The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West Part 4

Consider "the condition of some of the most polished countries in the sixteenth century after the establishment of the modern Inquisition--an inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.sive 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 wors.h.i.+p.

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 G.o.d 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 princ.i.p.al G.o.ddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to live idly, feasted at the banquets of the princ.i.p.al n.o.bles, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d), cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the mult.i.tudes 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 G.o.ds, and in a season of drought even children were sometimes slaughtered to propitiate Tlaloc, the G.o.d 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 a.s.serted their independence about A. D. 1325. Soon afterward, their first capital, Tenocht.i.tlan, 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 Cortes 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 inst.i.tutions, may be considered, perhaps, not much short of that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred."

In a pa.s.sage 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 a.n.a.logy 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 princ.i.p.al n.o.bles 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 G.o.d 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 l.u.s.ter and fame of your ancestors....

May G.o.d prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to G.o.d, who is in every place.[10]

[Footnote 10: Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva Espana, 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 G.o.ddess 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 a.s.sembled, 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 G.o.ds, 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, a.s.suming the dress and ornaments of their G.o.ds, moved from the capital toward a lofty mountain, about two leagues distant. They carried with them a n.o.ble 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 mult.i.tudes 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 inst.i.tuted 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 saeculares_ 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