Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines Part 21

They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool.... In this country there are certain skins, well dressed, and they dress them and paint them when they kill their oxen [buffaloes], for so they say themselves."--Hakluyt's Coll.

of Voyages, Lond. ed., 1600, iii, 377.]

CHAPTER X.

HOUSES OF THE AZTECS OR ANCIENT MEXICANS.

The first accounts of the pueblo of Mexico created a powerful sensation in Europe. In the West India Islands the Spanish discoverers found small Indian tribes under the government of chiefs, but on the continent, in the Valley of Mexico, they found a confederacy of three Indian tribes under a more advanced but similar government. In the midst of the valley was a large pueblo, the largest in America, surrounded with water, approached by causeways; in fine, a water-girt fortress impregnable to Indian a.s.sault. This pueblo presented to the Spanish adventurers the extraordinary spectacle of an Indian society lying two ethnical periods back of European society, but with a government and plan of life at once intelligent, orderly, and complete. There was aroused an insatiable curiosity for additional particulars, which has continued for three centuries, and which 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.

The Spanish adventurers who captured the pueblo of Mexico saw a king in Montezuma, lords in Aztec chiefs, and a palace in the large joint-tenement house occupied, Indian fashion, by Montezuma and his fellow-householders. It was, perhaps, an unavoidable self-deception at the time, because they knew nothing of the Aztec social system.

Unfortunately it inaugurated American aboriginal history upon a misconception of Indian life which has remained substantially unquestioned until recently. The first eye-witnesses gave the keynote to this history by introducing Montezuma as a king, occupying a palace of great extent crowded with retainers, and situated in the midst of a grand and populous city, over which, and much beside, he was reputed master. But king and kingdom were in time found too common to express all the glory and splendor the imagination was beginning to conceive of Aztec society; and emperor and empire gradually superseded the more humble conception of the conquerors. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote 1 relocated to chapter end.]

A psychological fact, which deserves a moment's notice, is revealed by these works, written as they were with a desire for the truth and without intending to deceive. These writers ought to have known that every Indian tribe in America was an organized society, with definite inst.i.tutions, usages, and customs, which, when ascertained, would have perfectly explained its government, the social relations of the people, and their plan of life. Indian society could be explained as completely and understood as perfectly as the civilized society of Europe or America by finding its exact organization. This, strange to say, was never attempted, or at least never accomplished, by any one of these numerous and voluminous writers. To every author, from Cortes and Bernal Diaz to Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg and Hubert H.

Bancroft, Indian society was an unfathomable mystery, and their works have left it a mystery still. Ignorant of its structure and principles, and unable to comprehend its peculiarities, they invoked the imagination to supply whatever was necessary to fill out the picture. When the reason, from want of facts, is unable to understand and therefore unable to explain the structure of a given society, imagination walks bravely in and fearlessly rears its glittering fabric to the skies. Thus in this case, we have a grand historical romance, strung upon the conquest of Mexico as upon a thread; the acts of the Spaniards, the pueblo of Mexico, and its capture, are historical, while the descriptions of Indian society and government are imaginary and delusive. These picturesque tales have been read with wonder and admiration, as they successively appeared, for three hundred and fifty years; though shown to be romances, they will continue to be read as Robinson Crusoe is read, not because they are true, but because they are pleasing. The psychological revelation is the eager, undefinable interest aroused by any picture of ancient society. It is felt by every stranger when he first walks the streets of Pompeii, and, standing within the walls of its roofless houses, strives to picture to himself the life and the society which flourished there eighteen hundred years ago.

In Mexico the Spaniards found an organized society several thousand years further back of their own than Pompeian society, in its arts, inst.i.tutions, and state of advancement. It was this revelation of a phase of the ancient life of mankind which possessed and still possesses such power to kindle the imagination and inspire enthusiasm.

It caught the imagination and overcame the critical judgment of Prescott, our most charming writer; it ravaged the sprightly brain of Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg, and it carried up in a whirlwind our author at the Golden Gate.

The commendation these works have received from critical journals reveals with painful distinctness the fact that we have no science of American ethnology. Such a science, resting as it must upon verified facts, and dealing with the inst.i.tutions, arts and inventions, usages and customs, languages, religious beliefs, and plan of government of the Indian tribes, would, were it fairly established, command as well as deserve the respect of the American people. With the exception of an amateur here and there, American scholars have not been willing to devote themselves to so vast a work.

