CHAPTER V.
ON THE WAR-PATH.
AMONG some of the tribes of Anahuac a farmer or a mechanic or a merchant might be counted as a man; not so was it with the fierce Aztecs. Every male in that tribe was born to be a warrior; it was only when he was maimed, sick, old, or, worse than all, an outcast from his clan, that he could not claim the privilege of going to the battlefield. Even the priests took a leading part in every conflict. It was not only their business to interpret the will of the gods, but they marched at the head of the Aztec troops bearing a little image, or talisman, of the most famous of the war-gods of Mexico. It was also the duty of the priests to give the signal for the battle to begin. When war was decided upon by the great council, a messenger was sent to the tribe to be attacked, and in case the help of their allies and tributaries was needed word was sent also to them. No one dared to refuse to join the Aztecs when they took the war-path.
Like the Sioux and other tribes on our borders, the Aztec braves had a war-dance around a blazing fire the night before they set out on a raid, and ceremonies as heathenish and disgusting as any of those in which our wild Indians engage were common among them. The humble wigwams on our prairies and the proud, luxurious city enthroned on Lake Tezcuco sent out the same kind of men in war-time. We can readily believe in the savage orgies held in the splendid square of Tlatililco when we remember the impurity and cruelty of old Rome when her warriors, builders and poets, her historians and statesmen, were moulding a civilization which made her the mistress of the world.
When the great snake-drum on the temple sounded the call to arms, the warriors from fifteen years old and upward gathered at the armory or house of darts belonging to their calpulli, where the weapons of their clan were kept. We have pictures of the armor they wore which correspond with the descriptions given by Cortez and his soldiers. The spear was their main weapon. It was made of hard and elastic cane, with flint points fastened into a slit at the end with gum and the strong fibres of the maguey. The spear sometimes had several of these flint tips. Their swords were made of tough wood, with grooves cut along the edge, in which was inserted a hard stone whose sharp edge was easily broken, but which cut like a blade of the finest steel. The bow was made of cane, and the arrows were carried in a quiver on the shoulder. They also had slings for throwing stones, which they used very skillfully. Shields were made of canes netted together, inwoven with cotton, encased with gilded boards and decorated with feathers. These were carried on the left arm, and were so hard that the Spaniards found that nothing but the arrows from their crossbows could pierce them.
Every warrior, from the chief-of-men down to the rank and file, was painted. The common soldier sometimes had scarcely any other dress than the colors of his clan, fancifully applied to face and body; at best, he went to the field with head, feet and arms bare. A quilted cotton tunic two fingers thick was so much like a coat of mail that the Spaniards were very glad to borrow the cheap and useful fashion. A chief wore his hair cropped above his ears, and a wooden helmet, over which he often stretched the skin of some wild bird or animal, the grinning teeth and fierce eyes of a bear or a tiger surmounting the painted face. The head of an eagle with hooked beak was a favorite device to represent the spirit of the wearer or the name he had won in battle. Lip pendants, ear-rings and other gewgaws were worn if the soldier's means permitted such extravagance. The chief of-men and his associate wore their hair tied with strips of leather colored red with cochineal. The towering plume of green feathers on the helmet was a mark of the highest rank which no other warrior dared to assume. A green stone hung from the bridge of the nose, and the ear-and lip-rings were of wrought gold. Bands of exquisite feather-work encircled the arms, wrists and ankles of the chief. On the field of battle a long tress of feather-work hung from the crown to the girdle. From this was suspended a small drum or horn, which the chief used in making signals to his men. As habits of luxury increased among the Aztecs their chief went out in a splendid litter. Gayly-dressed pages carried a gorgeous canopy over his head; and if obliged to alight, he was supported by chiefs of the highest rank. Cortez declares that these Indian chiefs came out to meet him in battle as they would go to some holiday parade, and that even the hardy Tlascalans had in this respect declined from their republican simplicity.
