Anahuac Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF THE MEXICAN G.o.dDESS OF WAR (OR OF DEATH), TEOYAOMIQUI. _(After Nebel). Height of the original, about Nine Feet_.]

It was like getting home again to reach Mexico, we had so many friends there, though our stay had been so short. We were fully occupied, for weeks of hard sight-seeing are hardly enough to investigate the objects of interest to be found in the city. We saw these things under the best auspices, for Mr. Christy had letters to the Minister of Public Instruction and other people in authority, who were exceedingly civil, and did all they could to put us in the way of seeing everything we wished. Among the places we visited, the Museum must have some notice.

It is in part of the building of the University; but we were rather surprised, when we reached the gate leading into the court-yard, to be stopped by a sentry who demanded what we wanted. The lower storey had been turned into a barrack by the Government, there being a want of quarters for the soldiers. As the ground-floor under the cloisters is used for the heavier pieces of sculpture, the scene was somewhat curious. The soldiers had laid several of the smaller idols down on their faces, and were sitting on the comfortable seat on the small of their backs, busy playing at cards. An enterprising soldier had built up a hutch with idols and sculptured stones against the statue of the great war-G.o.ddess Teoyaomiqui herself, and kept rabbits there. The state which the whole place was in when thus left to the tender mercies of a Mexican regiment may be imagined by any one who knows what a dirty and destructive animal a Mexican soldier is.

The guardians of the Museum have treated it even worse. People who know how often the curators of the Museums of southern Europe are ready to sell anything not very likely to be missed will not be astonished to hear of the same thing being done to a great extent some six or eight years before our visit.

The stone known as the statue of the war-G.o.ddess is a huge block of basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think that the figures on it stand for different personages, and that it is three G.o.ds,--Huitzilopochtli the G.o.d of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and Mictlanteuctli the G.o.d of h.e.l.l. It has necklaces of alternate hearts and dead man's hands, with death's heads for a central ornament. At the bottom of the block is a strange sprawling figure, which one cannot see now, for it is the base which rests on the ground; but there are two shoulders projecting from the idol, which show plainly that it did not stand on the ground, but was supported aloft on the tops of two pillars. The figure carved upon the bottom represents a monster holding a skull in each hand, while others hang from his knees and elbows. His mouth is a mere oval ring, a common feature of Mexican idols, and four tusks project just above it. The new moon laid down like a bridge forms his forehead, and a star is placed on each side of it. This is thought to have been the conventional representation of Mictlanteuctli (Lord of the Land of the Dead), the G.o.d of h.e.l.l, which was a place of utter and eternal darkness. Probably each victim as he was led to the altar could look up between the two pillars and see the hideous G.o.d of h.e.l.l staring down upon him from above.

There is little doubt that this is the famous war-idol which stood on the great teocalli of Mexico, and before which so many thousands of human victims were sacrificed. It lay undisturbed underground in the great square, close to the very site of the teocalli, until sixty years ago. For many years after that it was kept buried, lest the sight of one of their old deities might be too exciting for the Indians, who, as I have mentioned before, had certainly not forgotten it, and secretly ornamented it with garlands of flowers while it remained above ground.

The "sacrificial stone," so called, which also stands in the court-yard of the Museum, was not one of the ordinary altars on which victims were sacrificed. These altars seem to have been raised slabs of hard stone with a protuberant part near one end, so that the breast of the victim was raised into an arch, which made it more easy for the priest to cut across it with his obsidian knife. The Breton altars, where the slab was hollowed into the outline of a human figure, have some a.n.a.logy to this; but, though there were very many of these altars in different cities of Mexico, none are now known to exist. The stone we are now observing is quite a different thing, a cylindrical block of basalt nine feet across and three feet high: and Humboldt considers it to be the stone described by early Spanish writers, and called _temalacatl_ (spindle-stone) from its circular shape, something like a distaff-head.

