Chapter III: Mexico and Central America (2)

After the destruction of the ancient records by Landa, considerable efforts were made throughout Yucatan, in a sort of reactionary spirit, to recall the lingering recollections of what these manuscripts contained. The grouping of such recovered material became known as Chilan Balam.[915] It is from local collections of this kind that Brinton selected the narratives which he has published as _The Maya Chronicles_, being the first volume of his _Library of Aboriginal American Literature_. The original texts[916] are accompanied by an English translation. One of the books, the Chilan Balam of Mani, had been earlier printed by Stephens, in his _Yucatan_.[917] The only early Spanish chronicle is Bishop Landa’s _Relation des choses de Yucatan_,[918] which follows not an original, but a copy of the bishop’s text, written, as Brasseur thinks, thirty years after Landa’s death, or about 1610, and which Brasseur first brought to the world’s attention when he published his edition, with both Spanish and French texts, at Paris, in 1864. The MS. seems to have been incomplete, and was perhaps inaccurately copied at the time. At this date (1864) Brasseur had become an enthusiast for his theory of the personification of the forces of nature in the old recitals, and there was some distrust how far his zeal had affected his text; and moreover he had not published the entire text, but had omitted about one sixth. Brasseur’s method of editing became apparent when, in 1884, at Madrid, Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado published literally the whole Spanish text, as an appendix to the Spanish translation of Rosny’s essay on the hieratic writing. The Spanish editor pointed out some but not all the differences between his text and Brasseur’s,—a scrutiny which Brinton has perfected in his _Critical Remarks on the Editions of Landa’s Writings_ (Philad., 1887).[919] Landa gives extracts from a work by Bernardo Lizana, relating to Yucatan, of which it is difficult to get other information.[920] The earliest published historical narrative was Cogolludo’s _Historia de Yucathan_ (Madrid, 1688).[921] Stephens, in his study of the subject, speaks of it as “voluminous, confused, and ill-digested,” and says “it might almost be called a history of the Franciscan friars, to which order Cogolludo belonged.”[922]

* * * * *

The native sources of the aboriginal history of Guatemala, and of what is sometimes called the Quiché-Cakchiquel Empire, are not abundant,[923] but the most important are the _Popul Vuh_, a traditional book of the Quichés, and the _Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan_.

The _Popul Vuh_ was discovered in the library of the university at Guatemala, probably not far from 1700,[924] by Francisco Ximenez, a missionary in a mountain village of the country. Ximenez did not find the original Quiché book, but a copy of it, made after it was lost, and later than the Conquest, which we may infer was reproduced from memory to replace the lost text, and in this way it may have received some admixture of Christian thought.[925] It was this sort of a text that Ximenez turned into Spanish; and this version, with the copy of the Quiché, which Ximenez also made, is what has come down to us. Karl Scherzer, a German traveller[926] in the country, found Ximenez’ work, which had seemingly passed into the university library on the suppression of the monasteries, and which, as he supposes, had not been printed because of some disagreeable things in it about the Spanish treatment of the natives. Scherzer edited the MS., which was published as _Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de Esta Provincia de Guatemala_[927] (Vienna, 1857).

Brasseur, who had seen the Ximenez MSS. in 1855, considered the Spanish version untrustworthy, and so with the aid of some natives he gave it a French rendering, and republished it a few years later as _Popol Vuh_. _Le Livre sacré et les Mythes de l’antiquité américaine, avec les livres héroïques et historiques des Quichés. Ouvrage original des indigènes de Guatémala, texte Quiché et trad. française en regard, accompagnée de notes philologiques et d’un commentaire sur la mythologie et les migrations des peuples anciens de l’Amérique, etc., composé sur des documents originaux et inédits_ (Paris, 1861).

Brasseur’s introduction bears the special title: _Dissertation sur les mythes de l’antiquité Américaine sur la probabilité des Communications existant anciennement d’un Continent à l’autre, et sur les migrations des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique_,—in which he took occasion to elucidate his theory of cataclysms and Atlantis. He speaks of his annotations as the results of his observations among the Quichés and of his prolonged studies. He calls the _Popul Vuh_ rather a national than a sacred book,[928] and thinks it the original in some part of the “Livre divin des Toltèques,” the Teo-Amoxtli.[929] Brinton avers that neither Ximenez nor Brasseur has adequately translated the Quiché text,[930] and sees no reason to think that the matter has been in any way influenced by the Spanish contact, emanating indeed long before that event; and he has based some studies upon it.[931] In this opinion Bandelier is at variance, at least as regards the first portion, for he believes it to have been _written_ after the Conquest and under Christian influences.[932] Brasseur in some of his other writings has further discussed the matter.[933]

The _Memorial of Tecpan-Atitlan_, to use Brasseur’s title, is an incomplete MS.,[934] found in 1844 by Juan Gavarrete in rearranging the MSS. of the convent of San Francisco, of Guatemala, and it was by Gavarrete that a Spanish version of Brasseur’s rendering was printed in 1873 in the _Boletin de la Sociedad económica de Guatemala_ (nos. 29-43). This translation by Brasseur, made in 1856, was never printed by him, but, passing into Pinart’s hands with Brasseur’s collections,[935] it was entrusted by that collector to Dr. Brinton, who selected the parts of interest (46 out of 96 pp.), and included it as vol. vi. in his _Library of Aboriginal American Literature_, under the title of _The annals of the Cakchiquels_. _The original text, with a translation, notes, and introduction_ (Philadelphia, 1885).

Brinton disagrees with Brasseur in placing the date of its beginning towards the opening of the eleventh century, and puts it rather at about A.D. 1380. Brasseur says he received the original from Gavarrete, and it would seem to have been a copy made between 1620 and 1650, though it bears internal evidence of having been written by one who was of adult age at the time of the Conquest.

Brinton’s introduction discusses the ethnological position of the Cakchiquels, who he thinks had been separated from the Mayas for a long period.

