Mexican deluge-myth. Coxcoxtli used the help of the Aztecs
against the Xochimilco people; but his own nation, horrified at
their bloodthirsty sacrifice of prisoners, drove them out to the
islands and swamps of the great salt lagoon, where they are said
to have taken to making their chinampas or floating gardens of
mud heaped on rafts of reeds and brush, which in later times
were so remarkable a feature of Mexico. As one of the Aztec
chiefs at the time of the founding of their city was called Tenoch,
it is likely that from him was derived the name Tenochtitlan or
“Stone-cactus place.” Written as this name is in pictures or
rebus, it probably suggested the invention of the well-known
legend of a prophecy that the war-god’s temple should be built
where a prickly pear was found growing on a rock, and perched
on it an eagle holding a serpent; this legend is still commemorated
on the coins of Mexico. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, founded about
1325, for many years afterwards probably remained a cluster of
huts, and the higher civilization of the country was still to be
found, especially among the Acolhuas in Tezcuco. The wars
of this nation with the Tepanecs, which went on into the 15th
century, were merely destructive, but larger effects arose from
the expeditions under the Culhua king Acamapichtli, where the
Aztec warriors were prominent, and which extended far outside
the valley of Anahuac. Especially a foray southward to Quauhnahuac,
now Cuernavaca, on the watershed between the Atlantic
and Pacific, brought goldsmiths and other craftsmen to Tenochtitlan,
which now began to rise in arts, the Aztecs laying aside
their rude garments of aloe-fibre for more costly clothing, and
going out as traders for foreign merchandise. In the 14th century
the last great national struggle took place. The Acolhuas
had at first the advantage, but Ixtlilxochitl did not follow up the
beaten Aztecs but allowed them to make peace, whereupon,
under professions of submission, they fell upon and sacked the
city of Tezcuco. The next king of Tezcuco, Nezahualcoyotl,
turned the course of war, when Azcapuzalco, the Tepanec
stronghold, was taken and the inhabitants sold as slaves by the
conquering Acolhuas and Aztecs; the place thus degraded
became afterwards the great slave-market of Mexico. In this
war we first meet with the Aztec name Moteuczoma, afterwards
so famous in its Spanish form Montezuma. About 1430 took
place the triple alliance of the Acolhua, Aztec and Tepanec
kings, whose capitals were Tezcuco, Mexico and Tlacopan, the
latter standing much below the other two. In fact the rest of
native history may be fairly called the Aztec period, notwithstanding
the magnificence and culture which make Tezcuco
celebrated under Nezahualcoyotl and his son Nezahualpilli.
When the first Moteuczoma was crowned king of the Aztecs,
the Mexican sway extended far beyond the valley plateau of
its origin, and the gods of conquered nations around had their
shrines set up in Tenochtitlan in manifest inferiority to the
temple of Huitzilopochtli, the war-god of the Aztec conquerors.
The rich region of Quauhnahuac became tributary; the Miztec
country was invaded southward to the Pacific, and the Xicalanca
region to what is now Vera Cruz. It was not merely for conquest
and tribute that the fierce Mexicans ravaged the neighbour-lands,
but they had a stronger motive than either in the desire
to obtain multitudes of prisoners whose hearts were to be torn
out by the sacrificing priests to propitiate a pantheon of gods who
well personified their bloodthirsty worshippers. (E. B. T.)
Ancient Civilization.
While the prairie tribes of America lived under the loose sway of chiefs and councils of old men, the settled nations of Mexico had attained to a highly organized government. This may be seen by the elaborate balance of power maintained in the federation of Mexico, Tezcuco and Tlacopan, where each king was absolute in his own country, but in war or other Government. public interests they acted jointly, with powers in something like the proportion in which they divided conquered lands and spoil, which was two-fifths each to Mexico and Tezcuco and one-fifth to Tlacopan. The successor of the Aztec king was customarily a chosen brother or nephew, the eldest having the first claim unless set aside as incompetent; this mode of succession, which has been looked on as an elaborate device for securing practical advantages, seems rather to have arisen out of the law of choice among the descendants of the female line, found in American tribes of much lower culture. Something like this appears in the succession of kings of Tezcuco and Tlacopan, which went to sons by the principal wife, who was usually of the Aztec royal family. The Mexican chronicles, however, show instances of the king’s son succeeding or of powerful chiefs being elected to the kingship. The term republic is sometimes used to describe the little state of Tlascala, but this was in fact a federation of four chiefs, with an assembly of nobles. In the Zapotec district the Wiyatao or high-priest of Zopaa was a divine ruler before whom all prostrated themselves with faces to the ground; he was even too sacred to allow his foot to touch the earth, and was only seen carried in a litter.
