Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/Appendix 2 of the Second Letter
APPENDIX II.
MEXICO-TENOCHTITLAN
The migratory period of the Aztecs in the valley of Anáhuac came to its close with the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1325. The name Mexico signifies habitation of the god of war, Mexitli—otherwise known as Huitzilopochtli. The name Tenochtitlan signifies a cactus on a rock and was given to the new city because the choice of the site was decided by the augurs beholding, perched upon a cactus plant which grew on a rock, an eagle with a serpent in its talons. The emblem of the cactus and the eagle holding a serpent became the national standard of Mexico, and is displayed in the coat of arms of the present Republic.
The two islands of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco stood in the salt waters of the lake of Texcoco, separated from one another by a narrow channel of water, and in the beginning, Tlatelolco had its separate chief; but in the reign of Axayacatl, the last king of Tlatelolco, called Moquihuiz, was overthrown, and the islands afterwards became united by bridges and formed one city, with a single ruler. The city was joined to the main land by three great causeways, so solidly built of earth and stone, and having draw-bridges to span the canals which crossed them, as to excite the admiration of the Spaniards. The northern causeway, from the Tlatelolco quarter, extended for three miles to Tepejaca, where stands the present shrine of Guadaloupe; the causeway reaching to Tlacopan (Tacuba) was two miles long, and the southern road, by which the Spaniards entered, extended for seven miles to Itztapalapan, with a division at the small fortress of Xoloc, where one branch diverged to Coyohuacan and hence caused Cortes to mention four causeways, which strictly speaking was correct. Robertson erroneously speaks of a causeway leading to Texcoco. While the width of these splendid roads varied, Clavigero says that all were wide enough for ten horsemen to ride abreast (vol. iii., lib. ix.). To the minute description of the city given in the letter of Cortes, it seems unnecessary to add anything; he says nothing, however, about the number of inhabitants, which all the earlier authorities practically agree in numbering at 60,000 households—by an obvious error the Anonymous Conqueror speaks of 60,000 people, which should, of course, be families. Zuazo, Gomara, Motolinia, Peter Martyr, Clavigero, and others, give this estimate, hence it may be safely stated, that the city's population was not less than 300,000 souls; though Orozco y Berra, while admitting these figures, observes that considering the actual area and the large spaces occupied by palaces and public buildings, the people must have been a good deal crowded.
Very contradictory appreciations of the beauty of the Aztec capital, the grandeur of its buildings, and the merit of its architecture, have been given by different writers. Prescott's marvellous picture of the ancient city is familiar to all students of Mexican history, and hardly less well known and rivalling the American historian's delightful pages, are the chapters of Sir Arthur Helps, praised by Ruskin for their "beautiful quiet English," in which he compares Mexico to Thebes, Nineveh, and Babylon, among the great cities of antiquity, and to Constantinople, Venice, and Granada, among those of modern times, not hesitating to declare that it was "at that time the fairest in the world and has never since been equalled" (Hernan. Cortes, p. 108). The distinguished Mexican scholar Señor Alaman (Disertaciones, tom. i., p. 184) expresses his conviction that the city of Mexico contained no buildings of beauty or merit; that, aside from the royal palaces, the rest of the houses were adobe huts, amongst which rose the squat, truncated pyramids of the temples, unlovely to behold, decorated with rude sculptures of serpents and other horrible figures, and having heaps of human skulls piled in their court yards. He sustains this dreary appreciation by the argument that there would otherwise have remained some fragments of former architectural magnificence, whereas there is absolutely nothing. These eminent writers seem unwilling to allow that Tenochtitlan may have been a wonderfully beautiful city and at the same time have possessed few imposing buildings and no remarkable architecture. The descriptions of Mr. Prescott and Sir Arthur Helps are masterpieces of word-painting which charm us, but they are based upon early descriptions in which impeachable importance is given to architectural features of the city. It is, as Señor Alaman