his people; but the Mexicans had not fared in the general
successes as they had hoped for, and were only openly content. The
death of Tezozomoc prepared the way for one of his sons, Maxtla, to
seize the command, and the vassal lords soon found that the spirit
which had murdered a brother had aims that threatened wider desolation.
The Mexicans were the particular object of Maxtla’s oppressive spirit,
and by the choice of Itzcoatl for their ruler, who had been for many
years the Mexican war-chief, that people defied the lord of all, and
in this they were joined by the Tlatelulcas under Quauhtlatohuatzin,
and by lesser allies. Under this combination of his enemies Maxtla’s
capital fell, the usurper was sacrificed, and the honors of the victory
were shared by Itzcoatl, Nezahualcoyotl (the Acolhuan prince whose
imperial rights Maxtla had usurped), and Montezuma, the first of the
name,—all who had in their several capacities led the army of three
or four hundred thousand allies, if we may believe the figures, to
their successes, which occurred apparently somewhere between 1425 and
1430. The political result was a tripartite confederacy in Anáhuac,
consisting of Acolhua, Mexico, and Tlacopan. In the division of spoils,
the latter was to have one fifth, and the others two fifths each, the
Acolhuan prince presiding in their councils as senior.[841]
The next hundred years is a record of the increasing power of
this confederacy, with a constant tendency to give Mexico a larger
influence.[842] The two capitals, Tenochtitlan and Tezcuco, looking at
each other across the lake, were uninterruptedly growing in splendor,
or in what the historians call by that word,[843] with all the adjuncts
of public works,—causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces and
gardens, and other evidences of wealth, which perhaps these modern
terms only approximately represent. Tezcuco was taken possession of by
Nezahualcoyotl as his ancient inheritance, and his confederate Itzcoatl
placed the crown on his head. Together they made war north and south.
Xochimilco, on the lake next south of Mexico, yielded; and the people
of Chalco, which was on the most southern of the string of lakes,
revolted and were suppressed more than once, as opportunities offered.
The confederates crossed the ridge that formed the southern bound of
the Mexican valley and sacked Quauhnahuac. The Mexican ruler had in
all this gained a certain ascendency in the valley coalition, when he
died in 1440, and his nephew, Montezuma the soldier, and first of the
name,[844] succeeded him. This prince soon had on his hands another war
with Chalco, and with the aid of his confederates he finally humbled
its presumptuous people. So, with or without pretence, the wars and
conquests went on, if for no other reasons, to obtain prisoners for
sacrifice.[845] They were diversified at times, particularly in 1449,
by contests with the powers of nature, when the rising waters of the
lake threatened to drown their cities, and when, one evil being cured,
others in the shape of famine and plague succeeded.
Sometimes in the wars the confederates over-calculated their own
prowess, as when Atonaltzin of Tilantongo sent them reeling back, only,
however, to make better preparations and to succeed at last. In another
war to the southeast they captured, as the accounts say, over six
thousand victims for the stone of sacrifice.
The first Montezuma died in 1469, and the choice for succession fell
on his grandson, the commander of the Mexican army, Axayacatl, who at
once followed the usual custom of raiding the country to the south
to get the thousands of prisoners whose sacrifice should grace his
coronation. Nezahualcoyotl, the other principal allied chieftain,
survived his associate but two years, dying in 1472, leaving among
his hundred children but one legitimate son, Nezahualpilli, a minor,
who succeeded. This gave the new Mexican ruler the opportunity to
increase his power. He made Tlatelulco tributary, and a Mexican
governor took the place there of an independent sovereign. He annexed
the Matlaltzinca provinces on the west. So Axayacatl, dying in 1481,
bequeathed an enlarged kingdom to his brother and successor, Tizoc,
who has not left so warlike a record. According to some authorities,
however, he is to be credited with the completion of the great Mexican
temple of Huitzilopochtli. This did not save him from assassination,
and his brother Ahuitzotl in 1486 succeeded, and to him fell the lot
of dedicating that great temple. He conducted fresh wars vigorously
enough to be able within a year, if we may believe the native records,
to secure sixty or seventy thousand captives for the sacrificial
stone, so essential a part of all such dedicatory exercises. It would
be tedious to enumerate all the succeeding conquests, though varied
by some defeats, like that which they experienced in the Tehuantepec
region. Some differences grew up, too, between the Mexican chieftain
and Nezahualpilli, notwithstanding or because of the virtues of the
latter, among which doubtless, according to the prevailing standard, we
must count his taking at once three Mexican princesses for wives, and
his keeping a harem of over two thousand women, if we may believe his
descendant, the historian Ixtlilxochitl. His justice as an arbitrary
monarch is mentioned as exemplary, and his putting to death a guilty
son is recounted as proof of it.
Ahuitzotl had not as many virtues, or perhaps he had not a descendant
to record them so effectively; but when he died in 1503, what there was
heroic in his nature was commemorated in his likeness sculptured with
others of his line on the cliff of Chapultepec.[846] To him succeeded
that Montezuma, son of Axayacatl, with whom later this ancient history
vanishes. When he came to power, the Aztec name was never significant
of more lordly power, though the confederates had already had some
reminders that conquest near home was easier than conquest far away.
The policy of the last Aztec ruler was far from popular, and while
he propitiated the higher ranks, he estranged the people. The hopes
of the disaffected within and without Anáhuac were now centred in
the Tlascalans, whose territory lay easterly towards the Gulf of
Mexico, and who had thus far not felt the burden of Aztec oppression.
Notwithstanding that their natural allies, the Cholulans, turned
against the Tlascalans, the Aztec armies never succeeded in humbling
them, as they did the Mistecs and the occupants of the region towards
the Pacific. Eclipses, earthquakes, and famine soon succeeded one
another, and the forebodings grew numerous. Hardly anything happened
but the omens of disaster[847] were seen in it, and superstition
began to do its work of enervation, while a breach between Montezuma
and the Tezcucan chief was a bad augury. In this condition of things
the Mexican king tried to buoy his hopes by further conquests; but
widespread as these invasions were, Michoacan to the west, and Tlascala
to the east, always kept their independence. The Zapotecs in Oajaca
had at one time succumbed, but this was before the days of the last
Montezuma.
