Aztec civilization

“ Gallatin, we find ourselves frequently bewildered in the labyrinth of historical details and picturesque legends, which have been carefully gathered and grouped to form a romantic picture of the Aztec nation. Yet facts enough have survived, not only the wreck of the conquest, but also the comparative stagnation of the viceroyalty, to satisfy us that there was a large class of people, at least in the capitals and their vicinity, whose tastes, habits, and social principles, were nearly equal to the civilization of the Old World at that time. ”

“ The cause of humanity, indeed, has gained. They live under a better system of laws, a more assured tranquillity, a purer faith.{64} But all does not avail. Their civilization was of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce virtues of the Aztec were all his own. They refused to submit to European culture,—to be engrafted on a foreign stock. ”

“ The Spaniards, first hailed as gods by the Aztecs, because of their fair skins, their "canoes with wings," their armor, their horses, and their artillery, conquered the country, laid waste the fair cities of the lakes and the valley, and, with iron heel, stamped out the last vestiges of Aztec civilization—"a civilization that," as one historian says, "might have instructed Europe."
And foremost in this work of destruction and of death stood Ixtlilochitl of Tezcuco, a traitor to his home-land, [Pg 195] the vassal and the ally of Cortez the Spaniard. ”

“ To maintain the myth of the alleged Aztec power and its inaccurate greatness, is to remain at the mercy of the conquerors cultural heirs, who in this way prevents us from knowing at a greater depth the ancient civilization of which we are living part.
Of course, the mexica formidable ability to break the depressive inertia of the Anahuac culture in the Postclassical must be recognized. Their great will power and temperance to overcome the hegemony consolidation challenges. Their ability to re-functionalize art is an undeniable proof of the reaches and talent that the mexica culture had. ”

“ After the Conquest, for years the Spaniards were disturbed by remaining savage tribes who, resisting civilization, had retreated to the woods and mountains; but these tribes have been long exterminated. Their successor, the highway robber of roads and mountain passes, was of another breed, imported, with other products of civilization, from old Spain.
The Aztec dynasty, then, was extinct, but the Aztec nation, a large population, even after the great diminution in the wars of the Conquest, remained on the plateau to begin a new life under the influences of Christian rulers. ”

“ It remains for some one to compare the Aztec with the languages of the southern Indians before the investigation is complete. While the probability is pre-eminent that the ancient Americans are of old world origin and that the519 Mayas and Nahuas reached this continent from opposite directions, it is certain that the civilization developed by each people is indigenous—that it grew up on the soil where we find it, and was shaped by the wants of man as influenced and modified by the conditions of nature and physical surroundings. ”

“ It is true that the belief of the civilized Aztec was far higher and nobler than that of the uncivilized Carib, but can he who has read the evidence upon which old women and young maidens were convicted of riding upon broomsticks to witches' Sabbaths, by the most learned judges of the most learned law-courts of modern Europe, deny that the coarsest superstition and the highest civilization have hitherto gone hand in hand. ”

“ We find no traces of civilization in their architecture, or in their social life and customs. Their religion was brutal and bloody, indicating an Aztec origin. They were perfidious and cruel, and if they were at all superior to the neighboring tribes it was probably due to the district they occupied--the most beautiful, healthy and productive in the valley of the Mississippi--and the influence of its attractions in substituting permanent for temporary occupation. ”

“ The contrast between the steel-clad cavaliers of Castile, whose burnished armor blazed and glittered in the brilliant torch-light, and rung under their heavy martial tramp upon the marble floor, and the comparatively fairy figures of the gaudily apparelled Aztecs, was as strong as could possibly be presented in a scene like this. The costumes and customs of each were matter of wonder and admiration to the other. The Aztec trembled at the mysterious power, the incomprehensible weapons, of the white man. ”

“ It is more likely to think that only by force they could implant it and that the spirituality of some aspects of the aztec life should come from an ancient tradition, betrayed in it’s his essence for the benefit of a temporary structure dominated by a ruthless will to power". ”

“ From the moment of his coronation the Aztec sovereign lived in an atmosphere of adulation unknown to the mightiest potentate of the old world. Reverenced as a god, the
haughtiest nobles, sovereigns in their own land, humbled themselves before him; absolute in power, the fate of thousands depended upon a gesture of his hand. ”

“ And one cannot deny that, as he reflects on the progress made by the Aztecs in the knowledge of the useful arts, and, indeed, to a certain extent, of science, he must admit their claim to a higher place in the scale of civilization than that occupied by barbarians,—to one, in truth, occupied by the semi-civilized races of China and Hindostan. ”

“ The stranger still to strangers doomed to yield.” At the time of the conquest the Aztecs, who were then at the height of their power and glory, were the dominant race in what is now Mexico and Central America. And yet the broad plains of Yucatan and Central America were the theatre of a much older civilization compared with which that of the Aztecs was, as one writer says, “as the brightness of the full meridian moon to the splendour of the sun that has already set.” ”

“ Of course we see the rise of the Aztec nation, a small cycle, but like the Gothic upon the Roman, it comes at the end of the general American break-up—an incursion of barbarians settling on and preserving for us fragments of the culture that preceded them, just as has happened over and over again all over the world. ”

“ The Aztec were confessedly immigrants, who had wandered south less than five hundred years before the conquest; by their superiority as fighting-men they had won the hegemony over the kindred tribes which they found settled in the valley of Mexico, and had extended their power to both oceans and as far at least as the isthmus of Tehuantepec. ”

“ From their small beginning as a handful of hunted creatures, hiding in the rushes of a swamp, they had grown to be an all-powerful nation, carrying a triumphant warfare throughout the land, and enlarging their boundaries with every triumph. The shocking features of their sanguinary religion make them odious to our minds. It is difficult to accommodate it to the gentle SCULPTURE REPRESENTING HUMAN SACRIFICE.
traits of the Aztec character, which shows them to be of domestic tastes, affectionate and mild in temper. ”