Upon this the captive chiefs stood in the gladiatorial fights which took place within the s.p.a.ce surrounding the great teocalli. Slightly armed, they stood upon this raised platform in the midst of the crowd of spectators; and six champions in succession, armed with better weapons, came up to fight with them. If the captive worsted his a.s.sailants in this unequal contest, he was set free with presents; but this success was the lot of but few, and the fate of most was to be overpowered and dragged off ignominiously to be sacrificed like ordinary prisoners. On the top of the stone is sculptured an outline of the sun with its eight rays, and a hollow in the centre, whence a groove runs to the edge of the stone, probably to let the blood run down. All round it is an appropriate bas-relief repeated several times.

A vanquished warrior is giving up his stone-sword and his spears to his conqueror, who is tearing the plumed crest from his head.

The above explanation by Humboldt is a plausible one. But in Central America altars not unlike this, and with grooves upon the top, stand in front of the great stone idols; and this curious monument may have been nothing after all but an ordinary altar to sacrifice birds and small animals upon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE VIEWS OF A SACRIFICIAL COLLAR. _Carved out of hard mottled greenstone. (In Mr. Christy's Collection.) This is 17 inches long, and varies from 11 to 16 inches in width. The arms are 4 inches wide and 3 inches deep; and are 8 inches apart at about half their length._]

Senor Leon Ramirez, the curator, had come to the Museum to meet us, and we went over the collection of smaller objects, which are kept up stairs in gla.s.s-cases,--at any rate out of the way of the soldiers.

Here are the stone clamps shaped like the letter U, which were put over the wrists and ankles of the victims, to hold them down on the sacrificial stone. They are of hard stone, very heavy and covered with carvings. It is remarkable that, though the altars for human sacrifices are no longer to be found, these accessory stone clamps, or yoke-like collars, are not uncommon. A fine one from Mr. Christy's collection is figured. _(See opposite page.)_

The obsidian knives and arrow-heads are very good, but these I have spoken of already, as well as of the stone hammers. The axes and chisels of stone are so exactly like those found in Europe that it is quite impossible to distinguish them. The bronze hatchet-blades are thin and flat, slightly thickened at the sides to give them strength, and mostly of a very peculiar shape, something like a T, but still more resembling the section of a mushroom cut vertically through the middle of the stalk.

The obsidian mask is an extraordinary piece of work, considering the difficulty of cutting such a material. It was chipped into a rude outline, and finished into its exact shape by polis.h.i.+ng down with jeweller's sand. The polish is perfect, and there is hardly a scratch upon it. At least one of the old Spanish writers on Mexico gives the details of the process of cutting precious stones and polis.h.i.+ng them with _teoxalli_ or "G.o.d's sand." Masks in stone, wood, and terra-cotta are to be seen in considerable number in museums of Mexican antiquities. Their use is explained by pa.s.sages in the old Mexican writers, who mention that it was customary to mask the idols on the occasion of the king being sick, or of any other public calamity; and that men and women wore masks in some of the religious ceremonies. A fine mask of brown lava (from Mr. Christy's collection), which has been coloured, is here figured. _(See ill.u.s.tration.)_ The mirrors of obsidian have the same beautifully polished surface as the obsidian mask shows; and those made of nodules of pyrites, cut and polished, are worth notice.

The Mexicans were very skilful in making pottery; and of course there is a good collection here of terra-cotta vases, little altars and incense-dishes, rattles, flageolets, and whistles, tobacco-pipes and masks. Some of the large vases, which were formerly filled with skulls and bones, are admirable in their designs and decorations; and many specimens are to be seen of the red and black ware of Cholula, which was famous at the time of the Conquest, and was sent to all parts of the country. The art of glazing pottery seems only to have been introduced by the Spaniards, and to this day the Indians hardly care to use it. The terra-cotta rattles are very characteristic. They have little b.a.l.l.s in them which shake about, and they puzzled us much as the apple-dumpling did good King George, for we could not make out very easily how the b.a.l.l.s got inside. They were probably attached very slightly to the inside, and so baked and then broken loose. We often got little b.a.l.l.s like schoolboys' marbles, among lots of Mexican antiquities, and these were most likely the b.a.l.l.s out of broken rattles.

Burning incense was always an important part of the Mexican ceremonies.