The next in importance of the Guatemalan books is the work of Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman, _Historia de Guatemala, ó Recordación florida escrita el siglo xvii., que publica por primera vez con notas é ilustraciones F. Zaragoza_ (Madrid, 1882-83), being vols. 1 and 2 of the _Biblioteca de los americanistas_. The original MS., dated 1690, is in the archives of the city of Guatemala. Owing to a tendency of the author to laud the natives, modern historians have looked with some suspicion on his authority, and have pointed out inconsistencies and suspected errors.[936] Of a later writer, Ramon de Ordoñez (died about 1840), we have only the rough draught of a _Historia de la creation del Cielo y de la tierra, conforme al sistema de la gentilidad Americana_, which is of importance for traditions.[937] This manuscript, preserved in the Museo Nacional in Mexico, is all that now exists, representing the perfected work. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, 113) had a copy of this draught (made in 1848-49). The original fair copy was sent to Madrid for the press, and it is suspected that the Council for the Indies suppressed it in 1805. Ramon cites a manuscript _Hist. de la Prov. de San Vicente de Chiappas y Goathemala_, which is perhaps the same as the _Crónica de la Prov. de Chiapas y Guatemala_, of which the seventh book is in the Museo Nacional (_Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 97; Brasseur, _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, 157).

The work of Antonio de Remesal is sometimes cited as _Historia general de las Indias occidentales, y particular de la gobernacion de Chiapas y Guatemala_, and sometimes as _Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chyapa y Guatemala_ (Madrid, 1619, 1620).[938]

* * * * *

Bandelier (_Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, i. 95) has indicated the leading sources of the history of Chiapas, so closely associated with Guatemala. To round the study of the aboriginal period of this Pacific region, we may find something in Alvarado’s letters on the Conquest;[939] in Las Casas for the interior parts, and in Alonso de Zurita’s _Relacion_, 1560,[940] as respects the Quiché tribes, which is the source of much in Herrera.[941] For Oajaca (Oaxaca, Guaxaca) the special source is Francisco de Burgoa’s _Geográfica descripcion de la parte septentrional del Polo Artico de la América_, etc. (México, 1674), in two quarto volumes,—or at least it is generally so regarded. Bandelier, who traces the works on Oajaca (_Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 115), says there is a book of a modern writer, Juan B. Carriedo, which follows Burgoa largely. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 33) speaks of Burgoa as the only source which remains of the native history of Oajaca. He says it is a very rare book, even in Mexico. He largely depends upon its full details in some parts of his _Nations Civilisées_ (iii. livre 9). Alonso de la Rea’s _Crónica de Mechoacan_ (Mexico, 1648) and Basalenque’s _Crónica de San Augustin de Mechoacan_ (Mexico, 1673) are books which Brinton complains he could find in no library in the United States.

We trace the aboriginal condition of Nicaragua in Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Torquemada, and Ixtlilxochitl.[942]

* * * * *

The earliest general account of all these ancient peoples which we have in English is in the _History of America_, by William Robertson, who describes the condition of Mexico at the time of the Conquest, and epitomizes the early Spanish accounts of the natives. Prescott and Helps followed in his steps, with new facilities. Albert Gallatin brought the powers of a vigorous intellect to bear, though but cursorily, upon the subject, in his “Notes on the semi-civilized nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America,” in the _Amer. Ethnological Society’s Transactions_ (N. Y., 1845, vol. i.), and he was about the first to recognize the dangerous pitfalls of the pseudo-historical narratives of these peoples. The _Native Races_[943] of H. H. Bancroft was the first very general sifting and massing in English of the great confusion of material upon their condition, myths, languages, antiquities, and history.[944] The archæological remains are treated by Stephens for Yucatan and Central America, by Dr. Le Plongeon[945] for Yucatan, by Ephraim G. Squier for Nicaragua and Central America in general,[946] by Adolphe F. A. Bandelier in his communications to the Peabody Museum and to the Archæological Institute of America,[947] and by Professor Daniel G. Brinton in his editing of ancient records[948] and in his mythological and linguistic studies, referred to elsewhere. To these may be added, as completing the English references, various records of personal observations.[949]

Follows an etching published in the _Annuaire de la Société Américaine de France_, 1875. He died at Nice, Jan. 8, 1874, aged 59 years.]

