Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines Part 22

We are next to consider the second so-called palace, that in which Montezuma lived, and the dinner of Montezuma which these soldiers witnessed, and which has gone into history as a part of the evidence that a monarchy of the feudal type existed in Mexico. They had but little time to make their observations, for this imaginary kingdom perished almost immediately, and the people, in the main, dispersed.

The so-called palace of Montezuma is not described by Diaz, for the reason, probably, that there was nothing to distinguish it from a number of similar structures in the pueblo. Neither is it described by Cortes or the Anonymous Conqueror; Cortes merely remarking generally that "within the city his palaces were so wonderful that it is hardly possible to describe their beauty and extent; I can only say that in Spain there is nothing equal to them." [Footnote: Despatches, p. 121.]

Gothic cathedrals were then standing in Spain, the Alhambra in Grenada, and, without doubt, public and private buildings of dressed stone laid in courses. While the comparison was mendacious, we can understand the desire of the conqueror to magnify his exploits.

Herrera, who came later and had additional resources, remarks that the palace in which Montezuma resided "had twenty gates, all of them to the square or market-place, and the princ.i.p.al streets, and three s.p.a.cious courts, and in one of them a very large fountain.... There were many halls one hundred feet in length, and rooms of twenty-five and thirty, and one hundred baths. The timber-work was small, without nails, but very fine and strong, which the Spaniards much admired. The walls were of marble, jasper, porphyry, a black sort of stone with red veins like blood, white stone, and another sort that is transparent. The roofs were of wood, well wrought and carved....

The rooms were painted and matted, and many of them had rich hangings of cotton and coney wool, or of feather-work. The beds were not answerable to the grandeur of the house and furniture, being poor and wretched, consisting of blankets upon mats or on hay....

Few men lie in this palace, but there were one thousand women in it, and some say three thousand, which is reckoned most likely....

Montezuma took to himself the ladies that were the daughters of great men, being many in number." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 345.]

The external walls of the houses were covered with plaster. From the description it seems probable that in the interior of the large rooms the natural faces of the stone in the walls were seen here and there, some of the red porous stone, some of marble, and some resembling porphyry, for it is not supposable that they could cut this stone with flint implements. Large stones used on the inner faces of the walls might have been left uncovered, and thus have presented the mottled appearance mentioned. The Aztecs had no structures comparable with those of Yucatan. Their architecture resembles that of New Mexico wherever its features distinctly appear upon evidence that can be trusted. The best rooms found in the latter region are of thin pieces of sandstone prepared by fracture and laid up with a uniform face. Herrera had no occasion to speak of the use of marble and porphyry in the walls of this house in such a vague manner and upon more vague information. The reference to the thousand or more women as forming the harem of Montezuma is a gross libel.

Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, the last of the long line of writers who have treated the affairs of the Aztecs, has put the finishing touch to this picture in the following language: "The princ.i.p.al palace of the king of Mexico was an irregular pile of low buildings enormous in extent, constructed of huge blocks of tetzontli, a kind of porous stone common to that country, cemented with mortar. The arrangement of the buildings was such that they enclosed three great plazas or public squares, in one of which a beautiful fountain incessantly played. Twenty great doors opened on the squares and on the streets, and over these was sculptured in stone the coat-of-arms of the king of Mexico, an eagle griping in his talons a jaguar. In the interior were many halls, and one in particular is said by a writer who accompanied Cortes, known as the Anonymous Conqueror, to have been of sufficient extent to contain three thousand men.... In addition to these were more than one hundred smaller rooms, and the same number of marble baths.... The walls and floors of halls and apartments were many of them faced with polished slabs of marble, jasper, obsidian, and white tecali; lofty columns of the same fine stones supported marble balconies and porticos, every inch and corner of which was filled with wondrous ornamental carving, or held a grinning, grotesquely sculptured head. The beams and casings were of cedar, cypress, and other valuable woods profusely carved and put together without nails.... Superb mats of most exquisite finish were spread upon the marble floors; the tapestry that draped the walls and the curtains that hung before the windows were made of a fabric most wonderful for its delicate texture, elegant designs, and brilliant colors; through the halls and corridors a thousand golden censers, in which burned precious spices and perfumes, diffused a subtle odor." [Footnote: Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 160.]