When the white men were on their march to the capital, the inhabitants used to come out to meet them with such plates as we saw here, and burn copal before the leaders; and in Indian villages to this day the procession on saints' days would not be complete without men burning incense, not in regular censers, but in unglazed earthen platters such as their forefathers used.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF AN AZTEC MASK. _Sculptured out of hard brown lava. Twelve inches high; ten inches wide. (From Mr.

Christy's Collection.)_]

Our word _copal_ is the Mexican _copalli_. There are a few other Mexican words which have been naturalized in our European languages, of course indicating that the things they represent came from Mexico.

_Ocelotl_ is _ocelot_; _Tomatl_ is _tomata_; _Chilli_ is the Spanish _chile_ and our _chili_; _Cacahuatl_ is _cacao_ or cocoa; and _Chocolatl_, the beverage made from the cacao-bean with a mixture of vanilla, is our chocolate.

Cacao-beans were used by the Mexicans as money. Even in Humboldt's time, when there was no copper coinage, they were used as small change, six for a halfpenny; and Stephens says the Central Americans use them to this day. A mat in Mexican is _petlatl_, and thence a basket made of matting was called _petlacalli_--"mathouse." The name pa.s.sed to the plaited gra.s.s cigar-cases that are exported to Europe; and now in Spain any kind of cigar-case is called a _petaca_.

The pretty little ornamented calabashes--used, among other purposes, for drinking chocolate out of--were called by the Mexicans _xicalli_, a word which the Spaniards made into _jicara_, and now use to mean a chocolate-cup; and even the Italians have taken to it, and call a tea-cup a _chicchera_.

There is a well-known West Indian fruit which we call an _avocado_ or _alligator-pear_, and which the French call _avocat_ and the Spaniards _aguacate_. All these names are corruptions of the Aztec name of the fruit, _ahuacatl_.

Vanilla and cochineal were first found in Mexico; but the Spaniards did not adopt the unp.r.o.nounceable native names, _tlilxochitl_ and _nocheztli_. Vanilla, _vainilla_, means a little bean, from _vaina_, which signifies a scabbard or sheath, also a pod. _Cochinilla_ is from _coccus_, a berry, as it was at first supposed to be of vegetable origin. The Aztec name for cochineal, _nocheztli_, means "cactus-blood," and is a very apt description of the insect, which has in it a drop of deep crimson fluid, in which the colouring matter of the dye is contained.

The turkey, which was introduced into Europe from Mexico, was called _huexolotl_ from the gobbling noise it makes. (It must be remembered that x and j in Spanish are not the same letters as in English, but a hard guttural aspirate, like the German ch). The name, slightly altered into _guajalote_, is still used in Mexico; but when these birds were brought to Europe, the Spaniards called them peac.o.c.ks (_pavos_). To get rid of the confusion, it became necessary to call the real peac.o.c.k "_pavon_" (big peac.o.c.k), or "_pavo real_" (royal peac.o.c.k). The German name for a turkey, "Walscher Hahn," "Italian fowl," is reasonable, for the Germans got them from Italy; but our name "turkey" is wonderfully absurd.

There may be other Mexican words to be found in our language, but not many. The Mexicans were cultivating maize and tobacco when the Spaniards invaded the country, and had done so for ages; but these vegetables had been found already in the West India islands, and had got their name from the language of Hayti, _mahiz_ and _tabaco_; the latter word, it seems, meaning not the tobacco itself, but the cigars made of it.

I do not recollect anything else worthy of note that Europe has borrowed from Ancient Mexico, except Botanic Gardens, and dishes made to keep hot at dinner-time, which the Aztecs managed by having a pan of burning charcoal underneath them.

