The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West
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Title: The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West
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THE STORY OF EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WEST
by
ROBERT E. ANDERSON, M.A., F.A.S.
Author of
Extinct Civilizations of the East
[Illustration: Prehistoric Structure, Uxmal (Yucatan) (p. 76).]
[Illustration]
Venient annis saecula seris
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus
Tethys que novos detegat orbes.
--SENECA.
New York _McClure, Phillips & Co._ MCMIV
Copyright, 1903, by
D. Appleton and Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
I. PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA 19
II. "DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN" 36
III. THE EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF THE AZTECS 54
IV. AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY 71
V. MEXICO BEFORE THE SPANISH INVASION 88
VI. ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS 106
VII. CORTÉS AND MONTEZUMA 135
VIII. BALBOA AND THE ISTHMUS 164
IX. EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF PERU 172
X. PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 186
MAPS, ETC.
PAGE
Prehistoric Structure, Uxmal (Yucatan) _Frontispiece_
Imaginary Continent, South of Africa and Asia 12
Remains of a Norse Church at Katortuk, Greenland 21
Map of Vinland 24
The Dighton Stone in the Taunton River, Massachusetts 27
The Dighton Stone. Fig. 2 28
Cipher Autograph of Columbus 46
Chulpa or Stone Tomb of the Peruvians 87
Quetzalcoatl 93
Ancient Bridge near Tezcuco 100
Teocalli, Aztec Temple for Human Sacrifices 105
Monolith Doorway. Near Lake Titicaca. Fig. 1 173
Image over the Doorway shown in Fig. 1. Near Lake
Titicaca. Fig. 2 175
The Quipu 180
Gold Ornament (? Zodiac) from a Tomb at Cuzco 182
EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WEST
INTRODUCTION
Throughout all the periods of European history, ancient or modern, no
age has been more remarkable for events of first-rate importance than
the latter half of the fifteenth century. The rise of the New Learning,
the "discovery of the world and of man," the displacement of many
outworn beliefs, these with other factors produced an awakening that
startled kings and nations. Then felt they like Balboa, when
with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
It was at this historical juncture that the "middle ages" came to an
end, and modern Europe had its beginning. (See Chapter II.)
Why was Europe so long in discovering the vast Continent which all the
time lay beyond the Western Ocean? Simply because every skipper and
every "Board of Admiralty" believed that this world on which we live and
move is flat and level. They did not at all realize the fact that it is
_ball_-shaped; and that when a ball is very large (say, as large as a
balloon), then any small portion of the surface must appear flat and
level to a fly or "mite" traveling in that vicinity. Homer believed that
our world is a flat and level plain, with a great river, Oceanus,
flowing round it; and for many ages that seemed a very natural and
sufficient theory. The Pythagoreans, it is true, argued that our earth
must be spherical, but why? Oh, said they, because in geometry the
sphere is the "most perfect" of all solid figures. Aristotle, being
scientific, gave better reasons for believing that the earth is
spherical or ball-shaped. He said the shadow of the earth is always
round like the shadow of a ball; and the shadow of the earth can be seen
during any eclipse of the moon; therefore, all who see that shadow on
the moon's disk know, or ought to know, that the earth is ball-shaped.
Another reason given by Aristotle is that the altitude of any star above
the horizon changes when the observer travels north or south. For
example, if at London a star appears to be 40° above the northern
horizon, and at York the same star at the same instant appears 42-1/2°,
it is evident that 2-1/2° is the difference (increase) of altitude at
York compared with London. Such an observation shows that the road from
London to York is not over a flat, level plane, but over the curved
surface of a sphere, the arc of a circle, in fact.
Herodotus, the father of history, was a good geographer and an
experienced traveler, yet his only conception of the world was as a
flat, wide-extending surface. In Egypt he was told how Pharaoh Necho had
sent a crew of Phenicians to explore the coast of Africa by setting out
from the Red Sea, and how they sailed south till they had _the sun on
their right hand_. "Absurd!" says Herodotus, in his naïve manner, "this
story I can not believe." In Egypt, as in Greece or Europe generally,
the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing
north; whereas in South Africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing
south, and sunrise is therefore on the _right hand_. The honest sailors
had told the truth; they had merely "crossed the line," without knowing
it. If Herodotus had known that the world was spherical or ball-shaped,
he could easily have understood that by traveling due south the sun must
at last appear at noon to the north instead of the south. A counterpart
to the story of the Phenician sailors occurs in Pliny: he tells how some
ambassadors came to the Roman Emperor Claudius from an island in the
south of Asia, and when in Italy were much astonished to see the sun at
noon to the south, casting shadows to the north. They also wondered, he
says, to see the Great Bear and other groups of stars which had never
been visible in their native land (Nat. Hist., vi, 22).
That there were islands or even a continent in the Western Ocean was a
tradition not infrequent in classical and medieval times, as we shall
presently see, but to place a continent in the Southern Ocean was a
greater stretch of imagination. The great outstanding problem of the
sources of the Nile probably suggested this Southern Continent to some.
Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that
the Southern Continent was joined to Africa by a broad isthmus, as
indicated in certain maps. Such a connection of the two continents
would at once dispose of the story that the Phenician sailors had
"doubled the Cape." In several maps after the time of Columbus,
Australia is extended westward in order to pass muster for the Southern
Continent.
[Illustration: Imaginary Continent, south of Africa and Asia. [The
cardinal points are shown by the four winds.] Beginning of the fifteenth
century. The word Brumæ = the winter solstices.]
It is with a Western Continent, however, that we are now mainly
concerned. What lands were imagined by the ancients in the far West
under the setting sun? The mighty ocean beyond Spain was to the Greeks
and Latins a place of dread and mystery.
"Stout was his heart and girt with triple brass," says the Roman
poet, "who first hazarded his weak vessel on the pitiless ocean."
Even the western parts of the Mediterranean were shrunk from, according
to the Odyssey, without speaking of the horrors of the great ocean
beyond. "Beyond Gades," i. e., scarcely outside of the Pillars of
Hercules, the extreme limit of the ancient world, "no man," said Pindar,
"however daring, could pass; only a god might voyage those waters!"
In spite of the dread which the ancient mariners felt for the great
Western Ocean, their poets found it replete with charm and mystery. The
imagination rested upon those golden sunsets, and the tales of marvel
which, after long intervals, sea-borne sailors had told of distant lands
in the West. The poets placed there the happy home destined for the
souls of heroes. Thus (Odys. iv, 561):
No snow
Is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain,
But always ocean sendeth forth the breeze
Of the shrill West, and bloweth cool on men.
So far Homer. His contemporary, Hesiod, thus describes the Elysian
Fields as islands under the setting sun:
There on Earth's utmost limits Zeus assigned
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind,
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the Main,
In those blest Isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from Heaven's immortals calm they share,
A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:
And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming Ground.
The poet Pindar places in the same mysterious West "the castle of
Chronos" (i. e., "Old Time"), "where o'er the Isles of the Blest ocean
breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on
glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of
these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads."
_Vesper_, the star of evening, was called Hesperus by the Greeks; and
hence the Hesperides, daughters of the Western Star, had the task of
watching the golden apples planted by the goddess Hera in the garden of
the gods, on the other side of the river Oceanus. One of the labors of
Hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of
Mycenae. The poet Euripides thus refers to the Gardens of the West, when
the Chorus wish to fly "over the Adriatic wave":
Or to the famed Hesperian plains,
Whose rich trees bloom with gold,
To join the grief-attunèd strains
My winged progress hold;
Beyond whose shores no passage gave
The Ruler of the purple wave.
Of all the lands imagined to lie in the Western Ocean by the Greeks, the
most important was "Atlantis." Some have thought it may possibly have
been a prehistoric discovery of America. In any case it has exercised
the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. The tale of Atlantis we
owe to Plato himself, who perhaps learned it in Egypt, just as Herodotus
picked up there the account of the circumnavigation of Africa by the
Phenician mariners.
"When Solon was in Egypt," says Plato, "he had talk with an aged priest
of Sais who said, 'You Greeks are all children: you know but of one
deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by
flood and fire.'... In the distant Western Ocean lay a continent larger
than Libya and Asia together."...
In this Atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were
descended from Poseidon and had extended their sway over many
islands and over a portion of the great continent; even Libya up to
the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, submitted to
their sway.... Afterward came a day and night of great floods and
earthquakes; Atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves.
Geologists and geographers have seriously tried to find evidence of
Atlantis having existed in the Atlantic, whether as a portion of the
American continent, or as a huge island in the ocean which could have
served as a stepping-stone between the Western World and the Eastern.
From a series of deep-sea soundings ordered by the British, American,
and German Governments, it is now very well known that in the middle of
the Atlantic basin there is a ridge, running north and south, whose
depth is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys east and west of it
average 3,000 fathoms. At the Azores the North Atlantic ridge becomes
broader. The theory is that a part of the ridge-plateau was the Atlantis
of Plato that "disappeared swallowed by the waves." (Nature, xv, 158,
553, xxvii, 25; Science, June 29, 1883.)
Buffon, the naturalist, with reference to fauna and flora, dated the
separation of the new and old world "from the catastrophe of Atlantis"
(Epoques, ix, 570); and Sir Charles Lyell confessed a temptation to
"accept the theory of an Atlantis island in the northern Atlantic."
(Geology, p. 141.)
The following account "from an historian of the fourth century B. C." is
another possible reference to a portion of America--from a translation
"delivered in English," 1576.
Selenus told Midas that without this worlde there is a continent or
percell of dry lande which in greatnesse (as hee reported) was
unmeasureable; that it nourished and maintained, by the benifite of
the greene meadowes and pasture plots, sundrye bigge and mighty
beastes; that the men which inhabite the same climate exceede the
stature of us twise, and yet the length of there life is not equale
to ours.
The historian Plutarch, in his Morals, gives an account of Ogygia, with
an illusion to a continent, possibly America:
An island, Ogygia, lies in the arms of the Ocean, about five days'
sail west from Britain.... The adjacent sea is termed the
Saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly
environed is distant from Ogygia about 5,000 stadia, but from the
other islands not so far.... One of the men paid a visit to the
great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned
many things about the state of men after death--the conclusion
being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the
Elysian Fields of Homer.
The Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, has a similar account with
curious details of an "island" which might very well have been part of a
continent. Columbus believed to the last that Cuba was a continent.
In the ocean, at the distance of several days' sailing to the west,
there lies an island watered by several navigable rivers. Its soil
is fertile, hilly, and of great beauty.... There are country
houses handsomely constructed, with summer-houses and flower-beds.
The hilly district is covered with dense woods and fruit-trees of
every kind. The inhabitants spend much time in hunting and thus
procure excellent food. They have naturally a good supply of fish,
their shores being washed by the ocean.... In a word this island
seems a happy home for gods rather than for men (v. 19).
Another Greek writer, Lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to
an island in the Atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the
Pillars of Hercules--the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has
already been seen. Readers of Henry Fielding and admirers of Squire
Westers will remember how in the London of the eighteenth century the
limits of Piccadilly westward was a tavern at Hyde Park corner called
the _Hercules' Pillars_, on the site of the future Apsley House.[1]
Although neither Greek nor Roman navigators were likely to attempt a
voyage into the ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, yet a trading
vessel from Carthage or Phenicia might easily have been driven by an
easterly gale into, or even across, the Atlantic. Some involuntary
discoveries were no doubt due to this chance, and the reports brought to
Europe were probably the germs of such tales as the poets invented about
the fair regions of the West. In Celtic literature, moreover, "Avalon"
was placed far under the setting sun beyond the ocean--Avalon or
"Glas-Inis" being to the bards the Land of the Dead, marvelous and
mysterious.
[Footnote 1: Tom Jones, xvi. chap. 2, 3, etc.]
In English literature of the middle ages there is a remarkable passage
relating to our present subject, which was written long before that rise
of the New Learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It is a
statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the
thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore
the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics.
In his Opus Majus, the elder Bacon wrote:
More than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still
unknown to us.... It is evident therefore that between the extreme
West and the confines of India, there must be a surface which
comprises more than half the earth.
Though Roger Bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten,
buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of
modern science.
There now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. We have
been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly
happy anticipation of the discovery of the New World, so happy that it
became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. This we learn from
the life of the "Great Admiral," written by his son Ferdinand.
Secondly, because it adorns our title-page and has been characterized as
"a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century A. D. The author,
Seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at
the end of one of his choruses--Medea, 376. We may thus translate the
prophetic stanza:
For at a distant date this ancient world
Will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose
Beyond the Main a vast new Continent,
With realms of wealth and might.
CHAPTER I
PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA
1 _Norse Discovery._--By glancing at a map of the north Atlantic, the
reader will at once see that the natural approach from Europe to the
Western Continent was by Iceland and Greenland--especially in those
early days when ocean navigation was unknown. Iceland is nearer to
Greenland than to Norway; and Greenland is part of America. But in
Iceland there were Celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even King
Arthur, according to the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, sailed north
to that "Ultima Thule." During the ninth century a Christian community
had been established there under certain Irish monks. This early
civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct.
It was in A. D. 875, i. e., during the reign of Alfred the Great in
England, that the Norse earl, Ingolf, led a colony to Iceland. More
strenuous and savage than the Christian Celts whom they found there, the
latter with their preaching monks soon sailed to the south, and left the
Northmen masters of the island. The Norse colony under Ingolf was
strongly reenforced by Norwegians who took refuge there to avoid the
tyranny of their king, Harold, the Fair-haired. Ingolf built the town
Ingolfshof, named after him, and also Reikiavik, afterward the capital,
named from the "reek" or steam of its hot springs. So important did this
colony become that in the second generation the population amounted to
60,000.
Ingolf was admired by the poet James Montgomery (not to be confounded
with Robert, whom Macaulay criticized so severely), who in 1819 thus
wrote of him and his island:
There on a homeless soil his foot he placed,
Framed his hut-palace, colonized the waste,
And ruled his horde with patriarchal sway
--Where Justice reigns, 'tis Freedom to obey....
And Iceland shone for generous lore renowned,
A northern light when all was gloom around.
The next year after Ingolf had come to Iceland, Gunnbiorn, a hardy
Norseman, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land....
About half a century later, judging by the Icelandic sagas, we
learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away
which was called "Mickle Ireland" (_Irland it Mikla_)--[Winsor's
Hist. America, i, 61].
Gunnbiorn's discovery was utilized by Erik the Red, another sea-rover,
in A. D. 980, who sailed to it and, after three years' stay, returned
with a favorable account--giving it the fair name _Greenland_. The Norse
established two centers of population on Greenland. It is now believed
that after doubling Cape Farewell, they built their first town near that
head and the second farther north. The former, _Eystribygd_ (i. e.,
"Easter Bigging"), developed into a large colony, having in the
fourteenth century 190 settlements, with a cathedral and eleven
churches, and containing two cities and three or four monasteries. The
second town, _Westribygd_ (i. e., "Wester Bigging") had grown to ninety
settlements and four churches in the same time.
The germ and root of that civilization (afterward extinct, as we shall
see) was due to Leif the son of Red Erik, who visited Norway, the
mother-country, at the very close of the tenth century.
[Illustration: Remains of a Norse Church at Katortuk, Greenland.]
He found that the king and people there had enthusiastically embraced
the new religion, _Christianity_. Leif presently shared their fervor,
and decided to reject Woden, Thor, and the other gods of old
Scandinavia. A priest was told off to accompany Leif back to Greenland,
and preach the new faith. It was thus that a Christian civilization
first found footing in arctic America.
The ruins of those early Christian churches (see illustration above)
form most interesting objects in modern Greenland; near the chief ruin
is a curious circular group of large stones.
The poet of "Greenland," to whom we have already referred, quotes from a
Danish chronicle to the effect that, in the golden age of the colony,
there were a hundred parishes to form the bishopric; and that the see
was ruled by seventeen bishops from A. D. 1120 to 1408. Bishop Andrew is
the last mentioned, ordained in 1408 by the Archbishop of Drontheim.
From the same authority we learn that according to some of the annals
"the best wheat grew to perfection in the valleys; the forests were
extensive; flocks and herds were numerous and very large and fat." The
Cloister of St. Thomas was heated by pipes from a warm spring, and
attached to the cloister was a richly cultivated garden.
After Leif, son of Erik, had introduced Christianity into Greenland, his
next step was to extend the Norse civilization still farther within the
American continent. News had reached him of a new land, with a level
coast, lying nine days' sailing southwest of Greenland. Picking
thirty-five men, Leif started for further exploration. One part of the
new country was barren and rocky, therefore Leif named it _Helluland_
(i. e., "Stone Land"), which appears to have been Newfoundland. Farther
south they found a sandy shore, backed by a level forest country, which
Leif named _Markland_ (i. e., "Wood Land"), identified with Nova Scotia.
After two days' sail, according to the saga account, having landed and
explored the new continent along the banks of a river, they resolved to
winter there. In one of these explorations a German called Tyrker found
some grapes on a wild vine, and brought a specimen for the admiration of
Leif and his party. This country was therefore named _Vinland_ (i. e.,
"Wine Land"), and is identified with New England, part of Rhode Island,
and Massachusetts.[2]
[Footnote 2: Prof. R. B. Anderson says, "The basin of the Charles River
should be selected as the most probable scene of the visits of Leif
Erikson, etc." [_v._ map.]]
Our Greenland poet thus refers to Leif's landing:
Wineland the glad discoverers called that shore,
And back the tidings of its riches bore;
But soon return'd with colonizing bands.
The Norsemen founded a regular settlement in Vinland, establishing there
a Christian community related to that of Greenland. Leif's brother,
Korvald, explored the interior in all directions. With the natives, who
are called "Skraelings" in the sagas, they traded in furs; these people,
who seemed dwarfish to the Norsemen, used leathern boats and were no
doubt Eskimos:
A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock.
The principal settler in Vinland was Thorfinn, an Icelander, who had
married a daughter-in-law of Erik the Red. She persuaded Thorfinn to
sail to the new country in order to make a permanent settlement there.
In the year 1007 A. D. he sailed with 160 men, having live stock and
other colonial equipments. After three years he returned to Greenland,
his wife having given birth to a son during their first year in Vinland.
From this son, Snorre, it is claimed by some Norwegian historians, that
Thorwaldsen, the eminent Danish sculptor is descended. After the time
of Thorfinn, the settlement in Vinland continued to flourish, having a
good export trade in timber with Greenland. In 1121 A. D. according to
the Icelandic saga, the bishop, Erik Upsi, visited Vinland, that country
being, like Iceland and Greenland, included in his bishopric. The last
voyage to Vinland for timber, according to the sagas, was in 1347.
[Illustration: Map]
Professor Horsford, of Cambridge, Mass., finds the site of Norumbega,
mentioned in various old maps, on the River Charles, near Waltham,
Mass., and maintains that town to be identical with Vinland of the
Norsemen. To prove his belief in this theory, the professor built a
tower commemorating the Norse discoveries. He argued that Norumbega was
a corruption by the Indians of the word _Norvegr_ a Norse form of
"Norway."
The abandonment of Vinland by the Norse settlers may be compared with
that of Gosnold's expedition to the same region near the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign. Gosnold was sent to plant an English colony in
America, after the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement at Roanoke
(North Carolina); and the coast explored corresponded exactly to that
which the Norse settlers had named Vinland, lying between the sites of
Boston and New York. He gave the name Cape Cod to that promontory, and
also named the islands Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth
group. Selecting one of these for settling a colony, he built on it a
storehouse and fort. The scheme, however, failed, owing to the threats
of the natives and the scarcity of supplies, and all the colonists
sailed from Massachusetts, just as the Norse settlers had done many
generations previously.