His rival across the lake at Tezcuco was more oppressed with the tales
of the soothsayers than Montezuma was, and seems to have become inert
before what he thought an impending doom some time before he died, or,
as his people believed, before he had been translated to the ancient
Amaquemecan, the cradle of his race. This was in 1515. His son Cacama
was chosen to succeed; but a younger brother, Ixtlilxochitl, believed
that the choice was instigated by Montezuma for ulterior gain, and so
began a revolt in the outlying provinces, in which he received the aid
of Tlascala. The appearance of the Spaniards on the coasts of Yucatan
and Tabasco, of which exaggerated reports reached the Mexican capital,
paralyzed Montezuma, so that the northern revolt succeeded, and Cacama
and Ixtlilxochitl came to an understanding, which left the Mexicans
without much exterior support. Montezuma was in this crippled condition
when his lookouts on the coast sent him word that the dreaded Spaniards
had appeared, and he could recognize their wonderful power in the
pictured records which the messenger bore to him.[848] This portent
was the visit in 1518 of Juan de Grijalva to the spot where Vera Cruz
now stands; and after the Spaniard sailed away, there were months of
anxiety before word again reached the capital, in 1519, of another
arrival of the white-winged vessels, and this was the coming of Cortés,
who was not long in discovering that the path of his conquest was made
clear by the current belief that he was the returned Quetzalcoatl,[849]
and by his quick perception of the opportunity which presented itself
of combining and leading the enemies of Montezuma.[850]
* * * * *
Among what are usually reckoned the civilized nations of middle
America, there are two considerable centres of a dim history that have
little relation with the story which has been thus far followed. One
of these is that of the people of what we now call Guatemala, and the
other that of Yucatan. The political society which existed in Guatemala
had nothing of the known duration assigned to the more northern people,
at least not in essential data; but we know of it simply as a very
meagre and perplexing chronology running for the most part back two
or three centuries only. Whether the beginnings of what we suppose we
know of these people have anything to do with any Toltec migration
southward is what archæologists dispute about, and the philologists
seem to have the best of the argument in the proof that the tongue of
these southern peoples is more like Maya than Nahua. It is claimed that
the architectural remains of Guatemala indicate a departure from the
Maya stock and some alliance with a foreign stock; and that this alien
influence was Nahuan seems probable enough when we consider certain
similarities in myth and tradition of the Nahuas and the Quichés. But
we have not much even of tradition and myth of the early days, except
what we my read in the _Popul Vuh_, where we may make out of it what
we can, or even what we please,[851] with some mysterious connection
with Votan and Xibalba. Among the mythical traditions of this mythical
period, there are the inevitable migration stories, beginning with
the Quichés and ending with the coming of the Cakchiquels, but no one
knows to a surety when. The new-comers found Maya-speaking people, and
called them mem or memes (stutterers), because they spoke the Maya so
differently from themselves.
It was in the twelfth or thirteenth century that we get the first
traces of any historical kind of the Quichés and of their rivals the
Cakchiquels. Of their early rulers we have the customary diversities
and inconsistencies in what purports to be their story, and it is
difficult to say whether this or the other or some other tribe
revolted, conquered, or were beaten, as we read the annals of this
constant warfare. We meet something tangible, however, when we learn
that Montezuma sent a messenger, who informed the Quichés of the
presence of the Spaniards in his capital, which set them astir to be
prepared in their turn.
[Illustration: MAP IN BRASSEUR’S POPUL VUH.]
It is in the beginning of the sixteenth century that we encounter the
rivalries of three prominent peoples in this Guatemala country, and
these were the Quichés, the Cakchiquels, and the Zutigils; and of these
the Quichés, with their main seat at Utatlan, were the most powerful,
though not so much so but the Cakchiquels could get the best of them at
times in the wager of war; as they did also finally when the Spaniard
Alvarado appeared, with whom the Cakchiquels entered into an alliance
that brought the Quichés into sore straits.
* * * * *
A more important nationality attracts us in the Mayas of Yucatan.
There can be nothing but vague surmise as to what were the primitive
inhabitants of this region; but it seems to be tolerably clear that
a certain homogeneousness pervaded the people, speaking one tongue,
which the Spaniards found in possession. Whether these had come from
the northern regions, and were migrated Toltecs, as some believe, is
open to discussion.[852] It has often been contended that they were
originally of the Nahua and Toltec blood; but later writers, like
Bancroft,[853] have denied it. Brinton discards the Toltec element
entirely.
What by a license one may call history begins back with the
semi-mythical Zamná, to whom all good things are ascribed—the
introduction of the Maya institutions and of the Maya
hieroglyphics.[854] Whether Zamná had any connection, shadowy or real,
with the great Votanic demi-god, and with the establishment of the
Xibalban empire, if it may be so called, is a thing to be asserted or
denied, as one inclines to separate or unite the traditions of Yucatan
with those of the Tzendal, Quiché, and Toltec. Ramon de Ordonez, in a
spirit of vagary, tells us that Mayapan, the great city of the early
Mayas, was but one of the group of centres, with Palenqué, Tulan, and
Copan for the rest, as is believed, which made up the Votanic empire.
Perhaps it was. If we accept Brinton’s view, it certainly was not. Then
Torquemada and Landa tell us that Cukulcan, a great captain and a god,
was but another Quetzalcoatl, or Gucumatz. Perhaps he was. Possibly
also he was the bringer of Nahua influence to Mayapan, away back in a
period corresponding to the early centuries of the Christian era. It
is easy to say, in all this confusion, this is proved and that is not.
The historian, accustomed to deal with palpable evidence, feels much
inclined to leave all views in abeyance.