Upon this rhapsody it will be sufficient to remark that halls were entirely unknown in Indian architecture. Neither a hall, as that term is used by us, has ever been seen in an Indian house, nor has one been found in the ruins of any Indian structure. An external corridor has occasionally been found in ruins of houses in Central America. The great doors open on the squares and streets; Aztec window-curtains of delicate texture, marble baths and porticos, and floors of polished slabs of marble, as figments of a troubled imagination, recall the glowing description of the great kingdom of the Sandwich Islands--with its king, its cabinet ministers, its parliament, its army and navy, which Mark Twain has fitly characterized as "an attempt to navigate a sardine dish with Great Eastern machinery"; and it suggested also the Indian chief humorously mentioned by Irving as generously "decked out in c.o.c.ked hat and military coat, in contrast with his breech clout and leathern leggins, being grand officer at top and ragged Indian at bottom." [Footnote: Bonneville, p. 34.] Whatever may be said by credulous and enthusiastic authors to decorate this Indian pueblo, its houses and its breech-cloth people, cannot conceal the "ragged Indian" therein by dressing him in a European costume.

On the seventh day after the entry into Mexico, Montezuma was induced by intimidation to leave the house in which he lived and take up his quarters with Cortes, where he was held a prisoner until his death, which occurred a few weeks later. Whatever was seen of his mode of life in his usual place of residence was practically limited to the five days between the coming of the Spaniards and his capture. Our knowledge of the facts is in the main derived from what these soldiers reported upon slight and imperfect means of observation. Bernal Diaz and Cortes have left us an extraordinary description, not of his residence, but of his daily life, and more particularly of the dinner, which will now be considered. It is worth the attempt to take up the pictures of these and succeeding authors, and see whether the real truth of the matter cannot be elicited from their own statements. There was undoubtedly a basis of facts underneath them, because without such a basis the superstructure could not have been created.

It may with reason be supposed that the Spaniards found Montezuma, with his gentile kindred, in a large joint-tenement house, containing perhaps fifty or a hundred families united in a communal household. The dinner they witnessed was the single daily meal of this household, prepared in a common cook-house from common stores, and divided at the kettle. The dinner of each person was placed in an earthen bowl, with which in his hand an Indian needed neither chair nor table, and, moreover, had neither the one nor the other.

The men ate first, and by themselves, Indian fashion; and the women, of whom only a few were seen, afterwards and by themselves. On this hypothesis the dinner in question is susceptible of a satisfactory explanation.

It has been shown that each Aztec community of persons owned lands in common, from which they derived their support. Their mode of tillage and of distribution of the products, whatever it may have been, would have returned to each family or household, large or small, its rightful share. Communism in living in large households composed of related families springs naturally from such a soil. It may be considered a law of their condition, and, plainly enough, the most economical mode of life they could adopt until the idea of property had been sufficiently developed in their minds to lead to the division of lands among individuals with ownership in fee, and power of alienation. Their social system, which tended to unite kindred families in a common household, their ownership of lands in common, and their ownership, as a group, of a joint-tenement house, which would necessarily follow, would not admit a right in persons to sell, and thus to introduce strangers into the ownership of such lands or such houses. Lands and houses were owned and held under a common system which entered into their plan of life. The idea of property was forming in their minds, but it was still in that immature state which pertains to the Middle Status of barbarism. They had no money, but traded by barter of commodities; very little personal property, and scarcely anything of value to Europeans. They were still a breech-cloth people, wearing this rag of barbarism as the unmistakable evidence of their condition; and the family was in the syndyasmian or pairing form, with separation at any moment at the option of either party. It was the weakness of the family, its inability to face alone the struggle of life, which led to the construction of joint-tenement houses throughout North and South America by the Indian tribes; and it was the gentile organization which led them to fill these houses, on the principle of kin, with related families.

