The greater part of Oaxaca and the neighboring regions are still occupied
by the Zapotecs, who call themselves _Didja-Za_.[171] There are now about
265,000 of them, about fifty thousand of whom speak nothing but their
native tongue. In ancient times they constituted a powerful independent
state, the citizens of which seem to have been quite as highly civilized
as any member of the Aztecan family. They were agricultural and
sedentary, living in villages and constructing buildings of stone and
mortar. The most remarkable, but by no means the only specimens of these
still remaining are the ruins of Mitla, called by the natives _Ryo Ba_,
the “entrance to the sepulchre,” the traditional belief being that these
imposing monuments are sepulchres of their ancestors.[172] These ruins
consist of thirty-nine houses, some of adobe, but most of stone, and two
artificial hills. The stone houses have thick walls of rough stone and
mortar, faced with polished blocks arranged in a variety of symmetrical
patterns, such as are called grecques. Sometimes these patterns are
repeated on the inner walls, but more frequently these were plastered
with a hard white coat and painted an Indian red, with numerous figures.
These delineations are on a par with those from the valley of Mexico and
the ancient cities of Yucatan, and reveal much the same technique. One of
the rooms is called the “hall of the columns,” from six round monolithic
columns nearly ten feet in height, which were intended to support a roof
of heavy stone slabs.
The Mixtecs adjoined the Zapotecs to the west, extending along the coast
of the Pacific to about the present port of Acapulco. In culture they
were equal to the Zapotecs; having a preference for an agricultural
life, constructing residences of brick and stone and acquainted with a
form of picture or hieroglyphic writing, in which they perpetuated the
memory of their elaborate mythology.[173] They pretended to have taken
their name from Mixtecatl, one of the seven heroes who set out from
Chicomoztoc, “the land of seven caves,” far in the north, and at other
times pretended descent from the fabulous Toltecs, claims which Sahagun
intimates were fictions of the Nahuas living among them.[174]
The Zapotecs made use of a calendar, the outlines of which have been
preserved. It is evidently upon the same astronomical theory as the
Mexican, as was their system of enumeration. Their language is not
inharmonious. It is called the _ticha za_, “language of the noble people.”