Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/Appendix 3 of the Second Letter
APPENDIX III.
ORIGINS OF MEXICAN CIVILISATION
The different tribes or nations of Anáhuac came, according to their several traditions, from the north-west, in a series of migrations, but of their original starting point they preserved no clear record. M. de Guigne presents proofs to show that the Chinese visited Mexico as early as 458 a.d.; Horn (de originibus Americanis, 1699), Scherer (Recherches Hist.), Humboldt (Essai Polit.) and other authorities, without a dissentient voice, assign an Asiatic origin to the Toltecs and other Mexican peoples. That Mexico received settlers from other parts of the world seems also certain. Aristotle (De Admirandis in natura) relates that Carthaginian sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, and, after sailing sixty days to the west, reached a beautiful and fertile country, and that so many began to go thither that the Senate of Carthage passed a law suppressing such emigration, to prevent the depopulation of the city. The theory of the submerged Atlantis, and the arguments on which it rests, are too well known to require explanation.
The efforts to graft Mexican civilisation on to an Asiatic or African stock have not been entirely successful, for, while there tindoubtedly exist points of striking similarity, these seem to be counterbalanced by still more important divergencies. The paucity of positive data or even coherent traditions has left a wide field open to speculation, of which many learned and ingenious seekers have availed themselves to the fullest extent, but without achieving results commensurate with their labours. Without attempting a thorough search into the racial origin of the tribes which Cortes found in the valley of Mexico, it may be briefly stated that the best evidence before us points to Yucatan as the centre of the highest American civilisation, from whence a knowledge of law, arts, and manufactures, and the influence of an organised religious system, spread northwards. The splendid ruins of Yucatan and Central America attest the existence of a race of people, which, whatever its origin, was isolated from European and Asiatic influence alike since an epoch which it is impossible to fix, but which was certainly very remote. This race—the Maya—possessed a civilisation, sui generis, and entirely unique on the North American continent, the focus of which had already shifted to the high valley of Mexico long before the Spaniards first visited the country in the sixteenth century leaving the ancient cities of Uxmal, Palenque, Utatlan, and the others in the southern region, in ruins. What devastating influences produced this movement in an entire people is not known, and the length of time occupied by it, is problematical, though it must have extended over centuries, ebbing and flowing intermittently. The conflicting traditions as to the direction from which tribes, law-givers, and priests arrived in Anáhuac are doubtless owing to distinct movements at different times of the southern peoples in their wandering search for a new and permanent abiding place. These early migrations from south to north, were succeeded during the period commonly termed the Middle Ages, by a counter movement, and the descendants of the first Maya emigrants began to return southwards, conquering or absorbing the different peoples they encountered. Although some of the peoples had preserved much of the culture bequeathed them by their forefathers, there was no uniform civilisation existing among them, save in the case of the Toltecs, who seem still to have been in the full enjoyment of their Maya heritage.
The Toltecs left their country, called Huehuetlalpallan, in the vague north-west, in the year 554 a.d., and, after one hundred and four years of migratory life, they founded the city of Tollantzinco in 648, whence they again moved in 667 to Tula, or Tollan, from which date, their monarchy, which lasted three hundred and eighty-four years, is reckoned (Clavigero, vol. iv.). According to Torquemada, the Chichimecas followed within nine years after the extinction of the Toltec sovereignty, but Clavigero's calculation shows the improbability of this, for several reasons, the most convincing of which is the incredible chronology of their kings. Torquemada says that Xolotl reigned 113 years, his son lived to be 170, and his grandson 104 years old, while another king, Tezozomoc reigned 180 years! It is obvious that the Chichimeca period must either be shortened, or the number of kings increased. After the Chichimecas came the six tribes of Tlascala, Xochimilco, Acolhua (Texcoco), Tepanec, Chalco, and Tlahuichco, closely followed by the Colhuans or Mexicans, who first arrived at Tula in 1196, and, after several shorter migrations, finally founded Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1325, as is related in Appendix II. of this letter. The last tribe to come was that of the Otomies in 1420. Boturini believed that the tribes of Xicalango and the Olemchs antedated the Toltecs, but says that no records or picture-writings explaining their origin were discoverable in his time. From the foundation of Mexico in 1325, the form of government was aristocratic till 1352, when according to Torquemada's interpretation of their picture-writings, the first King Acamapatzin, eighth predecessor of Montezuma II., was elected, and reigned for thirty-seven years.