In a pueblo as large as that of Mexico, which was the largest found in America, and may possibly have contained thirty thousand inhabitants, there must have been a number of large communal houses of different sizes, from those that were called palaces, because of their size, to those filled by a few families. Degrees of prosperity are shown in barbarous as well as in civilized life in the quarters of the people. Herrera states that the houses of the poorer sort of people were "small, low, and mean," but that, "as small as the houses were, they commonly contained two, four, and six families."

[Footnote: History of America, ii, 360.]

Wherever a household is found in Indian life, be the married pairs composing it few or many, that household practiced communism in living. In the largest of these houses it would not follow necessarily that all its inmates lived from common stores, because they might form several household groups in the same house; but in the large household of which Montezuma was a member, it is plain that it was fed from common stores prepared in a common cook-house, and divided from the kettle, in earthen bowls, each containing the dinner of a single person. Montezuma was supposed to be absolute master of Mexico, and what they saw at this dinner was interpreted with exclusive reference to him as the central figure. The result is remarkably grotesque. It was their own self-deception, without any a.s.sistance from the Aztecs. The accounts given by Diaz and Cortes, and which subsequent writers have built upon with glowing enthusiasm and free additions, is simply the gossip of a camp of soldiers suddenly cast into an earlier form of society, which the Village Indians of America, of all mankind, then best represented. That they could understand it was not to have been expected. Accustomed to monarchy and to privileged cla.s.ses, the princ.i.p.al Aztec war-chief seemed to them quite naturally a king, and sachems and chiefs followed in their vision as princes and lords. But that they should have remained in history as such for three centuries is an amusing commentary upon the value of historical writings in general.

The dinner of Montezuma, witnessed within the five days named by the Spanish soldiers, comes down to us with a slender proportion of reliable facts. The accounts of Bernal Diaz and of Cortes form the basis of all subsequent descriptions [Footnote: The Anonymous Conqueror does not notice it.]. Montezuma was the central figure around whom all the others are made to move. A number of men, as Diaz states, were to be seen in the house and in the courts, going to and fro; a part of whom were thought to be chiefs in attendance upon Montezuma, and the remainder were supposed to be guards. Better proof of the use of guards is needed than the suggestion of Diaz. It implies a knowledge of military discipline unknown by Indian tribes.

It was noticed that Indians went barefooted into the presence of Montezuma, which was interpreted as an act of servility and deference, although bare feet must have been the rule rather than the exception in Tenocht.i.tlan. Diaz further informs us that "his cooks had upwards of thirty different ways of dressing meats, and they had earthen vessels so contrived as to keep them always hot. For the table of Montezuma himself above three hundred dishes were dressed, and for his guards above a thousand. Before dinner Montezuma would go out and inspect the preparations, and his officers would point out to him which were the best, and explain of what birds and flesh they were composed, and of these he would eat.... Montezuma was seated on a low throne or chair at a table proportionate to the height of his seat. The table was covered with white cloth and napkins, and four beautiful women presented him with water for his hands in vessels which they called xicales, with other vessels under them like plates to catch the water; they also presented him with towels. Then two other women brought him small cakes of bread, and when the king began to eat, a large screen of wood-gilt was placed before him, so that people should not during that time see him. The women having retired to a little distance, four ancient lords stood by the throne, to whom Montezuma from time to time spoke or addressed questions, and as a matter of particular favor gave to each of them a plate of that which he was eating.... This was served on earthenware of Cholula, red and black.... I observed a number of jars, about fifty, brought in filled with foaming chocolate, of which he took some which the women presented to him. During the time Montezuma was at dinner, two very beautiful women were busily employed making small cakes, with eggs and other things mixed therein. These were delicately white, and when made they presented them to him on plates covered with napkins. Also another kind of bread was brought to him in long loaves, and plates of cakes resembling wafers. After he had dined they presented to him three little canes, highly ornamented, containing liquid amber mixed with an herb they call tobacco; and when he had sufficiently viewed the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the smoke of one of these canes and then laid himself down to sleep; and thus his princ.i.p.al meal concluded. After this was over, all his guards and domestics sat down to dinner, and as near as I can judge, above a thousand plates of these eatables that I have mentioned were laid before them, with vessels of foaming chocolate, and fruit in immense quant.i.ty. For his women and various inferior servants, his establishment was a prodigious expense, and we were astonished, amid such a profusion, at the vast regularity that prevailed." [Footnote: History of the Conquest of Mexico, i, 198-202.] Diaz wrote his history more than thirty years after the conquest (he says he was writing it in 1568), [Footnote: ib., ii, 423.] which may serve to excuse him for implying the use of veritable chairs and a table where neither existed, and for describing the remainder as sitting down to dinner. Tezozomoc, who is followed by Herrera, says the table of Montezuma consisted of two skins. How they were fastened together and supported does not appear.

