Chapter I: Ancient America (4)

[Footnote 99: "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa
del gran Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni
volta vi camminauo tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di
vedere tutta." _Relatione fatta per un gentil' huomo del Signor
Fernando Cortese_, apud Ramusio, _Navigationi et Viaggi_,
Venice, 1556, tom. iii. fol. 309.]

[Sidenote: Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.]

[Sidenote: Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.]

[Sidenote: Change from gentile society to political society.]

Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand the meaning of what they saw. It dazed and bewildered them. They knew little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e. feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if they supposed that these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such misconceptions were common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100] Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable, found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot properly call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about barbaric society. Nothing could be further from _feudalism_, in which the relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly unknown and inconceivable. This more primitive form of society is not improperly called _gentilism_, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or clan, with communism in living, and with the conception of individual ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that everywhere prevailed throughout the myriads of unrecorded centuries during which the foremost races of mankind struggled up through savagery and barbarism into civilization, while weaker and duller races lagged behind at various stages on the way. The change from "gentile" society to political society as we know it was in some respects the most important change that has occurred in human affairs since men became human. It might be roughly defined as the change from personal to territorial organization. It was accomplished when the stationary clan became converted into the township, and the stationary tribe into the small state;[101] when the conception of individual property in land was fully acquired; when the tie of physical kinship ceased to be indispensable as a bond for holding a society together; when the _clansman_ became a _citizen_. This momentous change was accomplished among the Greeks during a period beginning shortly before the first Olympiad (B. C. 776), and ending with the reforms of Kleisthenes at Athens (B. C. 509); among the Romans it was accomplished by the series of legislative changes beginning with those ascribed to Servius Tullius (about B. C. 550), and perfected by the time of the first Punic War (B. C. 264-241). In each case about three centuries was required to work the change.[102] If now the reader, familiar with European history, will reflect upon the period of more than a thousand years which intervened between the date last named and the time when feudalism became thoroughly established, if he will recall to mind the vast and powerful complication of causes which operated to transform civil society from the aspect which it wore in the days of Regulus and the second Ptolemy to that which it had assumed in the times of Henry the Fowler or Fulk of Anjou, he will begin to realize how much "feudalism" implies, and what a wealth of experience it involves, above and beyond the change from "gentile" to "civil" society. It does not appear that any people in ancient America ever approached very near to this earlier change. None had fairly begun to emerge from gentilism; none had advanced so far as the Greeks of the first Olympiad or the Romans under the rule of the Tarquins.

[Footnote 100: When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was
received at court as befitted a "king's daughter," and the old
Virginia historian, William Stith (born in 1689), says it was a
"constant tradition" in his day that James I. "became jealous,
and was highly offended at Mr. Rolfe for marrying a princess."
The notion was that "if Virginia descended to Pocahontas, as it
might do at Powhatan's death, at her own death the kingdom
would be vested in Mr. Rolfe's posterity." Esten Cooke's
_Virginia_, p. 100. Powhatan (i. e. Wahunsunakok, chief of the
Powhatan tribe) was often called "emperor" by the English
settlers. To their intense bewilderment he told one of them
that his office would descend to his [maternal] brothers, even
though he had sons living. It was thought that this could not
be true.]

[Footnote 101: The small states into which tribes were at first
transformed have in many cases survived to the present time as
portions of great states or nations. The shires or counties of
England, which have been reproduced in the United States,
originated in this way, as I have briefly explained in my
little book on _Civil Government in the United States_, p. 49.
When you look on the map of England, and see the town of
_Icklingham_ in the county of _Suffolk_, it means that this
place was once the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of
Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of Angles known
as "South folk." So the names of Gaulish tribes survived as
names of French provinces, e. g. _Auvergne_ from the _Arverni_,
_Poitou_ from the _Pictavi_, _Anjou_ from the _Andecavi_,
_Béarn_ from the _Bigerrones_, etc.]

[Footnote 102: "It was no easy task to accomplish such a
fundamental change, however simple and obvious it may now
seem.... Anterior to experience, a township, as the unit of a
political system, was abstruse enough to tax the Greeks and
Romans to the depths of their capacities before the conception
was formed and set in practical operation." Morgan, _Ancient
Society_, p. 218.]

[Sidenote: Suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish accounts.]

[Sidenote: Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis Morgan.]