The Aztec civilisation, which attained its highest development in Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, never reached the level of the Maya culture, nor did its cities contain any such admirable buildings as those whose ruins still delight and mystify the traveller in Yucatan and Central America. Outside its few centres of learning and luxury, the numerous tribes under Montezuma's rule were dwellers in caves, living by the chase and in no way sharing in the benefits of the Aztec polity. In morals and manners, the Aztecs were inferior to the Toltecs, and though they adopted and continued the civilisation of their predecessors, they were devoid of their intellectual and artistic qualities, and turned their attention more to war and commerce as the surest means for riveting their supremacy on their neighbours. When Cortes arrived, Texcoco and Tlacopan, though still calling themselves independent, and ruled by sovereigns who held themselves co-equal with Montezuma, were rapidly sinking into a condition of vassalage. The Aztec religion was likewise of a militant order; it was polytheistic and readily admitted the gods of conquered or allied nations into its pantheon. Upon the milder cult of the older religious systems they had adopted, these devotees of the war-god speedily grafted their own horrible practices of human sacrifices, which augmented in number and ferocity until the temples became veritable charnel houses. With such a barbarous religious system draining their very life's blood, and a relentless despotism daily encroaching on their liberties, it is small wonder that Cortes was hailed as a liberator by the subject peoples of Mexico.
In the third chapter of his Historia Antigua, Don Manuel Orozco y Berra examines what he terms the two schools, the religious and the philosophical, whose teachings concerning the origin and early history of the Mexicans are based upon the interpretation of the ancient and authentic Mexican painting, now preserved in the National Museum in Mexico, and which came into the possession of the historian Ixtlilxochitl from his royal ancestors of Texcoco. The religious reading of this unique Chronicle (it is always Orozco y Berra who is my authority) sought to harmonise its chronology, and certain primitive events in the national history, with the biblical story, and all the early writers of this school, Carlos de Siguenza, Gemelli Careri, Clavigero, Veytia, and others, found in it an account of the creation, the flood, the tower of Babel, the dispersion of the nations, and other incidents of the mosaic records.
The philosophical school, of which Humboldt was the chief, following other lines, arrived, however, at a similar result, and connected the foundation of Mexico with the cessation of the deluge, and thus the problem of the origin of American races and animals was solved.
Don Fernando Ramirez, some time Curator of the Mexican National Museum, by showing the interpretation of both these schools to be mere illusions, demolished their conclusions, and interpreted the picture as merely representing the wanderings of the Mexicans in the valley itself, covering an area of about nine miles and a period of hardly more than 443 years, calculating from 1325 back to 882, a.d., the earliest chronological sign in the painting; while the water represented, is not the flood of but the neighbouring lake of Chalco.
The complex question of the relation in which the Maya and Toltec civilisations stood to one another has not yet found a generally accepted solution. Working in the light which anthropology, ethnology, archæology, and kindred modern sciences afford, many valuable facts have been recently discovered and the investigations still proceeding, yearly contribute highly specialised knowledge to the sum of what the early Spanish writers amassed but failed to scientifically classify. But with all this, the path through the American historical labyrinth remains a tortuous one: whether the Toltecs preceded the Mayas and brought into Yucatan the high civilisation of which noble remains attest the existence, or whether this civilisation was of Maya origin and afterwards spread towards the north, influencing the Toltecs, are questions on which various opinions are held by modern investigators. I incline to accept the latter theory, but while such learned authorities are still at variance, it were presumption for a mere student of early American history to present conclusions.
In this brief summary of such a large subject, I have sought to furnish the general reader with an intelligible explanation of the origins and history of the civilisation which Cortes beheld when first he visited Mexico.