It may be truly said at this moment that the structure and principles of Indian society are but partially known, and that the American Indian himself is still an enigma among us. The question is still before us as a nation whether we will undertake the work of furnishing to the world a scientific exposition of Indian society, or leave it as it now appears, crude, unmeaning, unintelligible, a chaos of contradictions and puerile absurdities. With a field of unequaled richness and of vast extent, with the same Red Race in all the stages of advancement indicated by three great ethnical periods, namely the Status of savagery, the Lower Status of barbarism, and the Middle Status of barbarism, [Footnote: See ante, page 43, note, for a definition of proposed ethnical or culture periods, and Ancient Society, chapter 1, "Ethnical Periods."] more persons ought to be found willing to work upon this material for the credit of American scholarship. It will be necessary for them to do as Herodotus did in Asia and Africa, to visit the native tribes at their villages and encampments, and study their inst.i.tutions as living organisms, their condition, and their plan of life. When this has been done from the region of the Arctic Sea to Patagonia, Indian society will become intelligible, because its structure and principles will be understood. It exhibits three distinct phases, each with a culture peculiar to itself, lying back of civilization, and back of the Upper Status of barbarism, having very little in common with European society of three hundred years ago, and very little in common with American society of to-day. Its inst.i.tutions, inventions, and customs find no a.n.a.logues in those of civilized nations, and cannot be explained in terms adapted to such a society.

Our later investigators are doing their work more and more on the plan of direct visitation, and I make no doubt a science of American ethnology will yet come into existence among us and rise high in public estimation from the important results it will rapidly achieve.

Precisely what is now needed is the ascertainment and scientific treatment of this material.

After so general a condemnation of Spanish and American writers, so far as they represent Aztec society and government, some facts and some reasons ought to be presented to justify the charge.

Recognizing the obligation, I propose to question the credibility of so much of the second volume of "The Native Races" and of so much of other Spanish histories as relate to two subjects--the character of the house in which Montezuma resided, which is styled a palace; and the account of the celebrated dinner of Montezuma, which is represented as the daily banquet of an imperial potentate. Neither subject, considered in itself, is of much importance; but if the accounts in these two particulars are found to be fict.i.tious and delusive, a breach will be made in a vital section of the fabric of Aztec romance, now the most deadly enc.u.mbrance upon American ethnology.

It may be premised that there is a strong probability, from what is known of Indian life and society, that the house in which Montezuma lived was a joint-tenement house of the aboriginal American model, owned by a large number of related families, and occupied by them in common as joint proprietors; that the dinner in question was the usual single daily meal of a communal household, prepared in a common cook-house from common stores, and divided, Indian fashion, from the kettle; and that all the Spaniards found in Mexico was a simple confederacy of three Indian tribes, the counterpart of which was found in all parts of America.

It may be premised further that the Spanish adventures who thronged to the New World after its discovery found the same race of Red Indians in the West India Islands, in Central and South America, in Florida, and in Mexico.

[Footnote: "But among all the other inhabitants of America there is such a striking similitude in the form of their bodies, and the qualities of their minds, that notwithstanding the diversities occasioned by the influence of climate, or unequal progress in improvement, we must p.r.o.nounce them to be descended from one source."-- Robertson's History of America, Law's ed., p. 69.]

In their mode of life and means of subsistence, in their weapons, arts, usages, and customs, in their inst.i.tutions, and in their mental and physical characteristics, they were the same people in different stages of advancement. No distinction of race was observed, and none in fact existed. They were broken up into numerous independent tribes, each under the government of a council of chiefs.

Among the more advanced tribes, confederacies existed, which represented the highest stage their governmental inst.i.tutions had attained. In some of them, as in the Aztec confederacy, they had a princ.i.p.al war-chief, elected for life or during good behavior, who was the general commander of the military bands. His powers were those of a general, and necessarily arbitrary when in the field.

Behind this war-chief--noticed, it is true, by Spanish writers, but without explaining or even ascertaining its functions--was the council of chiefs, "the great council without whose authority,"

Acosta remarks, Montezuma "might not do anything of importance".

[Footnote: The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, Lond. ed., 1604, Grimstone's Trans., p. 485.]

The civil and military powers of the government were in a certain sense coordinated between the council of chiefs and the military commander. The government of the Aztec confederacy was essentially democratic, because its organization and inst.i.tutions were so. If a more special designation is needed, it will be sufficient to describe it as a military democracy.