During the American Civil War, when there were hopes of some permanence for French influence in Mexico, the French government made some organized efforts to further the study of the antiquities of the country, and the results were published in the _Archives de la Commission Scientifique du Méxique_ (Paris, 1864-69, in 3 vols.).[950] The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who took a conspicuous part in this labor, has probably done more than any other Frenchman to bring into order the studies upon these ancient races, and in some directions he is our ultimate source. Unfortunately his character as an archæological expounder did not improve as he went on, and he grew to be the expositor of some wild notions that have proved acceptable to few. He tells us that he first had his attention turned to American archæology by the report, which had a short run in European circles, of the discovery of a Macedonian helmet and weapons in Brazil in 1832, and by a review of Rio’s report on Palenqué, which he read in the _Journal des Savants_. Upon coming to America, fresh from his studies in Rome, he was made professor of history in the seminary at Quebec in 1845-46, writing at that time a _Histoire du Canada_, of little value. Later, in Boston, he perfected his English and read Prescott. Then we find him at Rome poring over the _Codex Vaticanus_, and studying the _Codex Borgianus_ in the library of the Propaganda. In 1848 he returned to the United States, and, embarking at New Orleans for Mexico, he found himself on shipboard in the company of the new French minister, whom he accompanied, on landing, to the city of Mexico, being made almoner to the legation. This official station gave him some advantage in beginning his researches, in which Rafael Isidro Gondra, the director of the Museo, with the curators of the vice-regal archives, and José Maria Andrade, the librarian of the university, assisted him. Later he gave himself to the study of the Nahua tongue, under the guidance of Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia, a descendant of a brother of Montezuma, then a professor in the college of San Gregorio. In 1851 he was ready to print at Mexico, in French and Spanish, his _Lettres pour servir d’introduction à l’histoire primitive des anciennes nations civilisées du Méxique_, addressed (October, 1850) to the Duc de Valmy, in which he sketched the progress of his studies up to that time. He speaks of it as “le premier fruit de mes travaux d’archéologie et d’histoire méxicaines.”[951] It was this brochure which introduced him to the attention of Squier and Aubin, and from the latter, during his residence in Paris (1851-54), he received great assistance. Pressed in his circumstances, he was obliged at this time to eke out his living by popular writing, which helped also to enable him to publish his successive works.[952] To complete his Central American studies, he went again to America in 1854, and in Washington he saw for the first time the texts of Las Casas and Duran, in the collection of Peter Force, who had got copies from Madrid. He has given us[953] an account of his successful search for old manuscripts in Central America. Finally, as the result of all these studies, he published his most important work,—_Histoire des nations civilisées du Méxique et de l’Amérique centrale durant les siècles antérieurs à C. Colomb, écrite sur des docs. origin. et entièrement inédits, puisés aux anciennes archives des indigènes_ (Paris, 1857-58).[954] This was the first orderly and extensive effort to combine out of all available material, native and Spanish, a divisionary and consecutive history of ante-Columbian times in these regions, to which he added from the native sources a new account of the conquest by the Spaniards. His purpose to separate the historic from the mythical may incite criticism, but his views are the result of more labor and more knowledge than any one before him had brought to the subject.[955] In his later publications there is less reason to be satisfied with his results, and Brinton[956] even thinks that “he had a weakness to throw designedly considerable obscurity about his authorities and the sources of his knowledge.” His fellow-students almost invariably yield praise to his successful research and to his great learning, surpassing perhaps that of any of them, but they are one and all chary of adopting his later theories.[957] These were expressed at length in his _Quatre lettres sur le Mexique_. _Exposition du système hiéroglyphique mexicain. La fin de l’âge de pierre. Époque glaciaire temporaire. Commencement de l’âge de bronze. Origines de la civilisation et des religions de l’antiquité. D’après le Teo-Amoxtli_ [etc.] (Paris, 1868), wherein he accounted as mere symbolism what he had earlier elucidated as historical records, and connected the recital of the _Codex Chimalpopoca_ with the story of Atlantis, making that lost land the original seat of all old-world and new-world civilization, and finding in that sacred history of Colhuacan and Mexico the secret evidence of a mighty cataclysm that sunk the continent from Honduras (subsequently with Yucatan elevated) to perhaps the Canaries.[958] Two years later, in his elucidation of the _MS. Troano_ (1869-70), this same theory governed all his study. Brasseur was quite aware of the loss of estimation which followed upon his erratic change of opinion, as the introduction to his _Bibl. Mex.-Guatémalienne_ shows. No other French writer, however, has so associated his name with the history of these early peoples.[959]

In Mexico itself the earliest general narrative was not cast in the usual historical form, but in the guise of a dialogue, held night after night, between a Spaniard and an Indian, the ancient history of the country was recounted. The author, Joseph Joaquin Granados y Galvez, published it in 1778, as _Tardes Américanas: gobierno gentil y católico: breve y particular noticia de toda la historia Indiana: sucesos, casos notables, y cosas ignoradas, desde la entrada de la Gran nacion Tulteca á esta tierra de Anahuac, hasta los presentes tiempos_.[960]

The most comprehensive grouping of historical material is in the _Diccionario Universal de historia y de Geografía_ (Mexico, 1853-56),[961] of which Manuel Orozco y Berra was one of the chief collaborators. This last author has in two other works added very much to our knowledge of the racial and ancient history of the indigenous peoples. These are his _Geografía de las lenguas y Carta Etnográfica de México_ (Mexico, 1864),[962] and his _Historia antigua y de la Conquista de México_ (Mexico, 1880, in four volumes).[963] Perhaps the most important of all the Mexican publications is Manuel Larrainzar’s _Estudios sobre la historia de América, sus ruinas y antigüedades, comparadas con lo más notable del otro Continente_ (Mexico, 1875-1878, in five volumes).

In German the most important of recent books is Hermann Strebel’s _Alt-Mexico_ (Hamburg, 1885); but Waitz’s _Amerikaner_ (1864, vol. ii.) has a section on the Mexicans. Adolph Bastian’s “Zur Geschichte des Alten Mexico” is contained in the second volume of his _Culturländer des Alten America_ (Berlin, 1878), in which he considers the subject of Quetzalcoatl, the religious ceremonial, administrative and social life, as well as the different stocks of the native tribes.

NOTES.

I. THE AUTHORITIES ON THE SO-CALLED CIVILIZATION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND ADJACENT LANDS, AND THE INTERPRETATION OF SUCH AUTHORITIES.

THE ancient so-called civilization which the Spaniards found in Mexico and Central America is the subject of much controversy: in the first place as regards its origin, whether indigenous, or allied to and derived from the civilizations of the Old World; and in the second place as regards its character, whether it was something more than a kind of grotesque barbarism, or of a nature that makes even the Spanish culture, which supplanted it, inferior in some respects by comparison.[964] The first of these problems, as regards its origin, is considered in another place. As respects the second, or its character, it is proposed here to follow the history of opinions.