The Cocomes of Yucatan history were Cukulcan’s descendants or
followers, and had a prosperous history, as we are told; and there came
to live among them the Totul Xius, by some considered a Maya people,
who like the Quichés had been subjected to Nahua influences, and who
implanted in the monuments and institutions of Yucatan those traces of
Nahua character which the archæologists discover.[855] The Totul Xius
are placed in Uxmal in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries,
where they flourished along with the Cocomes, and it is to them that
it is claimed many of the ruins which now interest us in Yucatan can
be traced, though some of them perhaps go back to Zamná and to the
Xibalban period, or at least it would be hard to prove otherwise.
When at last the Cocome chieftains began to oppress their subjects, the
Totul Xius gave them shelter, and finally assisted them in a revolt,
which succeeded and made Uxmal the supreme city, and Mayapan became a
ruin, or at least was much neglected. The dynasty of the Totul Xius
then flourished, but was in its turn overthrown, and a period of
factions and revolutions followed, during which Mayapan was wholly
obliterated, and the Totul Xius settled in Mani, where the Spaniards
found them when they invaded Yucatan to make an easy conquest of a
divided people.[856]
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
FROM the conquerors of New Spain we fail to get any systematic
portrayal of the character and history of the subjugated people;
but nevertheless we are not without some help in such studies from
the letters of Cortes,[857] the accounts of the so-called anonymous
conqueror,[858] and from what Stephens[859] calls “the hurried and
imperfect observations of an unlettered soldier,” Bernal Diaz.[860]
[Illustration: MS. OF BERNAL DIAZ.
Fac-simile of the beginning of Capitulo LXXIV. of his _Historia
Verdadera_, following a plate in the fourth volume of J. M. de
Heredia’s French translation (Paris, 1877).]
We cannot neglect for this ancient period the more general writers
on New Spain, some of whom lived near enough to the Conquest to
reflect current opinions upon the aboriginal life as it existed in
the years next succeeding the fall of Mexico. Such are Peter Martyr,
Grynæus, Münster, and Ramusio. More in the nature of chronicles is
the _Historia General_ of Oviedo (1535, etc.).[861] The _Historia
General_ of Gomara became generally known soon after the middle of the
sixteenth century.[862] The _Rapport_, written about 1560, by Alonzo
de Zurita, throws light on the Aztec laws and institutions.[863]
Benzoni about this time traversed the country, observing the Indian
customs.[864] We find other descriptions of the aboriginal customs by
the missionary Didacus Valades, in his _Rhetorica Christiana_, of which
the fourth part relates to Mexico.[865] Brasseur says that Valades
was well informed and appreciative of the people which he so kindly
depicted.[866] By the beginning of the seventeenth century we find in
Herrera’s _Historia_ the most comprehensive of the historical surveys,
in which he summarizes the earlier writers, if not always exactly.[867]
Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 387) says of the ancient history
of Mexico that “it appears as if the twelfth century was the limit
of definite tradition. What lies beyond it is vague and uncertain,
remnants of tradition being intermingled with legends and mythological
fancies.” He cites some of the leading writers as mainly starting in
their stories respectively as follows: Brasseur, B. C. 955; Clavigero,
A.D. 596; Veytia, A.D. 697; Ixtlilxochitl, A.D. 503. Bandelier views
all these dates as too mythical for historical investigations, and
finds no earlier fixed date than the founding of Tenochtitlan (Mexico)
in A.D. 1325. “What lies beyond the twelfth century can occasionally
be rendered of value for ethnological purposes, but it admits of no
definite historical use.” Bancroft (v. 360) speaks of the sources
of disagreement in the final century of the native annals, from
the constant tendency of such writers as Ixtlilxochitl, Tezozomoc,
Chimalpain, and Camargo, to laud their own people and defame their
rivals.
* * * * *
In the latter part of the sixteenth century the viceroy of Mexico, Don
Martin Enriquez, set on foot some measures to gather the relics and
traditions of the native Mexicans. Under this incentive it fell to
Juan de Tobar, a Jesuit, and to Diego Duran, a Dominican, to be early
associated with the resuscitation of the ancient history of the country.
To Father Tobar (or Tovar) we owe what is known as the _Codex Ramirez_,
which in the edition of the _Crónica Mexicana_[868] by Hernando de
Alvarado Tezozomoc, issued in Mexico (1878), with annotations by Orozco
y Berra, is called a _Relacion del origen de los Indios que habitan
esta nueva España segun sus historias_ (José M. Vigil, editor). It
is an important source of our knowledge of the ancient history of
Mexico, as authoritatively interpreted by the Aztec priests, from their
picture-writings, at the bidding of Ramirez de Fuenleal, Bishop of
Cuenca. This ecclesiastic carried the document with him to Spain, where
in Madrid it is still preserved. It was used by Herrera. Chavero and
Brinton recognize its representative value.[869]
To Father Duran we are indebted for an equally ardent advocacy of the
rights of the natives in his _Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España
y islas de Tierra-Firme_ (1579-81), which was edited in part (1867),
as stated elsewhere[870] by José F. Ramirez, and after an interval
completed (1880) by Prof. Gumesindo Mendoza, of the Museo Nacional,—the
perfected work making two volumes of text and an atlas of plates. Both
from Tobar and from Duran some of the contemporary writers gathered
largely their material.[871]
[Illustration: SAHAGUN.
After a lithograph in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s
_Mexico_.]
We come to a different kind of record when we deal with the Roman
script of the early phonetic rendering of the native tongues. It has
been pointed out that we have perhaps the earliest of such renderings
in a single sentence in a publication made at Antwerp in 1534, where
a Franciscan, Pedro de Gante,[872] under date of June 21, 1529, tells
the story of his arriving in America in 1523, and his spending the
interval in Mexico and Tezcuco, acquiring a knowledge of the natives
and enough of their language to close his epistle with a sentence of it
as a sample.[873] But no chance effort of this kind was enough. It took
systematic endeavors on the part of the priests to settle grammatical
principles and determine phonetic values, and the measure of their
success was seen in the speedy way in which the interpretation of the
old idiograms was forgotten. Mr. Brevoort has pointed out how much the
progress of what may be called native literature, which is to-day so
helpful to us in filling the picture of their ancient life, is due to
the labors in this process of linguistic transfer of Motolinfa,[874]
Alonzo de Molina,[875] Andrés de Olmos,[876] and, above all, of the
ablest student of the ancient tongues in his day, as Mendieta calls
Father Sahagún,[877] who, dying in 1590 at ninety, had spent a good
part of a long life so that we of this generation might profit by his
records.[878]
Coming later into the field than Duran, Acosta, and Sahagún, and
profiting from the labors of his predecessors, we find in the
_Monarchia Indiana_ of Torquemada[879] the most comprehensive treatment
of the ancient history given to us by any of the early Spanish writers.