The army was readily prepared for a march. The common soldier carried his own provision. He had in his pouch corn-cake baked very hard, ground beans and chia (a berry out of which he made a palatable drink). Coffee was unknown among these people until after the conquest, and chocolate was a beverage which none but the wealthy could afford. He had plenty of red pepper, and used it not only as a condiment, but also as food. Salt for seasoning was obtained from the lake that surrounded the city. Cornstalk sugar was a common luxury, and formed part of the bill of fare in camp. Special carriers accompanied the army, loaded with whatever was needed, such as tents, tent-poles, mats for bedding, camp-kettles and ammunition. They also had the ornaments with which braves who should distinguish themselves in battle were to be decorated before they left the field. One of these tokens was the privilege of wearing a wrap of peculiar color. If the army passed through the land of one of its tributaries on its way, provisions were always furnished to it by the people, and friends and allies brought presents as a token of good-will.
The Mexicans needed no other strongholds than their massive houses and temples. The country was peculiarly adapted to their methods of warfare. Paths like that through the famous pass of Thermopylæ, or still more easily defended, were common. There were hilltops and precipices from which stones could be rolled down on an assailing force, and retreats among the mountains where a great army could hide in ambuscade as did thirty thousand of the men of Israel behind the city of Ai in Joshua's day. The burning of the teocallis was always the token of victory. The warriors of the place who survived either fled or were taken captive, and the women and children, who were generally sent to some cliff-dwelling among the hills before the storm broke on their homes, came back—if they came at all—to a scene of utter desolation.
But war did not always end thus. When a tribe refused to pay a valuable tribute, no attempt was made to destroy it, but merely to force obedience. The Aztecs once paid tribute to the Tepanacs, a tribe on the mainland, near Mexico. When their city became strong enough to rebel, a struggle took place for the mastery, in which the Aztecs were victorious. The immediate cause of this war was the possession of the great spring at Chapultepec, by which the city was supplied with water through an aqueduct. As this was on the yaotlalli, or neutral ground, between the Aztecs and Tepanacs, any attempt of the latter to cut off the water-supply of Mexico was taken as a challenge to war. Their success in this struggle made the Aztecs the leading power in the tableland. They became the head of a strong confederacy of tribes, and ruled with a high hand for nearly a hundred years, until, hated and feared by all their neighbors and crushed at home by the despotism of the council, the Aztecs were ripe for rebellion, and their beautiful domain fell an easy prey into the hands of the foreign invaders.
It is said that when Montezuma was asked why he had suffered the little republic of Tlascala to lift a defiant head between Mexico and the sea, he replied that the Aztecs would have crushed it long ago but that they needed victims for sacrifice and could get them readily in the skirmishes which constantly took place between the two tribes. Thus, with war as their chief business in life and a religion which demanded thousands of human sacrifices yearly, the Aztecs were glad of any pretext for an attack on their neighbors. The choice of a new war-chief was sure to bring on a conflict with somebody, as the ceremonies of his induction to office were never complete until he had brought home a train of captives. Some of these he must capture with his own hands—a feat which was sometimes accomplished by strategy, but oftener in a hand-to-hand fight. Although all these tribes believed that heaven was made for warriors and that none had higher seats there than those who died on the bloody stone of sacrifice, yet they had a natural love of life, and never yielded to their fate without a struggle. A Mexican's first aim in battle was not to kill his enemies, but to take captives. He would sacrifice a score of lives rather than fail in this aim.
The tactics of the Aztecs in war were those of rude nations. A favorite device was to feign retreat, and thus to decoy their victims into snares. Their ingenuity in such stratagems was equaled only by the patience with which they were carried into execution. The most daring warriors, and even the "chief-of-men" himself, would hide in some pit dug on a road toward which the enemy was enticed, and here they would remain motionless for hours, even days, like tigers waiting for a chance to spring on their hapless victims. They never left the field without carrying off their dead and wounded—a custom which sometimes turned victory into defeat.