In a book published at Seville in 1519, Martin Fernandez d’Enciso’s _Suma de geographia que trata de todas las partidas y provincias del mundo: en especial de las Indias_,[965] the European reader is supposed to have received the earliest hints of the degree of civilization—if it be so termed—of which the succeeding Spanish writers made so much. A brief sentence was thus the shadowy beginning of the stories of grandeur and magnificence[966] which we find later in Cortes, Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, Torquemada, Sahagún, Ramusio, Gomara, Oviedo, Zurita, Tezozomoc, and Ixtlilxochitl, and which is repeated often with accumulating effect in Acosta, Herrera, Lorenzana, Solis, Clavigero, and their successors.[967] Bandelier[968] points out how Robertson, in his views of Mexican civilization as in “the infancy of civil life,”[969] really opened the view for the first time of the exaggerated and uncritical estimates of the older writers, which Morgan has carried in our day to the highest pitch, and, as it would seem, without sufficient recognition of some of the contrary evidence.

It has usually been held that the creation among the Mexicans about thirty years after the founding of Mexico of a chief-of-men (Tlacatecuhtli) instituted a feudal monarchy. Bandelier,[970] speaking of the application of feudal terms by the old writers to Mexican institutions, says: “What in their first process of thinking was merely a comparative, became very soon a positive terminology for the purpose of describing institutions to which this foreign terminology never was adapted.” He instances that the so-called “king” of these early writers was a translation of the native term, which in fact only meant “one of those who spoke;” that is, a prominent member of the council.[971] Bandelier traces the beginning of the feudal ideas as a graft upon the native systems, in the oldest document issued by Europeans on Mexican soil, when Cortes (May 20, 1519) conferred land on his allies, the chiefs of Axapusco and Tepeyahualco, and for the first time made their offices hereditary. It is Bandelier’s opinion that “the grantees had no conception of the true import of what they accepted; neither did Cortes conceive the nature of their ideas.” This was followed after the Spanish occupation of Mexico by the institution of “repartimientos,” through which the natives became serfs of the soil to the conquerors.[972]

The story about this unknown splendor of a strange civilization fascinated the world nearly half a century ago in the kindly recital of Prescott;[973] but it was observed that he quoted too often the somewhat illusory and exaggerated statements of Ixtlilxochitl, and was not a little attracted by the gorgeous pictures of Waldeck and Dupaix. With such a charming depicter, the barbaric gorgeousness of this ancient empire, as it became the fashion to call it, gathered a new interest, which has never waned, and Morgan[974] is probably correct in affirming that it “has called into existence a larger number of works than were ever before written upon any people of the same number and of the same importance.”[975] Even those who, like Tylor, had gone to Mexico sceptics, had been forced to the conclusion that Prescott’s pictures were substantially correct, and setting aside what he felt to be the monstrous exaggerations of Solis, Gomara, and the rest, he could not find the history much less trustworthy than European history of the same period.[976] It has been told in another place[977] how the derogatory view, as opposed to the views of Prescott, were expressed by R. A. Wilson in his _New Conquest of Mexico_, in assuming that all the conquerors said was baseless fabrication, the European Montezuma becoming a petty Indian chief, and the great city of Mexico a collection of hovels in an everglade,—the ruins of the country being accounted for by supposing them the relics of an ancient Phœnician civilization, which had been stamped out by the inroads of barbarians, whose equally barbarious descendants the Spaniards were in turn to overcome. It cannot be said that such iconoclastic opinions obtained any marked acceptance; but it was apparent that the notion of the exaggeration of the Spanish accounts was becoming sensibly fixed in the world’s opinion. We see this reaction in a far less excessive way in Daniel Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_ (i. 325, etc.), and he was struck, among other things, with the utter obliteration of the architectural traces of the conquered race in the city of Mexico itself.[978] When, in 1875, Hubert H. Bancroft published the second volume of his _Native Races_, he confessed “that much concerning the Aztec civilization had been greatly exaggerated by the old Spanish writers, and for obvious reasons;” but he contended that the stories of their magnificence must in the main be accepted, because of the unanimity of witnesses, notwithstanding their copying from one another, and because of the evidence of the ruins.[979] He strikes his key-note in his chapter on the “Government of the Nahua Nations,” in speaking of it as “monarchical and nearly absolute;”[980] but it was perhaps in his chapter on the “Palaces and Households of the Nahua Kings,” where he fortifies his statement by numerous references, that he carried his descriptions to the extent that allied his opinions to those who most unhesitatingly accepted the old stories.[981]

The most serious arraignment of these long-accepted views was by Lewis H. Morgan, who speaks of them as having “caught the imagination and overcome the critical judgment of Prescott, ravaged the sprightly brain of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and carried up in a whirlwind our author at the Golden Gate.”[982]

Morgan’s studies had been primarily among the Iroquois, and by analogy he had applied his reasoning to the aboriginal conditions of Mexico and Central America, thus degrading their so-called civilization to the level of the Indian tribal organization, as it was understood in the North.[983] Morgan’s confidence in its deductions was perfect, and he was not very gracious in alluding to the views of his opponents. He looked upon “the fabric of Aztec romance as the most deadly encumbrance upon American ethnology.”[984] The Spanish chroniclers, as he contended, “inaugurated American aboriginal history upon a misconception of Indian life, which has remained substantially unquestioned till recently.”[985] He charges upon ignorance of the structure and principles of Indian society, the perversion of all the writers,[986] from Cortes to Bancroft, who, as he says, unable to comprehend its peculiarities, invoked the imagination to supply whatever was necessary to fill out the picture.[987] The actual condition to which the Indians of Spanish America had reached was, according to his schedule, the upper status of barbarism, between which and the beginning of civilization he reckoned an entire ethnical period. “In the art of government they had not been able to rise above gentile institutions and establish political society. This fact,” Morgan continues, “demonstrates the impossibility of privileged classes and of potentates, under their institutions, with power to enforce the labor of the people for the erection of palaces for their use, and explains the absence of such structures.”[988]

This is the essence of the variance of the two schools of interpretation of the Aztec and Maya life. The reader of Bancroft will find, on the other hand, due recognition of an imperial system, with its monarch and nobles and classes of slaves, and innumerable palaces, of which we see to-day the ruins. The studies of Bandelier are appealed to by Morgan as substantiating his view.[989] Mrs. Zelia Nuttall (_Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci._, Aug., 1886) claims to be able to show that the true interpretation of the Borgian and other codices points in part at least to details of a communal life.