The Spaniards who overran Mexico and Peru gave a very different interpretation of these two organizations. Having found, as they supposed, two absolute monarchies with feudal characteristics, the history of American Indian inst.i.tutions was cast in this mold. The chief attention of Europeans in the sixteenth century was directed to these two governments, to which the affairs of the numerous remaining tribes and confederacies were made subordinate. Subsequent history has run in the same grooves for more than three centuries, striving diligently to confirm that of which confirmation was impossible. The generalization was perhaps proper enough, that if the inst.i.tutions of the Aztecs and Peruvians, such well-advanced Indian tribes, culminated in monarchy, those of the Indian tribes generally were essentially monarchical, and therefore those of Mexico and Peru should represent the inst.i.tutions of the Red Race.

It may be premised, finally, that the histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements, and utensils, fabrics, food, and raiment, and things of a similar character. But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects, and commence anew; using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society. It was a calamity to the entire Red Race that the achievements of the Village Indians of Mexico and Central America, in the development of their inst.i.tutions, should have suffered a shipwreck so nearly total.

The only remedy for the evil done them is to recover, if possible, a knowledge of their inst.i.tutions, which alone can place them in their proper position in the history of mankind.

In order to understand so simple an event in Indian life as Montezuma's dinner, it is necessary to know certain usages and customs, and even certain inst.i.tutions of the Indian tribes generally, which had a direct bearing upon the dinner of every Indian in America at the epoch of the Spanish conquest. Although it may seem strange to the reader, it requires a knowledge of several cla.s.ses of facts to comprehend this dinner, such as: 1. The organization in gentes, phratries, and tribes. 2. The ownership of lands in common. 3.

The law of hospitality. 4. The practice of communism in living. 5.

The communal character of their houses. 6. Their custom of having but one prepared meal each day, a dinner. 7. Their separation at meals, the men eating first, and the women and children afterwards.

These several topics have been considered in previous chapters.

Not a vestige of the ancient pueblo of Mexico (Tenocht.i.tlan) remains to a.s.sist us to a knowledge of its architecture. Its structures, which were useless to a people of European habits, were speedily destroyed to make room for a city adapted to the wants of a civilized race. We must seek for its characteristics in contemporary Indian houses which still remain in ruins, and in such of the early descriptions as have come down to us, and then leave the subject with but little accurate knowledge. Its situation, partly on dry land and partly in the waters of a shallow artificial pond formed by causeways and dikes, led to the formation of streets and squares, which were unusual in Indian pueblos, and gave to it a remarkable appearance. "There were three sorts of broad and s.p.a.cious streets,"

Herrera remarks; "one sort all water with bridges, another all earth, and a third of earth and water, there being a s.p.a.ce to walk along on land and the rest for canoes to pa.s.s, so that most of the streets had walks on the sides and water in the middle". [Footnote: History of America, ii, 361.]

Many of the houses were large, far beyond the supposable wants of a single Indian family. They were constructed of adobe brick and of stone, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white; and some were constructed of a red porous stone.

In cutting and dressing this stone flint implements were used.

[Footnote: Clavigero, ii, 238.]

The fact that the houses were plastered externally leads us to infer that they had not learned to dress stone and lay them in courses. It is not certainly established that they had learned the use of a mortar of lime and sand. In the final attack and capture, it is said that Cortes, in the course of seventeen days, destroyed and leveled three-quarters of the pueblo, which demonstrates the flimsy character of the masonry. Some of the houses were constructed on three sides of a court, like those on the Rio Chaco in New Mexico, others probably surrounded an open court or quadrangle, like the House of the Nuns at Uxmal; but this is not clearly shown. The best houses were usually two stories high, an upper and lower floor being mentioned. The second story receded from the first, probably in the terraced form. Clavigero remarks that "the houses of the lords and people of circ.u.mstance were built of stone and lime. They consisted of two floors, having halls, large court-yards, and the chambers fitly disposed; the roofs were flat and terraced; the walls were so well whitened, polished, and shining that they appeared to the Spaniards when at a distance to have been silver. The pavement or floor was plaster, perfectly level, plain, and smooth.... The large houses of the capital had in general two entrances, the princ.i.p.al one to the street, the other to the ca.n.a.l. They had no wooden doors to their houses." [Footnote: History of Mexico, ii, 232.]