The statements in the Despatches of Cortes, as they now appear, are an improvement upon Diaz, the pitch being on a higher key. He remarks that Montezuma "was served in the following manner: Every day, as soon as it was light, six hundred n.o.bles and men of rank were in attendance at the palace, who either sat or walked about in the halls and galleries, and pa.s.sed their time in conversation, but without entering the apartment where his person was. The servants and attendants of these n.o.bles remained in the courtyards, of which there were two or three of great extent, and in the adjoining street, which was also very s.p.a.cious. They all remained in attendance from morning till night; and when his meals were served, the n.o.bles were likewise served with equal profusion, and their servants and secretaries also had their allowance. Daily his larder and wine-cellar were open to all who wished to eat or drink. The meals were served by three or four hundred youths, who brought in an infinite number of dishes; indeed, whenever he dined or supped the table was loaded with every kind of flesh, fish, fruits and vegetables that the country produced. As the climate is cold, they put a chafing-dish with live coals under every plate and dish, to keep them warm. The meals were served in a large hall in which Montezuma was accustomed to eat, and the dishes quite filled the room, which was covered with mats and kept very clean. He sat on a small cushion, curiously wrought of leather. During the meal there were present, at a little distance from him, five or six elderly caciques, to whom he presented some of the food. And there was constantly in attendance one of the servants, who arranged and handed the dishes, and who received from others whatever was wanted for the supply of the table. Both at the beginning and end of every meal, they furnished water for the hands, and the napkins used on these occasions were never used a second time, and this was the case also with the plates and dishes, which were not brought again, but new ones in place of them; it was the same with the chafing-dishes."

[Footnote: Despatches of Cortes, Folsom's Trans, p. 123]

Since cursive writing was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for two reasons; firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine. An acid beer (pulque), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was a common beverage of the Aztecs, but it is hardly supposable that even this was used at dinner.

It will he noticed that according to this account the dinner was served to all at the same time, Montezuma and several chiefs eating at one end of the room, but no mention is made of the manner in which the remainder ate. The six hundred men (or less) who remained about the house and courts during the day, we may well suppose, were, with their families, joint residents and joint proprietors with Montezuma of the establishment. Two or three structures are mingled in these descriptions, which were probably entirely distinct in their uses.

Herrera gathered up the subsequent growth of the story, which undoubtedly made a great sensation in Europe as a part of the picture of life in the New World; and embellished it from sheer delight in a marvelous tale. The few facts stated by Bernal Diaz, expressing the interpretation of the Spanish soldiers, were fruitful seeds planted three hundred years ago, which the imaginations of enthusiastic authors have developed into a glowing and picturesque narrative. The princ.i.p.al part of Herrera'a account runs as follows: "Montezuma did always eat alone, and so great a quant.i.ty of meat was served up to his table, such great variety, and so richly dressed, that there was sufficient for all the prime men of his household.