The first eminent writer to express a serious doubt as to the correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that sagacious Scotchman, William Robertson.[103] The illustrious statesman and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without very careful and critical scrutiny.[104] It is to be observed that Mr. Gallatin approached the subject with somewhat more knowledge of aboriginal life in America than had been possessed by previous writers. A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis Cass, who also knew a great deal about Indians.[105] Next came Mr. Morgan,[106] the man of path-breaking ideas, whose minute and profound acquaintance with Indian life was joined with a power of penetrating the hidden implications of facts so keen and so sure as to amount to genius. Mr. Morgan saw the nature of the delusion under which the Spaniards laboured; he saw that what they mistook for feudal castles owned by great lords, and inhabited by dependent retainers, were really huge communal houses, owned and inhabited by clans, or rather by segments of overgrown clans. He saw this so vividly that it betrayed him now and then into a somewhat impatient and dogmatic manner of statement; but that was a slight fault, for what he saw was not the outcome of dreamy speculation but of scientific insight. His researches, which reduced "Montezuma's empire" to a confederacy of tribes dwelling in pueblos, governed by a council of chiefs, and collecting tribute from neighbouring pueblos, have been fully sustained by subsequent investigation.

[Footnote 103: Robertson's _History of America_, 9th ed. vol.
iii. pp. 274, 281.]

[Footnote 104: "Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico,
Yucatan, and Central America," _American Ethnological Society's
Transactions_, vol. i., New York, 1852. There is a brief
account of Mr. Gallatin's pioneer work in American philology
and ethnology in Stevens's _Albert Gallatin_, pp. 386-396.]

[Footnote 105: Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," _North Amer.
Review_, Oct., 1840.]

[Footnote 106: Mr. R. A. Wilson's _New History of the Conquest
of Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish
conquerors as wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant,
uncritical, and full of wild fancies, it produced little
effect. It was demolished, with neatness and despatch, in two
articles in the _Atlantic Monthly_, April and May, 1859, by the
eminent historian John Foster Kirk, whose _History of Charles
the Bold_ is in many respects a worthy companion to the works
of Prescott and Motley. Mr. Kirk had been Mr. Prescott's
secretary.]

[Sidenote: Adolf Bandelier's researches.]

The state of society which Cortes saw has, indeed, passed away, and its monuments and hieroglyphic records have been in great part destroyed. Nevertheless some monuments and some hieroglyphic records remain, and the people are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, descendants in the eleventh or twelfth generation from the men whose bitter feuds gave such a golden opportunity to Cortes, still dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for deceiving mankind. From a really critical study of this literature, combined with archæological investigation, much may be expected; and a noble beginning has already been made. A more extensive acquaintance with Mexican literature would at times have materially modified Mr. Morgan's conclusions, though without altering their general drift. At this point the work has been taken up by Mr. Adolf Bandelier, of Highland, Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and untiring industry as a field archæologist is joined such a thorough knowledge of Mexican literature as few men before him have possessed. Armed with such resources, Mr. Bandelier is doing for the ancient history of America work as significant as that which Mommsen has done for Rome, or Baur for the beginnings of Christianity. When a sufficient mass of facts and incidents have once been put upon record, it is hard for ignorant misconception to bury the truth in a pit so deep but that the delving genius of critical scholarship will sooner or later drag it forth into the light of day.[107]

[Footnote 107: A summary of Mr. Bandelier's principal results,
with copious citation and discussion of original Spanish and
Nahuatl sources, is contained in his three papers, "On the art
of war and mode of warfare of the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the
distribution and tenure of land, and the customs with respect
to inheritance, among the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the social
organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans,"
_Peabody Museum Reports_, vol. ii., 1876-79, pp. 95-161,
385-448, 557-699.]

[Sidenote: The Aztec confederacy.]

At this point in our exposition a very concise summary of Mr. Bandelier's results will suffice to enable the reader to understand their import. What has been called the "empire of Montezuma" was in reality a confederacy of three tribes, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and Tlacopans,[108] dwelling in three large composite pueblos situated very near together in one of the strongest defensive positions ever occupied by Indians. This Aztec confederacy extended its "sway" over a considerable portion of the Mexican peninsula, but that "sway" could not correctly be described as "empire," for it was in no sense a military occupation of the country. The confederacy did not have garrisons in subject pueblos or civil officials to administer their affairs for them. It simply sent some of its chiefs about from one pueblo to another to collect tribute. This tax consisted in great part of maize and other food, and each tributary pueblo reserved a certain portion of its tribal territory to be cultivated for the benefit of the domineering confederacy. If a pueblo proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec warriors swooped down upon it in stealthy midnight assault, butchered its inhabitants and emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm of rage had spent itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for concubines, men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty as could be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.[109] If the sudden assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers.