The expedition of Gosnold to Vinland, however, bore good fruit, from the
favorable report of the new country which he made at home. The merchants
of Bristol fitted out two ships under Martin Pring, and in the first
voyage a great part of Maine (lying north of Massachusetts) was
explored, and the coast south to Martha's Vineyard, where Gosnold had
been. This led to profitable traffic with the natives, and three years
later Pring made a more complete survey of Maine.
Vinland was also the scene of the famous landing of the Mayflower,
bringing its Puritans from England. It was in Cape Cod Bay that she was
first moored. After exploring the new country, just as Leif Erikson had
done so many generations previously, they chose a place on the west side
of the bay and named the little settlement "Plymouth," after the last
English port from which they had sailed. Farther north, still in
Vinland, they soon founded two other towns, "Salem" and "Boston." Those
three settlements have ever since been important centers of energy and
intelligence in Massachusetts, as well as memorials of the Norse
occupation of Vinland.
On the occasion of a public statue being erected in Boston, Mass., to
the memory of Leif Erikson, a committee of the Massachusetts Historical
Society formally decided thus: "It is antecedently probable that the
Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century."
Prof. Daniel Wilson, in his learned work Prehistoric Man (ii, 83, 85),
thus gives his opinion as to the Norse colony:
With all reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of details, there is
the strongest probability in favor of the authenticity of the
American Vinland.
[Illustration: The Dighton Stone in the Taunton River, Massachusetts.]
Of the Norse colonies in Greenland there are some undoubted remains, one
being a stone inscription in _runes_, proving that it was made before
the Reformation, when that mode of writing was forbidden by law. The
stone is four miles beyond Upernavik. The inscription, according to
Professor Rask, runs thus:
Erling the son of Sigvat, and Enride Oddsoen,
Had cleared the place and raised a mound
On the Friday after Rogation-day;
--date either 1135 or 1170.
Rafn, the celebrated Danish archeologist, states as the result of many
years' research, that America was repeatedly visited by the Icelanders
in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; that the estuary of
the St. Lawrence was their chief station; that they had coasted
southward to Carolina, everywhere introducing some Christian
civilization among the natives.
[Illustration: The Dighton Stone. Fig. 2.]
A supposed rock memorial of the Norsemen is the Dighton Stone in the
Taunton River, Massachusetts; one of its sentences, according to
Professor Rafn, being:
"Thorfinn with 151 Norse seafaring men took possession of this land."
The figures and letters (whether runic or merely Indian) inscribed on
the Dighton Rock have been copied by antiquaries at the following dates:
1680, 1712, 1730, 1768, 1788, 1807, 1812. The above illustration (Fig.
2) shows the last mentioned.
There have been many probable traces of ancient Norsemen found in
America, besides those already given. At Cape Cod, in the last
generation, a number of hearth-stones were found under a layer of peat.
A more famous relic was the skeleton dug up in Fall River, Mass., with
an ornamental belt of metal tubes made from fragments of flat brass;
there were also some arrow-heads of the same material. Longfellow, the
New England poet, naturally had his attention directed to this discovery
(made, 1831), and founded on it his ballad The Skeleton in Armor,
connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport. The latter, according to
Professor Rafn, "was erected decidedly not later than the twelfth
century."
I was a Viking old,
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told
No Saga taught thee!...
Far in the Northern Land
By the wild Baltic's strand
I with my childish hand
Tamed the ger-falcon.
Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow.
* * * * *
Scarce had I put to sea
Bearing the maid with me--
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!
Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady's bower,
Built I this lofty tower
Which to this very hour
Stands looking seaward!
Sir Clements Markham, of the Royal Geographical Society, believes that
the Norse settlers in Greenland were driven from their settlements there
by Eskimos coming, not from the interior of America, but from West
Siberia along the polar regions, by Wrangell Land [_v._ Journal, R, G.
S., 1865, and Arctic Geography, 1875].
There was much curiosity from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century as
to the site of the lost colonies of Greenland which had so long
flourished. In 1568 and 1579 the King of Denmark sent two expeditions,
the latter in charge of an Englishman, but no traces were found. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century some light was thrown upon the
problem by a missionary called Egede, who first described the ruins and
relics observable on the west coast. By the success of his preaching
among the Greenlanders for fifteen years, assisted by other gospel
missionaries, the Moravians were induced to found their settlements in
the country, principally in the southwest.
It seems probable that in early times the climate of Iceland was milder
than it now is. Columbus, some fifteen years before his great voyage
across the Atlantic, sailed to this northern "Thule," and reports that
there was no ice. If so, it is surely possible that Greenland also may
have been greener and more attractive than during the recent centuries.
Why should it not at one time have been fully deserving of the name by
which we still know it? Some would explain the change in climatic
conditions by the closing in of icepacks. At present Greenland is buried
deep under a vast, solid ice-cap from which only a few of the highest
peaks protrude to show the position of the submerged mountains, but at
former periods, according to geologists, there were gardens and farms
flourishing under a genial climate. Others suppose that, were the ice
removed, we should see an archipelago of elevated islands.
2. _Celtic Discovery of America._--We have already glanced at the fact
that when the Norsemen first seized Iceland they found that island
inhabited by Irish Celts. These Christianized Celts made way before the
savage invaders, who did not accept the Catholic religion till about the
close of the tenth century. Sailing south, those dispossessed Irish
probably joined their brother Celts who had already long held a district
on the eastern coast of North America, which some Norse skippers called
"White Man's Land," and also _Irland-it-Mikla_ (i. e., "Mickle
Ireland"). Professor Rafn places this district on the coast of Carolina.
A learned memoir, published 1851, attempts to prove that the mysterious
"mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley were of the same race as the
settlers on Mickle Ireland, and related to the "white-bearded men" who
established an extinct civilization in Mexico. A French antiquary, 1875,
identified Mickle Ireland with Ontario and Quebec. Beauvois, in his
Elysée trans-atlantique, derives the name Labrador from the _Innis
Labrada_, an island mentioned in an ancient Irish romance.[3] Another
Irish discoverer was St. Brandan,[4] Abbot of Cluainfert, Ireland (died
May 16, 577), who was told that far in the ocean lay an island which was
the land promised to the saints. St. Brandan set sail in company with
seventy-five monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean in two voyages,
discovering this island and many others equally marvelous, including one
which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they
celebrated Easter.[5]
[Footnote 3: As to the Irish claim for the pre-Columbian discovery of
America, see also Humboldt (Cosmos, ii, 607), and Laing (Heimsk., i,
186).]
[Footnote 4: MS. Book of Lismore.]
[Footnote 5: The story is given by Humboldt and D'Avezac.]
Among the Celtic claimants for discovery we must also include the Welsh,
who lay stress upon certain resemblances between their language and the
dialects of the native Americans. A better argument is the historical
account taken from their annals about the expedition of Prince Madoc,
son of a Welsh chieftain, who sailed due west in the year 1170, after
the rumor of the Norse discoveries had reached Britain. He landed on a
vast and fertile continent where he settled 120 colonists. On his return
to Wales he fitted out a second fleet of ten ships, but the annals give
no report of the result. Several writers state that the place of landing
was near the Gulf of Mexico: Hakluyt connecting the discovery with
Mexico (1589) and again with the West Indies (edition of 1600). In the
seventeenth century some authors wished to substantiate the story of
Prince Madoc, in order that the British claim to America should antedate
the Spanish claim through Columbus. Prince Madoc is, to most readers,
only known by Southey's poem.[6]
[Footnote 6: Some quotations from Southey's poem are given in Chapters
V, VI.]
3. _Basque Discovery of America._--Who are the Basque people? A curious
race of Spanish mountaineers, who have been as great a puzzle to
ethnologists and historians as their language has been to philologists
and scholars. We know, however, that in former times they were nearly
all seamen, making long voyages to the north for whale and Newfoundland
cod fishing. They have produced excellent navigators; and possibly
preceded Columbus in discovering America. Sebastian, the lieutenant of
Magellan, was one of the Basque race. Magellan did not live to complete
his famous voyage, therefore Sebastian was the first actual
circumnavigator of our globe.
François Michel, in his work Le Pays Basque, says that the Basque
sailors knew the coasts of Newfoundland a century before the time of
Columbus; and that it was from one of these ocean mariners that he first
learned the existence of a continent beyond the Atlantic. Other
arguments are derived from comparing the peculiarities of the Basque
tongue with those of the American dialects. Whitney, an American
scholar, concludes that "No other dialect of the Old World so much
resembles the American languages in structure as the Basque."
4. _Jewish Discovery of America._--There is one claim for the discovery
of America, which, though quite improbable, if not impossible, has been
upheld and sanctioned by many scholarly works in several languages. It
is argued that the red Indians represent the ten "Lost Tribes" of the
Hebrew people who had been deported to Assyria and Media (_v._ Extinct
Civilizations of the East, p. 109). The theory was first started by some
Spanish priest-missionaries, and has since been defended by many learned
divines both in England and America, one leading argument being certain
similarities in the languages. Catlin (_v._ Smithsonian Report, 1885)
enumerates many analogies which he found among the Western Indians. The
most authoritative statement is that of Lord Kingsborough in the
well-known Mexican Antiquities (1830-'48), chiefly in Vol. VII. Some
writers actually quote a statement made in the Mormon Bible! Leading New
England divines, like Mayhew and Cotton Mather, espoused the cause with
similar faith, as well as Roger Williams and William Penn.
5. _The Italian Discovery of America._--Not through Columbus the
Genoese, or Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine, although they were
certainly Italians, but by two Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno. In A.
D. 1380 or 1390 these brothers Zeni were shipwrecked in the North
Atlantic, and, when staying in Frislanda, made the acquaintance of a
sailor who, after twenty-six years' absence, had returned, giving them
the following report:
"Being driven west in a gale, he found an island with civilized
inhabitants, who had Latin books, but could not speak Norse, and whose
country was called Estotiland, while a region on the mainland, farther
south, to which he had also gone, was called Drogeo. Here he had met
with cannibals. Still farther south was a great country with towns and
temples."
The two brothers Zeni finally conveyed this account to another brother
in Venice, together with a map of those distant regions, but these
documents remained neglected till 1558, when a descendant compiled a
book to embody the information, accompanied by a map, now famous as
"the Zeno map."
Humboldt, with reference to this map, remarks that it is singular that
the name Frislanda should have been applied by Columbus to an island
south of Iceland. Washington Irving (in his Life of Columbus) explains
the book by a desire to appeal to the national pride of Italy, since, if
true, the discovery of the brothers would antedate that of Columbus by a
century.
Malte-Brun, the distinguished geographer, distinctly accepted the Zeni
narrative as true, and believed that it was by colonists from Greenland
that the Latin books had reached Estotiland. Another strong advocate
afterward appeared in Mr. Major, an official in the map department of
the British Museum, who believed that much of the map in question
represented genuine information of the fourteenth century, mixed with
some spurious parts inserted by the younger Zeno. Mr. Major's paper on
The Site of the Lost Colony of Greenland Determined, and the
pre-Columbian Discoveries of America Confirmed, appeared in R. Geog.
Soc. Journal, 1873; _v_. also Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1874. Nordenskjöld
also accepted the chief results of this Italian discovery, and as an
arctic explorer of experience, his opinion carries weight. Mercator and
Hugo Grotius were also believers in the Zeni account.
CHAPTER II
"DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN"
At the beginning of this book a reference was made to the great upheaval
in European history called the "Renascence" (Fr. _renaissance_) or
Revival of Learning. In 1453 the Turks took Constantinople, driving the
Greek scholars to take refuge in Italy, which at once became the most
civilized nation in Europe. Poetry, philosophy, and art thence found
their way to France, England, and Germany, being greatly assisted by the
invention of printing, which just then was beginning to make books
cheaper than they ever had been. At the same time feudalism was ruined,
because the invention of gunpowder had previously been changing the art
of war. For example, the King of France, Louis XI, as well as the King
of England, Henry VII, had entire disposal of the national artillery;
and therefore overawed the barons and armored knights. Neither moated
fortresses nor mail-clad warriors, nor archers with bows and arrows,
could prevail against powder and shot. The middle ages had come to an
end; modern Europe was being born. France had become concentrated by the
union of the south to the north on the conclusion of the "Hundred Years'
War," the final expulsion of the English, and the abolition of all the
great feudatories of the kingdom. England, at the same time, had
entirely swept away the rule of the barons by the recent "Wars of the
Roses," and Henry had strengthened his position by alliance with
France, Spain, and Scotland. Spain, by the expulsion of the Moors from
Granada in A. D. 1492, was for the first time concentrated into one
great state by the union of Isabella's Kingdom of Castile-Leon to
Ferdinand's Kingdom of Aragon-Sicily.
From the importance of the word _renaissance_ as indicating the
"movement of transition from the medieval to the modern world," Matthew
Arnold gave it the English form "renascence"--adopted by J. R. Green,
Coleridge, and others. In Germany, this great revival of letters and
learning was contemporaneous with the Reformation, which had long been
preparing (e. g., in England since John Wyclif) and was specially
assisted by the invention of printing, which we have just mentioned. The
minds of men everywhere were expanded: "whatever works of history,
science, morality, or entertainment seemed likely to instruct or amuse
were printed and distributed among the people at large by printers and
booksellers."
Thus it was that, though the Turks never had any pretension to learning
or culture, yet their action in the middle of the fifteenth century
indirectly caused a marvelous tide of civilization to overflow all the
western countries of Europe. Another result in the same age was the
increase of navigation and exploration--the discovery of the world as
well as of man. When the Turks became masters of the eastern shores of
the Mediterranean, the European merchants were prevented from going to
India and the East by the overland route, as had been done for
generations. Thus, since geography was at this very time improved by
the science of Copernicus and others, the natural inquiry was how to
reach India by sea instead of going overland. Columbus, therefore,
sailed due west to reach Asia, and stumbled upon a "New World" without
knowing what he did; then Cabot, sailing from Bristol, sailed northwest
to reach India, and stumbled upon the continent of America; and during
the same reign (Henry VII) the Atlantic coast of both North and South
America was visited by English, Portuguese, or Spanish navigators. The
third expedition to reach India by sea was under De Gama. He set out in
the same year as Cabot, sailing into the South Atlantic, and ultimately
did find the west coast of India at Calicut, after rounding the cape.
The mere enumeration of so many events, all of first-rate importance,
proves that that half century (say from A. D. 1460 to 1520) must be
called "an age of marvels," _sæclum mirabile_. The concurrence of so
many epoch-making results gave a great impulse, not only to the study of
literature, science, and art, but to the exploration of many unknown
countries in America, Africa, and Asia, and the universal expansion of
human knowledge generally.
I.--We shall now consider the first of these discoverers, who was also
the greatest.
COLUMBUS, the Latinized form of the Italian Colombo, Spanish, Colon.
This Genoese navigator must throughout all history be called the
discoverer of America, notwithstanding all the work of smaller men. From
his study of geographical books in several languages, Columbus had
convinced himself that our planet is spherical or ball-shaped, not a
flat, plane surface. Till then India had always been reached by
traveling overland toward the rising sun. Why not sail westward from
Europe over the ocean, and thus come to the eastern parts of Asia by
traveling toward the setting sun? By doing so, since our world is
ball-shaped, said Columbus, we must inevitably reach Zipango (i. e.,
"Japan") and Cathay (i. e., "China"), which are the most eastern parts
of Asia. India then will be a mere detail. Judging from the accounts of
Asia and its eastern islands given by Marco Polo, a Venetian, as well as
from the maps sketched by Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, Columbus
believed that the east coast of Asia was not so very far from the west
coast of Europe. Columbus was confirmed in this opinion by a learned
geographer of Florence, named Paul, and henceforward impatiently waited
for an opportunity of testing the truth of his theory.
He convinced himself, but could not convince any one else, that a
westerly route to India was quite feasible. First he laid his plans
before the authorities at Genoa, who had for generations traded with
Asia by the overland journey, and ought therefore to have been glad to
learn of this new alternative route, since the Turks were now playing
havoc with the other; but no, they told Columbus that his idea was
chimerical! Next he applied to the court of France. "Ridiculous!" was
the reply, accompanied with a polite sneer. Next Columbus sent his
scheme to Henry VII of England, a prince full of projects, but miserly.
"Too expensive!" was the Tudor's reply, though presently, after the
Spanish success, he became eager to despatch expeditions from Bristol
under the Cabots. Then Columbus, by the advice of his brother, who had
settled in Lisbon as a map-maker, approached King John, seeking
patronage and assistance, pleading the foremost position of Portugal
among the maritime states. The Portuguese neglected the golden
opportunity, ocean navigation not being in their way as yet; their
skippers preferred "to hug the African shore."
At last Columbus gained the ear of Isabella, Queen of Castile; she
believed in him and tried to get the assistance of her husband,
Ferdinand, King of Aragon, in providing an outfit for the great
expedition. Owing to Ferdinand's war in expelling the Moors from
Granada, Columbus had still to wait several years.
In a previous year, 1477, Columbus had sailed to the North Atlantic,
perhaps in one of those Basque whalers already referred to, going "a
hundred leagues beyond Thule." If that means Iceland, as is generally
supposed, it seems most probable that, when conversing with the sailors
there he must have heard how Leif, with his Norsemen, had discovered the
American coasts of Newfoundland and Vinland some five centuries earlier,
and how they had settled a colony on the new continent. Other writers
have pointed out that Columbus could very well have heard of Vinland and
the Northmen before leaving Genoa, since one of the Popes had sanctioned
the appointment of a bishop over the new diocese. If so, the visit of
Columbus to Iceland probably gave him confirmation as to the Norse
discovery of the American continent.
When at last King Ferdinand had taken Granada from the Moors, Columbus
was put in command of three ships, with 120 men. He set sail from the
port of Palos, in Andalusia, on a Friday, August 3, 1492, first steering
to the Canary Islands, and then standing due west. In September, to the
amazement of all on board, the compass was seen to "vary": an important
scientific discovery--viz., that the magnetic needle does not always
point to the pole-star. Some writers have imagined that the compass was
for the first time utilized for a long journey by Columbus, but the
occult power of the magnetic needle or "lodestone" had been known for
ages before the fifteenth century. The ancient Persians and other "wise
men of the East" used the lodestone as a talisman. Both the Mongolian
and Caucasian races used it as an infallible guide in traveling across
the mighty plains of Asia. The Cynosure in the Great Bear was the
"guiding star," whether by sea or land; but when the heavens were
wrapped in clouds, the magic stone or needle served to point exactly the
position of the unseen star. What Columbus and his terrified crews
discovered was the "variation of the compass," due to the fact that the
magnetic needle points, not to the North Star, but to the "magnetic
pole," a point in Canada to the west of Baffin's Bay and north of Hudson
Bay.
If Columbus had continued steering due west he would have landed on the
continent of America in Florida; but before sighting that coast the
course was changed to southwest, because some birds were seen flying in
that direction. The first land reached was an island of the Bahama
group, which he named _San Salvador_. As the Spanish boats rowed to
shore they were welcomed by crowds of astonished natives, mostly naked,
unless for a girdle of wrought cotton or plaited feathers. Hence the
lines of Milton:
Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feathered cincture, naked else and wild,
Among the trees on isles and woody shores.
The spot of landing was formerly identified by Washington Irving and
Baron Humboldt with "Cat Island"; but from the latest investigation it
is now believed to have been Watling's Island. Here he landed on a
Friday, October 12, 1492.
