Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/219

MEXICO 209 or from Yucatan (for the stories differ widely), and dwelt twenty years among them, teaching men to follow his austere and virtuous life, to hate all violence and war, to sacrifice no men or beasts on the altars, but to give mild offerings of bread and flowers and perfumes, and to do penance by the votaries drawing blood with thorns from their own bodies. Legend tells stories of his teaching men picture-writing and the calendar, and also the artistic work of the silversmith, for which Cholula was long famed ; but at last he departed, some say towards the unknown land of Tlapallan, but others to Coatzacualco on the Atlantic coast on the confines of Central America, where native tradition still keeps up the divine names of Gucumatz among the Quiche s (see p. 208) and Cukulcan among the Mayas, these names having the same meaning as Quetzalcoatl in Aztec, viz., " Feathered Serpent." Native tradition held that when Quetzalcoatl reached the Atlantic he sent back his companions to tell the Cholulans that in a future age his brethren, white men and bearded like himself, should land there from the sea where the sun rises, and come to rule the country. That there is a basis of reality in the Toltec traditions is shown by the word toltecatl having become among the later Aztecs a substantive signifying an artist or skilled craftsman. It is further related by the Mexican historians that the Toltec nation all but perished in the llth century by years of drought, famine, and pestilence, a few only of the survivors remaining in the land, while the rest migrated into Yucatan and Guatemala, where, as has been already pointed out, their name is commemorated in local records. After the Toltecs came the Chichimecs, whose name, derived from chichi, "dog," is applied to many rude tribes ; the Chichimecs here in question are said to have come from Amaquemecan under a king named Xolotl, names which being Aztec imply that the nation was Nahua ; at any rate they appear afterwards as fusing with more cultured Nahua nations in the neighbourhood of Tezcuco. Lastly is recorded the Mexican immigration of the seven nations, Xochimilca, Chalca, Tepaneca, Acolhua, Tlahuica, Tlascalteca, Azteca. This classification of the Nahuatlac tribes has a meaning and value. It is true that Aztlan, the land whence the Aztecs traced their name and source, cannot be identified by geographers, while the story of the separation of the seven nations at the place called Chicomoztoc or Seven Caves looks like national legend rather than real history. But the later stages of the long Aztec migration seem historical, and the map of Mexico still shows the names of several settlements recorded in the curious migration-map published by Gemelli Careri (Giro del Jfondo, Venice, 1728) and commented on by Humboldt; among these local names are Tzompanco, " place of skulls," now Zumpango in the north of the Mexican valley, and Chapultepec, "grasshopper hill," now a suburb of the city of Mexico itself, where the Aztecs are recorded to have celebrated in 1195 the festival of tying up the "bundle of years " and beginning a new cycle. The Aztecs moving from place to place in Anahuac found little welcome from the Nahua peoples already settled there, whose own history was indeed one of incessant jealousy and quarrel. One of the first clear events of the Aztec arrival is their being made tributary by the Tepanecs, in whose service or alliance they began to manifest their warlike prowess in the fight near Tepeyacac, where now stands the famous shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thus they overcame in arms the Acolhuas, their superiors in civilization, who had made Tezcuco a centre of prosperity and improvement. By the 13th century the Aztecs by their ferocity had banded their neighbours together against them ; some were driven to take refuge on the reedy lake shore at Acoculco, while others were taken as captives into Culhuacan. The king of this district was Coxcoxtli, whose name has gained an undeserved reputation even in Europe as " Coxcox, the Mexican Noah," from a scene in the native picture-writing where his name appears together with the figure of a man floating in a dug-out tree, which has been mistaken even by Humboldt for a represen tation of the Mexican deluge-myth. Coxcoxtli used the help of the Aztecs against the Xochimilco people, but his own nation, horrified at their bloodthirsty sac rifice of prisoners, drove them out to live for years in want and misery on 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, i.e., "Stone-cactus," 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 after wards probably remained a cluster of huts, and the higher civilization of the country was still to be found among the other nations, 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 Cuer- navaca, on the watershed between the Atlantic and Pacific, caused the bringing of goldsmiths and other craftsmen home 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 de graded 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 Aztecs now became so predominant that the rest of native history may be fairly called the Aztec period, notwithstanding the picturesque magnificence and intellectual culture which made 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

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