[Footnote 108: In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed
a certain precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the
central council-fire, and the Senecas, who had the two head
war-chiefs, were much the most numerous. In the Mexican
confederacy the various points of superiority seem to have been
more concentrated in the Aztecs; but spoils and tribute were
divided into five portions, of which Mexico and Tezcuco each
took two, and Tlacopan one.]

[Footnote 109: The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled
to carry the booty.]

The tributary pueblos were also liable to be summoned to furnish a contingent of warriors to the war-parties of the confederacy, under the same penalties for delinquency as in the case of refusal of tribute. In such cases it was quite common for the confederacy to issue a peremptory summons, followed by a declaration of war. When a pueblo was captured, the only way in which the vanquished people could stop the massacre was by holding out signals of submission; a parley then sometimes adjusted the affair, and the payment of a year's tribute in advance induced the conquerors to depart, but captives once taken could seldom if ever be ransomed. If the parties could not agree upon terms, the slaughter was renewed, and sometimes went on until the departing victors left nought behind them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole and doorway lurid clouds of smoke and flame upon narrow silent streets heaped up with mangled corpses.

The sway of the Aztec confederacy over the Mexican peninsula was thus essentially similar to the sway of the Iroquois confederacy over a great part of the tribes between the Connecticut river and the Mississippi. It was simply the levying of tribute,--a system of plunder enforced by terror. The so-called empire was "only a partnership formed for the purpose of carrying on the business of warfare, and that intended, not for the extension of territorial ownership, but only for an increase of the means of subsistence."[110] There was none of that coalescence and incorporation of peoples which occurs after the change from gentilism to civil society has been effected. Among the Mexicans, as elsewhere throughout North America, the tribe remained intact as the highest completed political integer.

[Footnote 110: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 563.]

[Sidenote: Aztec clans.]

The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and phratries, and the number of clans would indicate that the tribe was a very large one.[111] There were twenty clans, called in the Nahuatl language "calpullis." We may fairly suppose that the average size of a clan was larger than the average tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois; but owing to the compact "city" life, this increase of numbers did not result in segmentation and scattering, as among Indians in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems to have occupied a number of adjacent communal houses, forming a kind of precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes, corresponding to the _estufas_ in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of occupancy, and--as among some ruder Indians--its individual members exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.

[Footnote 111: The notion of an immense population groaning
under the lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for
idle despots must be dismissed. The statements which refer to
such a vast population are apt to be accompanied by
incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the
burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people without
domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so
numerous (_Anc. Soc._, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe
Mr. Morgan makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in
underestimating the numbers that could be supported upon Indian
corn even under a system of horticulture without the use of the
plough. Some pertinent remarks on the extraordinary
reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Humboldt,
_Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811, tom.
iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of
the yield of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due
allowances, the yield under the ancient system must have been
well-nigh unexampled in barbaric agriculture.]

[Sidenote: Clan officers.]

The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs (_tecuhtli_) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan (_calpulli_) had an official head, or sachem, called the _calpullec_; and also a military commander called the _ahcacautin_, or "elder brother." The _ahcacautin_ was also a kind of peace officer, or constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its _calpullec_ and _ahcacautin_, and could depose them for cause.[112]

[Footnote 112: Compare this description with that of the
institutions of Indians in the lower status, above, p. 69.]

[Sidenote: Rights and duties of the clan.]

The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its members. Such names were invariably significant (as _Nezahualcoyotl_, "Hungry Coyote," _Axayacatl_, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.), and more or less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name. The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was, therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted by the clan.

[Sidenote: Aztec phratries.]

The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, as the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for military purposes.[113] The four phratries were four divisions of the tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was an arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which they were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.

[Footnote 113: In this respect it seems to have had some
resemblance to the Roman _centuria_ and Teutonic _hundred_. So
in prehistoric Greece we may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice
to Agamemnon that a similar organization existed:--

[Greek: krin' andras kata phyla, kata phrêtras, Agamemnon,
hôs phrêtrê phrêtrêphin arêgê, phyla de phylois.]
_Iliad_, ii. 362.

But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a
development among the Greeks as among the Romans and the early
English.]

[Sidenote: The tribal council.]