The book, however, is a provoking one, from the want of plan, its
chronological confusion, and the general lack of a critical spirit[880]
pervading it.
It is usually held that the earliest amassment of native records for
historical purposes, after the Conquest, was that made by Ixtlilxochitl
of the archives of his Tezcucan line, which he used in his writings in
a way that has not satisfied some later investigators. Charnay says
that in his own studies he follows Veytia by preference; but Prescott
finds beneath the high colors of the pictures of Ixtlilxochitl not a
little to be commended. Bandelier,[881] on the other hand, expresses
a distrust when he says of Ixtlilxochitl that “he is always a very
suspicious authority, not because he is more confused than any other
Indian writer, but because he wrote for an interested object, and
with a view of sustaining tribal claims in the eyes of the Spanish
government.”[882]
Among the manuscripts which seem to have belonged to Ixtlilxochitl
was the one known in our day under the designation given to it by
Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Codex Chimalpopoca_,[883] in honor of Faustino
Chimalpopoca, a learned professor of Aztec, who assisted Brasseur in
translating it. The anonymous author had set to himself the task of
converting into the written native tongue a rendering of the ancient
hieroglyphics, constituting, as Brasseur says, a complete and regular
history of Mexico and Colhuacan. He describes it in his _Lettres à M.
le duc de Valmy_ (_lettre seconde_)—the first part (in Mexican) being a
history of the Chichimecas; the second (in Spanish), by another hand,
elucidating the antiquities—as the most rare and most precious of all
the manuscripts which escaped destruction, elucidating what was obscure
in Gomara and Torquemada.
Brasseur based upon this MS. his account of the Toltec period in
his _Nations Civilisées du Mexique_ (i. p. lxxviii), treating as an
historical document what in later years, amid his vagaries, he assumed
to be but the record of geological changes.[884] A similar use was
made by him of another MS., sometimes called a Memorial de Colhuacan,
and which he named the _Codex Gondra_ after the director of the Museo
Nacional in Mexico.[885]
Brasseur says, in the _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, that the
_Chimalpopoca MS._ is dated in 1558, but in his _Hist. Nat. Civ._, i.
p. lxxix, he says that it was written in 1563 and 1579, by a writer
of Quauhtitlan, and not by Ixtlilxochitl, as was thought by Pichardo,
who with Gama possessed copies later owned by Aubin. The copy used
by Brasseur was, as he says, made from the MS. in the Boturini
collection,[886] where it was called _Historia de los Reynos de
Colhuacan y México_,[887] and it is supposed to be the original, now
preserved in the Museo Nacional de México. It is not all legible, and
that institution has published only the better preserved and earlier
parts of it, though Aubin’s copies are said to contain the full text.
This edition, which is called _Anales de Cuauhtitlan_, is accompanied
by two Spanish versions, the early one made for Brasseur, and a new one
executed by Mendoza and Solis, and it is begun in the _Anales del Museo
Nacional_ for 1879 (vol. i.).[888]
The next after Ixtlilxochitl to become conspicuous as a collector,
was Sigüenza y Gongora (b. 1645), and it was while he was the chief
keeper of such records[889] that the Italian traveller Giovanni
Francesco Gemelli Carreri examined them, and made some record of
them.[890] A more important student inspected the collection, which
was later gathered in the College of San Pedro and San Pablo, and
this was Clavigero,[891] who manifested a particular interest in the
picture-writing of the Mexicans,[892] and has given us a useful account
of the antecedent historians.[893]
[Illustration: CLAVIGERO.
After a lithograph in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s
_Mexico_, vol. iii.]
The best known efforts at collecting material for the ante-Spanish
history of Mexico were made by Boturini,[894] who had come over to
New Spain in 1736, on some agency for a descendant of Montezuma, the
Countess de Santibañez. Here he became interested in the antiquities
of the country, and spent eight years roving about the country
picking up manuscripts and pictures, and seeking in vain for some one
to explain their hieroglyphics. Some action on his part incurring
the displeasure of the public authorities, he was arrested, his
collection[895] taken from him, and he was sent to Spain. On the
voyage an English cruiser captured the vessel in which he was, and
he thus lost whatever he chanced to have with him.[896] What he left
behind remained in the possession of the government, and became the
spoil of damp, revolutionists, and curiosity-seekers. Once again in
Spain, Boturini sought redress of the Council of the Indies, and was
sustained by it in his petition; but neither he nor his heirs succeeded
in recovering his collection. He also prepared a book setting forth
how he proposed, by the aid of these old manuscripts and pictures,
to resuscitate the forgotten history of the Mexicans. The book[897]
is a jumble of notions; but appended to it was what gives it its
chief value, a “Catálogo del Museo histórico Indiano,” which tells us
what the collection was. While it was thus denied to its collector,
Mariano Veytia,[898] who had sympathized with Boturini in Madrid, had
possession, for a while at least, of a part of it, and made use of
it in his _Historia Antigua de Méjico_, but it is denied, as usually
stated, that the authorities upon his death (1778) prevented the
publication of his book. The student was deprived of Veytia’s results
till his MS. was ably edited, with notes and an appendix, by C. F.
Ortega (Mexico, 1836).[899] Another, who was connected at a later
day with the Boturini collection, and who was a more accurate writer
than Veytia, was Antonio de Leon y Gama, born in Mexico in 1735. His
_Descripcion histórica y Cronológica de las Dos Piedras_ (Mexico,
1832)[900] was occasioned by the finding, in 1790, of the great
Mexican Calendar Stone and other sculptures in the Square of Mexico.