His table was a cushion, or two pieces of colored leather; instead of a chair, a little low stool, made of one piece, the seat hollowed out, carved and painted in the best manner that could be; the table-cloth, napkins, and towels of very fine cotton as white as snow, and never served any more than once, being the fees of the proper officers. The meat was brought in by four hundred pages, all gentlemen, sons of lords, and set down together in a hall; the king went thither, and with a rod, or his hand, pointed to what he liked, and then the sewer set it upon the chafing-dishes that it might not be cold; and this he never failed to do, unless the steward at any time very much recommended to him some particular dishes. Before he sat down, twenty of the most beautiful women came and brought him water to wash his hands, and when seated the sewer did shut a wooded rail that divided the room, lest the n.o.bility that went to see him dine should enc.u.mber the table, and he alone set on and took off the dishes, for the pages neither came near nor spoke a word. Strict silence was observed, none daring to speak unless it was some jester, or the person of whom he asked a question. The sewer was always upon his knees and barefooted, attending him without lifting up his eyes.

No man with shoes on was to come into the room upon pain of death.

The sewer also gave him drink in a cup of several shapes, sometimes of gold, and sometimes of silver, sometimes of gourd, and sometimes of the sh.e.l.ls of fishes." [Footnote: Solis, thinking a cocoanut sh.e.l.l altogether too plain, embellishes the sh.e.l.l with jewels: "He had cups of gold, and salvers of the same; and sometimes he drank out of cocoas and natural sh.e.l.ls very richly set with jewels."--History of the Conquest of Mexico, Lond., ed. 1738, Townshend's Trans., I, 417.]

"Six ancient lords attended at a distance, to whom he gave some dishes of what he liked best, which they did eat there with much respect. He had always music of flutes, reeds, horns, sh.e.l.ls, kettle-drums, and other instruments, nothing agreeable to the ears of the Spaniards.... There were always at dinner dwarfs, crooked and other deformed persons, to provoke laughter, and they did eat of what was left at the further end of the hall, with the jesters and buffoons. What remained was given to three thousand Indians, that were constantly upon guard in the courts and squares, and therefore there were always three thousand dishes of meat and as many cups of liquor; the larder and cellar were never shut, by reason of their continual carrying in and out. In the kitchen they dressed all sorts of meat that were sold in the market, being a prodigious quant.i.ty, besides what was brought in by hunters, tenants, and tributaries.

The dishes and all utensils were all of good earthenware, and served the king but once. He had abundance of vessels of gold and silver, yet made no use of them, because they should not serve twice."

[Footnote: History of America, ii, 336.] Further on, and out of its place, Herrera gives us what seems to have been a call of the scattered household to dinner. "When it was dinner-time," he remarks, "eight or ten men whistled very loud, beating the kettle-drums hard, as it were to warn those that were to dance after dinner; then the dancers came, who, to entertain their great sovereign, were all to be men of quality, clad as richly as they could, with costly mantles, white, red, green, yellow, and some of several colors."

[Footnote: ib., 443.]

The four women of Diaz who brought water to Montezuma have now increased to twenty; but, as the Spanish writers claimed a wide lat.i.tude in the matter of numbers, fivefold is not, perhaps, unreasonable, especially as it did not occur to Herrera that Diaz may, at the outset, have quadrupled the actual number. The "three or four hundred youths" who brought in the dinner, according to Cortes, settle down under Herrera to "four hundred pages, all gentlemen, sons of lords"; and here we must recognize the discrimination of the historian in that he found the highest number stated by Cortes fully adequate to the occasion. Two other things may be noticed: shoes have disappeared from all Indian feet in the face of a terrific penalty, and three thousand hungry Indians stand in peaceful quietude, while their dinner grows cold upon the floor, as Montezuma eats alone in solitary grandeur. No American Indian could be made to comprehend this picture. It lacks the realism of Indian life, and embodies an amount of puerility of which the Indian nature is not susceptible. Europeans and Americans may rise to the height of the occasion because their mental range is wider, and their imaginations have fed more deeply upon nursery tales. Diaz had contented himself with saying that Montezuma "had two hundred of his n.o.bility on guard in apartments adjoining his own," [Footnote: History of the Conquest of Mexico, I, 198.] in whom may be recognized his fellow-householders; but Cortes generously increased the number to "six hundred n.o.bles and men of rank," who appeared at daylight and remained in attendance during the day. Neither number, however, was quite sufficient to meet the conceptions of the historiographer of Spain, and accordingly three thousand, all guards, were adopted by Herrera as a suitable number to give eclat to Montezuma's dinner. If any man conversant with Indian character could show by what instrumentality five hundred Indians could be kept together twelve hours in attendance upon any human being from a sense of duty, he would add something to our knowledge of the Red Race; and could he prove further that they had actually waited, in the presence of as many earthen bowls, smoking with their several dinners, while their war-chief in the same room was making his repast alone, the verifier would thereby endow the Indian character with an element of forbearance he has never since been known to display. The block of wood hollowed out for a stool or seat may be accepted, for it savors of the simplicity of Indian art. That the Aztecs had napkins of coa.r.s.e texture, woven by hand, is probable; as also that they were white, because cotton is white.