The supreme government of the Aztecs was vested in the tribal council composed of twenty members, one for each clan. The member, representing a clan, was not its _calpullec_, or "sachem;" he was one of the _tecuhtli_, or clan-chiefs, and was significantly called the "speaker" (_tlatoani_). The tribal council, thus composed of twenty speakers, was called the _tlatocan_, or "place of speech."[114] At least as often as once in ten days the council assembled at the _tecpan_, or official house of the tribe, but it could be convened whenever occasion required, and in cases of emergency was continually in session. Its powers and duties were similar to those of an ancient English shiremote, in so far as they were partly directive and partly judicial. A large part of its business was settling disputes between the clans. It superintended the ceremonies of investiture with which the chiefs and other officers of the clans were sworn into office. At intervals of eighty days there was an "extra session" of the _tlatocan_, attended also by the twenty "elder brothers," the four phratry-captains, the two executive chiefs of the tribe, and the leading priests, and at such times a reconsideration of an unpopular decision might be urged; but the authority of the _tlatocan_ was supreme, and from its final decision there could be no appeal.[115]

[Footnote 114: Compare _parliament_ from _parler_. These twenty
were the "grandees," "counsellors," and "captains" mentioned by
Bernal Diaz as always in Montezuma's company; "y siempre á la
contina estaban en su compañía veinte grandes señores y
consejeros y capitanes," etc. _Historia verdadera_, ii. 95. See
Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 646.]

[Footnote 115: Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an
especially apt illustration of the confusion of ideas and
inconsistencies of statement amid which the early Spanish
writers struggled to understand and describe this strange
society: _op. cit._ p. 651.]

[Sidenote: The "snake-woman."]

The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in number, as was commonly the case in ancient America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, bore the grotesque title of _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman."[116] His relation to the tribe was in general like that of the _calpullec_ to the clan. He executed the decrees of the tribal council, of which he was _ex officio_ a member, and was responsible for the housing of tribute and its proper distribution among the clans. He was also chief judge, and he was lieutenant to the head war-chief in command of the tribal host.[117] He was elected for life by the tribal council, which could depose him for misconduct.

[Footnote 116: In Aztec mythology Cihuacoatl was wife of the
supreme night deity, Tezcatlipoca. Squier, _Serpent Symbol in
America_, pp. 159-166, 174-183. On the connection between
serpent worship and human sacrifices, see Fergusson's _Tree and
Serpent Worship_, pp. 3-5, 38-41. Much evidence as to American
serpent worship is collected in J. G. Müller's _Geschichte der
amerikanischen Urreligionen_, Basel, 1855. The hieroglyphic
emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a female head surmounted
by a snake.]

[Footnote 117: Other tribes besides the Aztec had the
"snake-woman." In the city of Mexico the Spaniards mistook him
for a "second-king," or "royal lieutenant." In other towns they
regarded him, somewhat more correctly, as "governor," and
called him _gobernador_,--a title still applied to the tribal
sachem of the pueblo Indians, as e. g. in Zuñi heretofore
mentioned; see above p. 89.]

[Sidenote: The "chief-of men."]

[Sidenote: Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome.]

The office of head war-chief was an instance of primitive royalty in a very interesting stage of development. The title of this officer was _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men."[118] He was primarily head war-chief of the Aztec tribe, but about 1430 became supreme military commander of the three confederate tribes, so that his office was one of peculiar dignity and importance. When the Spaniards arrived upon the scene Montezuma was _tlacatecuhtli_, and they naturally called him "king." To understand precisely how far such an epithet could correctly be applied to him, and how far it was misleading, we must recall the manner in which early kingship arose in Europe. The Roman _rex_ was an officer elected for life; the typical Greek _basileus_ was a somewhat more fully developed king, inasmuch as his office was becoming practically hereditary; otherwise _rex_ was about equivalent to _basileus_. Alike in Rome and in Greece the king had at least three great functions, and possibly four.[119] He was, primarily, chief commander, secondly, chief priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the fourth stage and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter of dispute. Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at so early a date that some questions of this sort are difficult to settle. But in all probability the office grew up through the successive acquisition of ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military commander. The paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities before fighting resulted in making the general a priest competent to perform sacrifices and interpret omens;[120] he thus naturally became the most important among priests; an increased sanctity invested his person and office; and by and by he acquired control over the dispensation of justice, and finally over the whole civil administration. One step more was needed to develop the _basileus_ into a despot, like the king of Persia, and that was to let him get into his hands the law-making power, involving complete control over taxation. When the Greeks and Romans became dissatisfied with the increasing powers of their kings, they destroyed the office. The Romans did not materially diminish its functions, but put them into commission, by entrusting them to two consuls of equal authority elected annually. The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the royal functions among different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the nine archons.[121]

[Footnote 118: This title seems precisely equivalent to [Greek:
anax andrôn], commonly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to
other chieftains, in the Iliad.]