So little was then known of the geography of the Atlantic or of true
longitude, that Columbus attributed these islands to the _east coast of
Asia_. He therefore named them "Indian Islands," as if close to
Hindustan, a blunder that has now been perpetuated for four hundred and
ten years. The natives were called "Indians" for the same reasons. As
the knowledge of geography advanced it became necessary to say "West
Indies" or "East Indies" respectively, to distinguish American from
Asiatic--"Indian corn" means American, but "Indian ink" means Asiatic,
etc. Even after his fourth and last voyage Columbus believed that the
continent, as well as the islands, was a portion of eastern Asia, and he
died in that belief, without any suspicion of having discovered a New
World.
A curious confirmation of the opinion of Columbus has just been
discovered (1894) in the Florence Library, by Dr. Wieser, of Innsbruck.
It is the actual copy of a map by the Great Admiral, drawn roughly in a
letter written from Jamaica, July, 1503. It shows that his belief as to
the part of the world reached in his voyages was that it was the east
coast of Asia.
The chief discovery made by Columbus in his first voyage was the great
island of Cuba, which he imagined to be part of a continent. Some of the
Spaniards went inland for sixty miles and reported that they had reached
a village of more than a thousand inhabitants, and that the corn used
for food was called _maize_--probably the first instance of Europeans
using a term which was afterward to become as familiar as "wheat" or
"barley." The natives told Columbus that their gold ornaments came from
_Cubakan_, meaning the interior of Cuba; but he, on hearing the syllable
_kan_, immediately thought of the "Khan" mentioned by Marco Polo, and
therefore imagined that "Cathay" (the China of that famous traveler) was
close at hand. The simple-minded Cubans were amazed that the Spaniards
had such a love for gold, and pointed eastward to another island, which
they called _Hayti_, saying it was more plentiful there than in Cuba.
Thus Columbus discovered the second in size of all the West Indian
islands, Cuba being the first; he, after landing on it, called it
"Hispaniola," or Little Spain. Hayti in a few years became the
headquarters of the Spanish establishments in the New World, after its
capital, San Domingo, had been built by Bartholomew Columbus. It was in
this island that the Spaniards saw the first of the "caziques," or
native princes, afterward so familiar during the conquest of Mexico; he
was carried on the shoulders of four men, and courteously presented
Columbus with some plates of gold. In a letter to the monarchs of Spain
the admiral thus refers to the natives of Hayti:
The people are so affectionate, so tractable, and so peaceable that
I swear to your Highnesses there is not a better race of men, nor a
better country in the world; ... their conversation is the sweetest
and mildest in the world, and always accompanied with a smile. The
king is served with great state, and his behavior is so decent that
it is pleasant to see him.
The admiral had previously described the Indians of Cuba as equally
simple and friendly, telling how they had "honored the strangers as
sacred beings allied to heaven." The pity of it, and the shame, is that
those frank, unsuspicious, islanders had no notion or foresight of the
cruel desolation which their gallant guests were presently to bring upon
the native races--death, and torture, and extermination!
A harbor in Cuba is thus described by Columbus in a letter to Ferdinand
and Isabella:
I discovered a river which a galley might easily enter.... I found
from five to eight fathoms of water. Having proceeded a
considerable way up the river, everything invited me to settle
there. The beauty of the river, the clearness of the water, the
multitude of palm-trees and an infinite number of other large and
flourishing trees, the birds and the verdure of the plains, ... I
am so much amazed at the sight of such beauty, that I know not how
to describe it.
Having lost his flag-ship, Columbus returned to Spain with the two small
caravels that remained from his petty fleet of three, arriving in the
port of Palos March 15, 1493. The reception of the successful explorer
was a national event. He entered Barcelona to be presented at court with
every circumstance of honor and triumph. Sitting in presence of the king
and queen he related his wondrous tale, while his attendants showed the
gold, the cotton, the parrots and other unknown birds, the curious arms
and plants, and above all the nine "Indians" with their outlandish
trappings--brought to be made Christians by baptism. Ferdinand and
Isabella heaped honors upon the successful navigator; and in return he
promised them the untold riches of Zipango and Cathay. A new fleet,
larger and better equipped, was soon found for a second voyage.
With his new ships, in 1498, Columbus again stood due west from the
Canaries; and at last discovering an island with three mountain summits
he named it Trinidad (i. e., "Trinity") without knowing that he was then
coasting the great continent of South America. A few days later he and
the crew were amazed by a tumult of waves caused by the fresh water of a
great river meeting the sea. It was the "Oronooko," afterward called
Orinoco; and from its volume Columbus and his shipmates concluded that
it must drain part of a continent or a very large island.
Where Orinoco in his pride,
Rolls to the main no tribute tide,
But 'gainst broad ocean urges far
A rival sea of roaring war;
While in ten thousand eddies driven
The billows fling their foam to heaven,
And the pale pilot seeks in vain,
Where rolls the river, where the main.
That was the first glimpse which they had of America proper, still
imagining it was only a part of eastern Asia. In the following voyage,
his last, Columbus coasted part of the Isthmus of Darien. It was not,
however, explored till the visit of Balboa.
[Illustration:
Cipher autograph of Columbus.
The interpretation of the cipher is probably:
SERVATF Christus Maria Yosephus (Christoferens).]
It was during his third voyage that the "Great Admiral" suffered the
indignity at San Domingo of being thrown into chains and sent back to
Spain. This was done by Bobadilla, an officer of the royal household,
who had been sent out with full power to put down misrule. The monarchs
of Spain set Columbus free; and soon afterward he was provided with four
ships for his fourth voyage. Stormy weather wrecked this final
expedition, and at last he was glad to arrive in Spain, November 7,
1504. He now felt that his work on earth was done, and died at
Valladolid, May 20, 1506. After temporary interment there his body was
transferred to the cathedral of San Domingo--whence, 1796, some remains
were removed with imposing ceremonies to Havana. From later
investigations it appears that the ashes of the Genoese discoverer are
still in the tomb of San Domingo.
It was in the cathedral of Seville, over his first tomb, that King
Ferdinand is said to have honored the memory of the Great Admiral with a
marble monument bearing the well-known epitaph:
A CASTILLA Y ARAGON
NUEVO MUNDO DIO COLON.
or, "_To the united Kingdom of Castile-Aragon Columbus gave a New
World_."
After the death of Columbus, it seemed as if fate intended his family to
enjoy the honors and rewards of which he had been so unjustly deprived.
His son, Diego, wasted two years trying to obtain from King Ferdinand
the offices of viceroy and admiral, which he had a right to claim in
accordance with the arrangement formerly made with his father. At last
Diego began a suit against Ferdinand before the council which managed
Indian affairs. That court decided in favor of Diego's claim; and as he
soon greatly improved his social position by marrying the niece of the
Duke of Alva, a high nobleman, Diego received the appointment of
governor (not viceroy), and went to Hayti, attended by his brother and
uncles, as well as his wife and a large retinue. There Diego Columbus
and his family lived, "with a splendor hitherto unknown in the New
World."
II.--Henry VII of England, after repenting that he had not secured the
services of Columbus, commissioned John Cabot to sail from Bristol
across the Atlantic in a northwesterly direction, with the hope of
finding some passage there-abouts to India. In June, 1497, a new coast
was sighted (probably Labrador or Newfoundland), and named _Prima
Vista_. They coasted the continent southward, "ever with intent to find
the passage to India," till they reached the peninsula now called
Florida. On this important voyage was based the claim which the English
kings afterward made for the possession of all the Atlantic coast of
North America. King Henry wished colonists to settle in the new land,
_tam viri quam feminæ_, but since, in his usual miserly character, he
refused to give a single "testoon," or "groat" toward the enterprise, no
colonies were formed till the days of Walter Raleigh, more than a
century later.
Sebastian Cabot, born in Bristol, 1477, was more renowned as a navigator
than his father, John, and almost ranks with Columbus. After discovering
Labrador or Newfoundland with his father, he sailed a second time with
300 men to form colonies, passing apparently into Hudson Bay. He wished
to discover a channel leading to Hindustan, but the difficulties of
icebergs and cold weather so frightened his crews that he was compelled
to retrace his course. In another attempt at the northwest passage to
Asia, he reached latitude 67-1/2° north, and "gave English names to
sundry places in Hudson Bay." In 1526, when commanding a Spanish
expedition from Seville, he sailed to Brazil, which had already been
annexed to Portugal by Cabrera, explored the River La Plata and ascended
part of the Paraguay, returning to Spain in 1531. After his return to
England, King Edward VI had some interviews with Cabot, one topic being
the "variation of the compass." He received a royal pension of 250
marks, and did special work in relation to trade and navigation. The
great honor of Cabot is that he saw the American continent before
Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci.
III.--Of the great navigators of that unexampled age of discovery, as
Spain was honored by Columbus and England by Cabot, so Portugal was
honored by De Gama. Vasco de Gama, the greatest of Portuguese
navigators, left Lisbon in 1497 to explore the unknown world lying east
of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Calicut, May, 1498. Before that,
Diaz had actually rounded the cape, but seems to have done so merely
before a high gale. He named it "the stormy Cape." Cabrera, or Cabral,
was another great explorer sent from Portugal to follow in the route of
De Gama; but being forced into a southwesterly route by currents in the
south Atlantic, he landed on the continent of America, and annexed the
new country to Portugal under the name of Brazil. Cabrera afterward drew
up the first commercial treaty between Portugal and India.
IV.--Magellan, scarcely inferior to Columbus, brought honor as a
navigator both to Portugal and Spain. For the latter country, when in
the service of Charles V, he revived the idea of Columbus that we may
sail to Asia or the Spice Islands by sailing _west_. With a squadron of
five ships, 236 men, he sailed, in 1519, to Brazil and convinced
himself that the great estuary was not a strait. Sailing south along the
American coast, he discovered the strait that bears his name, and
through it entered the Pacific, then first sailed upon by Europeans,
though already seen by Balboa and his men "upon a peak in Darien"--as
Keats puts it in his famous sonnet.[7] From the continuous fine weather
enjoyed for some months, Magellan naturally named the new sea "the
Pacific." After touching at the Ladrones and the Philippines, Magellan
was killed in a fight with the inhabitants of Matan, a small island.
Sebastian, his Basque lieutenant (mentioned in Chapter I) then
successfully completed the circumnavigation of the world, sailing first
to the Moluccas and thence to Spain.
[Footnote 7: The poet, however, makes the clerical blunder of writing
Cortez for Balboa.]
V.--Of all the world-famous navigators contemporary with Colon, the
Genoese, there remains only one deserving of our notice, and that
because his name is for all time perpetuated in that of the New World.
Amerigo (Latin _Americus_) Vespucci, born at Florence, 1451, had
commercial occupation in Cadiz, and was employed by the Spanish
Government. He has been charged with a fraudulent attempt to usurp the
honor due to Columbus, but Humboldt and others have defended him, after
a minute examination of the evidence. In a book published in 1507 by a
German, _Waldseemüller_, the author happens to say:
And the fourth part of the world having been discovered by
Americus, it may be called Amerige, that is the land of Americus,
or _America_.
Vespucci never called himself the discoverer of the new continent; as a
mere subordinate he could not think of such a thing. As a matter of
fact, he and Columbus were always on friendly terms, attached, and
trusted. Humboldt explains the blunder of Waldseemüller and others by
the general ignorance of the history of how America was discovered,
since for some years it was jealously guarded as a "state secret."
Humboldt curiously adds that the "musical sound of the name caught the
public ear," and thus the blunder has been universally perpetuated:
_statque stabitque
in omne volubilis ævum_.
Another reason for the universal renown of Amerigo was that his book was
the first that told of the new "Western World"; and was therefore
eagerly read in all parts of Europe.
Cuba, though the largest of the West Indian islands, and second to be
discovered, was not colonized till after the death of Columbus. Thus for
more than three centuries and a half, as "Queen of the Antilles" and
"Pearl of the Antilles," Cuba has been noted as a chief colonial
possession of Spain, till recent events brought it under the power of
the United States. The conquest of the island was undertaken by
Velasquez, who, after accompanying the great admiral in his second
voyage, had settled in Hispaniola (or Hayti) and acquired a large
fortune there. He had little difficulty in the annexation of Cuba,
because the natives, like those of Hispaniola, were of a peaceful
character, easily imposed upon by the invaders. The only difficulty
Velasquez had was in the eastern part of the island, where Hatuey, a
cazique or native chief, who had fled there from Hispaniola, made
preparations to resist the Spaniards. When defeated, he was cruelly
condemned by Velasquez to be burned to death, as a "slave who had taken
arms against his master." The scene at Hatuey's execution is well known:
When fastened to the stake, a Franciscan friar promised him
immediate admittance into the joys of heaven, if he would embrace
the Christian faith. "Are there any Spaniards," says he, after some
pause, "in that region of bliss which you describe?" "Yes," replied
the monk, "but only such as are worthy and good." "The best of them
have neither worth nor goodness: I will not go to a place where I
may meet with one of that accursed race."
Being thus annexed in 1511, by the middle of the century all the native
Indians of Cuba had become extinct. In the following century this large
and fertile island suffered severely by the buccaneers, but during the
eighteenth century it prospered. During the nineteenth century, the
United States Government had often been urged to obtain possession of
it; for example, the sum of one hundred million dollars was offered in
1848 by President Polk. Slavery was at last abolished absolutely in
1886. In recent years Spain, by ceding Cuba and the Philippines to the
United States and the Carolines to Germany, has brought her colonial
history to a close.
Two other important events occurred when Velasquez was Governor of Cuba:
first, the escape of Balboa from Hispaniola, to become afterward
Governor of Darien; and, second, the expedition under Cordova to
explore that part of the continent of America which lies nearest to
Cuba. This expedition of 110 men, in three small ships, led to the
discovery of that large peninsula now known as Yucatan. Cordova imagined
it to be an island. The natives were not naked, like those of the West
Indian islands, but wore cotton clothes, and some had ornaments of gold.
In the towns, which contained large stone houses, and country generally,
there were many proofs of a somewhat advanced civilization. The natives,
however, were much more warlike than the simple islanders of Cuba and
Hispaniola; and Cordova, in fact, was glad to return from Yucatan.
Velasquez, on hearing the report of Cordova, at once fitted out four
vessels to explore the newly discovered country, and despatched them
under command of his nephew, Grijalva. Everywhere were found proofs of
civilization, especially in architecture. The whole district, in fact,
abounds in prehistoric remains. From a friendly chief Grijalva received
a sort of coat of mail covered with gold plates; and on meeting the
ruler of the province he exchanged some toys and trinkets, such as glass
beads, pins, scissors, for a rich treasure of jewels, gold ornaments and
vessels.
Grijalva was therefore the first European to step on the Aztec soil and
open an intercourse with the natives. Velasquez, the Governor, at once
prepared a larger expedition, choosing as leader or commander an officer
who was destined henceforth to fill a much larger place in history than
himself, one who presently appeared capable of becoming a general in the
foremost rank, Hernando Cortés, greatest of all Spanish explorers.
CHAPTER III
THE EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF THE AZTECS
In the Extinct Civilizations of the East it was shown that the cosmogony
of the Chaldeans closely resembles that of the Hebrews and the
Phenicians, and that the account of the deluge in Genesis exactly
reproduces the much earlier one found on one of the Babylonian tablets.
Traces of a deluge legend also existed among the early Aztecs. They
believed
that two persons survived the Deluge, a man named Koksoz and his
wife. Their heads are represented in ancient paintings together
with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. A
dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of languages in
his mouth.... Tezpi, the Noah of a neighboring people, also escaped
in a boat, which was filled with various kinds of animals and
birds. After some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained
feeding on the dead bodies of the giants, which had been left on
the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming-bird was then
sent forth and returned with the branch of a tree in its mouth.
Another Aztec tradition of the deluge is that the pyramidal mound, the
temple of Cholula (a sacred city on the way between the capital and the
seaport), was built by the giants to escape drowning. Like the tower of
Babel, it was intended to reach the clouds, till the gods looked down
and, by destroying the pyramid by fires from heaven, compelled the
builders to abandon the attempt.
The hieroglyphics used in the Aztec calendar correspond curiously with
the zodiacal signs of the Mongols of eastern Asia. "The symbols in the
Mongolian calendar are borrowed from animals, and four of the twelve are
the same as the Aztec."
The antiquity of most of the monuments is proved--e. g., by the growth
of trees in the midst of the buildings in Yucatan. Many have had time to
attain a diameter of from six to nine feet. In a courtyard at Uxmal, the
figures of tortoises sculptured in relief upon the granite pavement are
so worn away by the feet of countless generations of the natives that
the design of the artist is scarcely recognizable.
The Spanish invaders demolished every vestige of the Aztec religious
monuments, just as Roman Catholic images and paraphernalia were once
treated by the "straitest sects" of Protestants, or even Mohammedans.
The beautiful plateau around the lakes of Mexico, as well as other
central portions of America, were without any doubt occupied from the
earliest ages by peoples who gradually advanced in civilization from
generation to generation and passed through cycles of revolutions--in
one century relapsing, in another advancing by leaps and bounds by an
infusion of new blood or a change of environment--exactly similar to the
checkered annals of the successive dynasties in the Nile Valley and the
plains of Babylonia. In the New World, as in the Old World, from
prehistoric times wealth was accumulated at such centers, bringing
additional comfort and refinement, and implying the practise of the
useful arts and some applications of science. As to the legendary
migrations or even those extinct races whose names still remain, Max
Müller said:[8]
[Footnote 8: Chips from a German Workshop, i, 327.]
The traditions 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.
_Anahuac_ (i. e., "waterside" or "the lake-country"), in the early
centuries of our era, was a name of the country round the lakes and town
afterward called Mexico. To this center, as a place for settlement,
there came from the north or northwest a succession of tribes more or
less allied in race and language--especially (according to one theory)
the _Toltecs_ from Tula, and the _Aztecs_ from Aztlan. Tula, north of
the Mexican Valley, had been the first capital of the Toltecs, and at
the time of the Spanish conquest there were remains of large buildings
there. Most of the extensive temples and other edifices found throughout
"New Spain" were attributed to this race and the word "toltek" became
synonymous with "architect."
Some five centuries after the Toltecs had abandoned Tula, the Aztecs or
early Mexicans arrived to settle in the Valley of Anahuac. With the
Aztecs came the Tezcucans, whose capital, Tezcuco, on the eastern border
of the Mexican lake, has given it its still surviving name.
The Aztecs, again, after long migrations from place to place, finally,
in A. D. 1325, halted on the 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. They hailed the
auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the sight of
their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into
the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water....
The place was called Tenochtitlan (i. e. "the cactus on a rock") in
token of its miraculous origin. [Such were the humble beginnings of
the Venice of the Western World.][9]
[Footnote 9: Prescott, i, I, pp. 8, 9.]
To this day the arms of the Mexican republic show the device of the
eagle and the cactus--to commemorate the legend of the foundation of the
capital--afterward called Mexico from the name of their war-god. Fiercer
and more warlike than their brethren of Tezcuco, the men of the latter
town were glad of their assistance, when invaded and defeated by a
hostile tribe. Thus Mexico and Tezcuco became close allies, and by the
time of Montezuma I, in the middle of the fifteenth century, their
sovereignty had extended beyond their native plateau to the coast
country along the Gulf of Mexico. The capital rapidly increased in
population, the original houses being replaced by substantial stone
buildings. There are documents showing that Tenochtitlan was of much
larger dimensions than the modern capital of Mexico, on the same site.
