Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/220

Rh 210 MEXICO by the sacrificing priests to propitiate a pantheon of gods who well personified their bloodthirsty worshippers. The desire for war-captives as acceptable victims is related to have brought about an almost incredible agreement among nations of the Mexican alliance, that they should from time to time fight battles among themselves in order to provide prisoners for the altars. Thus there was something of the character of a religious war in the expedition made in 1469 under Axayacatl as far down the isthmus as Tehuantepec, whence the Mexican army came back with loads of rich plunder and thousands of captives, and the later ravaging of the Totonac region as far as the Atlantic, when the inhabitants were taken for sacrifice and their land recolonized by Aztecs. Ahuitzotl left the Aztec empire (as it is often somewhat ambitiously called) at the height of apparent power, but the cruel oppression of the subject regions had made their life almost unbearable, and the second Moteuczoma, coming to a rule already liable to break up from within, weakened it still more by upholding the class of chiefs or nobles against the common people who as warriors and traders had in great measure made the prosperity of the allied nations. The Mexicans had long tried to subjugate the stubborn little nation of Tlax- callan (Tlascala), which had obstinately held out, though so hemmed in that for years the people lived without salt, this being no longer to be had from the sea-coast. Moteuczoma made a last effort to crush them, but in vain, and when the Spaniards came they were there as ready-made allies planted on the high road to Mexico. From the date when the festival of the new cycle was first celebrated in Chapultepec six 52-year periods had passed when in 1507 the new fire symbolizing the beginning of a new cycle was kindled for the last time on the breast of a human victim. Rumours of the coming of the Europeans may have before this date spread from Cuba, but in 1517 Cordova touched in Yucatan, and in 1518 Grijalva was on the east coast of Mexico, and the Aztecs first met the white men, in whom they saw, partly with hope and partly with fear, the fulfilment of the prophecy that Quetzalcoatl should one day return. With the Spanish conquest under Hernando Cortes (see CORTES) the native history of Mexico comes to an end. CIVILIZATION. Govern- While the prairie tribes of America lived under the loose ment. sway of chiefs and councils of old men, the settled nations of Mexico had attained to a somewhat highly organized government. This may be seen by the elaborate balance of power maintained in the federation of Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, where each king was absolute in his own country, but in war or other public interests they acted jointly, with powers in something like the proportion in which they divided conquered lands and spoil, which was two-fifths each to Mexico and Tezcuco and one-fifth to Tlacopan. The suc cessor of the Aztec king was customarily a chosen brother or nephew, the eldest having the first claim unless set aside as incompetent, and having to be a tried warrior ; this mode of succession, which has been looked on as an elaborate practical device for securing practical advantages, seems rather to have arisen out of the law of choice among the descendants of the female line, found in American tribes of much lower culture. Something like this appears in the succes sion of kings of Tezcuco and Tlacopan, which went to sons by the principal wife, who was usually of the Aztec royal family. The Mexican chronicles, however, show instances of the king s son suc ceeding, or of powerful chiefs being elected to the kingship. The term republic is sometimes used to describe the little state of Tlascala, but this was in fact a federation of four chiefs, with an assembly of nobles. In the Zapotec district the, Wiyatao or high- priest of Zopaa was a divine ruler before whom all prostrated them selves with faces to the ground ; he was even too sacred to allow his foot to touch the earth, and was only seen carried in a litter. Palaces, The accounts given by the Spanish and native Mexican writers of &c. the courts and palaces of the native kings must be taken with some reserve, from the tendency to use descriptive terms not actually untrue, but which convey erroneous ideas taken from European architecture ; thus what are called columns of porphyry and jasper supporting marble balconies might perhaps be better described as piers carrying slabs, while the apartments and terraces must have been more remarkable for number and extent than architectural grandeur, being but low one-storied buildings. The principal palace of Mexico consisted of hundreds of rooms and halls ranged round three open squares, with women s apartment*, granaries, storehouses, menageries, aviaries, of such extent that one of the companions of Cortes records having four times wandered about till he was tired, without seeing the whole. Not less remark able was the palace of Tezcuco, surrounded with its groves and pleasure-gardens ; and, though now hardly