[Footnote 119: Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_, p. 64; Hermann's
_Political Antiquities of Greece_, p. 105; Morgan, _Anc. Soc._,
p. 248.]

[Footnote 120: Such would naturally result from the
desirableness of securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had
been in sole command of the Athenian armament in the harbour of
Syracuse, and had been a _basileus_, with priestly authority,
who can doubt that some such theory of the eclipse as that
suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted, and thus one
of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, _Hist.
Greece_, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his
admirable book _La Cité antique_, pp. 205-210, makes the
priestly function of the king primitive, and the military
function secondary; which is entirely inconsistent with what we
know of barbarous races.]

[Footnote 121: It is worthy of note that the archon who
retained the priestly function was called _basileus_, showing
perhaps that at that time this had come to be most prominent
among the royal functions, or more likely that it was the one
with which reformers had some religious scruples about
interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's
priestly function in an officer called _rex sacrorum_, whose
duty was at times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then
run away as fast as legs could carry him,--[Greek: hên thysas
ho basileus, kata tachos apeisi pheugôn ex agoras] (!)
Plutarch, _Quæst. Rom._ 63.]

[Sidenote: Mediæval kingship.]

The typical kingship in mediæval Europe, after the full development of the feudal system, was very different indeed from the kingship in early Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages all priestly functions had passed into the hands of the Church.[122] A king like Charles VII. of France, or Edward III. of England, was military commander, civil magistrate, chief judge, and _supreme landlord_; the people were his tenants. That was the kind of king with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico were familiar.

[Footnote 122: Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity,"
however, surrounded the king's person; and the ceremony of
anointing the king at his coronation was a survival of the
ancient rite which invested the head war-chief with priestly
attributes.]

[Sidenote: Montezuma was a "priest-commander."]

Now the Mexican _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was much more like Agamemnon in point of kingship than like Edward III. He was not supreme landlord, for landlordship did not exist in Mexico. He was not chief judge or civil magistrate; those functions belonged to the "snake-woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the "chief-of-men" as simply a military commander; but for reasons which I shall state hereafter,[123] it seems quite clear that he exercised certain very important priestly functions, although beside him there was a kind of high-priest or medicine-chief. If I am right in holding that Montezuma was a "priest-commander," then incipient royalty in Mexico had advanced at least one stage beyond the head war-chief of the Iroquois, and remained one stage behind the _basileus_ of the Homeric Greeks.

[Footnote 123: They can be most conveniently stated in
connection with the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below,
vol. ii. p. 278. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised
paper on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear
that he has taken these facts into the account.]

[Sidenote: Mode of succession to the office.]

The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was elected by an assembly consisting of the tribal council, the "elder brothers" of the several clans, and certain leading priests. Though the office was thus elective, the choice seems to have been practically limited to a particular clan, and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 1375 to 1520 a certain principle or custom of succession seems to be plainly indicated.[124] There was a further limit to the order of succession. Allusion has been made to the four phratry-captains commanding the quarters of the city. Their cheerful titles were "man of the house of darts," "cutter of men," "bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus." These captains were military chiefs of the phratries, and also magistrates charged with the duty of maintaining order and enforcing the decrees of the council in their respective quarters. The "chief of the eagle and cactus" was chief executioner,--Jack Ketch. He was not eligible for the office of "chief-of-men;" the three other phratry-captains were eligible. Then there was a member of the priesthood entitled "man of the dark house." This person, with the three eligible captains, made a quartette, and one of this privileged four _must_ succeed to the office of "chief-of-men."

[Footnote 124: I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting
Clavigero's statement that the office of _tlacatecuhtli_
"should always remain in the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as
the eleven who were actually elected were all closely akin to
one another. In point of fact it _did_ remain "in the house of
Acamapitzin."]

The eligibility of the "man of the dark house" may be cited here as positive proof that sometimes the "chief-of-men" could be a "priest-commander." That in all cases he acquired priestly functions after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as his first official act offered incense to the war-god.[125]

[Footnote 125: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
States_, vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent
demeanour of the people toward Montezuma, though perhaps
overcoloured, are not so absurd as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr.
Morgan was sometimes too anxious to reduce Montezuma to the
level of an Iroquois war-chief.]

[Sidenote: Manner of collecting tribute.]

