Aztecs

“ The Aztecs, indignant at the sacrilegious outrage perpetrated before their eyes, and gathering courage from the inspiration of the place, under the very presence of their deities, raised a yell of horror and vindictive fury, as, throwing themselves into something like order, they sprang, by a common impulse on the Spaniards. ”

“ We have not space for further details respecting the Mexican divinities, the attributes of many of whom were carefully defined, as they descended in regular gradation, to the penates or household gods, whose little images were to found in the humblest dwelling.
The Aztecs felt the curiosity, common to man in almost every stage of civilisation, to lift the veil which covers the mysterious past, and the more awful future. ”

“ The Aztecs, struck aghast at their own sacrilegious deed, dispersed in sorrow and shame to their homes; while the Spaniards felt that they had lost their only remaining hold upon the forbearance and regard of a mighty people, whose confidence they had shamefully abused, and whose altars and houses they had wantonly desecrated. It was a season of agonizing suspense. To retreat from their post, and abandon the conquest which they once imagined was nearly achieved, might be as disastrous as it would be humiliating. ”

“ But what must have been the sensations of the Aztecs themselves, as they looked on the portentous pageant as they heard, now for the first time, the well-cemented pavement ring under the iron tramp of the horses,—the strange animals which fear had clothed in such supernatural terrors; as they gazed on the children of the East, revealing their celestial origin in their fair complexions ”

“ 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. ”

“ Much of beauty and interest there is in a study of both the old and new religions of this land; much of the romance of the former we may feel, as, standing on the pyramid whence the rays of the orb of day were flashed back from the golden breastplate of Tonatiah in days of yore, we mark the sun-god of the Aztecs sink in the Occident. ”

“ How would they cling to this rude mountain clime,
And bar the door of their futurity!
The Aztecs were a proud and prowent race;
In the dispersal at the far Northeast,
Now many years, they held the leading place;
Yet, in their husbandry, they were the least.
Their hands were skilled to turbulence and strife;
The bow, the lance, and the rude hunter's knife—
Such were their ready implements; but peace
Found them all unacquainted; her surcease
[94] Requires a range of weaponry diverse.
The hands that hew down others, lips that curse,
Both must be newly christened ”

“ Entering the largest room, one sees some fine specimens of that famous picture-writing of the Aztecs, such as they used for conveying to Montezuma the intelligence of the arrival of the white strangers on his coast, in those fateful years of the conquest. There are images here, and gods of every known shape and kind, for the ancient Mexicans rejoiced in a greater variety of gods than any other nation existing at that time. ”

“ I do not mean to express a decided opinion that the Aztecs were not, some hundreds or thousands of centuries ago, or even at a somewhat less remote period, identical with the natives of New Mexico, for I have great faith in the power of time and environment to work unlimited changes in any people; I simply claim that it is a manifest absurdity to suppose that the monuments described were the work of the Aztecs during a migration southward, since the eleventh century, or of any people nearly allied in blood and institutions to the Aztecs as they were found in Anáhuac. ”

“ The Aztecs, like many nations of the old world, had their Golden Age. During this blissful period, Quetzalcoatl, god of the air, dwelt on earth, and instructed men in the use of metals, in agriculture and every useful art. ”

“ The Aztecs, it seemed, had not originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built. When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Christianity to add to the Aztec place of torment the torture of perpetual fire and brimstone. The Aztec heaven, like the Scandinavian Valhalla, was especially reserved for their heroes who fell in battle. To these privileged souls were added those slain in sacrifice. These fortunate elect of the Aztecs seem to have been destined for a time to a somewhat lively immortality, as they at once passed into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs and choral dances in his bright progress through the heavens. ”

“ The Aztecs, again, after long migrations from place to place, finally, in A. D. 1325, halted on the [Pg 57] southwestern shores of the great lake. According to tradition, a heavenly vision thus announced the site of their future capital:
They beheld perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot out from the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in its talons, and its broad wings opened to the rising sun. ”

“ The Aztecs and their neighbors were beaten into the dust of debasement by the falchion blows of avarice and bigotry, and they form, apparently, not the most insignificant atom of the chain of events which connects the history of the empires of the Old World with that of our Republic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another painting gives COURT OF THE MUSEUM AT MEXICO.
the chronology of the kings of Mexico and Texcuco; it is long, stretching half across the large room of the museum in which it is exhibited.
If we only had more of these paintings, the daily life of the Aztecs would be before us, just, as we can read on the Egyptian monuments every detail of such remote living.
In the usual accounts of the religion of the Aztecs, more stress is laid upon the horror of their human sacrifice than upon its other features, which, however, deserve notice. They firmly believed in a future life. ”