Imagination might easily expand a napkin into a table-cloth, provided a table existed to spread it upon; but in this case, without duly considering the relation between the two, the table-cloth has been created, but the table refuses to appear. The napkin business, therefore, seems to have been slightly overdone.

Finally, the call of the scattered household to dinner by kettle-drums and whistling savors too strongly of Indian ways and usages to be diverted into a summons to the dancers, as Herrera suggests. This Aztec dinner-call, on a scale commensurate with a large communal household, would have been lost to history but for the special use discerned in it to decorate a tale. It recognizes the loitering habits of an Aztec household, and perhaps the irregularity of the dinner-hour.

Pa.s.sing over the descriptions of Sahagun, Clavigero, and Prescott, who have kindled into enthusiasm over this dinner of Montezuma, Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft shall be allowed to furnish us with the very latest version. "Every day," he remarks, "from sunrise until sunset the antechambers of Montezuma's palace in Mexico were occupied by six hundred n.o.blemen and gentlemen, who pa.s.sed their time lounging about and discussing the gossip of the day in low tones, for it was considered disrespectful to speak loudly or make any noise within the palace limits. They were provided with apartments in the palace, and took their meals from what remained of the superabundance of the royal table, as did after them their own servants, of whom each person of quality was ent.i.tled to from one to thirty according to his rank. These retainers, numbering two or three thousand, filled several outer courts during the day. The king took his meals alone in one of the largest halls of the palace.... He was seated upon a low leather cushion, upon which were thrown various soft skins, and his table was of a similar description, except that it was larger and rather higher, and was covered with white cotton cloths of the finest texture. The dinner-service was of the finest ware of Cholula, and many of the goblets were of gold and silver, or fashioned with beautiful sh.e.l.ls. He is said to have possessed a complete service of solid gold, but as it was considered below a king's dignity to use anything at table twice, Montezuma, with all his extravagance, was obliged to keep this costly dinner-set in the temple. The bill of fare comprised everything edible of fish, flesh, and fowl that could be procured in the empire or imported beyond it. Relays of couriers were employed in bringing delicacies from afar.... There were cunning cooks among the Aztecs, and at these extravagant meals there was almost as much variety in the cookery as in the matter cooked.

Sahagun gives a most formidable list of roast, stewed, and broiled dishes, of meat, fish, and poultry, seasoned with many kinds of herbs, of which, however, that most frequently mentioned is chile. He further describes many kinds of bread, all bearing a more or less close resemblance to the Mexican tortilla ... then tamales of all kinds, and many other curious messes, such as frog sp.a.w.n and stewed ants, cooked with chile.... Each dish was kept warm on a chafing-dish placed under it. Writers do not agree as to the exact quant.i.ty of food served up at each meal, but it must have been immense, since the lowest number of dishes given is three hundred and the highest three thousand. They were brought into the hall by four hundred pages of n.o.ble birth, who placed their burdens upon the matted floor and retired noiselessly. The king then pointed out such viands as he wished to partake of, or left the selection to his steward, who doubtless took pains to study the likes and dislikes of the royal palate. The steward was a functionary of the highest rank and importance; he alone was privileged to place the designated delicacies before the king upon the table; he appears to have done duty both as royal carver and cup-bearer; and, according to Torquemada, to have done it barefooted and on his knees. [Footnote: The 'cup-bearer' agrees reasonably well with the 'window-curtains.']