As the "chief-of-men" was elected, so too he could be deposed for misbehaviour. He was _ex officio_ a member of the tribal council, and he had his official residence in the _tecpan_, or tribal house, where the meetings of the council were held, and where the hospitalities of the tribe were extended to strangers. As an administrative officer, the "chief-of-men" had little to do within the limits of the tribe; that, as already observed, was the business of the "snake-woman." But outside of the confederacy the "chief-of-men" exercised administrative functions. He superintended the collection of tribute. Each of the three confederate tribes appointed, through its tribal council, agents to visit the subjected pueblos and gather in the tribute. These agents were expressively termed _calpixqui_, "crop-gatherers." As these men were obliged to spend considerable time in the vanquished pueblos in the double character of tax-collectors and spies, we can imagine how hateful their position was. Their security from injury depended upon the reputation of their tribes for ruthless ferocity.[126] The tiger-like confederacy was only too ready to take offence; in the lack of a decent pretext it often went to war without one, simply in order to get human victims for sacrifice.

[Footnote 126: As I have elsewhere observed in a similar
case:--"Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the
dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and
down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons
and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the
savage council at Onondaga." _Beginnings of New England_, p.
121.]

Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were directed by the "chief-of-men." The tribute was chiefly maize, but might be anything the conquerors chose to demand,--weapons, fine pottery or featherwork, gold ornaments, or female slaves. Sometimes the tributary pueblo, instead of sacrificing all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of them up to Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the horrible deities was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the blackmail, but by the power that extorted it, and thus the latter obtained a larger share of divine favour. Generally the unhappy prisoners were forced to carry the corn and other articles. They were convoyed by couriers who saw that everything was properly delivered at the _tecpan_, and also brought information by word of mouth and by picture-writing from the _calpixqui_ to the "chief-of-men." When the newly-arrived Spaniards saw these couriers coming and going they fancied that they were "ambassadors." This system of tribute-taking made it necessary to build roads, and this in turn facilitated, not only military operations, but trade, which had already made some progress albeit of a simple sort. These "roads" might perhaps more properly be called Indian trails,[127] but they served their purpose.

[Footnote 127: See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the
Council of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 696.
The letter recommends that to increase the security of the
Spanish hold upon the country the roads should be made
practicable for beasts and wagons. They were narrow paths
running straight ahead up hill and down dale, sometimes
crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.]

[Sidenote: Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted.]

The general similarity of the Aztec confederacy to that of the Iroquois, in point of social structure, is thus clearly manifest. Along with this general similarity we have observed some points of higher development, such as one might expect to find in traversing the entire length of an ethnical period. Instead of stockaded villages, with houses of bark or of clay supported upon a wooden framework, we have pueblos of adobe-brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, the most advanced of which present the appearance of castellated cities. Along with the systematic irrigation and increased dependence upon horticulture, we find evidences of greater density of population; and we see in the victorious confederacy a more highly developed organization for adding to its stock of food and other desirable possessions by the systematic plunder of neighbouring weaker communities. Naturally such increase in numbers and organization entails some increase in the number of officers and some differentiation of their functions, as illustrated in the representation of the clans (_calpulli_) in the tribal council (_tlatocan_), by speakers (_tlatoani_) chosen for the purpose, and not by the official heads (_calpullec_) of the clan. Likewise in the military commander-in-chief (_tlacatecuhtli_) we observe a marked increase in dignity, and--as I have already suggested and hope to maintain--we find that his office has been clothed with sacerdotal powers, and has thus taken a decided step toward kingship of the ancient type, as depicted in the Homeric poems.

[Sidenote: Aztec priesthood: human sacrifices.]

No feature of the advance is more noteworthy than the development of the medicine-men into an organized priesthood.[128] The presence of this priesthood and its ritual was proclaimed to the eyes of the traveller in ancient Mexico by the numerous tall truncated pyramids (_teocallis_), on the flat summits of which men, women, and children were sacrificed to the gods. This custom of human sacrifice seems to have been a characteristic of the middle period of barbarism, and to have survived, with diminishing frequency, into the upper period. There are abundant traces of its existence throughout the early Aryan world, from Britain to Hindustan, as well as among the ancient Hebrews and their kindred.[129] But among all these peoples, at the earliest times at which we can study them with trustworthy records, we find the custom of human sacrifice in an advanced stage of decline, and generally no longer accompanied by the custom of cannibalism in which it probably originated.[130] Among the Mexicans, however, when they were first visited by the Spaniards, cannibalism flourished as nowhere else in the world except perhaps in Fiji, and human sacrifices were conducted on such a scale as could not have been witnessed in Europe without going back more than forty centuries.