Just before the arrival of the Spaniards, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the kingdom extended from the gulf across to the
Pacific; and southward under the ruthless Ahuitzotl over the whole of
Guatemala and Nicaragua.
The Aztecs resembled the ancient Peruvians in very few respects, one
being the use of knots on strings of different colors to record events
and numbers. Compare our account of "the quipu" in Chapter X. The Aztecs
seem to have replaced that rude method of making memoranda during the
seventh century by picture-writing. Before the Spanish invasion,
thousands of native clerks or chroniclers were employed in painting on
vegetable paper and canvas. Examples of such manuscripts may still be
seen in all the great museums. Their contents chiefly refer to ritual,
astrology, the calendar, annals of the kings, etc.
Most of the literary productions of the ancient Mexicans were stupidly
destroyed by the Spanish under Cortés. The first Archbishop of Mexico
founded a professorship in 1553 for expounding the hieroglyphs of the
Aztecs, but in the following century the study was abandoned. Even the
native-born scholars confessed that they were unable to decipher the
ancient writing. One of the most ancient books (assigned to Tula, the
"Toltec" capital, A. D. 660, and written by Huetmatzin, an astrologer),
describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations,
the arrangement of time in the official calendar, with some geography,
mythology, and cosmogony. In the fifteenth century the King of Tezcuco
published sixty hymns in honor of the Supreme Being, with an elegy on
the destruction of a town, and another on the instability of human
greatness.
In the same century the three Anahuac states (Acolhua, Mexico, and
Tlacopan) formed a confederacy with a constant tendency to give Mexico
the supremacy. The two capitals looking at each other across the lake
were steadily growing in importance, with all the adjuncts of public
works--causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces, gardens, and
other evidences of wealth.
The horror and disgust caused by the Aztec sacrificial bloodshed are
greatly increased by considering the number of the victims. The kings
actually made war in order to provide as many victims as possible for
the public sacrifices--especially on such an occasion as a coronation or
the consecration of a new temple. Captives were sometimes reserved a
considerable time for the purpose of immolation. It was the regular
method of the Aztec warrior in battle not to kill one's opponent if he
could be made a captive; to take him alive was a meritorious act in
religion. In fact, the Spaniards in this way frequently escaped death at
the hands of their Mexican opponents. When King Montezuma was asked by a
European general why he had permitted the republic of Tlascala to remain
independent on the borders of his kingdom, his reply was, "That she
might furnish me with victims for my gods."
In reckoning the number of victims Prescott seems to have trusted too
implicitly to the almost incredible accounts of the Spanish. Zumurraga,
the first Bishop of Mexico, asserts that 20,000 were sacrificed
annually, but Casas points out that with such a "waste of the human
species," as is implied in some histories, the country could not have
been so populous as Cortés found it. The estimate of Casas is "that the
Mexicans never sacrificed more than fifty or a hundred persons in a
year."
Notwithstanding the wholesale bloodshed before the shrines of their gory
gods, we can still assign to the Aztecs a high degree of civilization.
The history of even modern Europe will illustrate this statement,
although apparently paradoxical.
Consider "the condition of some of the most polished countries in the
sixteenth century after the establishment of the modern Inquisition--an
institution which yearly destroyed its thousands by a death more painful
than the Aztec sacrifices, ... which did more to stay the march of
improvement than any other scheme ever devised by human cunning....
Human sacrifice was sometimes voluntarily embraced by the Aztecs as the
most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise.
The Inquisition, on the other hand, branded its victims with infamy in
this world, and consigned them to everlasting perdition in the next."
The difficulty with the Aztecs is how to reconcile such refinement as
their extinct civilization showed with their savage enjoyment of
bloodshed. "No captive was ever ransomed or spared; all were sacrificed
without mercy, and their flesh devoured." The first of the four chief
counselors of the empire was called the "Prince of the Deadly Lance,"
the second "Divider of Men," the third "Shedder of Blood," the fourth
"the Lord of the Dark House."
The temples were very numerous, generally merely pyramidal masses of
clay faced with brick or stone. The roof was a broad area on which stood
one or two towers, from forty to fifty feet in height, forming the
sanctuaries of the presiding deities, and therefore containing their
images. Before these sanctuaries stood the dreadful stone of sacrifice.
There were also two altars with sacred fires kept ever burning.
All the religious services were public, and the pyramidal temples, with
stairs round their massive sides, allowed the long procession of priests
to be visible as they ceremoniously ascended to perform the dread office
of slaughtering the human victims.
Human sacrifices had not originally been a feature of the Aztec worship.
But about 200 years before the arrival of the Spanish invaders was the
beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was
considered complete without some human bloodshed.
Prescott takes as an example the great festival in honor of
Tezcatlipoca, a handsome god of the second rank, called "the soul of the
world," and endowed with perpetual youth.
A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for
his personal beauty and without a blemish on his body, was
selected.... Tutors took charge of him and instructed him how to
perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was
arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a
profusion of sweet-scented flowers.... When he went abroad he was
attended by a train of the royal pages, and as he halted in the
streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated
themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of
their good deity.... Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the
principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to
live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who
paid him all the honors of a divinity. When at length the fatal
day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of
the royal barges transported him across a lake to a temple which
rose on its margin.... Hither the inhabitants of the capital
flocked to witness the consummation of the ceremony. As the sad
procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim
threw away his gay chaplets of flowers and broke in pieces his
musical instruments. ... On the summit he was received by six
priests, whose long and matted locks flowed in disorder over their
sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import.
They led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with
its upper surface somewhat convex. On this the victim was
stretched. Five priests secured his head and limbs, while the
sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office,
dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp
razor of _itzli_, and inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the
palpitating heart, and after holding it up to the sun (as
representing the supreme God), cast it at the feet of the deity to
whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated
themselves in humble adoration.
Such was an instance of the human sacrifices for which ancient Mexico
became infamous to the whole civilized world.
One instance of a sacrifice differing from the ordinary sort is thus
given by a Spanish historian:
A captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms for
single combat against a number of Mexicans in succession. If he
defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to
escape. If vanquished he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in
the usual manner. The combat was fought on a huge circular stone
before the population of the capital.
Women captives were occasionally sacrificed before those bloodthirsty
gods, and in a season of drought even children were sometimes
slaughtered to propitiate Tlaloc, the god of rain.
Borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes and
decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest
hearts to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant
of the priests who read in their tears a favorable augury for the
rain prayer.
One Spanish historian informs us that these innocent victims of this
repulsive religion were generally bought by the priests from parents who
were poor.
We may now resume the traditional settlement of the ancient Mexicans on
the region called Anahuac, including all the fertile plateau and
extending south to the lake of Nicaragua. The chief tribes of the race
were said to have come from California, and after being subject to the
Colhua people asserted their independence about A. D. 1325. Soon
afterward, their first capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on the site of
Mexico, their permanent center. For several generations they lived, like
their remote ancestors, the Red Men of the Woods, as hunters, fishers,
and trappers, but at last their prince or chief cazique was powerful
enough to be called king. The rule of this Aztec prince, beginning A. D.
1440, marked the beginning of their greatness as a race. It became a
rule of their kingdom that every new king must gain a victory before
being crowned; and thus by the conquest of a new nation furnish a supply
of captives to gratify their tutelary deity by the necessary human
sacrifices. In 1502 the younger Montezuma ascended the throne. He is
better known to us than the previous kings, because it was in his reign
that the Spanish conquerors appeared on the scene. From the time of
Cortés the history of the Aztecs becomes part of that of the Mexicans.
They were easily conquered by the European troops, partly because of
their betrayal by various of the neighboring nations whom they had
formerly conquered. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, according
to Prescott, the Aztec king ruled the continent from the Atlantic to the
Pacific.
From the scientific side of their extinct civilization it is their
knowledge of astronomy that chiefly causes astonishment (see also p.
85). As in the case of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a motive
for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of
accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus
ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's
transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early
period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican
aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their
farming was naturally of a rude and imperfect sort.
"The degree of civilization," says Prescott, "which the Aztecs reached,
as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps,
not much short of that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred."
In a passage comparing the Aztecs to the American Indians, we read:
The latter has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature. He
shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. Even
when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization he
seems to sink and pine away beneath it. It has been so with the
Mexicans. Under the Spanish domination their numbers have silently
melted away. Their energies are broken. They no longer tread their
mountain plains with the conscious independence of their ancestors.
In their faltering step and meek and melancholy aspect we read the
sad characters of the conquered race.... Their civilization was of
the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce
virtues of the Aztec were all his own.
Humboldt found some analogy between the Aztec theory of the universe, as
taught by the priests, and the Asiatic "cosmogonies." The Aztecs, in
explaining the great mystery of man's existence after death, believed
that future time would revolve in great periods or cycles, each
embracing thousands of years. At the end of each of the four cycles of
future time in the present world, "the human family will be swept from
the earth by the agency of one of the elements, and the sun blotted out
from the heavens to be again rekindled."
The priesthood comprised a large number who were skilled in astrology
and divination. The great temple of Mexico, alone, had 5,000 priests in
attendance, of whom the chief dignitaries superintended the dreadful
rites of human sacrifice. Others had management of the singing choirs
with their musical accompaniment of drums and other instruments; others
arranged the public festivals according to the calendar, and had charge
of the hieroglyphical word-painting and oral traditions. One important
section of the priesthood were teachers, responsible for the education
of the children and instruction in religion and morality. The head
management of the hierarchy or whole ecclesiastical system, was under
two high priests--the more dignified that they were chosen by the king
and principal nobles without reference to birth or social station. These
high priests were consulted on any national emergency, and in precedency
of rank were superior to every man except the king. Montezuma is said to
have been a priest.
The priestly power was more absolute than any ever experienced in
Europe. Two remarkable peculiarities were that when a sinner was
pardoned by a priest, the certificate afterward saved the culprit from
being legally punished for any offense; secondly, there could be no
pardon for an offense once atoned for if the offense were repeated.
"Long after the conquest, the simple natives when they came under the
arm of the law, sought to escape by producing the certificate of their
former confession." (Prescott, i, 33.)
The prayer of the priest-confessor, as reported by a Spanish historian,
is very remarkable:
"O, merciful Lord, thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let
thy forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of heaven,
to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor
man has sinned, _not from his own free will_, but from the
influence of the sign under which he was born...."
After enjoining on the penitent a variety of minute ceremonies by
way of penance, the confessor urges the necessity of instantly
procuring a slave for sacrifice to the Deity.
In the schools under the clergy the boys were taught by priests and the
girls by priestesses. There was a higher school for instruction in
tradition and history, the mysteries of hieroglyphs, the principles of
government, and certain branches of astronomical and natural science.
In the education of their children the Mexican community were very
strict, but from a letter preserved by one of the Spanish historians, we
can not doubt the womanly affection of a mother who thus wrote to her
daughter:
My beloved daughter, very dear little dove, you have already heard
and attended to the words which your father has told you. They are
precious words, which have proceeded from the bowels and heart in
which they were treasured up; and your beloved father well knows
that you, his daughter, begotten of him, are his blood and his
flesh; and God our Lord knows that it is so. Although you are a
woman, and are the image of your father, what more can I say to you
than has already been said?... My dear daughter, whom I tenderly
love, see that you live in the world in peace, tranquillity, and
contentment--see that you disgrace not yourself, that you stain not
your honor, nor pollute the luster and fame of your ancestors....
May God prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to God, who is
in every place.[10]
[Footnote 10: Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, vi, 19.]
Some trace of a "natural piety," which will probably surprise our
readers, is also found in the ceremony of Aztec baptism, as described by
the same writer. After the head and lips of the infant were touched with
water and a name given to it, the goddess Cioacoatl was implored "that
the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might
not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live
and be born anew." In Sahagun's account we read:
When all the relations of the child were assembled, the midwife,
who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was
summoned. When the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in
her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water.... To
perform the rite, she placed herself _with her face toward the
west_, and began to go through certain ceremonies.... After this
she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, "O my child!
receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and
is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash
and to purify." ... [After a prayer] she took the child in both
hands, and lifting him toward heaven said, "O Lord, thou seest here
thy creature whom thou hast sent into this world, this place of
sorrow, suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and
thine inspiration."
The science of the Aztecs has excited the wonder of all competent
judges, such as Humboldt (already quoted) and the astronomer La Place.
Lord Kingsborough remarks in his great work:
It can hardly be doubted that the Mexicans were acquainted with
many scientifical instruments of strange invention;... whether the
telescope may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the
thirteenth plate of M. Dupaix's Monuments, which represents a man
holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to
suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision.
References to the calendar of the Aztecs should not omit the secular
festival occurring at the end of their great cycle of fifty-two years.
From the length of the period, two generations, one might compare it
with the "jubilee" of ancient Israel--a word made familiar toward the
close of Queen Victoria's reign. The great event always took place at
midwinter, the most dreary period of the year, and when the five
intercalary days arrived they "abandoned themselves to despair,"
breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the
temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their
furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes to rags. This
disorder and gloom signified that figuratively the end of the world was
at hand.
On the evening of the last day, a procession of priests, assuming
the dress and ornaments of their gods, moved from the capital
toward a lofty mountain, about two leagues distant. They carried
with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an
apparatus for kindling the _new fire_, the success of which was an
augury of the renewal of the cycle. On the summit of the mountain,
the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of
the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by
the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The
flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of
the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up toward
heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless
multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and
the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing
beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country.... A new
cycle had commenced its march.
The following thirteen days were given up to festivity. ... The
people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands
and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up
their oblations and thanksgivings in the temples. Dances and games
were instituted emblematical of the regeneration of the world.
[Footnote 11: A famous group of seven small stars in the Bull
constellation. The "seven sisters" appear as only _six_ to ordinary
eyesight: to make out the seventh is a test of a practised eye and
excellent vision.]
Prescott compares this carnival of the Aztecs to the great secular
festival of the Romans or ancient Etruscans, which (as Suetonius
remarked) "few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to witness
again." The _ludi sæculares_ or secular games of Rome were held only at
very long intervals and lasted for three days and nights.
The poet Southey thus refers to the ceremony of opening the new Aztec
cycle, or Circle of the Years.
On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid,
On his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums,
Laid ready to receive the sacred spark,
And blaze, to herald the ascending sun,
Upon his living altar. Round the wretch
The inhuman ministers of rites accurst
Stand, and expect the signal when to strike
The seed of fire. Their Chief, apart from all,
... eastward turns his eyes;
For now the hour draws nigh, and speedily
He look's to see the first faint dawn of day
Break through the orient sky.
_Madoc_, ii, 26.
CHAPTER IV
AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY
Long before the time of Columbus and the Spanish conquest there existed
on the table-land of Mexico two great races or nations, as has already
been shown, both highly civilized, and both akin in language, art, and
religion. Ethnologists and antiquaries are not agreed as to their origin
or the development of their civilization. Many recent critics have held
the theory that there had been a previous people from whom both races
inherited their extinct civilization, this previous race being the
"Toltecs," whom we have repeatedly mentioned in the preceding chapter.
To that previous race some attribute the colossal stonework around
Lake Titicaca, as well as other survivals of long-forgotten culture.
Some would even class them with the "mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley.
Other recent antiquaries, however, while fully admitting the
Aztec-Tescucan civilization to be real and historical, treat the Toltec
theory as partly or entirely mythical. One writer alleges, after the
manner of Max Müller, that the Toltecs are "simply a personification of
the rays of light" radiating from the Aztec sun-god.
Leaving abstract theories, we shall devote this chapter to the principal
facts of American archeology--especially as regards the races and the
monuments of their long extinct civilizations. Throughout many parts of
both North and South America, and over large areas, the red-skinned
natives continued their generations as their ancestors had done through
untold centuries, scarcely rising above the state of rude, uncultured
sons of the soil living as hunters, trappers, fishers, as had been done
immemorially
When wild in woods the noble savage ran,
as Dryden puts it. But in Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America,
Colombia, and Peru there were men of the original redskin race who had
distinctly attained to civilization for unknown generations before the
time of Columbus. Not only so, but in many centers of wealth and
population the process of social improvement and advance had been
continuous for unrecorded ages; and in certain cases a long extinct
civilization had over-laid a previous civilization still more remotely
extinct. Some works constructed for supplying water, for example, could
only have been applied to that purpose when the climate or geological
conditions were quite different from what they have always been in
historical times!
Who is the red man? Compared in numbers with the yellow man, the white
man, or even the black, he is very unimportant, being only one-tenth as
great as the African race.[12] In American ethnology, however, the red
man is all-important. Primeval men of this race undoubtedly formed the
original stock whence during the centuries were derived all the numerous
tribes of "Indians" found in either North or South America. Throughout
Asia and Africa there is great diversity in type among the races that
are indigenous; but as to America, to quote Humboldt:
[Footnote 12: White or Caucasian 640,000,000, yellow or Mongolian
600,000,000, black or African 200,000,000, red or American 20,000,000.]
The Indians of New Spain [i. e., Mexico] bear a general resemblance
to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil. We have the
same swarthy and copper color, straight and smooth hair, small
beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner directed upward toward
the temples, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, and expression of
gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and
severe look.
Whence the original red men of America were derived it is impossible to
say. The date is too remote and the data too few. From fossil remains of
human bones, Agassiz estimated a period of at least ten thousand years;
and near New Orleans, beneath four buried forests, a skeleton was found
which was possibly fifty thousand years old. If, therefore, the redskins
branched off from the yellow man, it must have been at a period which
lies utterly beyond historic ken or calculation.
Some recent ethnologists have borrowed the "glacier theory" from the
science of geology, in order to trace the development of civilization
among certain races. In Switzerland and Greenland the signs of the
action of a glacier can be traced and recognized just as we trace the
proofs of the action of water in a dry channel. Visit the front of a
glacier in autumn after the summer heat has made it shrink back, you
will see (1) rounded rocks, as if planed on the top, with (2) a mixed
mass of stones and gravel like a rubbish-heap, scattered on (3) a mass
of clay and sand, containing boulders. The same three tests are
frequently found in countries where there have been no glaciers within
the memory of man.
Such traces, found not only in England, Scotland, and Ireland, but in
northern Germany and Denmark, prove that the mountain mass of
Scandinavia was the nucleus of a huge ice-cap "radiating to a distance
of not less than 1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up with solid
ice the North Sea, the German Ocean, the Baltic, and even the Atlantic
up to the 100-fathom line." In North America the same thing is proved by
similar evidence. A gigantic ice-cap extending from Canada has glaciated
all the minor mountain ranges to the south, sweeping over the whole
continent. The drift and boulders still remain to prove the fact, as far
south as only 15° north of the tropic. A warm oceanic current, like the
Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, would shorten a glacial period. Speaking of
Scotland, one authority states that "if the Gulf Stream were diverted
and the Highlands upheaved to the height of the New Zealand Alps, the
whole country would again be buried under glaciers pushing out into the
seas" on the west and east.
The theory is that as the climate became warmer, the ice-fronts
retreated northward by the shrinking of the glaciers, and therefore the
animals, including man, were able to live farther north. The men of that
very remote period were "Neolithic," and some of the stone monuments are
attributed to them that were formerly called "Druidic." A recent writer
asks; with reference to Stonehenge:
Did Neolithic men slowly coming northward, as the rigors of the
last glacial period abated, domicile here, and build this huge
gaunt temple before they passed farther north, to degrade and
dwindle down into Eskimos wandering the dismal coasts of arctic
seas?