The special issues which for a test Morgan takes with Bancroft are in regard to the character of the house in which Montezuma lived, and of the dinner which is represented by Bernal Diaz and the rest as the daily banquet of an imperial potentate. Morgan’s criticism is in his _Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines_ (Washington, 1881).[990] The basis of this book had been intended for a fifth Part of his _Ancient Society_, but was not used in that publication. He printed the material, however, in papers on “Montezuma’s Dinner” (_No. Am. Rev._, Ap. 1876), “Houses of the Moundbuilders” (_Ibid._, July, 1876), and “Study of the Houses and House Life of the Indian Tribes” (_Archæol. Inst. of Amer. Publ._). These papers amalgamated now make the work called _Houses and House Life_.[991]

Morgan argues that a communal mode of living accords with the usages of aboriginal hospitality, as well as with their tenure of lands,[992] and with the large buildings, which others call palaces, and he calls joint tenement houses. He instances, as evidence of the size of such houses, that at Cholula four hundred Spaniards and one thousand allied Indians found lodging in such a house; and he points to Stephens’s description of similar communal establishments which he found in our day near Uxmal.[993] He holds that the inference of communal living from such data as these is sufficient to warrant a belief in it, although none of the early Spanish writers mention such communism as existing; while they actually describe a communal feast in what is known as Montezuma’s dinner;[994] and while the plans of the large buildings now seen in ruins are exactly in accord with the demands of separate families united in joint occupancy. In such groups, he holds, there is usually one building devoted to the purpose of a Tecpan, or official house of the tribe.[995] Under the pressure to labor, which the Spaniards inflicted on their occupants, these communal dwellers were driven, to escape such servitude, into the forest, and thus their houses fell into decay. Morgan’s views attracted the adhesion of not a few archæologists, like Bandelier and Dawson; but in Bancroft, as contravening the spirit of his _Native Races_, they begat feelings that substituted disdain for convincing arguments.[996] The less passionate controversialists point out, with more effect, how hazardous it is, in coming to conclusions on the quality of the Nahua, Maya, or Quiché conditions of life, to ignore such evidences as those of the hieroglyphics, the calendars, the architecture and carvings, the literature and the industries, as evincing quite another kind, rather than degree, of progress, from that of the northern Indians.[997]

II. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES UPON THE RUINS AND ARCHÆOLOGICAL REMAINS OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.

Elsewhere in this work some account is given of the comprehensive treatment of American antiquities. It is the purpose of this note to characterize such other descriptions as have been specially confined to the antiquities of Mexico, Central America, and adjacent parts; together with noting occasionally those more comprehensive works which have sections on these regions. The earliest and most distinguished of all such treatises are the writings of Alexander von Humboldt,[998] to whom may be ascribed the paternity of what the French define as the Science of Americanism, which, however, took more definite shape and invited discipleship when the Société Américaine de France was formed, and Aubin in his _Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’écriture figurative des Anciens Méxicains_ furnished a standard of scholarship. How new this science was may be deduced from the fact that Robertson, the most distinguished authority on early American history, who wrote in English, in the last part of the preceding century, had ventured to say that in all New Spain there was not “a single monument or vestige of any building more ancient than the Conquest.” After Humboldt, the most famous of what may be called the pioneers of this art were Kingsborough, Dupaix, and Waldeck, whose publications are sufficiently described elsewhere. The most startling developments came from the expeditions of Stephens and Catherwood, the former mingling both in his _Central America_ and _Yucatan_ the charms of a personal narrative with his archæological studies, while the draughtsman, beside furnishing the sketches for Stephens’s book, embodied his drawings on a larger scale in the publication which passes under his own name.[999] The explorations of Charnay are those which have excited the most interest of late years, though equally significant results have been produced by such special explorers as Squier in Nicaragua, Le Plongeon in Yucatan, and Bandelier in Mexico.

The labors of the French archæologist, which began in 1858, resulted in the work _Cités et ruines Américaines: Mitla, Palenqué, Izamal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, recueillies et photographiées par Désiré Charnay, avec un Texte par M. Viollet le Duc_. (Paris, 1863.) Charnay contributed to this joint publication, beside the photographs, a paper called “Le Méxique, 1858-61,—souvenirs et impressions de Voyage.” The Architect Viollet le Duc gives us in the same book an essay by an active, well-equipped, and ingenious mind, but his speculations about the origin of this Southern civilization and its remains are rather curious than convincing.[1000]

After a drawing in Cumplido’s Spanish translation of Prescott’s _Mexico_, vol. iii. (Mexico, 1846.)]

The public began to learn better what Charnay’s full and hearty confidence in his own sweeping assertions was, when he again entered the field in a series of papers on the ruins of Central America which he contributed (1879-81) to the _North American Review_ (vols. cxxxi.-cxxxiii.), and which for the most part reached the public newly dressed in some of the papers contributed by L. P. Gratacap to the American Antiquarian,[1001] and in a paper by F. A. Ober on “The Ancient Cities of America,” in the _Amer. Geog. Soc. Bulletin_, Mar., 1888. Charnay took moulds of various sculptures found among the ruins, which were placed in the Trocadero Museum in Paris.[1002] What Charnay communicated in English to the _No. Amer. Review_ appeared in better shape in French in the _Tour du Monde_ (1886-87), and in a still riper condition in his latest work, _Les anciens villes du Nouveau Monde: voyages d’explorations au Méxique et dans l’Amérique Centrale_. 1857-1882. _Ouvrage contenant 214 gravures et 19 cartes ou plans._ (Paris, 1885.)[1003]