This work brought to bear Gama’s great learning to the interpretation
of these relics, and to an exposition of the astronomy and mythology
of the ancient Mexicans, in a way that secured the commendation of
Humboldt.[901]
[Illustration: LORENZO BOTURINI.
After a lithograph in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s
_Mexico_. There is an etched portrait in the _Archives de la Soc.
Américaine de France, nouvelle série_, i., which is accompanied by an
essay on this “Père de l’Américanisme,” and “les sources aux quelles il
a puisé son précis d’histoire Américaine,” by Léon Cahun.]
During these years of uncertainty respecting the Boturini collection,
a certain hold upon it seems to have been shared successively by
Pichardo and Sanchez, by which in the end some part came to the Museo
Nacional, in Mexico.[902] It was also the subject of lawsuits, which
finally resulted in the dispersion of what was left by public auction,
at a time when Humboldt was passing through Mexico, and some of its
treasures were secured by him and placed in the Berlin Museum. Others
passed hither and thither (a few to Kingsborough), but not in a way
to obscure their paths, so that when, in 1830, Aubin was sent to
Mexico by the French government, he was able to secure a considerable
portion of them, as the result of searches during the next ten years.
It was with the purpose, some years later, of assisting in the
elucidation and publication of Aubin’s collection that the Société
Américaine de France was established. The collection of historical
records, as Aubin held it, was described, in 1881, by himself,[903]
when he divided his Mexican picture-writings into two classes,—those
which had belonged to Boturini, and those which had not.[904] Aubin
at the same time described his collection of the Spanish MSS. of
Ixtlilxochitl,[905] while he congratulated himself that he had secured
the old picture-writings upon which that native writer depended in the
early part of his _Historia Chichimeca_. These Spanish MSS. bear the
signature and annotations of Veytia.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE OF BOTURINI’S IDEA.]
We have another description of the Aubin collection by Brasseur de
Bourbourg.[906]
If we allow the first place among native writers, using the Spanish
tongue, to Ixtlilxochitl, we find several others of considerable
service: Diego Muñoz Camargo, a Tlaxcallan Mestizo, wrote (1585) a
_Historia de Tlaxcallan_.[907] Tezozomoc’s _Crónica Mexicana_ is
probably best known through Ternaux’s version,[908] and there is an
Italian abridgment in F. C. Marmocchi’s _Raccolta di Viaggi_ (vol.
x.). The catalogue of Boturini discloses a MS. by a Cacique of
Quiahuiztlan, Juan Ventura Zapata y Mendoza, which brings the _Crónica
de la muy noble y real Ciudad de Tlaxcallan_ from the earliest times
down to 1689; but it is not now known. Torquemada and others cite
two native Tezcucan writers,—Juan Bautista Pomar, whose _Relacion de
las Antigüedades de los Indios_[909] treats of the manners of his
ancestors, and Antonio Pimentel, whose _Relaciones_ are well known. The
MS. _Crónica Mexicana_ of Anton Muñon Chimalpain (b. 1579), tracing
the annals from the eleventh century, is or was among the Aubin
MSS.[910] There was collected before 1536, under the orders of Bishop
Zumárraga, a number of aboriginal tales and traditions, which under the
title of _Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas_ was printed by
Icazbalceta, who owns the MS., in the _Anales del Museo Nacional_ (ii.
no. 2).[911]
[Illustration: ICAZBALCETA.
[After a photograph kindly furnished by himself at the editor’s
request.—ED.]]
As regards Yucatan, Brasseur[912] speaks of the scantiness of the
historical material, and Brinton[913] does not know a single case where
a Maya author has written in the Spanish tongue, as the Aztecs did,
under Spanish influence. We owe more to Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton
than to any one else for the elucidation of the native records, and he
had had the advantage of the collection of Yucatan MSS. formed by Dr.
C. H. Berendt,[914] which, after that gentleman’s death, passed into
Brinton’s hands.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR DANIEL G. BRINTON.]
After the destruction of the ancient records by Landa, considerable
efforts were made throughout Yucatan, in a sort of reactionary spirit,
to recall the lingering recollections of what these manuscripts
contained. The grouping of such recovered material became known as
Chilan Balam.[915] It is from local collections of this kind that
Brinton selected the narratives which he has published as _The Maya
Chronicles_, being the first volume of his _Library of Aboriginal
American Literature_. The original texts[916] are accompanied by an
English translation. One of the books, the Chilan Balam of Mani,
had been earlier printed by Stephens, in his _Yucatan_.[917] The
only early Spanish chronicle is Bishop Landa’s _Relation des choses
de Yucatan_,[918] which follows not an original, but a copy of the
bishop’s text, written, as Brasseur thinks, thirty years after Landa’s
death, or about 1610, and which Brasseur first brought to the world’s
attention when he published his edition, with both Spanish and French
texts, at Paris, in 1864. The MS. seems to have been incomplete, and
was perhaps inaccurately copied at the time. At this date (1864)
Brasseur had become an enthusiast for his theory of the personification
of the forces of nature in the old recitals, and there was some
distrust how far his zeal had affected his text; and moreover he
had not published the entire text, but had omitted about one sixth.
Brasseur’s method of editing became apparent when, in 1884, at Madrid,
Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado published literally the whole Spanish
text, as an appendix to the Spanish translation of Rosny’s essay on the
hieratic writing. The Spanish editor pointed out some but not all the
differences between his text and Brasseur’s,—a scrutiny which Brinton
has perfected in his _Critical Remarks on the Editions of Landa’s
Writings_ (Philad., 1887).[919] Landa gives extracts from a work by
Bernardo Lizana, relating to Yucatan, of which it is difficult to get
other information.[920] The earliest published historical narrative was
Cogolludo’s _Historia de Yucathan_ (Madrid, 1688).[921] Stephens, in
his study of the subject, speaks of it as “voluminous, confused, and
ill-digested,” and says “it might almost be called a history of the
Franciscan friars, to which order Cogolludo belonged.”[922]
* * * * *
The native sources of the aboriginal history of Guatemala, and
of what is sometimes called the Quiché-Cakchiquel Empire, are
not abundant,[923] but the most important are the _Popul Vuh_, a
traditional book of the Quichés, and the _Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan_.