remarks, incredible that not a fragment of column or capital, statue or architrave should have been saved to attest the existence of great architectural monuments, even though 150,000 men were diligently engaged for two months in destroying the buildings, filling up canals with the debris and that finally, when the city came to be rebuilt, many idols and other larger fragments of temples were used in the foundations of the cathedral, which rose on the site of the great teocalli. Palaces, such as Montezuma's is described by the Spaniards, may be vast in extent, with beautiful courts, fountains, gardens, and audience halls, they may be luxurious and filled with curious and beautiful objects, but they add little to the picturesque or imposing appearance of a capital; the temples were sufficiently numerous, but none save the great temple seem to have been lofty, and even the principal teocalli had but 114 steps, so that its heighth was only remarkable by comparison with the great stretch of low flat-roofed houses about it. Cortes describes the destruction of the city, day by day, which he sincerely deplored as necessary to subdue it, but he does not mention any one building which he sought to save, as he must infallibly have done, had he been burning an Alhambra or a Doge's Palace or been forced to blow up a Santa Sophia. It seems impossible that any one should seriously pretend that the waters of Texcoco's lake mirrored such façades as are reflected in the canals of Venice, or that there was a Rialto among the bridges, so hotly contested by the Spaniards. Orozco y Berra wisely reproves the comparison which Alaman draws between Mexico and Rome as notoriously misplaced. But, between the dazzling word pictures of Prescott and Helps on the one hand, and on the other Alaman's depressing sketch of a squalid town of hovels, inhabited by bloodthirsty cannibals, there is still room for a beautiful city in which dwelt a sovereign, amidst surroundings of interesting splendour.
Even without conscious intention to mislead, it was inevitable that the Spaniards should fall into exaggeration in describing the city of Mexico; first, because they necessarily used the same terms to portray what they saw as they would have used in describing Rome, Paris, or Constantinople; second, because the contrast between such Indian towns as they had seen and the capital was undoubtedly very great, and their long years of rough life, perilous voyages, and the absence at times even of shelter from the elements, made any large town with some system of order, with houses having court-yards, gardens and embroidered hangings, seem worthy to be compared with great cities elsewhere seen and dimly remembered; and lastly because Mexico was unquestionably a very beautiful city. It could hardly have been otherwise in such a situation, and the Spaniards, not stopping to analyse wherein its charms lay, fell into the easy error of attributing them to architectural excellence and grandeur, which were really wanting.
Solis adopts the conquerors' style, without having their excuse and, were he writing of the Courts of Leo X., or Louis XIV., he could hardly use other language than he does in describing Montezuma and his household.
The very ignorance and naïveté of the conquerors are good warrants for the truth of much that they wrote, for as they were illiterate men (even Cortes had but a scanty store of learning, gathered during his brief course of two careless years at Salamanca) without sufficient knowledge to invent descriptions of the Mexican laws, customs, religion, and institutions, the facts which they state, and in which they agree, are indubitable. The Aztec Empire possessed some highly developed institutions; to mention but one, there was the system of couriers or the post, which kept up daily and rapid communication between the capital and the provinces, and that at a time when no country in Europe possessed anything equalling it.
Their religion was established with a regular hierarchy, and a calendar of festivals, which were observed with a really admirable ritual, marred only by the barbarity of certain rites; their deities were gloomy and ferocious, fear was the motive of worship, human sacrifice the only means of placating the gods, and thus religion, which should soften and humanise manners and elevate character, was engulfed in a dreadful superstition, which held the nation in a state of permanent degradation, with the result that the most civilised amongst the Indians of North America were at the same time the most barbarous. The perfect ordering of this system impressed the Spaniards, while its awful rites horrified them.