After a sketch in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 233, who also gives a plan of the mound. The modern Church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios is on the summit, where there are no traces of aboriginal works. A paved road leads to the top. A suburban road skirts its base, and fields of maguey surround it. The circuit of the base is 3859 feet, and the mound covers nearly twenty acres. Estimates of its height are variously given from 165 to 208 feet, according as one or another base line is chosen. It is built of adobe brick laid in clay, and it has suffered from erosion, slides, and other effects of time. There are some traces of steps up the side. Bandelier (pl. xv.) also gives a fac-simile of an old map of Cholula. The earliest picture which we have of the mound, evidently thought by the first Spaniards to be a natural one, is in the arms of Cholula (1540). There are other modern cuts in Carbajal-Espinosa’s _Mexico_ (i. 195); _Archæologia Americana_ (i. 12); Brocklehurst’s _Mexico to-day_, 182. The degree of restoration which draughtsmen allow to themselves, accounts in large measure for the great diversity of appearance which the mound makes in the different drawings of it. There is a professed restoration by Mothes in Armin’s _Heutige Mexico_, 63, 68, 72. The engraving in Humboldt is really a restoration (_Vues_, etc., pl. vii., or pl. viii. of the folio ed.). Bandelier gives a slight sketch of a restoration (p. 246, pl. viii.).]

We proceed now to note geographically some of the principal ruins. In the vicinity of Vera Cruz the pyramid of Papantla is the conspicuous monument,[1004] but there is little else thereabouts needing particular mention. Among the ruins of the central plateau of Mexico, the famous pyramid of Cholula is best known. The time of its construction is a matter about which archæologists are not agreed, though it is perhaps to be connected with the earliest period of the Nahua power. Duran, on the other hand, has told a story of its erection by the giants, overcome by the Nahuas.[1005] Its purpose is equally debatable, whether intended for a memorial, a refuge, a defence, or a spot of worship—very likely the truth may be divided among them all.[1006] It is a similar problem for divided opinion whether it was built by a great display of human energy, in accordance with the tradition that the bricks which composed its surface were passed from hand to hand by a line of men, extending to the spot where they were made leagues away, or constructed by a slower process of accretion, spread over successive generations, which might not have required any marvellous array of workmen.[1007] The fierce conflict which—as some hold—Cortés had with the natives around the mound and on its slopes settled its fate; and the demolition begun thereupon, and continued by the furious desolaters of the Church, has been aided by the erosions of time and the hand of progress, till the great monument has become a ragged and corroded hill, which might to the casual observer stand for the natural base, given by the Creator, to the modern chapel that now crowns its summit; but if Bandelier’s view (p. 249) is correct, that none of the conquerors mention it, then the conflict which is recorded took place, not here, but on the vanished mound of Quetzalcoatl, which in Bandelier’s opinion was a different structure from this more famous mound, while other writers pronounce it the shrine itself of Quetzalcoatl.[1008]

After a cut in _Harper’s Magazine_. An enlarged engraving of the central head is given on the title-page of the present volume. A photographic reproduction, as the “Stone of the Sun,” is given in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 54, where he summarizes the history of it, with references, including a paper by Alfredo Chavero, in the _Anales del Museo nacional de México_, and another, with a cut, by P. J. J. Valentini, in _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1878, and in _The Nation_, Aug. 8 and Sept. 19, 1878. Chavero’s explanation is translated in Brocklehurst’s _Mexico to-day_, p. 186. The stone is dated in a year corresponding to A.D. 1479, and it was early described in Duran’s _Historia de las Indias_, and in Tezozomoc’s _Crónica mexicana_. Tylor (_Anahuac_, 238) says that of the drawings made before the days of photography, that in Carlos Nebel’s _Viaje pintoresco y Arqueológico sobre la República Mejicana_, 1829-1834 (Paris, 1839), is the best, while the engravings given by Humboldt (pl. xxiii.) and others are more or less erroneous. Cf. other cuts in Carbajal’s _México_, i. 528; Bustamante’s _Mañanas de la Alameda_ (Mexico, 1835-36); Short’s _No. Amer. of Antiq._, 408, 451, with references; Bancroft’s _Native Races_, ii. 520; iv. 506; Stevens’s _Flint Chips_, 309.

Various calendar disks are figured in Clavigero (Casena, 1780); a colored calendar on agave paper is reproduced in the _Archives de la Commission Scientifique du Méxique_, iii. 120. (Quaritch held the original document in Aug., 1888, at £25, which had belonged to M. Boban.)

For elucidations of the Mexican astronomical and calendar system see Acosta, vi. cap. 2; Granados y Galvez’s _Tardes Americanas_ (1778); Humboldt’s essay in connection with pl. xxiii. of his _Atlas_; Prescott’s _Mexico_, i. 117; Bollaert in _Memoirs read before the Anthropol. Soc. of London_, i. 210; E. G. Squier’s _Some new discoveries respecting the dates on the great calendar stone of the ancient Mexicans, with observations on the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years_, in the _American Journal of Science and Arts_, 2d ser., March, 1849, pp. 153-157; Abbé J. Pipart’s _Astronomie, Chronologie et rites des Méxicaines_ in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_ (n. ser. i.); Brasseur’s _Nat. Civ._, iii. livre ii.; Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, ii. ch. 16; Short, ch. 9, with ref., p. 445; Cyrus Thomas in Powell’s _Rept. Ethn. Bureau_, iii. 7. Cf. Brinton’s _Abor. Amer. Authors_, p. 38; Brasseur’s “Chronologie historique des Méxicaines” in the _Actes de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_ (1872), vol. vi.; Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, i. 355, for the Toltecs as the source of astronomical ideas, with which compare Bancroft, v. 192; the _Bulletin de la Soc. royale Belge de Géog._, Sept., Oct., 1886; and Bandelier in the _Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 572, for a comparison of calendars.

Wilson in his _Prehistoric Man_ (i. 246) says: “By the unaided results of native science, the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning, according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced.”