To return to the Museum. There are stamps in terra-cotta with geometrical patterns, for making lines and ornaments on the vases before they were baked, and for stamping patterns upon the cotton cloth which was one of their princ.i.p.al manufactures, as it is now. Connected with the same art are the _malacates_, or winders, which I have already described. Little grotesque heads made of baked clay, like those I have mentioned as being found in such immense numbers on the sites of old Mexican cities, are here by hundreds. I think there were, besides, some of the moulds, also in terra-cotta, in which they were formed; at any rate, they are to be seen, so that making the little heads must have been a regular trade. What they were for is not so easy to say. Some have bodies, and are made with flat backs to stand against a wall, and these were probably idols. The ancient Mexicans, we read, had household-G.o.ds in great numbers, and called them _Tepitotons_, "little ones." The greatest proportion, however, are mere heads which never had had bodies, and will not stand anyhow. They could not have been personal ornaments, for there is nothing to fasten them on by. They are rather a puzzle. I have seen a suggestion somewhere, that when a man was buried, each surviving member of his family put one of these heads into his grave. This sounds plausible enough, especially as both male and female heads are found.

One shelf in the museum is particularly instructive. We called it the "Chamber of Horrors," after the manner of Marlborough House, and it contains numbers of the sham antiquities, the manufacture of which is a regular thing in Mexico, as it is in Italy. They are princ.i.p.ally vases and idols of earthenware, for the art of working obsidian is lost, and there can be no trickery about that[18]; and as to the hammers, chisels, and idols in green jade, serpentine, and such like hard materials, they are decidedly cheaper to find than to make. The Indians in Mexico make their unglazed pottery just as they did before the Conquest, so that, if they imitate real antiques exactly, there is no possibility of detecting the fraud; but when they begin to work from their own designs, or even to copy from memory, they are almost sure to put in something that betrays them.

As soon as the Spaniards came, they began to introduce drawing as it was understood in Europe; and from that moment the peculiarities of Mexican art began to disappear. The foreheads of the Mexican races are all very low, and their painters and sculptors even exaggerated this peculiarity, to make the faces they depicted more beautiful,--so producing an effect which to us Europeans seems hideously ugly, but which is not more unnatural than the ideal type of beauty we see in the Greek statues. After the era of the Spaniards we see no more of such foreheads; and the eyes, which were drawn in profiles as one sees them in the full face, are put in their natural position. The short squat figures become slim and tall; and in numberless little details of dress, modelling, and ornament, the acquaintance of the artist with European types is shown; and it is very seldom that the modern counterfeiter can keep clear of these and get back to the old standard.

Among the things on the condemned shelf were men's faces too correctly drawn to be genuine, grotesque animals that no artist would ever have designed who had not seen a horse, head-dresses and drapery that were European and not Mexican. Among the figures in Mayer's _Mexico_, a vase is represented as a real antique, which, I think, is one of the worst cases I ever noticed. There is a man's head upon it, with long projecting pointed nose and chin, a long thin pendant moustache, an eye drawn in profile, and a cap. It is true the pure Mexican race occasionally have moustaches, but they are very slight, not like this, which falls in a curve on both sides of the mouth; and no Mexican of pure Indian race ever had such a nose and chin, which must have been modelled from the face of some toothless old Spaniard.

Mention must be made of the wooden drums--_teponaztli_--of which some few specimens are still to be seen in Mexico. Such drums figured in the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, and one often hears of them in Mexican history. I have mentioned already the great drum which Bernal Diaz saw when he went up the Mexican teocalli with Cortes, and which he describes as a h.e.l.lish instrument, made with skins of great serpents; and which, when it was struck, gave a loud and melancholy sound, that could be heard at two leagues' distance. Indeed, they did afterwards hear it from their camp a mile or two off, when their unfortunate companions were being sacrificed on the teocalli.

The Aztec drums, which are still to be seen, are altogether of wood, nearly cylindrical, but swelling out in the middle, and hollowed out of solid logs. Some have the sounding-board made unequally thick in different parts, so as to give several notes when struck. All are elaborately carved over with various designs, such as faces, head-dresses, weapons, suns with rays, and fanciful patterns, among which the twisted cord is one of the commonest.

Besides the drums which are preserved in museums, there are others, carefully kept in Indian villages, not as curiosities, but as instruments of magical power. h.e.l.ler mentions such a _teponaztli_, which is still preserved among the Indians of Huatusco, an Indian village near Mirador in the tierra templada, where the inhabitants have had their customs comparatively little altered by intercourse with white men. They keep this drum as a sacred instrument, and beat it only at certain times of the year, though they have no reason to give for doing so. It is to be regretted that h.e.l.ler did not take a note of the particular days on which this took place; for the times of the Mexican festivals are well known, and this information would have settled the question whether the Indians of the present day have really any definite recollection of their old customs.