The _Popul Vuh_ was discovered in the library of the university at
Guatemala, probably not far from 1700,[924] by Francisco Ximenez, a
missionary in a mountain village of the country. Ximenez did not find
the original Quiché book, but a copy of it, made after it was lost,
and later than the Conquest, which we may infer was reproduced from
memory to replace the lost text, and in this way it may have received
some admixture of Christian thought.[925] It was this sort of a text
that Ximenez turned into Spanish; and this version, with the copy of
the Quiché, which Ximenez also made, is what has come down to us.
Karl Scherzer, a German traveller[926] in the country, found Ximenez’
work, which had seemingly passed into the university library on the
suppression of the monasteries, and which, as he supposes, had not been
printed because of some disagreeable things in it about the Spanish
treatment of the natives. Scherzer edited the MS., which was published
as _Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de Esta Provincia de
Guatemala_[927] (Vienna, 1857).
Brasseur, who had seen the Ximenez MSS. in 1855, considered the Spanish
version untrustworthy, and so with the aid of some natives he gave it
a French rendering, and republished it a few years later as _Popol
Vuh_. _Le Livre sacré et les Mythes de l’antiquité américaine, avec
les livres héroïques et historiques des Quichés. Ouvrage original
des indigènes de Guatémala, texte Quiché et trad. française en
regard, accompagnée de notes philologiques et d’un commentaire sur la
mythologie et les migrations des peuples anciens de l’Amérique, etc.,
composé sur des documents originaux et inédits_ (Paris, 1861).
Brasseur’s introduction bears the special title: _Dissertation sur les
mythes de l’antiquité Américaine sur la probabilité des Communications
existant anciennement d’un Continent à l’autre, et sur les migrations
des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique_,—in which he took occasion to
elucidate his theory of cataclysms and Atlantis. He speaks of his
annotations as the results of his observations among the Quichés and
of his prolonged studies. He calls the _Popul Vuh_ rather a national
than a sacred book,[928] and thinks it the original in some part of
the “Livre divin des Toltèques,” the Teo-Amoxtli.[929] Brinton avers
that neither Ximenez nor Brasseur has adequately translated the Quiché
text,[930] and sees no reason to think that the matter has been in any
way influenced by the Spanish contact, emanating indeed long before
that event; and he has based some studies upon it.[931] In this opinion
Bandelier is at variance, at least as regards the first portion, for
he believes it to have been _written_ after the Conquest and under
Christian influences.[932] Brasseur in some of his other writings has
further discussed the matter.[933]
The _Memorial of Tecpan-Atitlan_, to use Brasseur’s title, is an
incomplete MS.,[934] found in 1844 by Juan Gavarrete in rearranging
the MSS. of the convent of San Francisco, of Guatemala, and it was
by Gavarrete that a Spanish version of Brasseur’s rendering was
printed in 1873 in the _Boletin de la Sociedad económica de Guatemala_
(nos. 29-43). This translation by Brasseur, made in 1856, was never
printed by him, but, passing into Pinart’s hands with Brasseur’s
collections,[935] it was entrusted by that collector to Dr. Brinton,
who selected the parts of interest (46 out of 96 pp.), and included it
as vol. vi. in his _Library of Aboriginal American Literature_, under
the title of _The annals of the Cakchiquels_. _The original text, with
a translation, notes, and introduction_ (Philadelphia, 1885).
Brinton disagrees with Brasseur in placing the date of its beginning
towards the opening of the eleventh century, and puts it rather at
about A.D. 1380. Brasseur says he received the original from Gavarrete,
and it would seem to have been a copy made between 1620 and 1650,
though it bears internal evidence of having been written by one who was
of adult age at the time of the Conquest.
Brinton’s introduction discusses the ethnological position of the
Cakchiquels, who he thinks had been separated from the Mayas for a long
period.
The next in importance of the Guatemalan books is the work of
Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman, _Historia de Guatemala, ó
Recordación florida escrita el siglo xvii., que publica por primera vez
con notas é ilustraciones F. Zaragoza_ (Madrid, 1882-83), being vols. 1
and 2 of the _Biblioteca de los americanistas_. The original MS., dated
1690, is in the archives of the city of Guatemala. Owing to a tendency
of the author to laud the natives, modern historians have looked with
some suspicion on his authority, and have pointed out inconsistencies
and suspected errors.[936] Of a later writer, Ramon de Ordoñez
(died about 1840), we have only the rough draught of a _Historia
de la creation del Cielo y de la tierra, conforme al sistema de la
gentilidad Americana_, which is of importance for traditions.[937] This
manuscript, preserved in the Museo Nacional in Mexico, is all that now
exists, representing the perfected work. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._,
113) had a copy of this draught (made in 1848-49). The original fair
copy was sent to Madrid for the press, and it is suspected that the
Council for the Indies suppressed it in 1805. Ramon cites a manuscript
_Hist. de la Prov. de San Vicente de Chiappas y Goathemala_, which is
perhaps the same as the _Crónica de la Prov. de Chiapas y Guatemala_,
of which the seventh book is in the Museo Nacional (_Am. Antiq. Soc.
Proc._, n. s., i. 97; Brasseur, _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, 157).
The work of Antonio de Remesal is sometimes cited as _Historia general
de las Indias occidentales, y particular de la gobernacion de Chiapas y
Guatemala_, and sometimes as _Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente
de Chyapa y Guatemala_ (Madrid, 1619, 1620).[938]
* * * * *
Bandelier (_Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, i. 95) has indicated the
leading sources of the history of Chiapas, so closely associated
with Guatemala. To round the study of the aboriginal period of this
Pacific region, we may find something in Alvarado’s letters on the
Conquest;[939] in Las Casas for the interior parts, and in Alonso de
Zurita’s _Relacion_, 1560,[940] as respects the Quiché tribes, which
is the source of much in Herrera.[941] For Oajaca (Oaxaca, Guaxaca)
the special source is Francisco de Burgoa’s _Geográfica descripcion de
la parte septentrional del Polo Artico de la América_, etc. (México,
1674), in two quarto volumes,—or at least it is generally so regarded.