See what Wilson (_Prehistoric Man_, i. 333) says of the native veneration for this calendar stone, when it was exhumed. Mrs. Nuttall (_Proc. Am. Asso. Adv. Sci._, Aug., 1886) claims to be able to show that this monolith is really a stone which stood in the Mexican market-place, and was used in regulating the stated market-days.]

We have reference to a Cholula mound in some of the earliest writers. Bernal Diaz counted the steps on its side.[1009] Motolinía saw it within ten years of the Conquest, when it was overgrown and much ruined. Sahagún says it was built for defensive purposes. Rojas, in his _Relacion de Cholula_, 1581, calls it a fortress, and says the Spaniards levelled its convex top to plant there a cross, where later, in 1594, they built a chapel. Torquemada, following Motolinía and the later Mendieta, says it was never finished, and was decayed in his time, though he traced the different levels. Its interest as a relic thus dates almost from the beginnings of the modern history of the region. Boturini mentions its four terraces. Clavigero, in 1744, rode up its sides on horseback, impelled by curiosity, and found it hard work even then to look upon it as other than a natural hill.[1010] The earliest of the critical accounts of it, however, is Humboldt’s, made from examinations in 1803, when much more than now of its original construction was observable, and his account is the one from which most travellers have drawn,—the result of close scrutiny in his text and of considerable license in his plate, in which he aimed at something like a restoration.[1011] The latest critical examination is in Bandelier’s “Studies about Cholula and its vicinity,” making part iii. of his _Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_.[1012]

What are called the finest ruins in Mexico are those of Xochicalco, seventy-five miles southwest of the capital, consisting of a mound of five terraces supported by masonry, with a walled area on the summit. Of late years a cornfield surrounds what is left of the pyramidal structure, which was its crowning edifice, and which up to the middle of the last century had five receding stories, though only one now appears. It owes its destruction to the needs which the proprietors of the neighboring sugar-works have had for its stones. The earliest account of the ruins appeared in the “Descripcion (1791) de los antiqüedades de Xochicalco” of José Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, in the _Gacetas de Literatura_ (Mexico, 1790-94, in 3 vols.; reprinted Puebla, 1831, in 4 vols.), accompanied by plates, which were again used in Pietro Marquez’s _Due Antichi Monumenti de Architettura Messicana_ (Roma, 1804),[1013] with an Italian version of Alzate, from which the French translation in Dupaix was made. Alzate furnished the basis of the account in Humboldt’s _Vues_ (i. 129; pl. ix. of folio ed.), and Waldeck (_Voyage pitt._, 69) regrets that Humboldt adopted so inexact a description as that of Alzate. From Nebel (_Viage pintoresco_) we get our best graphic representations, for Tylor (_Anahuac_) says that Casteñeda’s drawings, accompanying Dupaix, are very incorrect. Bancroft says that one, at least, of these drawings in Kingsborough bears not the slightest resemblance to the one given in Dupaix. In 1835 there were explorations made under orders of the Mexican government, which were published in the _Revista Mexicana_ (i. 539,—reprinted in the _Diccionario Universal_, x. 938). Other accounts, more or less helpful, are given by Latrobe, Mayer,[1014] and in Isador Löwenstern’s _Le Méxique_ (Paris, 1843).[1015]

NOTE.—The opposite view of the court of the Museum is from Charnay, p. 57. He says: “The Museum cannot be called rich, in so far that there is nothing remarkable in what the visitor is allowed to see.” The vases, which had so much deceived Charnay, earlier, as to cause him to make casts of them for the Paris Museum, he at a later day pronounced forgeries; and he says that they, with many others which are seen in public and private museums, were manufactured at Tlatiloco, a Mexican suburb, between 1820 and 1828. See Holmes on the trade in Mexican spurious relics in _Science_, 1886.

The reclining statue in the foreground is balanced by one similar to it at an opposite part of the court-yard. One is the Chac-mool, as Le Plongeon called it, unearthed by him at Chichen-Itza, and appropriated by the Mexican government; the other was discovered at Tlaxcala.

The round stone in the centre is the sacrificial stone dug up in the great square in Mexico, of which an enlarged view is given on another page.

The museum is described in Bancroft, iv. 554; in Mayer’s _Mexico as it was_, etc., and his _Mexico, Aztec, etc._; Fossey’s _Mexique_.

On Le Plongeon’s discovery of the Chac-mool see _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Apr., 1877; Oct., 1878, and new series, i. 280; Nadaillac, Eng. tr., 346; Short, 400; Le Plongeon’s _Sacred Mysteries_, 88, and his paper in the _Amer. Geog. Soc. Journal_, ix. 142 (1877). Hamy calls it the Toltec god Tlaloc, the rain-god; and Charnay agrees with him, giving (pp. 366-7) cuts of his and of the one found at Tlaxcala.]

The ancient Anahuac corresponds mainly to the valley of Mexico city.[1016] Bancroft (iv. 497) shows in a summary way the extent of our knowledge of the scant archæological remains within this central area.[1017]

In the city of Mexico not a single relic of the architecture of the earlier peoples remains,[1018] though a few movable sculptured objects are preserved.[1019]

* * * * *

After a sketch in Tylor’s _Anahuac_, who thinks it the original _Puente de las Bergantinas_, where Cortes had his brigantines launched. The span is about 20 feet, and this Tylor thinks “an immense span for such a construction.” Cf. H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races_, iv. 479, 528. Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 696) doubts its antiquity.]