Everything being in readiness, a number of the most beautiful of the king's women entered, bearing water in round vessels called Xicales, for the king to wash his hands in, and towels that he might dry them, other vessels being placed upon the ground to catch the drippings.

Two other women at the same time brought him some small loaves of a very delicate kind of bread, made of the finest maize flour, beaten up with eggs. This done, a wooden screen, carved and gilt, was placed before him that no one might see him while eating. There were always present five or six aged lords, who stood near the royal chair barefooted and with bowed heads. To these, as a special mark of favor, the king occasionally sent a choice morsel from his own plate. During the meal the monarch amused himself by watching the performances of his jugglers and tumblers, whose marvellous feats of strength and dexterity I shall describe in another place; at other times there was dancing, accompanied by singing and music.... The more solid food was followed by pastry, sweetmeats, and a magnificent dessert of fruit. The only beverage drank was chocolate, of which about fifty jars were provided; it was taken with a spoon, finely wrought of gold or sh.e.l.l, from a goblet of the same material.

Having finished his dinner, the king again washed his hands in water brought to him, as before, by the women. After this, several painted and gilt pipes were brought, from which he inhaled, through his mouth or nose, as best suited him, the smoke of a mixture of liquid amber and an herb called tobacco. This siesta over, he devoted himself to business, and proceeded to give audience to foreign amba.s.sadors or deputations from cities in the empire, and to such of his lords and ministers as had business to transact with him."

[Footnote: Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 174-178.]

In this account, although founded upon those of Diaz and Cortes, and showing nothing essentially new, we have the final growth of the story to the present time, but without any a.s.surance that the limits of its possible expansion have been reached. The purification of our aboriginal history, by casting out the ma.s.s of trash with which it is so heavily freighted, is forced upon us to save American intelligence from deserved disgrace. Whatever may be said of the American aborigines in general, or of the Aztecs in particular, they were endowed with common sense in the matter of their daily food, which cost them labor, forethought, and care to provide. The picture of Indian life here presented is simply impossible. Village Indians in the Middle Status of barbarism were below the age of tables and chairs for dinner service; neither had they learned to arrange a dinner to be eaten socially at a common table, or even to share their dinner with their wives and children. Their joint-tenement houses, their common stores, their communism in living, and the separation of the s.e.xes at their meals, are genuine Indian customs and usages which explain this dinner. It was misconceived by the Spaniards quite naturally, and with the grotesque results herein presented; but there is no excuse for continuing this misconception in the presence of known facts accessible to all.

There is no doubt whatever that Montezuma was treated with great consideration by all cla.s.ses of persons. Indians respect and venerate their chiefs. As their princ.i.p.al war-chief, Montezuma held the highest official position among them. He is represented as amiable, generous, and manly, although unnerved by the sudden appearance and the novel and deadly arms of the Spaniards. He had charge of the reception and entertainment of Cortes and his men, who requited him savagely for his hospitality and kindness. But when his home-life is considered, he fared no better than his fellow-householders, sharing with them their common dinner. These accounts, when divested of their misconceptions, render it probable that Montezuma was living with his gentle kinsmen in a house they owned in common; and that what the Spaniards saw was a dinner in common by this household, which, with the women and children, may have numbered from five hundred to a thousand persons. When the scattered members of the household had been summoned, the single daily meal was brought in by a number of persons from the common cook-house in earthen bowls and dishes, and set down upon the floor of an apartment used as a place for dinner in the fashion of Indians.

Indians as they were, they doubtless took up these bowls one by one, each containing the dinner of one person divided at the kettle. They ate standing, or it may be sitting upon the floor, or upon the ground in the open court. Indians as they were, the men ate first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. After dinner was over, they were diverted, probably, with music and dancing, and made themselves merry, as well-fed Indians are apt to do. That the same dinner, conducted in a similar manner, occurred at all the houses in the pueblo, large and small, once a day, there can scarcely be a doubt.