Bandelier, who traces the works on Oajaca (_Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._,
n. s., i. 115), says there is a book of a modern writer, Juan B.
Carriedo, which follows Burgoa largely. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._,
p. 33) speaks of Burgoa as the only source which remains of the native
history of Oajaca. He says it is a very rare book, even in Mexico. He
largely depends upon its full details in some parts of his _Nations
Civilisées_ (iii. livre 9). Alonso de la Rea’s _Crónica de Mechoacan_
(Mexico, 1648) and Basalenque’s _Crónica de San Augustin de Mechoacan_
(Mexico, 1673) are books which Brinton complains he could find in no
library in the United States.
We trace the aboriginal condition of Nicaragua in Peter Martyr, Oviedo,
Torquemada, and Ixtlilxochitl.[942]
* * * * *
The earliest general account of all these ancient peoples which we
have in English is in the _History of America_, by William Robertson,
who describes the condition of Mexico at the time of the Conquest,
and epitomizes the early Spanish accounts of the natives. Prescott
and Helps followed in his steps, with new facilities. Albert Gallatin
brought the powers of a vigorous intellect to bear, though but
cursorily, upon the subject, in his “Notes on the semi-civilized
nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America,” in the _Amer.
Ethnological Society’s Transactions_ (N. Y., 1845, vol. i.), and
he was about the first to recognize the dangerous pitfalls of the
pseudo-historical narratives of these peoples. The _Native Races_[943]
of H. H. Bancroft was the first very general sifting and massing in
English of the great confusion of material upon their condition,
myths, languages, antiquities, and history.[944] The archæological
remains are treated by Stephens for Yucatan and Central America, by
Dr. Le Plongeon[945] for Yucatan, by Ephraim G. Squier for Nicaragua
and Central America in general,[946] by Adolphe F. A. Bandelier in his
communications to the Peabody Museum and to the Archæological Institute
of America,[947] and by Professor Daniel G. Brinton in his editing of
ancient records[948] and in his mythological and linguistic studies,
referred to elsewhere. To these may be added, as completing the English
references, various records of personal observations.[949]
[Illustration: BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG.
Follows an etching published in the _Annuaire de la Société Américaine
de France_, 1875. He died at Nice, Jan. 8, 1874, aged 59 years.]
During the American Civil War, when there were hopes of some
permanence for French influence in Mexico, the French government
made some organized efforts to further the study of the antiquities
of the country, and the results were published in the _Archives
de la Commission Scientifique du Méxique_ (Paris, 1864-69, in 3
vols.).[950] The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who took a conspicuous
part in this labor, has probably done more than any other Frenchman
to bring into order the studies upon these ancient races, and in some
directions he is our ultimate source. Unfortunately his character as
an archæological expounder did not improve as he went on, and he grew
to be the expositor of some wild notions that have proved acceptable
to few. He tells us that he first had his attention turned to American
archæology by the report, which had a short run in European circles,
of the discovery of a Macedonian helmet and weapons in Brazil in
1832, and by a review of Rio’s report on Palenqué, which he read in
the _Journal des Savants_. Upon coming to America, fresh from his
studies in Rome, he was made professor of history in the seminary at
Quebec in 1845-46, writing at that time a _Histoire du Canada_, of
little value. Later, in Boston, he perfected his English and read
Prescott. Then we find him at Rome poring over the _Codex Vaticanus_,
and studying the _Codex Borgianus_ in the library of the Propaganda.
In 1848 he returned to the United States, and, embarking at New
Orleans for Mexico, he found himself on shipboard in the company of
the new French minister, whom he accompanied, on landing, to the city
of Mexico, being made almoner to the legation. This official station
gave him some advantage in beginning his researches, in which Rafael
Isidro Gondra, the director of the Museo, with the curators of the
vice-regal archives, and José Maria Andrade, the librarian of the
university, assisted him. Later he gave himself to the study of the
Nahua tongue, under the guidance of Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia, a
descendant of a brother of Montezuma, then a professor in the college
of San Gregorio. In 1851 he was ready to print at Mexico, in French and
Spanish, his _Lettres pour servir d’introduction à l’histoire primitive
des anciennes nations civilisées du Méxique_, addressed (October, 1850)
to the Duc de Valmy, in which he sketched the progress of his studies
up to that time. He speaks of it as “le premier fruit de mes travaux
d’archéologie et d’histoire méxicaines.”[951] It was this brochure
which introduced him to the attention of Squier and Aubin, and from
the latter, during his residence in Paris (1851-54), he received great
assistance. Pressed in his circumstances, he was obliged at this time
to eke out his living by popular writing, which helped also to enable
him to publish his successive works.[952] To complete his Central
American studies, he went again to America in 1854, and in Washington
he saw for the first time the texts of Las Casas and Duran, in the
collection of Peter Force, who had got copies from Madrid. He has
given us[953] an account of his successful search for old manuscripts
in Central America. Finally, as the result of all these studies, he
published his most important work,—_Histoire des nations civilisées
du Méxique et de l’Amérique centrale durant les siècles antérieurs
à C. Colomb, écrite sur des docs. origin. et entièrement inédits,
puisés aux anciennes archives des indigènes_ (Paris, 1857-58).[954]
This was the first orderly and extensive effort to combine out of all
available material, native and Spanish, a divisionary and consecutive
history of ante-Columbian times in these regions, to which he added
from the native sources a new account of the conquest by the Spaniards.