Tezcuco, on the other side of the lake from Mexico, affords some traces of the ante-Conquest architecture, but has revealed no such interesting movable relics as have been found in the capital city.[1020] Twenty-five miles north of Mexico are the ruins of Teotihuacan, which have been abundantly described by early writers and modern explorers. Bancroft (iv. 530) makes up his summary mainly from a Mexican official account, Ramon Almaraz’s _Memoria de los trabajos ejecutados por la comision cientifica de Pachuca_ (Mexico, 1865), adding what was needed to fill out details from Clavigero, Humboldt, and the later writers.[1021]

Bancroft (iv. ch. 10), in describing what is known of the remains in the northern parts of Mexico, gives a summary of what has been written regarding the most famous of these ruins, Quemada in Zacatecas.[1022]

After a photograph in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 68. He thinks it was intended to be a bearer of a torch, and has no symbolical meaning.]

Bancroft (iv. ch. 7) has given a separate chapter to the antiquities of Oajaca (Oaxaca) and Guerrero, as the most southern of what he terms the Nahua people, including and lying westerly of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and he speaks of it as a region but little known to travellers, except as they pass through a part of it lying on the commercial route from Acapulco to the capital city of Mexico. Bancroft’s summary, with his references, must suffice for the inquirer for all except the principal group of ruins in this region, that of Mitla (or Lyó-Baa), of which a full recapitulation of authorities may be made, most of which are also to be referred to for the lesser ruins, though, as Bancroft points out, the information respecting Monte Alban and Zachila is far from satisfactory. Of Monte Alban, Dupaix and Charnay are the most important witnesses, and the latter says that he considers Monte Alban “one of the most precious remains, and very surely the most ancient of the American civilizations.”[1023] On Dupaix alone we must depend for what we know of Zachila.

It is, however, of Mitla (sometime Miquitlan, Mictlan) that more considerable mention must be made, and its ruins, about thirty miles southerly from Mexico, have been oftenest visited, as they deserve to be; and we have to regret that Stephens never took them within the range of his observations. Their demolition had begun during a century or two previous to the Spanish Conquest, and was not complete even then. Nature is gloomy, and even repulsive in its desolation about the ruins;[1024] but a small village still exists among them. The place is mentioned by Duran[1025] as inhabited about 1450; Motolinía describes it as still lived in,[1026] and in 1565-74 it had a gobernador of its own. Burgoa speaks of it in 1644.[1027]

A, the ruins on the highest ground, with a church and curacy built
into the walls.
B, C, E, are ruins outside the village.
D is within the modern village.
F is beyond the river.]

The earliest of the modern explorers were Luis Martin, a Mexican architect, and Colonel de la Laguna, who examined the ruins in 1802; and it was from Martin and his drawings that Humboldt drew the information with which, in 1810, he first engaged the attention of the general public upon Mitla, in his _Vues des Cordillères_. Dupaix’s visit was in 1806. The architect Eduard L. Mühlenpfordt, in his _Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico_ (Hannover, 1844, in 2 vols.), says that he made plans and drawings in 1830,[1028] which, passing into the hands of Juan B. Carriedo, were used by him to illustrate a paper, “Los palacios antiguos de Mitla,” in the _Ilustracion Mexicana_ (vol. ii.), in which he set forth the condition of the ruins in 1852. Meanwhile, in 1837, some drawings had been made, which were twenty years later reproduced in the ninth volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, as Brantz Mayer’s _Observations on Mexican history and archæology, with a special notice of Zapotec, remains as delineated in Mr. J. G. Sawkins’s drawings of Mitla, etc._ (Washington, 1857). Bancroft points out (iv. 406) that the inaccuracies and impossibilities of Sawkins’ drawings are such as to lead to the conclusion that he pretended to explorations which he never made, and probably drafted his views from some indefinite information; and that Mayer was deceived, having no more precise statements than Humboldt’s by which to test the drawings. Matthieu Fossey visited the ruins in 1838; but his account in his _Le Méxique_ (Paris, 1857) is found by Bancroft to be mainly a borrowed one. G. F. von Tempsky’s _Mitla, a narrative of incidents and personal adventure on a journey in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador, 1853-1855, edited by J. S. Bell_ (London, 1858), deceives us by the title into supposing that considerable attention is given in the book to Mitla, but we find him spending but a part of a day there in February, 1854 (p. 250). The book is not prized; Bandelier calls it of small scientific value, and Bancroft says his plates must have been made up from other sources than his own observations.[1029] Charnay, here, as well as elsewhere, made for us some important photographs in 1859.[1030] This kind of illustration received new accessions of value when Emilio Herbrüger issued a series of thirty-four fine plates as _Album de Vistas fotográficas de las Antiguas Ruinas de los palacios de Mitla_ (Oaxaca, 1874). In 1864, J. W. von Müller, in his _Reisen in den Vereinigten Staaten, Canada und Mexico_ (Leipzig, in 3 vols.), included an account of a visit.[1031] The most careful examination made since Bancroft summarized existing knowledge is that of Bandelier in his _Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_ (Boston, 1885), published as no. ii. of the American series of the _Papers of the Archæological Institute of America_, which is illustrated with heliotypes and sketch plans of the ruins and architectural details in all their geometrical symmetry. Bancroft (iv. 392, etc.) could only give a plan of the ruins based on the sketches of Mühlenpfordt as published by Carriedo, but the student will find a more careful one[1032] in Bandelier, who also gives detailed ones of the several buildings (pl. xvii., xviii.)

* * * * *

After a photograph in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 67. See on another page, cut of the court-yard of the Museum, where this stone is preserved. Cf. Humboldt, pl. xxi.; Bandelier in _Amer. Antiq_., 1878; Bancroft, iv. 509; Stevens’s _Flint Chips_, 311. There is a discussion of the stone in Orozco y Berra’s _El Cuauhxicalli de Tizoc_, in the _Anales del Museo Nacional_, i. no. 1; ii. no. 1. On the sacrificial stone of San Juan Teotihuacan, see paper by Amos W. Butler in the _Amer. Antiq_., vii. 148. A cut in Clavigero (ii.) shows how the stone was used in sacrifices; the engraving has been often copied. In Mrs. Nuttall’s view this stone simply records the periodical tribute days (_Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Proc._, Aug. 1886).]