“ The Aztecs not only did not advance the condition of their vassals, but, morally speaking, they did much to degrade it. How can a nation where human sacrifices prevail, and especially when combined with cannibalism, further the march of civilization? How can the interests of humanity be consulted, where man is levelled to the rank of the brutes that perish? The influence of the Aztecs introduced their gloomy superstition into lands before unacquainted with it, or where, at least, it was not established in any great strength. ”

“ Even from the summary and incomplete indications here given, it is seen that the Aztec state possessed many excellent institutions and elements of an advanced civilisation, and, despite the co-existence of certain limitations which have led some to doubt the development claimed for them, our interest in the origin and history of the mysterious races of Andhuac is stimulated to wonder and admiration for what we do know of their empire, and to boundless regret for the disappearance of all, save the few vestiges which remain to excite a curiosity they are inadequate to appease. ”

“ Yet we cannot regret the fall of an empire which did so little to promote the happiness of its subjects or the real interests of humanity. Notwithstanding the lustre thrown over its latter days by the glorious defence of its capital, by the mild munificence of Montezuma, by the dauntless heroism of Guatemozin, the Aztecs were emphatically a fierce and brutal race, little calculated, in their best aspects, to excite our sympathy and regard. Their civilization, such as it was, was not their own, but reflected, perhaps imperfectly, from a race whom they had succeeded in the land. ”

“ For it is an error, generally received indeed, but contradicted by history, that the Spanish captain decided the fate of so redoubtable an empire, and of a city so vigorously defended as Mexico, with the sole aid of his thousand Europeans.
For the rest, we are forced to acknowledge that the Aztecs had developed their civilization, in its political and material aspects, in a way that does the greatest credit to their sagacity. Property was organized on the individual and hereditary basis for the noble families, and on the collective bases for the people, divided into communities. ”

“ AZTEC CULTURE The Aztecs appear to have borrowed much of their art, science, and knowledge of writing from their Maya neighbors. They built houses and temples of stone or sundried brick, constructed aqueducts, roads, and bridges, excelled in the dyeing, weaving, and spinning of cotton, and made most beautiful ornaments of silver and gold. They worshiped many gods, to which the priests offered prisoners of war as human sacrifices. ”

“ Their dark countenances and long hair, their vestments and arms, were all of an Aztec character; yet a second and more scrutinizing glance made it apparent, that one, at least, if not two of them, was of another and nobler race. ”

“ It is impossible with our present knowledge to form an estimate of the civilization of the Aztecs at their highest point. The reports given by the Spaniards at the time of the conquests are not to be relied upon, as they paint in the exaggerated colors they thought most likely to give glory to their own achievements. ”

“ The best histories, the best poems, the best code of laws, the purest dialect, were all allowed to be Tezcucan. The Aztecs rivalled their neighbors in splendor of living, and even in the magnificence of their structures. They displayed a pomp and ostentatious pageantry truly Asiatic. But this was the development of the material rather than the intellectual principle. They{219} wanted the refinement of manners essential to a continued advance in civilization. An insurmountable limit was put to theirs by that bloody mythology which threw its withering taint over the very air that they breathed. ”

“ But although this exalted philosophy had been adopted by the fierce and uncultured Aztecs, it had become so obscured by the introduction of cruel and inhuman rites and customs as to be almost no longer recognisable as the pure faith of the race they had succeeded in the land. The germ and core of the Aztec religion was the idea of the constant necessity of propitiating the gods by means of human sacrifice, and to this aspect of their religion we will return later. ”

“ Did they remain on the soil, and mingle and become incorporated with the fierce Aztecs who succeeded them? Or did they pass on to the South, and find a wider field for the expansion of their civilization, as shown by the higher character of the architectural remains in the distant regions of Central America and Yucatan? It is all a mystery,—over which time has thrown an impenetrable veil, that no mortal hand may raise. A nation has passed away,—powerful, populous, and well advanced in refinement, as attested by their monuments,—but it has perished without a name. ”

“ The Aztecs were a very powerful people, and all the nations around them were afraid of them and acknowledged the Aztec king as theirs; and everywhere from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico were great roads leading from the city down to the coasts, so that the king could send messages at any time from one part of his kingdom to another; all over the country outside the city were great fields, where cotton, corn, wheat, sugar, coffee, and other things were raised. The Aztecs did not dress in skins, as did the Indians farther north, but they wove cotton into cloth and made garments of that. ”

“ The darker side of Aztec rule is seen in the enforced human labor exacted to supply the tributes in kind, and in the revolting system of organized cannibalism, the outgrowth of their elaborate ritual. ”

“ Nevertheless, there is a singular interest in the simple chain of evidence, thus confirmatory of the Aztec traditions of original migration, and the subjugation of the elder civilised race of Anahuac by northern warriors: which leads us, step by step, from such rude arts as those of the Iroquois, and relics of other barbarous tribes in western sepulchral mounds, to the Mexican armature of the era of the conquest, and artistic records of the lettered architects of Yucatan. ”

“ And time their lips with sunnier kinds of lays.
As if to fill the interim, there grew
From their own ranks, the fittest kind of guide,
A pastoral leader; who by instinct knew
The flowery paths that lead on either side
The verdant fields of husbandry and thrift;
The worthy Moctheuzoma [B] had this gift,
And led them to the conquest of the soil—
That easy conquering that seeks its spoil
Only where God intended it for man,
The fruits of his own labor. Thus began
An era of self-discipline, that led
The Aztecs on to greatness ”