Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/44

30 masculine race, eager, not only for gold, but for the establishment of estates which were in fact principalities, and whose beneficial improvement required the employment of large bodies of continual and compulsory laborers. The Indians afforded the staple of this stock at once. The conquest rooted out all their old institutions by violence. Their government and laws were overthrown by force; their religion was changed by power; their graven idols, the material emblems of their gods, were ground to dust; their social system was completely overturned; and thus, perfectly annihiliated as a nation, in politics, theology, and domestic life or habits, they were, in the end, but wretched outcasts in their own land.

The Indians may therefore be regarded as somewhat prepared by degradation for the system of repartimientos, which, as we have already seen in the historical part of this work, was instituted immediately after the conquest.

The aborigines throughout Mexico have been devoted as a class to agricultural labors. Immediately after the conquest the Spaniards forced them to toil in the mines as well as in the fields; but as soon us a race of mixed blood was found to replace these original laborers in the bowels of the earth, the native Indian escaped to wilder districts where there were no mines, or where his services were required on the surface of the earth. Besides this, since the revolution, labor has been somewhat more free than before that epoch. The Indian, if not bound to the estate, by the slavery of debt, as we shall see hereafter, has the right to do what he pleases, and consequently he selects that labor which will give him support with least fatigue in a country whose soil is almost spontaneously productive.

The Mexican Indian, may therefore be generally designated as an agriculturist. A few of them engage in the manufacture of certain elegant fabrics of wool and cotton; in some of the imitative arts, in which they greatly excel; and in the formation of utensils for domestic use.

In the field, the Indian executes all the labor,—sometimes in the midst of the great plantations of sugar, cotton, coffee, corn, tobacco, wheat, and barley—or, at others, in the midst of the beautiful gardens for which some parts of the republic are celebrated. In all these positions his labor is faithfully performed;—but he is the enemy of all changes in the modes or utensils of his work. He prefers the old system of drawing water for irrigation; the old system of rooting the earth with the Arab stake instead of the American plough; the old system of carrying offal, stones, or