Another writer, with reference to the American ice-sheet, says:
During the second glacial epoch when the great boreal ice-sheet
covered one-half of the North American continent, reaching as far
south as the present cities of Philadelphia and St. Louis, and the
glaciated portions were as unfit for human occupation as the
snow-cap of Greenland is to-day, aggregations of population
clustered around the equatorial zone, because the climatic
conditions were congenial. And inasmuch as civilization, the world
over, clings to the temperate climates and thrives there best, we
are not surprised to learn that communities far advanced in arts
and architecture built and occupied those great cities in Yucatan,
Honduras, Guatemala, and other Central American states, whose
populations once numbered hundreds of thousands.
An approximate date when this civilization was at the acme of its
glory would be about ten thousand years ago. This is established by
observations upon the recession of the existing glacier fronts,
which are known to drop back twelve miles in one hundred years.
With the gradual withdrawal of the glacial ice-sheet the climate
grew proportionately milder, and flora and fauna moved
simultaneously northward. Some emigrants went to South America and
settled there, carrying their customs, arts, ceremonial rites,
hieroglyphs, architecture, etc.; and an immense exodus took place
into Mexico, which ultimately extended westward up the Pacific
coast.
In subsequent epochs when the ice-sheet had withdrawn from large
areas, there were immense influxes of people from Asia via Bering
Strait on the Pacific side, and from northwestern Europe via
Greenland on the Atlantic side. The Korean immigration of the year
544 led to the founding of the Mexican Empire in 1325.
To trace then the gradations of ascent from the native American--called
"Indians" by a blunder of the Great Admiral, as afterward they were
nicknamed "redskins" by the English settlers--to the Mexicans,
Peruvians, or Colombians is a task far beyond our strength. Leaving the
question of race, therefore, we now turn to the antiquarian remains,
especially the architectural.
The prehistoric civilization which was developed to the south of Mexico
is generally known as "Mayan," although the Mayas were undoubtedly akin
to the Aztecs or early Mexicans. The Maya tribes in Yucatan and
Honduras, from abundant evidence, must have risen to a refinement in
prehistoric times, which, in several respects, was superior to that of
the Aztecs. In architecture they were in advance from the earliest ages
not only of the Aztec peoples, but of all the American races.
In Yucatan the Mayas have left some wonderful remains at Mayapan, their
prehistoric capital, and near it at a place called Uxmal which has
become famous from its vast and elaborate structures,[13] evidencing a
knowledge of art and science which had flourished in this region for
centuries before the arrival of the Spanish. The chief building in Uxmal
is in pyramidal form, the principal design in the ancient Aztec temples
(as well as those of Chaldea, etc.), consisting of three terraces faced
with hewn stone. The terraces are in length 575, 545, and 360 feet
respectively; with the temple on the summit, 322 feet, and a great
flight of stairs leading to it. The whole building is surrounded by a
belt of richly sculptured figures, above a cornice. At Chichen, also in
Yucatan, there is an area of two miles perimeter entirely covered with
architectural ruins; many of the roofs having apparently consisted of
stone arches, painted in various colors. One building, of peculiar
construction, proves an enigma to all travelers: it is more than ninety
yards long and consists of two parallel walls, each ten yards thick, the
distance between them being also ten yards. It has been conjectured that
the anomalous construction had reference to some public games by which
the citizens amused themselves in that long-forgotten period. Among
other memorials of Mayan architecture in this country is the city of
Tuloom on the east coast, fortified with strong walls and square towers.
A more remarkable "find" in the dense forests of Chiapas, in the same
country, is the city recorded by Stephens and other travelers. It is
near the coast, at the place where Cortés and his Spanish soldiers were
moving about for a considerable time, yet they do not appear to have
ever seen the splendid ruins, or to have at all suspected their
existence. Even if the natives knew, the Spaniards might have found the
toil of forcing a passage through such forests too laborious. The name
of the city which had so long been buried under the tropical vegetation
was quite unknown, nor was there any tradition of it; but when found it
was called "Palenque," from the nearest inhabited village. There were
substantial and handsome buildings with excellent masonry, and in many
cases beautiful sculptures and hieroglyphical figures.
[Footnote 13: See Frontispiece.]
Merida, the capital of Yucatan, is on the site of a prehistoric city
whose name had also become unknown. When building the present town, the
Spaniards utilized the ancient buildings as quarries for good stones.
The larger prehistoric structures are frequently on artificial mounds,
being probably intended for religious or ceremonial purposes. The walls
both within and without are elaborately decorated, sometimes with
symbolic figures. Sometimes officials in ceremonial costumes are seen
apparently performing religious rites. These are often accompanied by
inscriptions in low relief, with the peculiar Mayan characters which
some archeologists call "calculiform hieroglyphs" (_v._ p. 82).
On one of the altar-slabs near Palenque there occurs a sculptured group
of several figures in the act of making offerings to a central
object shaped like the Latin cross. "The Latin, the Greek, and the
Egyptian cross or _tau_ (T) were evidently sacred symbols to this
ancient people, bearing some religious meanings derived from their
own cult."[14]
[Footnote 14: D. G. Brinton.]
The cross occurs frequently, not only in the Mayan sculptures, but also
in the ceremonial of the Aztecs. The Spanish followers of Cortés were
astonished to see this symbol used by these "barbarians," as they called
them. Winsor (i, 195) says that the Mayan cross has been explained to
mean "the four cardinal points, the rain-bringers, the symbol of life
and health"; and again, "the emblem of fire, indeed an ornamental
fire-drill."
Students of architecture find a rudimentary form of the arch occurring
in some of the ruins, notably at Palenque. Two walls are built parallel
to each other, at some distance apart, then at the beginning of the arch
the layers on both sides have the inner stones slightly projecting, each
layer projecting a little more than the previous one, till at a certain
height the stones of one wall are almost touching those of the wall
opposite. Finally, a single flat stone closes in the space between and
completes the arch.
In Honduras, on the banks of the Copan, the Spaniards found a
prehistoric capital in ruins, on an elevated area, surrounded by
substantial walls built of dressed stones, and enclosing large groups of
buildings. One structure is mainly composed of huge blocks of polished
stone. In several houses the whole of the external surface is covered
with elaborate carved designs:
The adjacent soil is covered with sculptured obelisks, pillars, and
idols, with finely dressed stones, and with blocks ornamented with
skilfully carved figures of the characteristic Maya hieroglyphs,
which, could they be deciphered, would doubtless reveal the story
of this strange and solitary city.
In western Guatemala, at Utatla, the ancient capital of the Quiches, a
tribe allied to the Mayas, several pyramids still remain. One is 120
feet high, surmounted by a stone wall, and another is ascended by a
staircase of nineteen steps, each nineteen inches in height.
The literary remains (such as Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, Manuscripts, etc.)
of the Maya and Aztec races are in some respects as vivid a proof of the
extinct civilizations as any of the architectural monuments already
discussed. Both Aztecs and Mayans of Yucatan and Central America used
picture-writing, and sometimes an imperfect form of hieroglyphics. The
most elementary kind was simply a rough sketch of a scene or historical
group which they wished to record. When, for example, Cortés had his
first interview with some messengers sent by Montezuma, one of the
Aztecs was observed sketching the dress and appearance of the Spaniards,
and then completing his picture by using colors. Even in recent times
Indians have recorded facts by pictographs: in Harper's Magazine
(August, 1902) we read that "pictographs and painted rocks to the number
of over 3,000 are scattered all over the United States, from the Dighton
Rock, Massachusetts (_v_. pp. 27, 28), to the Kern River Cañon in
California, and from the Florida Cape to the Mouse River in Manitoba.
The identity of the Indians with their ancient progenitors is further
proved by relics, mortuary customs, linguistic similarities, plants and
vegetables, and primitive industrial and mechanical arts, which have
remained constant throughout the ages." The pictographs of the Kern
River Cañon, according to the same writer, were inscribed on the rocks
there "about five thousand years ago."
A more advanced form of picture-writing is frequently found in the Mayan
and other inscriptions and manuscripts. Two objects are represented,
whose names, when pronounced together, give a sound which suggests the
name to be recorded or remembered. Thus, the name Gladstone may be
expressed in this manner by two pictures, one a laughing face (i. e.,
"happy" or "glad"), the other a rock (i. e., "stone"). It is exactly the
same contrivance that is used to construct the puzzle called a "rebus."
A third form of hieroglyphic was by devising some conventional mark or
symbol to suggest the initial sound of the name to be recorded. Such a
mark or character would be a "letter," in fact; and thus the prehistoric
alphabets were arrived at, not only among the early Mayans of Yucatan,
etc., but among the prehistoric peoples of Asia, as the Chinese, the
Hittites, etc., as well as the primeval Egyptians. Many of the
sculptures in Copan and Palenque to which we have referred contain
pictographs and hieroglyphs. A Spanish Bishop of Yucatan drew up a Mayan
alphabet in order to express the hieroglyphs on monuments and
manuscripts in Roman letters; but much more data are needed before
scholars will read the ancient Mayan-Aztec tongues as they have been
enabled to understand the Egyptian inscriptions or the cuneiform records
of Babylonia. For the American hieroglyphs we still lack a second Young
or Champollion.
There are three famous manuscripts in the Mayan character:
1. The Dresden Codex, preserved in the Royal Library of that city.
It is called a "religious and astrological ritual" by Abbé
Brasseur.
2. Codex Troano, in Madrid, described in two folios by Abbé
Brasseur.
3. Codex Peresianus, named from the wrapper in which it was found,
1859, which had the name "Perez." It is also known as Codex
Mexicanus.
In Lord Kingsborough's great work on Mexican Antiquities there are
several of the Mayan manuscripts printed in facsimile, and others in a
book by M. Aubin, of Paris.
Each group of letters in a Mayan inscription is enclosed in an irregular
oval, supposed to resemble the cross-section of a pebble; hence the term
_calculiform_ (i. e., "pebble-shaped") is applied to their hieroglyphs,
as _cuneiform_ (i. e., "wedge-shaped") is applied to the Babylonian and
Assyrian letters.
The paper which the prehistoric Mexicans (Mayas, Aztecs, or Tescucans,
etc.) used for writing and drawing upon was of vegetable origin, like
the Egyptian papyrus. It was made by macerating the leaves of the
_maguey_, a plant of the greatest importance (_v._ p. 94). When the
surface of the paper was glazed, the letters were painted on in
brilliant colors, proceeding from left to right, as we do. Each book was
a strip of paper, several yards long and about ten inches wide, not
rolled round a stick, as the volumes of ancient Rome were, but folded
zigzag, like a screen. The protecting boards which held the book were
often artistically carved and painted.
The topics of the ordinary books, so far as we yet know, were religious
ritual, dreams, and prophecies, the calendar, chronological notes,
medical superstitions, portents of marriage and birth. The written
language was in common and extensive use for the legal conveyance and
sale of property.
One of the most remarkable facts connected with this extinct
civilization was the accuracy of their calendar and chronological
system. Their calendar was actually superior to that then existing in
Europe. They had two years: one for civil purposes, of three hundred and
sixty-five days, divided into eighteen months of twenty days, besides
five supplementary days; the other, a ritual or ecclesiastical year, to
regulate the public festivals. The civil year required thirteen days to
be added at the end of every fifty-two years, so as to harmonize with
the ritual year. Each month contained four weeks of five days, but as
each of the twenty days (forming a month) had a distinct name, Humboldt
concluded that the names were borrowed from a prehistoric calendar, used
in India and Tartary.
Wilson (Prehistoric Man, i, 133) remarks:
By the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the
Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time
so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast,
their own reckoning according to the unreformed Julian calendar,
was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the
barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced.
In 1790 there was found in the Square of Mexico a famous relic, the
Mexican Calendar Stone, "one of the most striking monuments of American
antiquity." It was long supposed to have been intended for chronological
purposes; but later authorities call it a votive tablet or sacrificial
altar.[15] Similar circular stones have been dug up in other parts of
Mexico and in Yucatan.
[Footnote 15: Pp. 68-70, _v._ p. 95.]
Both the Mayas and the Aztecs excelled in the ordinary arts of civilized
life. Paper-making has already been spoken of. Cotton being an important
produce of their soil, they understood its spinning, dyeing, and weaving
so well that the Spaniards mistook some of the finer Aztec fabrics for
silk. They cultivated maize, potatoes, plantains, and other vegetables.
Both in Mexico and Yucatan they produced beautiful work in feathers;
metal working was not so important as in some countries, being chiefly
for ornamental purposes. In fact, it was the comparative plenty of gold
and silver around Mexico that delayed the invasion of the Mayan country
for more than twenty years. The Mayas had developed trade to a
considerable extent before the Spanish invasion, and interchanged
commodities with the island of Cuba. It was there, accordingly, that
Columbus first saw this people, and first heard of Yucatan.
Of the Mexican remains on the central plateau, the most conspicuous is
the mound or pyramid of Cholula, although it retains few traces of
prehistoric art. A modern church with a dome and two towers now occupies
the summit, with a paved road leading up to it. It is chiefly noted,
first, by antiquaries, as having originally been a great temple of
Quetzalcoatl, the beneficent deity, famous in story; and, secondly, for
the fierce struggle around the mound and on the slopes between the
Mexicans and Spanish. (_V._ pp. 130-133.)
Another mound in this district, Yochicalco, lies seventy-five miles
southwest of the capital. It is considered one of the best memorials of
the extinct civilization, consisting of five terraces supported by stone
walls, and formerly surmounted by a pyramid.
Passing from the traces of Aztec and Mayan civilization, we may now
glance at the antiquities of the Colombian states. There are no temples
or large structures, because the natives, before the Spanish conquest,
used timber for building, but owing to the abundance of gold in their
brooks and rivers, they developed skill in gold-working, and produced
fine ornaments of wonderful beauty. Many hollow figures have been found,
evidently cast from molds, representing men, beasts, and birds, etc.
Stone-cutting was also an art of this ancient race, sometimes applied to
making idols bearing hieroglyphs.
When the Spaniards invaded them to take their gold and precious stones,
the "Chibchas," who then held the Colombian table-land and valleys,
threw large quantities of those valuables into a lake near Bogota, the
capital. It was afterward attempted to recover those treasures by
draining off the water, but only a small portion was found; and in the
present year (1903) a new engineering attempt has been made. A Spanish
writer, in 1858, asserted that evidence was found in the caves and mines
that in ancient times the Colombians produced an alloy of gold, copper,
and iron having the temper and hardness of steel. On a tributary of the
River Magdalena there are many curious stone images, sometimes with
grotesquely carved faces.
Turning next to the mound-builders, in the Ohio and upper Mississippi
Valley, we find traces of an extinct civilization in high mounds,
evidently artificial, extensive embankments, broad deep ditches,
terraced pyramids, and an interesting variety of stone implements and
pottery. Some mounds were for burial-places, others for sacrificial
purposes, others again as a site for building, like those we have seen
in Mexico and Maya. Many enclosures contain more than fifty acres of
land; and one embankment is fifty miles long. Among the relics
associated with those works are articles of pottery, knives, and copper
ornaments, hammered silver, mica, obsidian, pearls, beautifully
sculptured pipes, shells, and stone implements. The mounds found in some
of the Gulf States seem to confirm a theory that the mound-builders were
the ancestors of the Choctaw Indians and their allies, and had been
driven southward.
In the lower Mississippi Valley, eastward to the seacoast, there are
many large earthworks, including round and quadrilateral mounds,
embankments, canals, and artificial lakes. Similar works can be traced
to the southern extremity of Florida. Some were constructed as sites for
large buildings. The tribes to whom they are due are now known to have
been agricultural--growing maize, beans, and pumpkins; with these
products and those of the chase they supported a considerable
population.
Among other antiquarian remains in America are the cliff-houses and
"pueblos." The former peculiarity is explained by the deep cañons of the
dry table-land of Colorado. Imagine a narrow deep cutting or narrow
trench worn by water-courses out of solid rock, deep enough to afford a
channel to the stream from 500 to 1,500 feet below the plateau above.
Next imagine one of the caves which the water many ages ago had worn out
of the perpendicular sides of the cañon; and in that cave a substantial,
well-built structure of cut stones bedded in firm mortar. Such are the
"cliff--houses," sometimes of two stories. Occasionally there is a
watch-tower perched on a conspicuous point of rock near a
cliff-dwelling, with small windows looking to the east and north. These
curious buildings, though now prehistoric, in a sense, are believed by
archeologists to be later than the Spanish conquest. Peru is very
important archeologically, but some interesting points will properly
fall under our general account of that country and its conquest by
Spain.
[Illustration: Chulpa or Stone Tomb of the Peruvians.]
In Peruvian architecture, we find "Cyclopean walls," with polygonal
stones of five or six feet diameter, so well polished and adjusted that
no mortar was necessary; sometimes with a projecting part of the stone
fitting exactly into a corresponding cavity of the stone immediately
above or below it. Such huge stones are of hard granite or basalt, etc.
The walls are often very massive and substantial, sometimes from thirty
to forty feet in thickness. The only approach to the modern "arch" in
the Peruvian structures is a device similar to that which was described
under the Mayan architecture.
Some important buildings were surrounded with large upright stones,
similar to the famous "Druidic" temple at Stonehenge. All of the chief
structures were accurately placed with reference to the cardinal points,
and the main entrance always faced the east. The Peruvian tombs were
very elaborate, one kind being made by cutting caverns in the steep
precipices of the cordillera and then carefully walling in the entrance.
Another variety (the _chulpa_) was really a stone tower erected above
ground, twelve to thirty feet high. The chulpas were sometimes built in
groups.
CHAPTER V
MEXICO BEFORE THE SPANISH INVASION
The Aztecs and the Tescucans were the chief races occupying the great
table-land of Anahuac, including, as we have seen, the famous Mexican
Valley. In the preceding chapter we have set forth some of the leading
points in the extinct civilization of those races, and also that of the
Mayas, who in several respects were perhaps superior to the Anahuac
kingdoms.
Several features of the early Mexican civilization will come before us
as we accompany the European conquerors, in their march over the
table-land. Meantime, we glance first at the geography of this
magnificent region, and secondly at the manners and institutions of the
people, their industrial arts, etc., and their terrible religion. The
last-mentioned topic has already been partly discussed in Chapter III.
The Tropic of Cancer passes through the middle of Mexico, and therefore
its southern half, which is the most important, is all under the burning
sun of the "torrid zone." This heat, however, is greatly modified by the
height of the surface above sea-level, since the country, taken as a
whole, is simply an extensive table-land. The height of the plain in the
two central states, Mexico and Puebla, is 8,000 feet, or about double
the average height of the highest summits in the British Isles. On the
west of the republic is a continuous chain of mountains, and on the east
of the table-land run a series of mountainous groups parallel to the
seacoast, with a summit in Vera Cruz of over 13,400 feet. To the south
of the capital an irregular range running east and west contains these
remarkable volcanoes--Colima, 14,400 feet; Jorulla, Popocatepetl,
17,800; Orizaba (extinct), 18,300, the highest summit in Mexico, and,
with the exception of some of the mountains of Alaska, in North America.
The great plateau-basin formed around the capital and its lakes is
completely enclosed by mountains.
This high table-land has its own climate as compared with the broad
tract lying along the Atlantic. Hence the latter is known as the hot
region (_caliente_), and the former the cold region (_fria_). Between
the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great
plateau, is the temperate region (_templada_), an intermediate belt of
perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of
the hot region with its "bilious fevers." Sometimes as he passes along
the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep
slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he sees
their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enameled vegetation of the
tropics." This contrast arises from the height he has now gained above
the hot coast region.