Their state was well ordered, and, in many respects, governed according to wise and enlightened standards, and that their civilisation was of no mean order is proven by the following factors in it:
| I. | The rights of private property were recognised and respected; its transfer was effected by sale or inheritance. |
| II. | All free men were land owners, either by absolute possession or by usufruct derived from holding some public office in the state, and these composed the nobility: others held land in community, parcels being allotted to a given number of families, whose members worked them in common and shared their produce equitably. |
| III. | Taxes were levied according to an established system and were paid in kind, thus filling the government store-houses with vast accumulations of all the products of the Empire. |
| IV. | Justice was administered by regularly appointed judges, who interpreted the laws and exercised jurisdiction in different districts. |
| V. | Markets were held as Cortes describes. |
| VI. | The streets were regularly cleaned, lighted by fires at night, and patrolled by police; public sanitary arrangements were provided, and the city was probably more spacious, cleaner, and healthier than any European towns of that time. |
| VII. | Public charity provided hospitals for the sick and aged. |
| VIII. | Separate arts and trades flourished, and the metal-workers, lapidaries, weavers, etc., learned their trades by a regular system of instruction and apprenticeship pretty much as in the guilds of Europe. |
| IX. | The great public-works, such as the causeways, aqueducts, canals with locks, and bridges, were admirably constructed, and, in the neighbourhood of the capital at least, were numerous. |
| X. | There was a fair knowledge of the medicinal and curative properties of herbs, barks, roots, and plants, though, if the medicine men were skilled in the use of poisons, it seems strange that they did not rid themselves of the hungry invaders at some of the feasts which were constantly offered them. |
| XI. | In the arts, the lapidaries, feather-workers, and silversmiths produced the best work. Mexican paintings, judged as works of art, are crude and primitive enough, but their real value and interest lie in the fact that they are chronicles in picture writing, of which, unfortunately, too few have been preserved; ideas were rarely and imperfectly represented by this method, which was only serviceable for recording material facts. Music was the least developed of all the arts. |
| XII. | Their solar system was more correct than that of the Greeks and Romans. The year was divided into eighteen months, of twenty days each, with five complementary days added, which were holidays, but were considered unlucky, especially as birthdays. For full information on the Mexican calendar, solar system, and astronomical science, the student is referred to Orozco y Berra. Hist. Antiqua, lib. iv., where these subjects are lucidly explained. |
| XIII. | There we were regularly graduated social classes, the lowest being composed of peasant-serfs called Mayeques who were bound to the land; above them came ascending grades until we reach the Emperor at the top of all. |
Three features characteristic of the feudal system everywhere are found: A. An overlord or Emperor, supreme in the central government, whose standard all followed in war and whose authority and person were regarded as semi-divine. B. Practically independent nobles or chiefs of tribes, levying their own taxes holding peoples and cities in subjection, transmitting their titles by right of inheritance and ready to contend with the Emperor himself on questions of etiquette, and precedence. Many of these were his kinsmen and all were allied amongst themselves, thus forming an aristocracy of rank and power. C. A people reduced to practical serfage.
Sumptuary laws prescribed the dress of the different orders, and the regulations governing court dress for different occasions were rigidly enforced; all removed their sandals in the emperor's presence, and even the greatest nobles covered their ornaments with a plain mantle when they appeared before him. The Aztec language was extremely polite and contained not only titles, but many ceremonious phrases of respect and expressions of courtesy and deference.
The crown descended in the same family, but a council of six electors, chosen during the lifetime of the sovereign, met immediately after his death and elected a successor from among the eligible princes of the royal family.
Alongside these indications of an advanced civilisation are found several others which show a nation still in its infancy:
| I. | They did not know the use of wax or oil for lighting purpose. |
| II. | They used no milk. |
| III. | They had no coinage: cacao nuts were commonly used as a standard of value and also gold dust put up in quills, but usually commodities were exchanged. Sahagun mentions a sort of coin which the Mexicans called quahtli or eagle, but he does not describe it. Montezuma paid his losses at play with the Spaniards in chips of gold, each of the value of fifty ducats; this piece was called tejuelo, but it does not certainly appear to have been a coin. |
| IV. | There was no system of phonetic writing. |
| V. | They kept no domestic animals save rabbits, chickens, and little dogs, all of which they ate; and they had no beasts of burden. |
| VI. | Their only cereal was maize. |
| VII. | They knew neither iron, nor tin, nor lead, though the mountains were full of them, and their only hard metal was copper. |
Even from the summary and incomplete indications here given, it is seen that the Aztec state possessed many excellent institutions and elements of an advanced civilisation, and, despite the co-existence of certain limitations which have led some to doubt the development claimed for them, our interest in the origin and history of the mysterious races of Andhuac is stimulated to wonder and admiration for what we do know of their empire, and to boundless regret for the disappearance of all, save the few vestiges which remain to excite a curiosity they are inadequate to appease.
It is not required to endow Mexico with "the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome" in order to admit that it was beautiful.