The accounts of the palaces of the native kings must be taken with some reserve, from the tendency to use descriptive terms not actually untrue, but which convey erroneous ideas taken from European architecture; thus what are called columns of porphyry and jasper supporting marble balconies might perhaps be better described as piers carrying slabs, whilePalaces, &c. the apartments and terraces must have been more remarkable for number and extent than architectural grandeur, being but low one-storied buildings. The principal palace of Mexico consisted of hundreds of rooms ranged round three open squares, of such extent that one of the companions of Cortes records having four times wandered about till he was tired, without seeing the whole. Not less remarkable was the palace of Tezcuco, surrounded with its groves and pleasure-gardens; and, though now hardly anything remains of the buildings above ground, the neighbouring hill of Tezcotzinco still has its stone steps and terraces; and the immense embankment carrying the aqueduct-channel of hewn stone which supplied water to basins cut in the solid, rock still remains to prove that the chroniclers’ descriptions, if highly coloured, were at any rate genuine. Till the 18th century the gigantic figures of Axayacatl and his son Montezuma were to be seen carved in the porphyry hill of Chapultepec, but these as well as the hanging gardens have been destroyed, and only the groves of ahuehuete (cypress) remain of the ancient beauties of the place. That in the palace gardens flowers from the tierra caliente were transplanted, and water-fowl bred near fresh and salt pools fit for each kind, that all kinds of birds and beasts were kept in well-appointed zoological gardens, where there were homes even for alligators and snakes—all this testifies to a cultivation of natural history which was really beyond the European level of the time. From the palaces and retinues of thousands of servants attached to the royal service may be inferred at once the despotic power of the Mexican rulers and the heavy taxation of the people; in fact some of the most remarkable of the picture-writings are tribute-rolls enumerating by hundreds and thousands the mantles, ocelot-skins, bags of gold-dust, bronze hatchets, loads of chocolate, &c., furnished periodically by the towns. Below the king was a numerous and powerful class of nobles, the highest of whom (tlatoani) were great vassals owing little more than homage and tribute to their feudal lord, while the natural result of the unruliness of the noble class was that the king to keep them in check increased their numbers, brought them to the capital as councillors, and balanced their influence by military and household officers, and by a rich and powerful merchant class. The nobles not only had privileges of rank and dignity, but substantial power over the plebeian or peasant class (macehualli). The greatest estates belonged to the king, or had been granted to military chiefs whose sons succeeded them, or were the endowments of temples, but the calpulli or village community still survived, and each freeman of the tribe held and tilled his portion of the common lands. Below the freemen were the slaves, who were war-captives, persons enslaved for punishment, or children sold by their parents. Prisoners of war were mostly doomed to sacrifice, but other classes of slaves were mildly treated, retaining civil rights, and their children were born free.
The superior courts of law formed part of the palace, and there were tribunals in the principal cities, over each of which presided a supreme judge or cihuacoatl, who was irremovable, and whose criminal decisions not even the king might reverse; he appointed the lower judges and heard appeals from them; it is doubtful whether he judged in civil cases, but both kinds of suitsJustice. were heard in the court below, by the tlacatecatl and his two associates, below whom were the ward-magistrates. Lands were set apart for the maintenance of the judges, and indeed nothing gives a higher idea of the elaborate civilization of Mexico than this judicial system, which culminated in a general court and council of state presided over by the king. The laws and records of suits were set down in picture-writings, of which some are still to be seen; sentence of death was recorded by drawing a line with an arrow across the portrait of the condemned, and the chronicles describe the barbaric solemnity with which the king passed sentence sitting on a golden and jewelled throne in the divine tribunal, with one hand on an ornamented skull and the golden arrow in the other. Among the resemblances to old-world law was the use of a judicial oath, the witness touching the ground with his finger and putting it to his lips, thus swearing by Mother Earth. The criminal laws were of extreme severity, even petty theft being punished by the thief being enslaved to the person he had robbed, while to steal a tobacco pouch or twenty ears of corn was death; he who pilfered in the market was then and there beaten to death, and he who insulted Xipe, the god of the gold- and silversmiths, by stealing his precious metal, was skinned alive and sacrificed
to the offended deity. Though aloe-beer or “pulque” was allowed