Drums of this kind do not belong exclusively to Mexico. Among all the tribes of North America they were one of the princ.i.p.al "properties"

used by the Medicine-men in their ceremonies; and among the tribes which have not been christianized they are still to be found in use.

After we left Mexico, Mr. Christy visited some tribes in the Hudson's Bay Territory; and on one occasion, happening to a.s.sist at a festival in which just such a wooden drum was used, he bought it of the Medicine-man of the tribe, and packed it off triumphantly to his museum.

A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and Tezcuco. Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities, some perished by mere neglect, but the great ma.s.s was destroyed by archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt--and, to some extent, a successful one--to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying all the monuments and records in the country. One of the picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived white men, their s.h.i.+ps and horses, and their cannons with fire and smoke issuing from their mouths. Another shows a white man being sacrificed, of course one of the Spanish prisoners. The pictorial history of the migration of the Aztecs is here, and a list of tributes paid to the Mexican sovereign; the different articles being drawn with numbers against each, to show the quant.i.ties to be paid, as in the Egyptian inscriptions. Lord Kingsborough's great work contains fac-similes of several Mexican ma.n.u.scripts, and in Humboldt's _Vues des Cordilleres_ some of the most remarkable are figured and described.

One of the most curious of the Aztec picture-writings is in the Bodleian Library, and in fac-simile in Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities of Mexico_. In it are shown, in a series of little pictures, the education of Mexican boys and girls, as prescribed by law. The child four days old is being sprinkled with water, and receiving its name. At four years old they are to be allowed one tortilla a meal, which is indicated by a drawing above their heads, of four circles representing years, and one cake; and the father sends the son to carry water, while the mother shows the daughter how to spin. A tortilla is like an oat-cake, but is made of Indian corn.

At seven years old the boy is taken to learn to fish, while the girl spins; and so on with different occupations for one year after another.

At nine years old the father is allowed to punish his son for disobedience, by sticking aloe-points all over his naked body, while the daughters only have them stuck into their hands; and at eleven years old, both boy and girl were to be punished by holding their faces in the smoke of burning capsic.u.ms.

At fifteen the youth is married by the simple process of tying the corner of his s.h.i.+rt to the corner of the bride's petticoat (thus literally "splicing" them, as my companion remarked). And so on; after scenes of cutting wood, visiting the temples, fighting and feasting, we come to the last scene of all, headed "_seventy years_," and see an old man and woman reeling about helplessly drunk with pulque; for drunkenness, which was severely punished up to that age, was tolerated afterwards as a compensation for the sorrows and infirmities of the last period of life.

Astrological charts formed a large proportion of these picture-writings. Here, as elsewhere, we may trace the origin of astrology. The signs of the days and years were represented, for convenience sake, by different animals, and objects, like the signs of the Zodiac which we still retain. The signs remained after the history of their origin was lost; and then--what more natural than to imagine that the symbols handed down by their wise ancestors had some mysterious meaning, connected with the days and years they stood for; and then, that a man's destiny had to do with the names of the signs that "prevailed" at his birth?

There is little to be seen here or elsewhere, of one kind of work in which the Mexicans excelled perhaps more than in any other, the goldsmith's work. Where are the calendars of solid gold and silver--as big as great wheels, and covered with hieroglyphics, and the cups and collars, the golden birds, beasts, and fishes? The Spaniards who saw them record how admirable their workmans.h.i.+p was, and they were good judges of such matters. Benvenuto Cellini saw some of these things, and was filled with admiration. They have all gone to the melting-pot centuries ago! How important the goldsmith's trade was accounted in old times is shown by a strange Aztec law. It was no ordinary offence to steal gold and silver. Criminals convicted of this offence were not treated as common thieves, but were kept till the time when the goldsmiths celebrated their annual festival, and were then solemnly sacrificed to their G.o.d Xipe;[19] the priests flaying their bodies, cooking and eating them, and walking about dressed in their skins, a ceremony which was called _tlacaxipehualiztli_, "the man-flaying."