His purpose to separate the historic from the mythical may incite
criticism, but his views are the result of more labor and more
knowledge than any one before him had brought to the subject.[955]
In his later publications there is less reason to be satisfied with
his results, and Brinton[956] even thinks that “he had a weakness to
throw designedly considerable obscurity about his authorities and the
sources of his knowledge.” His fellow-students almost invariably yield
praise to his successful research and to his great learning, surpassing
perhaps that of any of them, but they are one and all chary of adopting
his later theories.[957] These were expressed at length in his _Quatre
lettres sur le Mexique_. _Exposition du système hiéroglyphique
mexicain. La fin de l’âge de pierre. Époque glaciaire temporaire.
Commencement de l’âge de bronze. Origines de la civilisation et des
religions de l’antiquité. D’après le Teo-Amoxtli_ [etc.] (Paris,
1868), wherein he accounted as mere symbolism what he had earlier
elucidated as historical records, and connected the recital of the
_Codex Chimalpopoca_ with the story of Atlantis, making that lost
land the original seat of all old-world and new-world civilization,
and finding in that sacred history of Colhuacan and Mexico the secret
evidence of a mighty cataclysm that sunk the continent from Honduras
(subsequently with Yucatan elevated) to perhaps the Canaries.[958] Two
years later, in his elucidation of the _MS. Troano_ (1869-70), this
same theory governed all his study. Brasseur was quite aware of the
loss of estimation which followed upon his erratic change of opinion,
as the introduction to his _Bibl. Mex.-Guatémalienne_ shows. No other
French writer, however, has so associated his name with the history of
these early peoples.[959]
In Mexico itself the earliest general narrative was not cast in the
usual historical form, but in the guise of a dialogue, held night
after night, between a Spaniard and an Indian, the ancient history
of the country was recounted. The author, Joseph Joaquin Granados y
Galvez, published it in 1778, as _Tardes Américanas: gobierno gentil
y católico: breve y particular noticia de toda la historia Indiana:
sucesos, casos notables, y cosas ignoradas, desde la entrada de la
Gran nacion Tulteca á esta tierra de Anahuac, hasta los presentes
tiempos_.[960]
The most comprehensive grouping of historical material is in
the _Diccionario Universal de historia y de Geografía_ (Mexico,
1853-56),[961] of which Manuel Orozco y Berra was one of the chief
collaborators. This last author has in two other works added very much
to our knowledge of the racial and ancient history of the indigenous
peoples. These are his _Geografía de las lenguas y Carta Etnográfica
de México_ (Mexico, 1864),[962] and his _Historia antigua y de la
Conquista de México_ (Mexico, 1880, in four volumes).[963] Perhaps the
most important of all the Mexican publications is Manuel Larrainzar’s
_Estudios sobre la historia de América, sus ruinas y antigüedades,
comparadas con lo más notable del otro Continente_ (Mexico, 1875-1878,
in five volumes).
In German the most important of recent books is Hermann Strebel’s
_Alt-Mexico_ (Hamburg, 1885); but Waitz’s _Amerikaner_ (1864, vol. ii.)
has a section on the Mexicans. Adolph Bastian’s “Zur Geschichte des
Alten Mexico” is contained in the second volume of his _Culturländer
des Alten America_ (Berlin, 1878), in which he considers the subject of
Quetzalcoatl, the religious ceremonial, administrative and social life,
as well as the different stocks of the native tribes.
NOTES.
I. THE AUTHORITIES ON THE SO-CALLED CIVILIZATION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND
ADJACENT LANDS, AND THE INTERPRETATION OF SUCH AUTHORITIES.
THE ancient so-called civilization which the Spaniards found in Mexico
and Central America is the subject of much controversy: in the first
place as regards its origin, whether indigenous, or allied to and
derived from the civilizations of the Old World; and in the second
place as regards its character, whether it was something more than
a kind of grotesque barbarism, or of a nature that makes even the
Spanish culture, which supplanted it, inferior in some respects by
comparison.[964] The first of these problems, as regards its origin, is
considered in another place. As respects the second, or its character,
it is proposed here to follow the history of opinions.
In a book published at Seville in 1519, Martin Fernandez d’Enciso’s
_Suma de geographia que trata de todas las partidas y provincias
del mundo: en especial de las Indias_,[965] the European reader
is supposed to have received the earliest hints of the degree of
civilization—if it be so termed—of which the succeeding Spanish writers
made so much. A brief sentence was thus the shadowy beginning of the
stories of grandeur and magnificence[966] which we find later in
Cortes, Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, Torquemada, Sahagún, Ramusio, Gomara,
Oviedo, Zurita, Tezozomoc, and Ixtlilxochitl, and which is repeated
often with accumulating effect in Acosta, Herrera, Lorenzana, Solis,
Clavigero, and their successors.[967] Bandelier[968] points out how
Robertson, in his views of Mexican civilization as in “the infancy of
civil life,”[969] really opened the view for the first time of the
exaggerated and uncritical estimates of the older writers, which Morgan
has carried in our day to the highest pitch, and, as it would seem,
without sufficient recognition of some of the contrary evidence.
It has usually been held that the creation among the Mexicans
about thirty years after the founding of Mexico of a chief-of-men
(Tlacatecuhtli) instituted a feudal monarchy. Bandelier,[970] speaking
of the application of feudal terms by the old writers to Mexican
institutions, says: “What in their first process of thinking was
merely a comparative, became very soon a positive terminology for the
purpose of describing institutions to which this foreign terminology
never was adapted.” He instances that the so-called “king” of these
early writers was a translation of the native term, which in fact
only meant “one of those who spoke;” that is, a prominent member of
the council.[971] Bandelier traces the beginning of the feudal ideas
as a graft upon the native systems, in the oldest document issued by
Europeans on Mexican soil, when Cortes (May 20, 1519) conferred land
on his allies, the chiefs of Axapusco and Tepeyahualco, and for the
first time made their offices hereditary. It is Bandelier’s opinion
that “the grantees had no conception of the true import of what they
accepted; neither did Cortes conceive the nature of their ideas.” This
was followed after the Spanish occupation of Mexico by the institution
of “repartimientos,” through which the natives became serfs of the soil
to the conquerors.[972]