The climate on the table-land is only cold in a relative sense, being
mild to Europeans, with a mean temperature at the capital of 60°, seldom
lowered to the freezing-point. The "temperate" slopes form the "Paradise
of Mexico," from "the balmy climate, the magnificent scenery, and the
wealth of semitropical vegetation."
The Aztec and Tescucan laws were kept in state records, and shown
publicly in hieroglyphs. The great crimes against society were all
punished with death, including the murder of a slave. Slaves could hold
property, and all their sons were freedmen. The code in general showed
real respect for the leading principles of morality.
In Mexico, as in ancient Egypt,
the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. The
king must be an experienced warrior. The tutelary deity of the
Aztecs was the god of war. A great object of military expeditions
was to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. The soldier who
fell in battle was transported at once to the region of ineffable
bliss in the bright mansions of the sun.... Thus every war became
a crusade; and the warrior was not only raised to a contempt of
danger, but courted it--animated by a religious enthusiasm like
that of the early Saracen or the Christian crusader.
The officers of the armies wore rich and conspicuous uniforms--a
tight-fitting tunic of quilted cotton sufficient to turn the arrows of
the native Indians; a cuirass (for superior officers) made of thin
plates of gold or silver; an overcoat or cloak of variegated
feather-work; helmets of wood or silver, bearing showy plumes, adorned
with precious stones and gold ornaments. Their belts, collars,
bracelets, and earrings were also of gold or silver.
Southey, in his poem, makes his Welsh prince, Madoc, thus boast:
Their mail, if mail it may be called, was woven
Of vegetable down, like finest flax,
Bleached to the whiteness of new-fallen snow,
... Others of higher office were arrayed
In feathery breastplates, of more gorgeous hue
Than the gay plumage of the mountain-cock,
Than the pheasants' glittering pride. But what were these
Or what the thin gold hauberk, when opposed
To arms like ours in battle?
_Madoc_, i, 7.
We learn of the ancient Mexicans, to their honor, that in the large
towns hospitals were kept for the cure of the sick and wounded soldiers,
and as a permanent refuge if disabled. Not only so, says a Spanish
historian, but "the surgeons placed over them were so far better than
those in Europe that they did not protract the cure to increase the
pay."
Even the red man of the woods, as we learn from Fenimore Cooper and
Catlin, believes reverently in the Great Spirit who upholds the
universe; and similarly his more civilized brother of Mexico or Tezcuco
spoke of a Supreme Creator, Lord of Heaven and Earth. In their prayers
some of the phrases were:
The God by whom we live, omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving
all gifts, without whom man is nothing, invisible, incorporeal, of
perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and
a sure defense.
Prescott, however, remarks that notwithstanding such attributes "the
idea of unity--of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need
of inferior ministers to execute his purposes--was too simple, or too
vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a
plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the
seasons, and the various occupations of man."
The Aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen _dii majores_ and over 200
_dii minores_. To each of these a special day was assigned in the
calendar, with its appropriate festival. Chief of them all was that
bloodthirsty monster _Huitsilopochtli_, the hideous god of
war--tutelary deity of the nation. There was a huge temple to him in
the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all
his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of
human victims was being constantly poured out.
The terrible name of this Mexican Mars has greatly puzzled scholars of
the language. According to one derivation, the name is a compound of
two words, _humming-bird_ and _on the left_, because his image has the
feathers of that bird on the left foot. Prescott naturally thinks that
"too amiable an etymology for so ruffian a deity." The other name of the
war-god, _Mexitl_ (i. e., "the hare of the aloes"), is much better
known, because from it is derived the familiar name of the capital.
[Illustration: Quetzalcoatl.]
The god of the air, _Quetzalcoatl_, a beneficent deity, who taught
Mexicans the use of metals, agriculture, and the arts of government.
Prescott remarks that
he was doubtless one of those benefactors of their species who have
been deified by the gratitude of posterity.
There was a remarkable tradition of Quetzalcoatl, preserved among the
Mexicans, that he had been a king, afterward a god, and had a temple
dedicated to his worship at Cholula[16] when on his way to the Mexican
Gulf. Embarking there, he bade his people a long farewell, promising
that he and his descendants would revisit them. The expectation of his
return prepared the way for the success of the tall white-skinned
invaders.
[Footnote 16: The ruins were referred to in chap, iv, (_v._ p. 84, also
130.)]
In the Aztec agriculture, the staple plant was of course the _maize_ or
Indian corn. Humboldt tells us that at the conquest it was grown
throughout America, from the south of Chile to the River St. Lawrence;
and it is still universal in the New World. Other important plants on
the Aztec soil were the _banana_, which (according to one Spanish
writer) was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother Eve; the
_cacao_, whose fruit supplies the valuable chocolate; the _vanilla_,
used for flavoring; and most important of all, the _maguey_, or Mexican
aloe, much valued because its leaves were manufactured into paper, and
its juice by fermentation becomes the national intoxicant, "pulque." The
_maguey_, or great Mexican aloe, grown all over the table-land, is
called "the miracle of nature," producing not only the _pulque_, but
supplying _thatch_ for the cottages, _thread_ and _cords_ from its tough
fiber, _pins_ and _needles_ from the thorns which grow on the leaves, an
excellent _food_ from its roots, and _writing-paper_ from its leaves.
One writer, after speaking of the "pulque" being made from the "maguey,"
adds, "with what remains of these leaves they manufacture excellent and
very fine cloth, resembling holland or the finest linen."
The _itztli_, formerly mentioned as being used at the sacrifices by the
officiating priest, was "obsidian," a dark transparent mineral, of the
greatest hardness, and therefore useful for making knives and razors.
The Mexican sword was serrated, those of the finest quality being of
course edged with itztli. Sculptured figures abounded in every Aztec
temple and town, but in design very inferior to the ancient specimens of
Egypt and Babylonia, not to mention Greece. A remarkable collection of
their sculptured images occurred in the _place_ or great square of
Mexico--the Aztec forum--and similar spots. Ever since the Spanish
invasion the destruction of the native objects of art has been ceaseless
and ruthless. "Two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last Montezuma and his
father," says Prescott, "cut in the solid rock, in the beautiful groves
of Chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century
[i. e., the eighteenth], by order of the government." He further
remarks:
This wantonness of destruction provokes the bitter animadversion of
the Spanish writer Martyr, whose enlightened mind respected the
vestiges of civilization wherever found. "The conquerors," says he,
"seldom repaired the buildings that they defaced; they would rather
sack twenty stately cities than erect one good edifice."
The pre-Columbian Mexicans inherited a practical knowledge of mechanics
and engineering. The Calendar Stone, for example (spoken of in the
preceding chapter), a mass of dark porphyry estimated at fifty tons
weight, was carried for a distance of many leagues from the mountains
beyond Lake Chalco, through a rough country crossed by rivers and
canals. In the passage its weight broke down a bridge over a canal, and
the heavy rock had to be raised from the water beneath. With such
obstacles, without the draft assistance of horses or cattle, how was it
possible to effect such a transport? Perhaps the mechanical skill of
their builders and engineers had contrived some tramway or other
machinery. An English traveler had a curious suggestion:
Latrobe accommodates the wonders of nature and art very well to
each other, by suggesting that these great masses of stone were
transported by means of the mastodon, whose remains are
occasionally disinterred in the Mexican Valley.
The Mexicans wove many kinds of cotton cloth, sometimes using as a dye
the rich crimson of the cochineal insect. They made a more expensive
fabric by interweaving the cotton with the fine hair of rabbits, and
other animals; sometimes embroidering with pretty designs of flowers and
birds, etc. The special art of the Aztec weaver was in feather-work,
which when brought to Europe produced the highest admiration:
With feathers they could produce all the effect of a beautiful
mosaic. The gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds, especially of
the parrot tribe, afforded every variety of color; and the fine
down of the humming-bird, which reveled in swarms among the
honeysuckle bowers of Mexico, supplied them with soft aerial tints
that gave an exquisite finish to the picture. The feathers, pasted
on a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy,
hangings for apartments, and ornaments for the temples.
When some of the Mexican feather-work was shown at Strasbourg: "Never,"
says one admirer, "did I behold anything so exquisite for brilliancy
and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. No European
artist could have made such a thing."
Instead of shops the Aztecs had in every town a market-place, where
fairs were held every fifth day--i. e., once a week. Each commodity had
a particular quarter, and the traffic was partly by barter, and partly
by using the following articles as money: bits of tin shaped like an
Egyptian cross (T), bags of cacao holding a specified number of grains,
and, for large values, quills of gold-dust.
The married women among the Aztecs were treated kindly and respectfully
by their husbands. The feminine occupations were spinning and
embroidery, etc., as among the ancient Greeks, while listening to
ballads and love stories related by their maidens and musicians
(Ramusio, iii, 305).
In banquets and other social entertainments the women had an equal share
with the men. Sometimes the festivities were on a large scale, with
costly preparations and numerous attendants. The Mexicans, ancient and
modern, have always been passionately fond of flowers, and on great
occasions not only were the halls and courts strewed and adorned in
profusion with blossoms of every hue and sweet odor, but perfumes
scented every room. The guests as they sat down found ewers of water
before them and cotton napkins, since washing the hands both before and
after eating was a national habit of almost religious obligation.[17]
Modern Europeans believe that tobacco was introduced from America in
the time of Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth, but ages before that
period the Aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to
the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the
form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." The
smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the _siesta_ or nap of
"forty winks." It is not known if the Aztec ladies, like their
descendants in modern Mexico, also appreciated the _yetl_, as the
Mexicans called "tobacco." Our word came from the natives of Hayti, one
of the islands discovered by Columbus.
[Footnote 17: Sahagun (vi, 22) quotes the precise instructions of a
father to his son: he must wash face and hands before sitting down to
table, and must not leave till he has repeated the operation and
cleansed his teeth.]
The tables of the Aztecs abounded in good food--various dishes of meat,
especially game, fowl, and fish. The turkey, for example, was introduced
into Europe from Mexico, although stupidly supposed to have come from
Asia. The French named it _coq d'Inde_,[18] the "Indian cock," meaning
American, but the ordinary hearer imagined _d'Inde_ meant from
Hindustan. The blunder arose from that misapplication of the word
"Indian," first made by Columbus, as we formerly explained.
[Footnote 18: The Spanish named this handsome bird _gallopavo_ (Lat.
_pavo_, the "peacock"). The wild turkey is larger and more beautiful
than the tame, and therefore Benjamin Franklin, when speaking
sarcastically of the "American Eagle," insisted that the wild turkey was
the proper national emblem.]
The Aztec cooks dressed their viands with various sauces and condiments,
the more solid dishes being followed by fruits of many kinds, as well as
sweetmeats and pastry. Chafing-dishes even were used. Besides the
varieties of beautiful flowers which adorned the table there were
sculptured Vases of silver and sometimes gold. At table
the favorite beverage was the _chocolatl_ flavored with vanilla and
different spices. The fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture
of sweets and acids, supplied also various agreeable drinks, of
different degrees of strength.
When the young Mexicans of both sexes amused themselves with dances, the
older people kept their seats in order to enjoy their _pulque_ and
gossip, or listen to the discourse of some guest of importance. The
music which accompanied the dances was frequently soft and rather
plaintive.
The early Mexicans included the Tezcucans as well as the Aztecs proper;
and since their capitals were on the same lake and both races were
closely akin, we may devote some space to these Alcohuans or eastern
Aztecs. Their civilization was superior to that of the western Aztecs in
some respects, and Nezahual-coyotl, their greatest prince, formed
alliance with the western state, and then remodeled the various
departments of his government. He had a council of war, another of
finance, and a third of justice.
A remarkable institution, under King Nezahual-coyotl, was the "Council
of Music," intended to promote the study of science and the practise of
art.
Tezcuco, in fact, became the nursery not only of such sciences as could
be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and
ornamental arts. "Its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated
throughout the country.... Its idiom, more polished than the Mexican,
continued long after the conquest to be that in which the best
productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco was the Athens of
the Western World.... Among the most illustrious of her bards was their
king himself." A Spanish writer adds that it was to the eastern Aztecs
that noblemen sent their sons "to study poetry, moral philosophy, the
heathen theology, astronomy, medicine, and history."
[Illustration: Ancient Bridge near Tezcuco.]
The most remarkable problem connected with ancient Mexico is how to
reconcile the general refinement and civilization with the sacrifices of
human victims. There was no town or city but had its temples in public
places, with stairs visibly leading up to the sacrificial stone, ever
standing ready before some hideous idol or other--as already described.
In all countries there have been public spectacles of bloodshed, not
only as in the gladiators in the ancient circus--
butchered to make a Roman holiday,
or the tournays of the middle ages, but in the prize-ring fights and
public executions by ax or guillotine, of the age that is just passing
away. The thousands who perished for religious ideas by means of the
Holy Roman Inquisition should not be overlooked by the Spanish writers
who are so indignant that Montezuma and his priests sacrificed tens of
thousands under the claims of a heathen religion. The very day on which
we write these words, August 18th, is the anniversary of the last
sentence for beheading passed by our House of Lords. By that sentence
three Scottish "Jacobites" passed under the ax on Tower Hill, where
their remains still rest in a chapel hard by. So lately as 1873, the
Shah of Persia, when resident as a visitor in Buckingham Palace, was
amazed to find that the laws of Great Britain prevented him from
depriving five of his courtiers of their lives. They had just been found
guilty of some paltry infringement of Persian etiquette. During the last
generation or the previous one, both in England and Scotland, the
country schoolmaster on a certain day had the schoolroom cleared so that
the children and their friends should enjoy the treat of seeing all the
game-cocks of the parish bleeding on the floor one after another, being
either struck by a spur to the brain, or else wounded to a painful
death. When James Boswell and others regularly attended the spectacles
of Tyburn and sometimes cheered the wretched victim if he "died game,"
the philosopher will not wonder at the populace of some city of ancient
Mexico crowding round the great temple and greedily watching the bloody
sacrifice done with full sanction of the priesthood and the king.
The primitive religions were derived from sun-worship, and as fire is
the nearest representative of the sun, it seemed essential to _burn_ the
victim offered as a sacrifice. At Carthage, the great Phenician colony,
children were cruelly sacrificed by fire to the god Melkarth of Tyre.
"Melkarth" being simply _Melech Kiriath_ (i. e., "King of the City"),
and therefore identical with the "Moloch" or "Molech" of the Ammonites,
Moabites, and Israelites. In the earliest prehistoric age the children
of Ammon, Moab, and Israel were apparently so closely akin that they had
practically the same religion and worshiped the same idols. The tribal
god was originally the god of Syria or Canaan. In more than a dozen
places of the Old Testament we find the Hebrews accused of burning their
children or passing them through the fire to the sun-god, but the
ancient Mexicans did not burn their victims, and _in no case were the
victims their own children_. The victims were captives taken in war, or
persons convicted of crime; and thus the Mexicans were in atrocity far
surpassed by those races akin to the Hebrews who are much denounced by
the sacred writers, e. g.:
Josiah ... defiled Topheth that no man might make his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings xxiii, 10).
They have built also the high places to burn their sons with fire
for burnt-offerings (Jer. xix, 5).
Yea, they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of
their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan (Ps.
cvi, 37).
That a father should offer his own child as a sacrifice to the sun-god
or any other, would to the mild and gentle Aztec be too dreadful a
conception. It is the enormous number who were immolated that shocks the
European mind, but to the populace enjoying the spectacle the victims
were enemies of the king or criminals deserving execution.
Perhaps it is a more difficult problem to explain how so civilized a
community as the Aztec races undoubtedly were could look with
complacency upon any one tasting a dish composed of some part of the
captive he had taken in battle. It is not only repulsive as an idea, but
seems impossible. Yet much depends on the point of view as well as the
atmosphere. According to archeologists, all the primeval races of men
could at a pinch feed on human flesh, but after many generations learned
to do better without it. We may have simply outgrown the craving, till
at last we call it unnatural, whereas those ancient Mexicans, with all
their wealth of food, had refined upon it. Let us again refer to the Old
Testament:
Thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters and these hast thou
sacrificed to be devoured (Ezek. xvi, 20).
... have caused their sons to pass for them through the fire, to
devour them (Ezek. xxiii, 37).
We may therefore infer that to the early races of Canaan (including
Israel), as well as to the primeval Aztecs, it was a privilege and
religious custom to eat part of any sacrifice that had been offered.
There can be little doubt, to any one who has studied the earliest human
antiquities, that all races indulged in cannibalism, not only during
that enormously remote age called Paleolithic, but in comparatively
recent though still prehistoric times. "This is clearly proved by the
number of human bones, chiefly of women and young persons, which have
been found charred by fire and split open for extraction of the marrow."
Such charred bones have frequently been preserved in caves, as at
Chaleux in Belgium, where in some instances they occurred "in such
numbers as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal feasts."
The survival of human sacrifice among the Aztecs, with its accompanying
traces of cannibalism, was due to the savagery of a long previous
condition of their Indian race; just as in the Greek drama, when that
ancient people had attained a high level of culture and refinement, the
sacrifice of a human life, sometimes a princess or other distinguished
heroine, was not unfrequent. We remember Polyxena, the virgin daughter
of Hecuba, whom her own people resolved to sacrifice on the tomb of
Achilles; and her touching bravery, as she requests the Greeks not to
bind her, being ashamed, she says, "having lived a princess to die a
slave." A better known example is Iphigenia, so beloved by her father,
King Agamemnon, and yet given up by him a victim for purposes of state
and religion.
[Illustration: Teocalli, Aztec Temple for Human Sacrifices.]
From the Greek drama, human sacrifices frequently passed to the Roman;
nor does such a refined critic as Horace object to it, but only suggests
that the bloodshed ought to be perpetrated behind the scenes. In
Seneca's play, Medea (quoted in our Introduction), that rule was grossly
violated, since the children have their throats cut by their heroic
mother in full view of the audience. In the same passage (Ars Poët.,
185, 186) Horace forbids a banquet of human flesh being prepared before
the eyes of the public, as had been done in a play written by Ennius,
the Roman poet. The religious sacrifice of human victims by the "Druids"
or priests of ancient Gaul and Britain seems exactly parallel to the
wholesale executions on the Mexican _teocallis_, since the wretched
victims whom our Celtic ancestors packed for burning into those huge
wicker images, were captives taken in battle, like those stretched for
slaughter upon the Mexican stone of sacrifice.
Human sacrifice was so common in civilized Rome that it was not till the
first century B. C. that a law was passed expressly forbidding
it--(Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxx, 3, 4).
CHAPTER VI
ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS
The "New Birth" of the world, which characterized the end of the
fifteenth century, had an enormous influence upon Spain. Her queen, the
"great Catholic Isabella," had, by assisting Columbus, done much in the
great discovery of the Western World. Spain speedily had substantial
reward in the boundless wealth poured into her lap, and the rich
colonies added to her dominion. Thus in the beginning of the sixteenth
century the new consolidated Spain, formed by the union of the two
kingdoms, Castile and Aragon, became the richest and greatest of all the
European states.
The Spanish governors in the West Indies being ambitious of planting new
colonies in the name of the Spanish King, conquest and annexation were
stimulated in all directions. When Cuba and Hayti were overrun and
annexed to Spain, not without much unjust treatment of the simple
natives, as we have seen, they became centers of operation, whence
expeditions could be sent to Trinidad or any other island, to Panama, to
Yucatan, or Florida, or any other part of the continent. After the
marvelous experience of Grijalva in Yucatan, then considered an island,
and his report that its inhabitants were quite a civilized community
compared with the natives of the isles, Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba,
resolved at once to invade the new country for purposes of annexation
and plunder.