[Footnote 128: The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it
form a caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient
Mexico, nor were there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans,"
"merchants," etc. See Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 599.]

[Footnote 129: See the copious references in Tylor's _Primitive
Culture_, ii. 340-371; Mackay, _Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews_, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, _The Bible
for Young People_, i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170,
316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, _Die Menschenopfer der
alten Hebräer_, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the subject with much
learning.]

[Footnote 130: Spencer, _Princip. Sociol._, i. 287; Tylor, _op.
cit._ ii. 345.]

The custom of sacrificing captives to the gods was a marked advance upon the practice in the lower period of barbarism, when the prisoner, unless saved by adoption into the tribe of his captors, was put to death with lingering torments. There were occasions on which the Aztecs tortured their prisoners before sending them to the altar,[131] but in general the prisoner was well-treated and highly fed,--fatted, in short, for the final banquet in which the worshippers participated with their savage deity.[132] In a more advanced stage of development than that which the Aztecs had reached, in the stage when agriculture became extensive enough to create a steady demand for servile labour, the practice of enslaving prisoners became general; and as slaves became more and more valuable, men gradually succeeded in compounding with their deities for easier terms,--a ram, or a kid, or a bullock, instead of the human victim.[133]

[Footnote 131: Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with
details, refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's
Inferno, _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 64.]

[Footnote 132: See below, vol. ii. p. 283.]

[Footnote 133: The victim, by the offer of which the wrath of
the god was appeased or his favour solicited, must always be
some valued possession of the sacrificer. Hence, e. g., among
the Hebrews "wild animals, as not being property, were
generally considered unfit for sacrifice." (Mackay, _op. cit._
ii. 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott, _loc. cit._) on certain
occasions of peculiar solemnity the clan offered some of its
own members, usually children. In the lack of prisoners such
offerings would more often be necessary, hence one powerful
incentive to war. The use of prisoners to buy the god's favour
was to some extent a substitute for the use of the clan's own
members, and at a later stage the use of domestic animals was a
further substitution. The legend of Abraham and Isaac
(_Genesis_, xxii. 1-14) preserves the tradition of this latter
substitution among the ancient Hebrews. Compare the Boeotian
legend of the temple of Dionysos Aigobolos:--[Greek: thyontes
gar tô theô proêchthêsan pote hypo methês es hybrin, hôste kai
tou Dionysou ton hierea apokteinousin; apokteinantas de autika
epelabe nosos loimôdês; kai sphisin aphiketo hama ek Delphôn,
tô Dionysô thyein paida hôraion; etesi de ou pollois hysteron
ton theon phasin aiga hiereion hypallaxai sphisin anti tou
paidos.]

Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress was the substitution of a mere inanimate symbol for a living victim, whether human or brute, as shown in the old Roman custom of appeasing "Father Tiber" once a year by the ceremony of drowning a lot of dolls in that river. Of this significant rite Mommsen aptly observes, "Die Ideen göttlicher Gnade und Versöhnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar gemischt mit der frommen Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht den gefährlichen Herrn durch scheinhafte Befriedigung zu berücken und abzufinden." _Römische Geschichte_, 4e Aufl., 1865, Bd. i. p. 176. After reading such a remark it may seem odd to find the writer, in a footnote, refusing to accept the true explanation of the custom; but that was a quarter of a century ago, when much less was known about ancient society than now.]

[Sidenote: Aztec slaves.]

The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this stage, which in the Old World characterized the upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, however, made a beginning among the Aztecs. The nucleus of the small slave-population of Mexico consisted of _outcasts_, persons expelled from the clan for some misdemeanour. The simplest case was that in which a member of a clan failed for two years to cultivate his garden-plot.[134] The delinquent member was deprived, not only of his right of user, but of all his rights as a clansman, and the only way to escape starvation was to work upon some other lot, either in his own or in some other clan, and be paid in such pittance from its produce as the occupant might choose to give him. This was slavery in embryo. The occupant did not own this outcast labourer, any more than he owned his lot; he only possessed a limited right of user in both labourer and lot. To a certain extent it was "adverse" or exclusive possession. If the slave ran away or was obstinately lazy, he could be made to wear a wooden collar and sold without his consent; if it proved too troublesome to keep him, the collared slave could be handed over to the priests for sacrifice.[135] In this class of outcasts and their masters we have an interesting illustration of a rudimentary phase of slavery and of private property.