The house was entered through doorways from the street, or from the court, on the ground-floor. Not a house in Mexico is mentioned by any of the early writers as occupied by a single family. They were evidently joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American model, each occupied by a number of families ranging from five and ten to one hundred, and perhaps in some cases two hundred families in a house.

Before considering the house architecture of the Aztecs, it remains to notice, briefly, the general character of the houses of the Village Indians within the areas of Spanish visitation. They were joint-tenement houses, usually, of the American model, adapted to communism in living, like those previously described, and will aid us to understand the houses of the pueblo of Mexico.

Herrera, speaking of the natives of Cuba, remarks that "they had caciques and towns of two hundred houses, with several families in each of them, as was usual in Hispaniola". [Footnote: ib., ii, 15.]

The Cubans were below the Sedentary Indians. In Yucatan, the houses of the Mayas, and of the tribes of Guatemala, Chiapas, and Honduras, remain in ruins to speak for themselves, and will form the subject of the ensuing chapter. On the march to Mexico, Cortez and his men, "being come down into the plain, took up their quarters in a country house that had many apartments." [Footnote: ib., ii, 320.]

"At Iztapalapa he was entertained in a house that had large courts, upper and lower floors and very delightful gardens. The walls were of stone, the timber work well wrought, there were many and s.p.a.cious rooms, hung with cotton hangings extraordinary rich in their way."

[Footnote: "History of America", 325.]

His accommodations in the pueblo of Mexico will elsewhere be noticed.

After the capture of the pueblo Alvaredo was sent southward with two hundred foot and forty horse to the province of Tututlepec on the Pacific. "When he arrived the lord of Tututlepec offered to quarter the Spaniards in his palace which was very magnificent."

"In 1525 Cortez made his celebrated march to Guatemala with one hundred and fifty horse, the same number of foot, and three hundred Indians. Being well received in the city of Apoxpalan, Cortez and all the Spaniards with their horses were quartered in one house, the Mexicans being dispersed into others, and all of them plentifully supplied with provisions during their stay. The first 'palace'

described by Herrera was discovered by Balboa somewhere in the present Costa Rica, and Comagre has gone into history as its proprietor. This palace was more remarkable and better built than any that had been yet seen on the islands or the little that was then known of the continent, being one hundred and fifty paces in length and eighty in breadth founded on very large posts inclosed by a stone wall with timber intermixed at the top and hollow s.p.a.ces so beautifully wrought that the Spaniards were amazed at the sight of it and could not express the manner and curiosity of it. There were in it several chambers and apartments and one that was like a b.u.t.tery and full of such provisions as the country afforded, as bread, venison, swine's flesh, &c. There was another large room like a cellar full of earthen vessel containing several sorts of white and red liquors made of Indian wheat etc. The noticeable fact in this description is the two chambers containing provisions and stores for the household which was undoubtedly the case with all of those named.

Zempoala near Vera Cruz is described as a very large town with stately buildings of good timber work and every house had a garden with water so that it looked like a terrestrial paradise.... The scouts advancing on horseback came to the great square and courts where the prime houses were, which having been lately new plastered over, were very light, the Indians being extraordinary expert at that work", [Footnote: History of America, ii, 211.] and further states that "the houses were built of 'lime and stone'."

These pueblos were generally small, consisting of three or four large joint-tenement houses, with other houses smaller in size, the different grades of houses representing the relative thrift and prosperity of the several groups by whom they were owned and occupied.

It is doubtful whether there was a single pueblo in North America, with the exception of Tlascala, Cholula, Tezcuco, and Mexico, which contained ten thousand inhabitants. There is no occasion to apply the term "city" to any of them. None of the Spanish descriptions enable us to realize the exact form and structure of these houses, or their relations to each other in forming a pueblo. But for the pueblos, occupied or in ruins, in New Mexico, and the more remarkable pueblos in ruins in Yucatan and Central America, we would know very little concerning the house architecture of the Sedentary Village Indians. It is evident from the citations made that the largest of these joint-tenement houses would accommodate from five hundred to a thousand or more people, living in the fashion of Indians; and that the courts were probably quadrangles, formed by constructing the building on three sides of an inclosed s.p.a.ce, as in the New Mexican pueblos, or upon the four sides, as in the House of the Nuns, at Uxmal.