Museums of Mexican antiquities are so much alike, that, in general, one description will do for all of them. Mr. Uhde's Museum at Heidelberg is a far finer one than that at Mexico, except as regards the picture-writings. I was astonished at the enormous quant.i.ty of stone idols, delicately worked trinkets in various hard stones and even in obsidian, terra-cotta tobacco-pipes, figures, and astronomical calendars, &c., displayed there.

Mr. Christy's collection is richer than any other in small sculptured figures from Central America. It contains a squatting female figure in hard brown lava, like the one in black basalt which is drawn in Humboldt's _Vues des Cordilleres_, and there called (I cannot imagine why) an Aztec priestess. Above all, it contains what I believe to be the three finest specimens of Aztec decorative art which exist in the world. One of these is the knife of which the figure at page 101 gives some faint idea, the other two being a wooden mask overlaid with mosaic, and a human skull decorated in the same manner, of which a more particular description will be found in the Appendix. There are two kinds of Aztec articles in Mr. Christy's collection which I did not observe either at Mexico or Heidelberg. These are bronze needles, resembling our packing-needles, and little cast bronze bells, called in Aztec _yotl_, not unlike small horse-bells made in England at the present day; these are figured in the tribute-lists in the picture-writings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTIQUE BRONZE BELLS FROM MEXICO. _Such as are often sculptured on Aztec Images._]

Apropos of the mammoth bones preserved in the Mexican Museum, I must insert a quotation from Bernal Diaz. It is clear that the traditions of giants which exist in almost every country had their origin in the discovery of fossil bones, whose real character was not suspected until a century ago; but I never saw so good an example of this as in the Tlascalan tradition, which my author relates as follows.--"And they"

(the Tlascalan chiefs) "said that their ancestors had told them that, in times past, there lived amongst them in settlements men and women of great size, with huge bones; and, as they were wicked and of evil dispositions, they (the ancestors of the Tlascalans) fought against them and killed them; and those who were left died out. And that we might see what stature they were of, they brought a bone of one of them, and it was very big, and its height was that of a man of reasonable stature; it was a thigh-bone, and I (Bernal Diaz) measured myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, who am a man of reasonable stature; and they brought other pieces of bones like the first, but they were already eaten through and rotted by the earth; and we were all amazed to see those bones, and held that for certain there had been giants in that land; and our captain, Cortes, said to us that it would be well to send the great bone to Castile, that His Majesty might see it; and so we did send it by the first messengers who went."

Among other things belonging to the Spanish period is the banner, with the picture of the Virgin, which accompanied the Spanish army during the Conquest. Authentic or not, it is certainly very well painted.

There is a suit of armour said to have belonged to Cortes. Its genuineness has been doubted; but I think its extreme smallness seems to go towards proving that it is a true relic, for Bullock saw the tomb of Cortes opened some thirty years ago, and was surprised at the small proportions of his skeleton. Specimens of the pottery and gla.s.s now made in the country, and other curiosities, complete the catalogue of this interesting collection.

The Mexican calendar is not in the Museum, but is built into the wall of the cathedral, in the Plaza Mayor. It is sculptured on the face of a single block of basalt, which weighs between twenty and thirty tons, and must have been transported thirty miles by Mexican labourers, for the stone is not found nearer than that distance from the city; and this transportation was, of course, managed by hand-labour alone, as there were no beasts of burden.

We know pretty well the whole system of Mexican astronomy from this calendar-stone and a few ma.n.u.scripts which still exist, and from the information given in the work of Gama the astronomer and other writers.

The Aztecs and Tezcucans who used it, did not claim its invention as their own, but said they had received it from the Toltecs, their predecessors. The year consisted of 365 days, with an intercalation of 13 days for each cycle of 52 years, which brought it to the same length as the Julian year of 365 days 6 hours. The theory of Gama, that the intercalation was still more exact, namely, 12-1/2 days instead of 13, seems to be erroneous.