[Footnote 134: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 611.]

[Footnote 135: There was, however, in this extreme case, a
right of sanctuary. If the doomed slave could flee and hide
himself in the _tecpan_ before the master or one of his sons
could catch him, he became free and recovered his clan-rights;
and no third person was allowed to interfere in aid of the
pursuer. Torquemada, _Monarquía indiana_, ii. 564-566.]

[Sidenote: The Aztec family.]

At this point it is worthy of note that in the development of the family the Aztecs had advanced considerably beyond the point attained by Shawnees and Mohawks, and a little way toward the point attained in the patriarchal family of the ancient Romans and Hebrews. In the Aztec clan (which was exogamous[136]) the change to descent in the male line seems to have been accomplished before the time of the Discovery. Apparently it had been recently accomplished. Names for designating family relationships remained in that primitive stage in which no distinction is made between father and uncle, grandchildren and cousins. The family was still too feebly established to count for much in the structure of society, which still rested firmly upon the clan.[137] Nevertheless the marriage bonds were drawn much tighter than among Indians of the lower status, and penalties for incontinence were more severe. The wife became her husband's property and was entitled to the protection of his clan. All matrimonial arrangements were controlled by the clan, and no member of it, male or female, was allowed to remain unmarried, except for certain religious reasons. The penalty for contumacy was expulsion from the clan, and the same penalty was inflicted for such sexual irregularities as public opinion, still in what we should call quite a primitive stage, condemned. Men and women thus expelled went to swell the numbers of that small class of outcasts already noted. With men the result, as we have seen, was a kind of slavery; with women it was prostitution; and it is curious to see that the same penalty, entailing such a result, was visited alike upon unseemly frailty and upon refusal to marry. In either case the sin consisted in rebellion against the clan's standards of proper or permissible behaviour.

[Footnote 136: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_,
vol. ii. p. 251.]

[Footnote 137: Bandelier, _op. cit._ pp. 429, 570, 620.]

[Sidenote: Aztec property.]

The inheritance in the male line, the beginnings of individual property in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are germs of the upper status of barbarism, as well as of the earliest status of civilization more remotely to follow. The common cause, of which they are the manifestations, is an increasing sense of the value and importance of personal property. In the Old World this sense grew up during a pastoral stage of society such as the New World never knew, and by the ages of Abraham and Agamemnon[138] it had produced results such as had not been reached in Mexico at the time of the Discovery. Still the tendency in the latter country was in a similar direction. Though there was no notion of real estate, and the house was still clan-property, yet the number and value of articles of personal ownership had no doubt greatly increased during the long interval which must have elapsed since the ancestral Mexicans entered upon the middle status. The mere existence of large and busy market-places with regular and frequent fairs, even though trade had scarcely begun to emerge from the stage of barter, is sufficient proof of this. Such fairs and markets do not belong to the Mohawk chapter in human progress. They imply a considerable number and diversity of artificial products, valued as articles of personal property. A legitimate inference from them is the existence of a certain degree of luxury, though doubtless luxury of a barbaric type.

[Footnote 138: I here use these world-famous names without any
implication as to their historical character, or their precise
date, which are in themselves interesting subjects for
discussion. I use them as best symbolizing the state of society
which existed about the northern and eastern shores of the
eastern Mediterranean, several centuries before the
Olympiads.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan's rules.]

It is at this point, I think, that a judicious critic will begin to part company with Mr. Morgan. As regards the outward aspect of the society which the Spaniards found in Mexico, that eminent scholar more than once used arguments that were inconsistent with principles of criticism laid down by himself. At the beginning of his chapter on the Aztec confederacy Mr. Morgan proposed the following rules:--

"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."[139]

[Footnote 139: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 186, note.]

Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been impossible. It is not so much the _facts_ as the _interpretations_ of the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their misinterpretations are interesting and instructive when once we rightly understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the truth.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's Dinner."]

The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules, is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted. Very good. But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."[140] When Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have been so,--there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool, but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "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."[141]

[Footnote 140: _North Amer. Review_, April, 1876. The substance
of it was reproduced in his _Houses and House-Life_, chap. x.]

[Footnote 141: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 241.]

To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative. From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As for the place where the _pulque_ was kept, it was a venial slip of the pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on to call it "beer"? The _pulque_ was neither the one nor the other; for want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable" that _pulque_ was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined with Montezuma, know so much more about _such things_ than Cortes and Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]

[Footnote 142: Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in
his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a
tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr.
Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.]

[Sidenote: The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.]