“ Our chief concern, however, in groping our way through the tangled labyrinth of tradition, is to ascertain the story of the Aztecs, whose advent has been already announced. It was about the year 1160, that they departed from Aztlan, the original seat of their tribe, on their journey of southern emigration. Their pilgrimage seems to have been interrupted by numerous halts and delays, both on their route through the northern regions now comprehended in the modern Republic of Mexico, as well as in different parts of the Mexican valley which was subsequently to become their home and capital. ”

“ Of all the native American nations the Aztecs had for centuries held the most prominent position, and their advancement was surprising to the Spaniards, who, instead of encountering a nation of barbarians, were faced by a people to whom they could not deny a great degree of culture. ”

“ If this people were, as is generally supposed, the leaders in Mexican and Central American civilization, it is possible that the Aztecs, a more savage and barbarous people, borrowed their civilization from the former, and, having less tendency toward development, retained the original symbols and figures of the former, adding only ornamentation and details, but not advancing to any great extent toward a written language. ”

“ Realizing the gravity of the task, I have been led to carefully weigh and investigate the different theories advanced as to the origin of the Aztecs, and to adopt the argument of the poem as the best ground on which to unite the Sun Worship of the East with the Mythology of of the West.
Reverently, and with a full realization of how great must ever be the distance between the actual work and the ideal of my early inspiration, I lay the gathered chaplet at the shrine of old Chapultepec, and only regret that the fruiting should have fallen so far short of the promise of its blooming. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We find here many succeeding peoples of whom it is as yet not clearly shown whether they were fundamentally distinct, or in some particulars structurally related. The last of these invaders, the Aztecs, came from the north, and, as the language proves, are represented there to-day. According to the most recent investigations, the gigantic mounds which are found in North America are to be attributed to a people nearly related to the Aztecs of Mexico, and represent the rude precursors of the colossal structures of Central America. ”

“ The Aztecs were a deeply religious people—as, indeed, were all the Mexican tribes—and when they came to unburden their hearts to the priests in the confessional, they could in no way express themselves so well as by their old pictures. ”

“ These genuine Aztecs have peculiarly soft, pleasant voices, in contrast with the Spanish voice, which is apt to be harsh. They are shiftless and squalid, but their manners are above their surroundings. ”

“ The Aztecs, one of these tribes, in the course of events gaining the ascendency, gave their name to the language which their conquests speedily extended over a territory four hundred leagues in length, and in width from the Gulf to the Pacific, in the latitude of the capital. The Aztec tongue prevailed continuously from a point on the Gulf of California, under the twenty-sixth parallel of latitude south-easterly to Rios Goatzacoalco and Tobasco; and southward to the fifteenth parallel, extending along the coast of San Salvador and appearing in the interior of Nicaragua. ”

“ But, without insisting upon this conjecture, it is clear that there were other and earlier builders than the Aztecs. The Toltecs passed away, as a nation, a full century, according to the legend, before the arrival of the Aztecs. Their works filled the country. Accounts of them abounded in the Tezcucan tablets. They were celebrated by the Aztec painters. They were still magnificent and wonderful in ruins, when the Spaniards arrived. And yet, among the present race of Indians in Mexico, there is no tradition respecting them, no knowledge of their origin, no interest whatever in their history. ”

“ The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though greatly improved in execution, and simplified by abbreviations, was the same in principle as that of the rude northern tribes. The recognised signs of the months and days of their calendar are not greatly in advance of Indian symbolism; while some of their pictorial records are as definite pieces of literal representation as the battle of the reindeer from the Dordogne cave, or the peaceful grazing scene recovered from a Swiss grotto near Thayingen. ”

“ The innumerable little things about their Indian mounds force the conviction on the experienced eye of an American traveler that the Aztecs were a horde of North American savages, who had precipitated themselves first upon the table-land, and afterward, like the Goths from the table-lands of Spain, extended their conquests over the expiring civilization of the coast country ”

“ Bandelier points out, the Spaniards tell of the Aztecs that they had great wealth, reared great palaces, and acquired both scientific knowledge and skill in art, while in mechanical appliances they remained on the level of the savage, using stone and flint for tools and weapons, making pottery without the potter's wheel, and weaving intricate patterns with the hand-loom only. ”