Velasquez prepared a large expedition for this adventure, consisting of
eleven ships with more than 600 armed men on board; and after much
deliberation chose Fernando Cortés to be the commander. Who was this
Cortés, destined by his military genius and unscrupulous policy to be
comparable to Hannibal or Julius Cæsar among the ancients, and to Clive
or Napoleon Bonaparte among the moderns? Velasquez knew him well as one
of his subordinates in the cruel conquest of Cuba; before that Cortés
had distinguished himself in Hayti as an energetic and skilled officer.
Of an impetuous and fiery temper which he had learned to keep thoroughly
in command, he was characterized by that quality possessed by all
commanders of superior genius, the "art of gaining the confidence and
governing the minds of men." As a youth in Spain he had studied for the
bar at the University of Salamanca; and in some of his speeches on
critical occasions one can find certain traces of his academical
training in the adroit arguments and clever appeals.
Other qualifications as an officer were his manly and handsome
appearance, his affable manners, combined with "extraordinary address in
all martial exercises, and a constitution of such vigor as to be capable
of enduring any fatigue."
Cortés on reviewing his commission from the Governor, Velasquez, was too
shrewd not to be aware of the importance of his new position. The "Great
Admiral," with reference to the discovery of the New World, had said: "I
have only opened the door for others to enter"; and Cortés was conscious
that now was the moment for that entrance. Filled with unbounded
ambition he rose to the occasion.
Velasquez somewhat hypocritically pretended that the object he had in
view was merely barter with the natives of New Spain--that being the
name given by Grijalva to Yucatan and the neighboring country. He
ordered Cortés
to impress on the natives the grandeur and goodness of his royal
master; to invite them to give in their allegiance to him, and to
manifest it by regaling him with such comfortable presents of gold,
pearls, and precious stones as by showing their own good-will would
secure his favor and protection.
Mustering his forces for the new expedition, Cortés found that he had no
sailors, 553 soldiers, besides 200 Indians of the island; ten heavy
guns, four lighter ones, called falconets. He had also sixteen horses,
knowing the effect of even a small body of cavalry in dealing with
savages. On February 18, 1519, Cortés sailed with eleven vessels for the
coast of Yucatan.
Landing at Tabasco, where Grijalva had found the natives friendly,
Cortés found that the Yucatans had resolved to oppose him, and were
presently assembled in great numbers. The result of the fighting,
however, was naturally a foregone conclusion, partly on account of "the
astonishment and terror excited by the destructive effect" of the
European firearms, and the "monstrous apparition" of men on horseback.
Such quadrupeds they had never seen before, and they concluded that the
rider with his horse formed one unaccountable animal. Gomara and other
chroniclers tell how St. James, the tutelar saint of Spain, appeared in
the ranks on a gray horse, and led the Christians to victory over the
heathen.
An especially fortunate thing for Cortés was that among the female
slaves presented after this battle, there was one of remarkable
intelligence, who understood both the Aztec and the Mayan languages, and
soon learned the Spanish. She proved invaluable to Cortés as an
interpreter, and afterward had a share in all his campaigns. She is
generally called Marina.
If the Spanish accounts are true, stating that the native army consisted
of five squadrons of 8,000 men each, then this victory is one of the
most remarkable on record, as a proof of the value of gunpowder as
compared with primitive bows and arrows. To the simple Americans the
terrible invaders seemed actually to wield the thunder and the
lightning. Next day Cortés made an arrangement with the chiefs; and
after confidence was restored, asked where they got their gold from.
They pointed to the high grounds on the west, and said _Culhua_, meaning
Mexico.
The Palm Sunday being at hand, the conversion of the "heathen" was duly
celebrated by pompous and solemn ceremonial. The army marched in
procession with the priests at their head, accompanied by crowds of
Indians of both sexes, till they reached the principal temple. A new
altar being built, the image of the presiding deity was taken from its
place and thrown down, to make room for that of the Virgin carrying the
infant Saviour.
Cortés now learned that the capital of the Mexican Empire was on the
mountain plains nearly seventy leagues inland; and that the ruler was
the great and powerful Montezuma.
It was on the morning of Good Friday that Cortés landed on the site of
Vera Cruz, which after the conquest of Mexico speedily grew into a
flourishing seaport, becoming the commercial capital of New Spain. A
friendly conference took place between Cortés and Teuhtlile, an Aztec
chief, who asked from what country the strangers had come and why they
had come.
"I am a servant," replied Cortés, "of a mighty monarch beyond the seas,
who rules over an immense empire, having kings and princes for his
vassals. Since my master has heard of the greatness of the Mexican
Emperor he has desired me to enter into communication with him, and has
sent me as envoy to wait upon Montezuma with a present in token of
good-will, and with a message which I must deliver in person. When can
I be admitted to your sovereign's presence?"
The Aztec chief replied with an air of dignity: "How is it that you have
been here only two days, and demand to see the Emperor? If there is
another monarch as powerful as Montezuma, I have no doubt my master will
be happy to interchange courtesies."
The slaves of Teuhtlile presented to Cortés
ten loads of fine cotton, several mantles of that curious
feather-work whose rich and delicate dyes might vie with the most
beautiful painting, and a wicker basket filled with ornaments of
wrought gold, all calculated to inspire the Spaniards with high
ideas of the wealth and mechanical ingenuity of the Mexicans.
Having duly expressed his thanks, Cortés then laid before the Aztec
chief the presents intended for Montezuma. These were "an armchair
richly carved and painted; a crimson cap bearing a gold medal emblazoned
with St. George and the Dragon; collars, bracelets, and other ornaments
of cut-glass, which, in a country where glass was unknown, might claim
to have the value of real gems."
During the interview Teuhtlile had been curiously observing a shining
gilt helmet worn by a soldier, and said that it was exactly like that of
Quetzalcoatl. "Who is he?" asked Cortés. "Quetzalcoatl is the god about
whom the Aztecs have the prophecy that he will come back to them across
the sea." Cortés promised to send the helmet to Montezuma, and expressed
a wish that it would be returned filled with the gold-dust of the
Aztecs, that he might compare it with the Spanish gold-dust!
One reporter who was present says:
He further told Governor Teuhtlile that the Spaniards were troubled
with a disease of the heart for which gold was a specific remedy!
Another incident of this notable interview was that one of the Mexican
attendants was observed by Cortés to be scribbling with a pencil. It was
an artist sketching the appearance of the strangers, their dress, arms,
and attitude, and filling in the picture with touches of color. Struck
with the idea of being thus represented to the Mexican monarch, Cortés
ordered the cavalry to be exercised on the beach in front of the
artists.
The bold and rapid movements of the troops, ... the apparent ease
with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were
mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the
trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they
heard the thunders of the cannon, which Cortés ordered to be fired
at the same time, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame
issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound of the
balls, as they dashed through the trees of the neighboring forest,
shivering their branches into fragments, they were filled with
consternation and wonder, from which the Aztec chief himself was
not wholly free.
This was all faithfully copied by the picture-writers, so far as their
art went, in sketching and vivid coloring. They also recorded the ships
of the strangers--"the water-houses," as they were named--whose dark
hulls and snow-white sails were swinging at anchor in the bay.
Meantime what had Montezuma been doing, the sad-faced[19] and haughty
Emperor of Mexico, land of the Aztecs and the Tezcucans? At the
beginning of his reign he had as a skilful general led his armies as far
as Honduras and Nicaragua, extending the limits of the empire, so that
it had now reached the maximum.
[Footnote 19: The name Montezuma means "sad or severe man," a title
suited to his features, though not to his mild character.]
Tezcuco, the sister state to Mexico, had latterly shown hostility to
Montezuma, and still more formidable was the republic of Tlascala, lying
between his capital and the coast. Prodigies and prophecies now began to
affect all classes of the population in the Mexican Valley. Everybody
spoke of the return from over the sea of the popular god Quetzalcoatl,
the fair-skinned and longhaired (p. 93). A generation had already
elapsed since the first rumors that white men in great mysterious
vessels, bearing in their hands the thunder and lightning, were seizing
the islands and must soon seize the mainland.
No wonder that Montezuma, stern, tyrannical, and disappointed, should be
dismayed at the news of Grijalva's landing, and still more so when
hearing of the fleet and army of Cortés, and seeing their horsemen
pictured by his artists--the whole accompanied by exaggerated accounts
of the guns and cannon able to produce thunder and lightning. After
holding a council, Montezuma resolved to send an embassy to Cortés,
presenting him with a present which should reflect the incomparable
grandeur and resources of Mexico, and at the same time forbidding an
approach to the capital.
The governor Teuhtlile, on this second embassy, was accompanied by two
Aztec nobles and 100 slaves, bearing the present from Montezuma to
Cortés. As they entered the pavilion of the Spanish general the air was
filled with clouds of incense which rose from censers carried by some
attendants.
Some delicately wrought mats were then unrolled, and on them the
slaves displayed the various articles, ... shields, helmets,
cuirasses, embossed with plates and ornaments of pure gold; collars
and bracelets of the same metal, sandals, fans, and crests of
variegated feathers, intermingled with gold and silver thread, and
sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; imitations of birds and
animals in wrought and cast gold and silver, of exquisite
workmanship; curtains, coverlets, and robes of cotton, fine as
silk, of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather-work that
rivaled the delicacy of painting.... The things which excited most
admiration were two circular plates of gold and silver, as "large
as carriage-wheels"; one representing the sun was richly carved
with plants and animals. It was thirty palms in circumference, and
was worth about £52,500 sterling.[20]
[Footnote 20: Robertson, the historian, gives £5,000; but Prescott
reckons a _peso de oro_ at £2 12s. 6d.; whence the 20,000 of the text
gives 20,000 x 2-5/8 = 2,500 x 21 = £52,500.]
Cortés was interested in seeing the soldier's helmet brought back to him
full to the brim with grains of gold. The courteous message from
Montezuma, however, did not please him much. Montezuma excused himself
from having a personal interview by "the distance being too great, and
the journey beset with difficulties and dangers from formidable
enemies.... All that could be done, therefore, was for the strangers to
return to their own land."
Soon after Cortés, by a species of statecraft, formed a new
municipality, thus transforming his camp into a civil community. The
name of the new city was _Villa Rica de Vera Cruz_, i. e., "the Rich
Town of the True Cross." Once the municipality was formed, Cortés
resigned before them his office of captain-general, and thus became free
from the authority of Velasquez. The city council at once chose Cortés
to be captain-general and chief justice of the colony. He could now go
forward unchecked by any superior except the Crown.
It was a desperate undertaking to climb with an army from the hot region
of this flat coast through the varied succession of "slopes" which form
the temperate region, and at last, on the high table-land, obtain
entrance upon the great enclosed valley of Mexico. Cortés found that an
essential preliminary was to gain the friendship of the Totonacs, a
nation tributary to Montezuma. Their subjection to the Aztecs he had
already verified, since one day when holding a conference with the
Totonac leaders and a neighboring cazique (i. e., "prince"), Cortés saw
five men of haughty appearance enter the market-place, followed by
several attendants, and at once receive the politest attention from the
Totonacs.
Cortés asked Marina, his slave interpreter, who or what they were. "They
are Aztec nobles," she replied, "sent by Montezuma to receive tribute."
Presently the Totonac chiefs came to Cortés with looks of dire dismay,
to inform him of the great Emperor's resentment at the entertainment
offered to the Spaniards, and demanding in expiation twenty young men
and women for sacrifice to the Aztec gods.
Cortés, with every look of indignation, insisted that the Totonacs
should not only refuse to comply, but should seize the Aztec messengers
and hold them strictly confined in prison. Unscrupulous to gain his
ends, Cortés by lies and cunning duplicity managed to set the Mexican
nobles free, dismissing them with a friendly message to Montezuma, while
at the same time securing the confidence of the simple-minded Totonacs,
urging them to join the Spaniards and make a bold effort to regain their
independence. Some thought that Cortés was really the kindly divinity
Quetzalcoatl, promised by the prophets to bring freedom and happiness.
As an instance of the religious enthusiasm of the Spanish invaders, we
may give the account of the "conversion" of Zempoalla, a city in the
Totonac district. When Cortés pressed upon the cazique of Zempoalla that
his mission was to turn the Indians from the abominations of their
present religion, that prince replied that he could not accept what the
Spanish priests had told him about the Creator and Ruler of the
Universe; especially that he ever stooped to become a mere man, weak and
poor, so as to suffer voluntarily persecution and even death at the
hands of some of his own creatures. The cazique added that he "would
resist any violence offered to his gods, who would, indeed, avenge the
act themselves by the instant destruction of their enemies."
Cortés and his men seized the opportunity. There is no doubt that, after
witnessing some of the barbarous sacrifices of human victims followed by
cannibal feasts, their souls had naturally been sickened. They now
proceeded to force the work of conversion as soon as Cortés had appealed
to them and declared that "God and the holy saints would never favor
their enterprise, if such atrocities were allowed; and that for his own
part, he was resolved the Indian idols should be demolished that very
hour if it cost him his life.
"Scarcely waiting for his commands the Spaniards moved toward one of the
principal _teocallis_, or temples, which rose high on a pyramidal
foundation with a steep ascent of stone steps in the middle. The
cazique, divining their purpose, instantly called his men to arms. The
Indian warriors gathered from all quarters, with shrill cries and
clashing of weapons, while the priests, in their dark cotton robes, with
disheveled tresses matted with blood, rushed frantic among the natives,
calling on them to protect their gods from violation! All was now
confusion and tumult.... Cortés took his usual prompt measures. Causing
the cazique and some of the principal citizens and priests to be
arrested, he commanded them to quiet the people, declaring that if a
single arrow was shot against a Spaniard, it should cost every one of
them his life.... The cazique covered his face with his hands,
exclaiming that the gods would avenge their own wrongs.
"The Christians were not slow in availing themselves of his tacit
acquiescence. Fifty soldiers, at a signal from their general, sprang up
the great stairway of the temple, entered the building on the summit,
the walls of which were black with human gore, and dragged the huge
wooden idols to the edge of the terrace. Their fantastic forms and
features, conveying a symbolic meaning which was lost on the Spaniards,
seemed to their eyes only the hideous lineaments of Satan. With great
alacrity they rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of the
pyramid, amid the triumphant shouts of their own companions and the
groans and lamentations of the natives. They then consummated the whole
by burning them in the presence of the assembled multitude."
After the temple had been cleansed from every trace of the idol-worship
and its horrors, a new altar was raised, surmounted by a lofty cross,
and hung with garlands of roses. A reaction having now set in among the
Indians, many were willing to become Christians, and some of the Aztec
priests even joined in a procession to signify their conversion, wearing
white robes instead of their former dark mantles, and carrying lighted
candles in their hands, "while an image of the Virgin half smothered
under the weight of flowers was borne aloft, and, as the procession
climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar.... The
impressive character of the ceremony and the passionate eloquence of the
good priest touched the feelings of the motley audience, until Indians
as well as Spaniards, if we may trust the chronicler, were melted into
tears and audible sobs."
Before finally marching westward toward the temperate "slopes" of the
mountains, Cortés had another opportunity of proving his generalship
and prompt resource at a critical moment. When Agathocles, the
autocratic ruler of Syracuse, sailed over to defeat the Carthaginians,
the first thing he did on landing in Africa was to burn his ships, that
his soldiers might have no opportunity of retreat, and no hope but in
victory. Cortés now acted on exactly the same principle.
After discovering that a number of his soldiers had formed a conspiracy
to seize one of the ships and sail to Cuba, Cortés, on conviction,
punished two of the ringleaders with death. Soon after, he formed the
extraordinary resolution of destroying his ships without the knowledge
of his army.
The five worst ships were first ordered to be dismantled; and, soon
after, to be sunk. When the rest were inspected, four of them were
condemned in the same manner.
When the news reached Zempoalla, the army were excited almost to open
mutiny. Cortés, however, was perfectly cool. Addressing the army
collectively, he assured them that the ships were not fit for service,
as had been shown by due inspection. "There is one important advantage
gained to the army, viz., the addition of a hundred able-bodied recruits
who were necessary to man the lost ships. Besides all that, of what use
could ships be to us in the present expedition? As for me, I will remain
here even without a comrade. As for those who shrink from the dangers of
our glorious enterprise, let them go back, in God's name! Let them go
home, since there is still one vessel left; let them go on board and
return to Cuba. They can tell how they deserted their commander and
their comrades, and patiently wait till they see us return loaded with
the spoils of the Aztecs."
Persuasion is the end of true oratory. The reply of the army to Cortés
was the unanimous shout "To Mexico! To Mexico!"
After beginning the gradual ascent in their march toward the table-land
of Mexico, the first place noted by the invaders was Jalapa, a town
which still retains its Aztec name, known to all the world by the
well-known drug grown there. It is a favorite resort of the wealthier
residents in Vera Cruz, and that too tropical plain which Cortés had
just left. The mighty mountain Orizaba, one of the guardians of the
Mexican Valley, is now full in sight, towering in solitary grandeur with
its robe of snow.
At last they reached a town so populous that there were thirteen Aztec
temples with the usual sacrificial stone for human victims before each
idol. In the suburbs the Spanish were shocked by a gathering of human
skulls, many thousand in number. This appalling reminder of the
unspeakable sacrifices soon became a familiar sight as they marched
through that country.
Cortés asked the cazique if he were subject to Montezuma. "Who is
there," replied the local prince, "that is not tributary to that
Emperor?" "_I_ am not," said the stranger general. Cortés assured him
that the monarch whom the Spaniards served had princes as vassals, who
were more powerful than the Aztec ruler. The cazique said:
Montezuma could muster thirty great vassals, each master of 100,000
men. His revenues were incalculable, since every subject, however
poor, paid something.... More than 20,000 victims, the fruit of his
wars, were annually sacrificed on the altars of his gods! His
capital stood on a lake, in the center of a spacious valley.... The
approach to the city was by means of causeways several miles long;
and when the connecting bridges were raised all communication with
the country was cut off.
The Indians showed the greatest curiosity respecting the dresses,
weapons, horses, and dogs of their strange visitors. The country all
around was then well wooded and full of villages and towns, which
disappeared after the conquest. Humboldt remarked, when he traveled
there, that the whole district had, "at the time of the arrival of the
Spanish, been more inhabited and better cultivated, and that in
proportion as they got higher up near the table-land, they found the
villages more frequent, the fields more subdivided, and the people more
law-abiding."
Before entering upon the table-land, Cortés resolved to visit the
republic of Tlascala, which was noted for having retained its
independence in spite of the Aztecs. After sending an embassy,
consisting of the four chief Zempoallas, who had accompanied the army,
he set out toward Tlascala, lingering as they proceeded, so that his
ambassadors should have time to return. While wondering at the delay,
they suddenly reached a remarkable fortification which marked the limits
of the republic, and acted as a barrier against the Mexican invasions.
Prescott thus describes it:
A stone wall nine feet in height and twenty in thickness, with a
parapet a foot and a half broad raised on the summit for the
protection of those who defended it. It had only one opening in
the center, made by two semicircular lines of wall overlapping each
other for the space of forty paces, and affording a passageway
between, ten paces wide, so contrived, therefore, as to be
perfectly commanded by the inner wall. This fortification, which
extended more than two leagues, rested at either end on the bold
natural buttresses formed by the sierra. The work was built of
immense blocks of stone nicely laid together without cement, and
the remains still existing, among which are rocks of the whole
breadth of the rampart, fully attest its solidity and size.