anything remains of the buildings above ground, the neighbouring hill of Tezcotzinco still has its stone steps and terraces ; and the immense embankment carrying the aqueduct-channel of hewn stone which supplied water to basins cut in the solid rock still remains to prove that the chron iclers descriptions, if highly-coloured, were at any rate genuine. Till the last century the gigantic figures of Axayacatl and his son Monte- zuma were to be seen carved in the porphyry hill of Chapultepec, but these as well as the hanging gardens have been destroyed, and only the groves of ahuehuctc (cypress) remain of the ancient beauties of the place. That in the palace gardens flowers from the tierra caliente were transplanted, and water-fowl bred near fresh and salt pools fit for each kind, that all kinds of birds and beasts were kept in well-appointed zoological gardens where there were homes even for alligators and snakes, all this testifies, not merely to barbaric ostentation, but to a cultivation of natural history which was really beyond the European level of the time. From the palaces and re tinues of thousands of servants attached to the royal service may be inferred at once the despotic power of the Mexican rulers and the heavy taxation of the people ; in fact some of the most remarkable of the picture-writings are tribute-rolls enumerating by hundreds and thousands the mantles, ocelot-skins, bags of gold-dust, bronze hatchets, loads of chocolate, &c., furnished periodically by the towns. Below the king was a numeroiis and powerful class of nobles, the highest of whom (tlatoani) were great vassals owing little more than homage and tribute to their feudal lord, while the natural result of the unruliness of the noble class was that the king to keep them in check increased their numbers, brought them to the capital as councillors, and balanced their influence by military and household officers, and by a rich and powerful merchant class. The nobles not only had privileges of rank and dignity, but substantial power over the plebeian or peasant class (macehualli), who submitted to much the same oppression and extortion at their hands as was customary in the Old World. The tenures of land in Mexico were those generally appearing in barbaric countries where invasion and military despotism have encroached on but not totally superseded the earlier tribal laws. The greatest estates belonged to the king, or had been granted to military chiefs whose sons succeeded them, or were the endowments of temples, but the calpulli or village community still survived, and each freeman of the tribe held and tilled his portion of the common lands. Below the freemen were the slaves, who were war-captives, persons enslaved for punishment, or children sold by their parents. Prisoners of war were mostly doomed to sacrifice, but other classes of slaves were mildly treated, retaining civil rights, and their children were born free. The superior courts of law formed part of the palace, and there Justice, were tribunals in the principal cities, over each of which presided a supreme judge or cihuacoatl, who was irremovable, and whose criminal decisions not even the king might reverse ; he appointed the lower judges and heard appeals from them ; it is doubtful whether he judged in civil cases, but both kinds of suits were heard in the court below, by the tlacatecatl and his two associates, below whom were the ward-magistrates. Lands were set apart for the maintenance of the judges, and indeed nothing gives a higher idea of the elaborate civilization of Mexico than this judicial system, which culminated in a general court and council of state presided over by the king. The laws and records of suits were set down in picture-writings, of which some are still to be seen ; sentence of death was recorded by drawing a line with an arrow across the portrait of the condemned, and the chroniclers describe the barbaric solemnity with which the king passed sentence sitting on a golden and jewelled throne in the divine tribunal, with one hand on an ornamented skull and the golden arrow in the other. Among the resemblances to Old- World law was the use of a judicial oath, the witness touching the ground with his finger and putting it to his lips, thus swearing by Mother Earth. The criminal laws were of extreme severity, even petty theft being punished by the thief being enslaved to the person he had robbed, while to steal a tobacco pouch or twenty ears of corn was death ; he who pilfered in the market was then and there beaten to death, and he who insulted Xipe, the god of the gold- and silver-smiths, by stealing his precious metal, was skinned alive and sacrificed to the offended deity. Though aloe-beer or &quot;pulque&quot; was allowed for feasts and to invalids in moderation, and old people over seventy seem to be represented in one of the picture-writings as having liberty of drunkenness, young men found drunk were clubbed to death and young women stoned. Such a Draconian standard prevailing, it is hardly needful to enumerate the special penalties of such offences as witchcraft, fraud, removing landmarks, adultery, &c., which differed as to