The writers on the conquest have failed to describe the Aztec house in such a manner that it can be fairly comprehended. They have also failed to explain the mode of life within it. But it can safely be said that most of these houses were large, far beyond any supposable wants of a single Indian family; that they were constructed, when on dry land, of adobe brick, and when in the water, of stone imbedded in some kind of mortar, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white. Some also were constructed of a red porous stone. Some of these houses were built on three sides of a court, like those on the Chaco, but the court opened on a street or causeway. Others not unlikely surrounded an open court or quadrangle, which must have been entered through a gateway; but this is not clearly shown. The large houses were probably two stories high; an upper and a lower floor are mentioned in some cases, but rarely a third.

Communism in living in large households, the communism being confined to the household, was probably the rule of life among the ancient Mexicans at the time of the Conquest.

[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote 2 relocated to chapter end.]

Two of the houses in Mexico were more particularly noted by the soldiers of Cortes than others--that in which they were quartered, and that in which Montezuma lived. Neither can be said to have been described. I shall confine myself to these two structures.

Cortes made his first entry into Mexico in November, 1519, with four hundred and fifty Spaniards, according to Bernal Diaz, [Footnote: Diaz Conquest of Mex., ed. 1803, Keatinge's Trans., i, 181, 189.

Herrera says, 300, ii, 327.] accompanied by a thousand Tlaxcallan allies. They were lodged in a vacant palace of Montezuma's late father, Diaz naively remarks, observing that "the whole of this palace was very light, airy, clean, and pleasant, the entry being through a great court." [Footnote: Diaz, I, 191.] Cortes, after describing his reception, informs us that Montezuma "returned along the street in the order already described, until he reached a very large and splendid palace in which we were to be quartered. He then took me by the hand and led me into a s.p.a.cious saloon, in front of which was a court through which we had entered." [Footnote: Dispatches of Cortes, Folsom's Trans., p. 86.]

So much for the statements of two eye-witnesses. Herrera gathered some additional particulars. He states that "they came to a very large court, which was the wardrobe of the idols, and had been the house of Axayacatzin, Montezuma's father.... Being lodged in so large a house, that, though it seems incredible, contained so many capacious rooms, with bedchambers, that one hundred and fifty Spaniards could all lie single. It was also worth observing that though the house was so big, every part of it to the last corner was very clean, neat, matted, and hung with hangings of cotton and feather work of several colors, and had beds and mats with pavilions over them. No man of whatsoever quality having any other sort of bed, no other being used." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 330.] In the tidiness of these rooms we gain some evidence of the character of Aztec women.

Joint-tenement houses, and the mode of life they indicate, were at this time unknown in Europe. They belonged to a more ancient condition of society. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Spaniards, astonished at their magnitude, should have styled them palaces, and having been received with a great array by Montezuma, as the general commander of the Aztec forces, should have regarded him as a king, since monarchical government was the form with which they were chiefly acquainted. Suffice it then, to say that one of the great houses of the Aztecs was large enough to accommodate Cortes and his fourteen hundred and fifty men including Indian allies as they had previously been accommodated in one Cholulan house and elsewhere, on the way to Mexico. From New Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama there was scarcely a princ.i.p.al village in which an equal number could not have found accommodations in a single house.

When it is found to be unnecessary to call it a palace in order to account for its size, we are led to the conclusion that an ordinary Aztec house was emptied of its inhabitants to make room for their unwelcome visitors. After their reception, Aztec hospitality supplied them with provisions. Mr. Bandelier has, in the article above referred to, explained this house in a very satisfactory manner as "the tecpan, or official house of the tribe." He says: "The house where the Spaniards were quartered was the 'tecpan,' or official house of the tribe, vacated by the official household for that purpose." In sallying forth to greet the newcomers at the dike, "Wrathy chief (Montezuma) acted simply as the representative of the tribal hospitality, extending unusual courtesies to unusual, mysterious, and therefore dreaded guests. Leaving these in possession of the 'tecpan,' he retired to another of the large communal buildings surrounding the central square, where the official business was, meanwhile, transacted. His return to the Spanish quarters, even if compulsory, had less in it to strike the natives than is commonly believed. It was a re-installation in old quarters, and therefore the 'Tlatocan (Council of Chiefs) itself felt no hesitancy in meeting there again, until the real nature of the dangerous visitors was ascertained, when the council gradually withdrew from the snare, leaving the unfortunate 'chief of men' in Spanish hands." [Footnote: 12 Annual Report of Peabody Museum, p.

680.]