Who were the people of this stout-hearted republic? The Tlascalans were
a kindred tribe to the Aztecs, and after coming to the Mexican Valley,
toward the close of the twelfth century, had settled for many years on
the western shore of Lake Tezcuco. Afterward they migrated to that
district of fruitful valleys where Cortés found them; _Tlascala_,
meaning "land of bread." They then, as a nation, consisted of four
separate states, considerably civilized, and always able to protect
their confederacy against foreign invasion. Their arts, religion, and
architecture were the same as those of the Aztecs and Tezcucans.
More than once had the Aztecs attempted to bring the little republic
into subjection, but in vain. In one campaign Montezuma had lost a
favorite, besides having his army defeated; and though a much more
formidable invasion followed, "the bold mountaineers withdrew into the
recesses of their hills, and coolly watching their opportunity, rushed
like a torrent on the invaders, and drove them back with dreadful
slaughter from their territories."
The Tlascalans had of course heard of the redoubtable Europeans and
their advance upon Montezuma's kingdom, but not expecting any visit
themselves, they were in doubt about the embassy sent by Cortés, and the
council had not reached a decision when the arrival of Cortés was
announced at the head of his cavalry. Attacked by a body of several
thousand Indians, he sent back a horseman to make the infantry hurry up
to his assistance. Two of the horses were killed, a loss seriously felt
by Cortés; but when the main body had discharged a volley from their
muskets and crossbows, so astounded were the Tlascalan Indians that they
stopped fighting and withdrew from the field.
Next morning, after Cortés had given careful instruction to his army
(now more than 3,000 in number, with his Indian auxiliaries), they had
not marched far when they were met by two of the Zempoallans, who had
been sent as ambassadors. They informed Cortés that, as captives, they
had been reserved for the sacrificial stone, but had succeeded in
breaking out of prison. They also said that forces were being collected
from all quarters to meet the Spaniards.
At the first encounter, the Indians, after some spirited fighting,
retreated in order to draw the Spanish army into a defile impracticable
for artillery or cavalry. Pressing forward they found, on turning an
abrupt corner of the glen, that an army of many thousands was drawn up
in order, prepared to receive them. As they came into view, the
Tlascalans set up a piercing war-cry, shrill and hideous, accompanied by
the melancholy beat of a thousand drums. Cortés spurred on the cavalry
to force a passage for the infantry, and kept exhorting his soldiers,
while showing them an example of personal daring. "If we fail now," he
cried, "the Cross of Christ can never be planted in this land. Forward,
comrades! when was it ever known that a Castilian turned his back on a
foe?"
With desperate efforts the soldiers forced a passage through the Indian
columns, and then, as soon as the horse opened room for the movements of
the gunners, the terrible "thunder and lightning" of the cannon did the
rest. The havoc caused in their ranks, combined with the roar and the
flash of gunpowder, and the mangled carcasses, filled the whole of the
barbarian army with horror and consternation. Eight leaders of the
Tlascalan army having fallen, the prince ordered a retreat.
The chief of the Tlascalans, Xicotencatl, was no ordinary leader. When
Cortés wished to press on to the capital, he sent two envoys to the
Tlascalan camp, but all that Xicotencatl deigned to reply was
that the Spaniards might pass on as soon as they chose to Tlascala,
and when they reached it their flesh would be hewn from their
bodies for sacrifice to the gods. If they preferred to remain in
their own quarters, he would pay them a visit there the next day.
The envoys also told Cortés that the chief had now collected another
very large army, five battalions of 10,000 men each. There was evidently
a determination to try the fate of Tlascala by a pitched battle and
exterminate the bold invaders.
The next day, September 5, 1519, was therefore a critical one in the
annals of Cortés. He resolved to meet the Tlascalan chief in the field,
after directing the foot-soldiers to use the point of their swords and
not the edge; the horse to charge at half speed, directing their lances
at the eyes of their enemies; the gunners and crossbowmen to support
each other, some loading while others were discharging their pieces.
Before Cortés and his soldiers had marched a mile they saw the immense
Tlascalan army stretched far and wide over a vast plain. Nothing could
be more picturesque than the aspect of these Indian battalions, with the
naked bodies of the common soldiers gaudily painted, the fantastic
helmets of the chiefs bright with ornaments and precious stones, and the
glowing panoplies of feather-work....
The golden glitterance and the feather-mail
More gay than glittering gold; and round the helm
A coronal of high upstanding plumes....
... With war-songs and wild music they came on.[21]
[Footnote 21: Southey (Madoc, i, 7).]
The Tlascalan warriors had attained wonderful skill in throwing the
javelin. "One species, with a thong attached to it, which remained in
the slinger's hand, that he might recall the weapon, was especially
dreaded by the Spaniards." Their various weapons were pointed with bone
or obsidian, and sometimes headed with copper.
The yell or scream of defiance raised by these Indians almost drowned
the volume of sound from "the wild barbaric minstrelsy of shell, atabal,
and trumpet with which they proclaimed their triumphant anticipations
of victory over the paltry forces of the invaders."
Advancing under a thick shower of arrows and other missiles, the Spanish
soldiers at a certain distance quickly halted and drew up in order,
before delivering a general fire along the whole line. The front ranks
of their wild opponents were mowed down and those behind were "petrified
with dismay."
But for the accident of dissension having arisen between the chiefs of
the Tlascalans, it almost seemed as if nothing could have saved Cortés
and his Spanish army. Before the battle, the haughty treatment of one of
those chiefs by Xicotencatl, the cazique, provoked the injured man to
draw off all his contingent during the battle, and persuade another
chief to do the same. With his forces so weakened, the cazique was
compelled to resign the field to the Spaniards.
Xicotencatl, in his eagerness for revenge, consulted some of the Aztec
priests, who recommended a night attack upon Cortés's camp in order to
take his army by surprise. The Tlascalan, therefore, with 10,000
warriors, marched secretly toward the Spanish camp, but owing to the
bright moonlight they were not unseen by the vedettes. Besides that,
Cortés had accustomed his army to sleep with their arms by their side
and the horses ready saddled. In an instant, as it were, the whole camp
were on the alert and under arms. The Indians, meanwhile, were
stealthily advancing to the silent camp, and, "no sooner had they
reached the slope of the rising ground than they were astounded by the
deep battle-cry of the Spaniards, followed by the instantaneous
appearance of the whole army. Scarcely awaiting the shock of their
enemy, the panic-struck barbarians fled rapidly and tumultuously across
the plain. The horse easily overtook the fugitives, riding them down,
and cutting them to pieces without mercy." Next day Cortés sent new
ambassadors to the Tlascalan capital, accompanied by his faithful slave
interpreter, Marina. They found the cazique's council sad and dejected,
every gleam of hope being now extinguished.
The message of Cortés still promised friendship and pardon, if only they
agreed to act as allies. If the present offer were rejected, "he would
visit their capital as a conqueror, raze every house to the ground, and
put every inhabitant to the sword." On hearing this ultimatum, the
council chose four leading chiefs to be entrusted with a mission to
Cortés, "assuring him of a free passage through the country, and a
friendly reception in the capital." The ambassadors, on their way back
to Cortés, called at the camp of Xicotencatl, and were there detained by
him. He was still planning against the terrible invaders.
Cortés, in the meantime, had another opportunity of showing his resource
and presence of mind. Some of his soldiers had shown a grumbling
discontent: "The idea of conquering Mexico was madness; if they had
encountered such opposition from the petty republic, what might they not
expect from the great Mexican Empire? There was now a temporary
suspension of hostilities; should they not avail themselves of it to
retrace their steps to Vera Cruz?" To this Cortés listened calmly and
politely, replying that "he had told them at the outset that glory was
to be won only by toil and danger; he had never shrunk from his share of
both. To go back now was impossible. What would the Tlascalans say? How
would the Mexicans exult at such a miserable issue! Instead of turning
your eyes toward Cuba, fix them on Mexico, the great object of our
enterprise." Many other soldiers having gathered round, the mutinous
party took courage to say that "another such victory as the last would
be their ruin; they were going to Mexico only to be slaughtered." With
some impatience Cortés gaily quoted a soldiers' song:
Better die with honor
Than live in long disgrace!
--a sentiment which the majority of the audience naturally cheered to
the echo, while the malcontents slunk away to their quarters.
The next event was the arrival of some Tlascalans wearing white badges
as an indication of peace. They brought a message, they said, from
Xicotencatl, who now desired an arrangement with Cortés, and would soon
appear in person. Most of them remained in the camp, where they were
treated kindly; but Marina, with her "woman's wit," became somewhat
suspicious of them. Perhaps some of them, forgetting that she knew their
language, let drop a phrase in talking to each other, which awoke her
distrust. She told Cortés that the men were spies. He had them arrested
and examined separately, ascertaining in that way that they were sent
to obtain secret information of the Spanish camp, and that, in fact,
Xicotencatl was mustering his forces to make another determined attack
on the invading army.
To show the fierceness of his resentment at such treatment, Cortés
ordered the fifty spy ambassadors to have their hands hacked off, and
sent back to tell their lord that "the Tlascalans might come by day or
night, they would find the Spaniards ready for them." The sight of their
mutilated comrades filled the Indian camp with dread and horror. All
thoughts of resistance to the advance of Cortés were now abandoned, and
not long after the arrival of Xicotencatl himself was announced,
attended by a numerous train. He advanced with "the firm and fearless
step of one who was coming rather to bid defiance than to sue for peace.
He was rather above the middle size, with broad shoulders and a muscular
frame, intimating great activity and strength. He made the usual
salutation by touching the ground with his hand and carrying it to his
head." He threw no blame on the Tlascalan senate, but assumed all the
responsibility of the war. He admitted that the Spanish army had beaten
him, but hoped they would use their victory with moderation, and not
trample on the liberties of the republic.
Cortés admired the cazique's lofty spirit, while pretending to rebuke
him for having so long remained an enemy. "He was willing to bury the
past in oblivion, and to receive the Tlascalans as vassals to the
Emperor, his master."
Before the entry into Tlascala, the capital, there arrived an embassy
from Montezuma, who had been keenly disappointed, no doubt, that Cortés
had not only not been defeated by the bravest race on the Mexican
table-land, but had formed a friendly alliance with them.
As Cortés, with his army, approached the populous city, they were
welcomed by great crowds of men and women in picturesque dresses, with
nosegays and wreaths of flowers; priests in white robes and long matted
tresses, swinging their burning censers of incense. The anniversary of
this entry into Tlascala, September 23, 1519, is still celebrated as a
day of rejoicing.
Cortés, in his letter to the Emperor, King of Spain, compares it for
size and appearance to Granada, the Moorish capital. Pottery was one of
the industries in which Tlascala excelled. The Tlascalan was chiefly
agricultural in his habits; his honest breast glowed with the patriotic
attachment to the soil, which is the fruit of its diligent culture,
while he was elevated by that consciousness of independence which is the
natural birthright of a child of the mountains.
Cholula, capital of the republic of that name, is six leagues north of
Tlascala, and about twenty southeast of Mexico. In the time of the
conquest of the table-land of Anahuac, as the whole district is
sometimes termed, this city was large and populous. The people excelled
in mechanical arts, especially metal-working, cloth-weaving, and a
delicate kind of pottery. Reference has already been made to the god
Quetzalcoatl, in whose honor a huge pyramid was erected here. From the
farthest parts of Anahuac devotees thronged to Cholula, just as the
Mohammedans to Mecca.
The Spaniards found the people of Cholula superior in dress and looks to
any of the races they had seen. The higher classes "wore fine
embroidered mantles resembling the Moorish cloak in texture and
fashion.... They showed the same delicate taste for flowers as the other
tribes of the plateau, tossing garlands and bunches among the
soldiers.... The Spaniards were also struck with the cleanliness of the
city, the regularity of the streets, the solidity of the houses, and the
number and size of the pyramidal temples." After being treated with
kindness and hospitality for several days, all at once the scene
changed, the cause being the arrival of messengers from Montezuma. At
the same time some Tlascalans told Cortés that a great sacrifice, mostly
of children, had been offered to propitiate the favor of the gods.
At this juncture, Marina, the Indian slave interpreter, again proved to
be the "good angel" of Cortés. She had become very friendly with the
wife of one of the Cholula caziques, who gave her a hint that there was
danger in staying at the house of any Spaniard; and, when further
pressed by Marina, said that the Spaniards were to be slaughtered when
marching out of the capital. The plot had originated with the Aztec
Emperor, and 20,000 Mexicans were already quartered a little distance
out of town.
In this most critical position, Cortés at once decided to take
possession of the great square, placing a strong guard at each of its
three gates of entrance. The rest of what troops he had in the town, he
posted without with the cannon, to command the avenues. He had already
sent orders to the Tlascalan chiefs to keep their soldiers in readiness
to march, at a given signal, into the city to support the Spaniards.
Presently the caziques of Cholula arrived with a larger body of levies
than Cortés had demanded. He at once charged them with conspiring
against the Spaniards after receiving them as friends. They were so
amazed at his discovery of their perfidy that they confessed everything,
laying the blame on Montezuma. "That pretense," said Cortés, assuming a
look of fierce indignation, "is no justification; I shall now make such
an example of you for your treachery that the report of it will ring
throughout the wide borders of Anahuac!"
At the firing of a harquebus, the fatal signal, the crowd of
unsuspecting Cholulans were massacred as they stood, almost without
resistance. Meantime the other Indians without the square commenced an
attack on the Spaniards, but the heavy guns of the battery played upon
them with murderous effect, and cavalry advanced to support the attack.
The steeds, the guns, the weapons of the Spaniards, were all new to
the Cholulans. Notwithstanding the novelty of the terrific
spectacle, the flash of arms mingling with the deafening roar of
the artillery, the desperate Indians pushed on to take the places
of their fallen comrades.
While this scene of bloodshed was progressing, the Tlascalans, as
arranged, were hastening to the assistance of their Spanish allies. The
Cholulans, when thus attacked in rear by their traditional enemies,
speedily gave way, and tried to save themselves in the great temple and
elsewhere. The "Holy City," as it was called, was converted into a
pandemonium of massacre. In memory of the signal defeat of the
Cholulans, Cortés converted the chief part of the great temple into a
Christian church.
Envoys again arrived from Mexico with rich presents and a message
vindicating the pusillanimous Emperor from any share in the conspiracy
against Cortés. Continuing their march, the allied army of Spaniards and
Tlascalans proceeded till they reached the mountains which separate the
table-land of Puebla from that of Mexico. To cross this range they
followed the route which passes between the mighty Popocatepetl (i. e.,
"the smoking mountain") and another called the "White Woman" from its
broad robe of snow. The first lies about forty miles southeast of the
capital to which their march was directed. It is more than 2,000 feet
higher than Mont Blanc, and has two principal craters, one of which is
about 1,000 feet deep and has large deposits of sulfur which are
regularly mined. Popocatepetl has long been only a quiescent volcano,
but during the invasion by Cortés it was often burning, especially at
the time of the siege of Tlascala. That was naturally interpreted all
over the district of Anahuac to be a bad omen, associated with the
landing and approach of the Spaniards. Cortés insisted on several
descents being made into the great crater till sufficient sulfur was
collected to supply gunpowder to his army. The icy cold winds, varied by
storms of snow and sleet, were more trying to the Europeans than the
Tlascalans, but some relief was found in the stone shelters which had
been built at certain intervals along the roads for the accommodation
of couriers and other travelers.
At last they reached the crest of the sierra which unites Popocatepetl,
the "great _Volcan_," to its sister mountain the "Woman in White." Soon
after, at a turning of the road, the invaders enjoyed their first view
of the famous Valley of Mexico or Tenochtitlan, with its beautiful lakes
in their setting of cultivated plains, here and there varied by woods
and forests. "In the midst, like some Indian empress with her coronal of
pearls, the fair city with her white towers and pyramidal temples,
reposing as it were on the bosom of the waters--the far-famed 'Venice of
the Aztecs.'"
This view of the "Promised Land" will remind some of the picturesque
account given by Livy (xxi, 35) of Hannibal reaching the top of the pass
over the Alps and pointing out the fair prospect of Italy to his
soldiers. We may thus render the passage: "On the ninth day the ridge of
the Alps was reached, over ground generally trackless and by roundabout
ways.... The order for marching being given at break of day, the army
were sluggishly advancing over ground wholly covered with snow,
listlessness, and despair depicted on the features of all, Hannibal went
on in front, and after ordering the soldiers to halt on a height which
commanded a distant view, far and wide, points out to them Italy and the
plains of Lombardy on both banks of the Po, at the foot of the Alps,
telling them that at that moment they were crossing not only the walls
of Italy but of the Roman capital; that the rest of the march was easy
and downhill." The situation of Hannibal and his Carthaginians
surveying Italy for the first time is in some respects closely analogous
to that of Cortés pointing out the Valley of Mexico to his Spanish
soldiers.
CHAPTER VII
CORTÉS AND MONTEZUMA
We have now seen the Spanish conquerors with a large contingent of 6,000
natives surmounting the mountains to the east of the Mexican Valley and
looking down upon the Lake of Tezcuco on which were built the sister
capitals. Montezuma, the Aztec monarch, was already in a state of
dismay, and sent still another embassy to propitiate the terrible
Cortés, with a great present of gold and robes of the most precious
fabrics and workmanship; and a promise that, if the foreign general
would turn back toward Vera Cruz, the Mexicans would pay down four loads
of gold for himself and one to each of his captains, besides a yearly
tribute to their king in Europe.
These promises did not reach Cortés till he was descending from the
sierra. He replied that details were best arranged by a personal
interview, and that the Spaniards came with peaceful motives.
Montezuma was now plunged in deep despair. At last he summoned a council
to consult his nobles and especially his nephew, the young King of
Tezcuco, and his warlike brother. The latter advised him to "muster as
large an army as possible, and drive back the invaders from his capital
or die in its defense." "Ah!" replied the monarch, "the gods have
declared themselves against us!" Still another embassy was prepared,
with his nephew, lord of Tezcuco, at its head, to offer a welcome to the
unwelcome visitors.
Cortés approached through fertile fields, plantations, and
maguey-vineyards till they reached Lake Chalco. There they found a large
town built in the water on piles, with canals instead of streets, full
of movement and animation. "The Spaniards were particularly struck with
the style and commodious structure of the houses, chiefly of stone, and
with the general aspect of wealth and even elegance which prevailed."
Next morning the King of Tezcuco came to visit Cortés, in a palanquin
richly decorated with plates of gold and precious stones, under a canopy
of green plumes. He was accompanied by a numerous suite. Advancing with
the Mexican salutation, he said he had been commanded by Montezuma to
welcome him to the capital, at the same time offering three splendid
pearls as a present. Cortés "in return threw over the young king's neck
a chain of cut glass, which, where glass was as rare as diamonds, might
be admitted to have a value as real as the latter."
The army of Cortés next marched along the southern side of Lake Chalco,
"through noble woods and by orchards glowing with autumnal fruits, of
unknown names, but rich and tempting hues." They also passed "through
cultivated fields waving with the yellow harvest, and irrigated by
canals introduced from the neighboring lake, the whole showing a careful
and economical husbandry, essential to the maintenance of a crowded
population." A remarkable public work next engaged the attention of the
Spaniards, viz., a solid causeway of stone and lime running directly
through the lake, in some places so wide that eight horsemen could ride
on it abreast. Its length is some four
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