The dinner of Montezuma which has gone into history, and been read for three centuries with wonder and admiration, is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the slender material out of which American aboriginal history has been made. It shows, moreover, as a warning, what results flow from great misconceptions through the constructive faculty of authors.

A confederacy of three Indian tribes, speaking dialects of the same language, was precisely what the Spaniards found in Mexico, and this was all they found. They had no occasion in their accounts to advance a step beyond this simple fact. A satisfactory explanation of this confederacy can be found in similar Indian confederacies. It was a growth from the common inst.i.tutions of the Indian family.

Underneath these delusive pictures a council of chiefs is revealed, which was the natural and legitimate instrument of government under Indian inst.i.tutions. No other form of government was possible among them. They had, beside, which was an equally legitimate part of this system, an elective and deposable war-chief (Teuchtli), the power to elect and to depose being held by a fixed const.i.tuency ever present, and ready to act when occasion required. The Aztec organization stood plainly before the Spaniards as a confederacy of Indian tribes.

Nothing but the grossest perversion of obvious facts could have enabled Spanish writers to fabricate the Aztec monarchy out of a democratic organization.

Without ascertaining the unit of their social system, if organized in gentes, as they probably were, and without gaining any knowledge of the organization that did exist, they boldly invented for the Aztecs a monarchy, with high feudal characteristics, out of the reception of Cortes by their princ.i.p.al war-chief, and such other flimsy materials as Montezuma's dinner. This misconception has stood, through American indolence, quite as long as it deserves to stand.

Since the foregoing was written, the investigations of Mr.

Bandelier "On the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans" have been published. With the new light thus thrown upon the subject, this chapter should have been re-written.

He shows that the Aztecs were composed of twenty gentes or clans.

"The existence of twenty autonomous consanguine groups is thus revealed, and we find them again at the time of the conquest, while their last vestiges were perpetuated until after 1690, when Fray Augustin de Vetancurt mentions four chief quarters with their original Indian names, comprising and subdivided into twenty 'barrios'. Now the Spanish word 'barrio' is equivalent to the Mexican term 'calpulli.' Both indicate the kin, localized and settled with the view to permanence." [Footnote: Twelfth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, 1880, p. 591.]

This organization, as was to have been expected, lies at the foundation of their social system. He names the following as among the rights, duties, and obligations of the kinship:

I. The kin claimed the right to name its members.

II. It was the duty of the kin to educate or train its members to every branch of public life.

III. The kin had the right to regulate and to control marriage.

IV. It was one of the attributes of the kin to enjoy common burial.

V. The right of the kin to 'separate worship' appears not only established within the kin's territory, but it is also recognized even at the central medicine-lodge of the tribe.

VI. The kin was obligated to protect and defend the persons and property of its members, and to resent and punish any injury done to them, as if it were a crime committed against the kin itself.

VII. The kin had the right to elect its officers, as well as the right to remove or depose them for misbehavior.

[Footnote: Twelfth Ann. Rept. Peabody Museum, pp. 615-638.]

He also regards the four "brotherhoods" who occupied the four quarters of the pueblo as probably phratries. [Footnote: ib., p. 584.]

He also shows that the government was under the control of a council, Tlatocan, composed of a body of chiefs. [Footnote: ib., p. 646, et seq.]

One of the most interesting results of this investigation is the discovery of a cla.s.s of persons unattached to any gens, "outcasts from the bond of kinship." [Footnote: ib., p. 608, et seq.] Such a cla.s.s grows up in every gentile society, when as far advanced as the Aztecs were. It finds its a.n.a.logue in the Roman Plebeians. This remarkable essay will abundantly repay a careful study.

When we have learned to speak of the American Indians in language adapted to Indian life and Indian inst.i.tutions, they will become comprehensible. So long as we apply to their social organizations and domestic inst.i.tutions terms adapted to the organizations and to the inst.i.tutions of civilized society, we caricature the Indians and deceive ourselves. There was neither a political society, nor a state, nor any civilization in America when it was discovered; and, excluding the Eskimos, but one race of Indians, the Red Race.