These tribes all went into battle with a defiant war-whoop. Each clan had its own war-cry—usually its own name—and every pueblo had its standard. The device of Mexico was a cactus on a stone, rudely painted on a banner and carried on a pole high over the troop by a chosen standard-bearer; and it was as high a point of honor then as now to defend the flag at all risks.
When captives were taken, they were secured, if many, by wooden collars and fastened together in gangs; if few, each warrior cared for his own prize. In the old picture records of this country and carved on the stones of the monuments captors are seen holding prisoners by their long hair. On the sides of the sacrificial stone these scenes are carefully cut, the hand of one figure being raised to grasp the head-ornaments of his victim, who drops his weapons helplessly. Sometimes the captives helped to bear the spoils of war to the city of the conqueror. In every case they were considered as sacred objects devoted to the war-god, and were well fed and cared for. Ransom was entirely out of the question. The captor dared not spare his victim's life even when his own was in danger, as any loss in this respect was defrauding the war-god. The lynx-eyed priests were ever on the watch to detect and punish those who would be merciful, if any such there were in those dark days. The careless warrior who lost a captive and made the excuse of one of old, "As thy servant was busy here and there he was gone," met the same doom: "Thy life shall go for his life." When the wretched victims had been led home in triumph, they were taken first to the chief teocallis, or house of the gods, and after bowing to Humming-Bird and his hideous brother they were marched solemnly around the great stone of sacrifice, then taken away to a house set apart for those who were thus appointed to die. The home-coming of such an expedition was a great event. The warriors were received with the wildest din of music; flowers were showered upon them, and the air was filled with the odor of burning frankincense. The old men of the tribe carried the censers, standing in rows on each side of the path, their long hair tied on the back of their heads with gay strips of leather, and sometimes they bore a shield with a rod and rattle, which they sounded in token of rejoicing that they were the fathers of such braves. Along the road were erected bowers decked with the choicest flowers to be gathered in that flowery land.
In 1497 a great army was sent out by the confederated tribes. It went far southward to Tehuantepec, and came back loaded with plunder and with multitudes of captives. Some of the ruined cities now found in those solitudes may then have been laid waste, but no record remains to tell of the scenes of carnage and rapine which must have marked this campaign. The confederates afterward ravaged all the Totonac region as far east as the Gulf coast, swept it clean and recolonized it with their own people.
The victors in the tribal wars cared not to change the customs or the laws of a subjugated people; all they asked was tribute, and the question was often settled in one battle. When this was concluded by the burning of the teocallis—the signal of surrender—the amount and kind of articles of tribute and the time when this was to be paid were immediately arranged. The vanquished party were henceforth watched with jealous care by a taxgatherer appointed by the victor; a house was set apart for his use and as a place of storage for the tribute until it should be sent away. Some tribes paid their tribute every eighty days, and others once a year. This tribute money was sometimes borne to the capital on the backs of human victims who had been chosen by lot to suffer for the tribe on the altars of the conqueror. These sad processions must have been a common sight even in the few peaceful days known among these war-loving people.
After each fresh conquest the Aztecs adorned their city with a new temple, bearing the name of the conquered people and filled with their gods. These senseless blocks of wood and stone were prisoners, and as such were punished severely when the tribe they represented rebelled. The victors sought to make the worship of these captured idols acceptable by stationing in each such building priests from the tribe from which the idols were taken.
At the time of the Spanish invasion the whole country seemed to be on the eve of one of those terrible conflicts by which some of the fairest portions of the earth had been desolated. The Aztecs had maintained their supremacy for nearly a hundred years, and now the tribes far and near, outraged by their oppressions, were brooding over their wrongs, awaiting some leader who should head a new confederacy and mete out justice to Mexico. She was drunk with human blood, and the tide of war was turning—as, in time, it always will turn against a people whose only right is might. Unheard by it, God had said of the beautiful Aztec city, as he had said of Babylon of old, "The cup which she hath filled, fill to her double."