United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Aztecs from a place called Tenochtitlan. Twenty thousand of them got sacrificed in a bunch for some reason or other. Poor devils. They think this is some kind of heaven. They tell me this is easy work compared to the type they had to undergo. The Satheri like to get big bunches through in one conjuration, like the haul they made from the victims of somebody named Tamerlane."
Thence we went to Patzcuaro by rail, and studied the Tarascans in the villages about Lake Patzcuaro, visiting these by canoe-trips. After returning to Mexico, we visited the states of Tlaxcala and Puebla. In and around the City of Tlaxcala, we secured our Tlaxcalan subjects. At Cuauhtlantzinco, we worked upon Aztecs.
I found myself wondering how these half-civilized brutes had possibly managed to conceive the idea of the spiral stair. It was known to neither the Aztecs nor the Incas, in America; nor to any of the primitive European or Asiatic civilizations. But they had found a place where nothing else would do and they made it. Another of the innumerable offspring of Mother Necessity.
Once, in later years, whilst in Mexico, near Crizaba, I was intensely surprised to meet in the forest a string of Indios going to market and using this identical thoppa; the similar cut of the hair across the forehead, the blanket and dress, the physical features, even the peculiar grunt emitted when carrying a weight, settled for me the long-disputed question of the origin of the Aztecs.
Thus, in the lower level were to be found the cassavatree and the banana, that bountiful plant, which seems to have relieved man from the primeval curse if it were not rather a blessing of toiling for his sustenance.27 As the banana faded from the landscape, a good substitute was found in the maize, the great agricultural staple of both the northern and southern divisions of the American continent; and which, after its exportation to the Old World, spread so rapidly there, as to suggest the idea of its being indigenous to it.28 The Peruvians were well acquainted with the different modes of preparing this useful vegetable, though it seems they did not use it for bread, except at festivals; and they extracted a sort of honey from the stalk, and made an intoxicating liquor from the fermented grain, to which, like the Aztecs, they were immoderately addicted.29
"This," he said, "is the great artery; this is the Mississippi River." He drew another line. "Here to the southwest is Mexico, and that is a country for great dreams. There the plantain and the orange grow and there are silver and gold and the warm gulf is on this side, and the South Sea far, far away, and down here is South America. The Aztecs lived in Mexico, and Cortez conquered them.
According to the native histories as reported by Clavigero, the Aztecs began their migration northward from Aztlan about the year 1160 A.D., and founded the more important of their first settlements in the Valley of Mexico about the year 1216 A.D., a little over three hundred years previous to the Spanish invasion. Another result of investigation adds a century to this estimate.
Wilson, were he consistent, would have done so too; for how could the Aztecs, when they saw the Spaniards desecrating the Phoenician temples and destroying the Phoenician idols, suppose that these people were of the "same race," and had come "to teach the same religion"? We care little for his inconsistencies; but the feat which he has here performed, by his "shadings," his "translations into Indian phraseology," and his medley of "pale faces," "great waters," "floating houses," "truncated pyramids," "hard taskmasters," "winds," "climates," "religions," and "laws of population," we believe to be unsurpassed by anything ever perpetrated in prose or rhyme, by Grecian bard or mediaeval monk.
At length the defenders were exhausted and Cortes entered. It had taken him two years to conquer the Aztecs. A greater task remained for him to do. He was to cleanse and rebuild the City of Mexico, make it a center of Spanish civilization, and Mexico a New Spain. By such work Cortes showed that he could be not only a great conqueror, but also an able ruler in time of peace.
Spencer has evidently made a most extensive and comprehensive study of this subject, and his paper is a most valuable contribution to the subject. In the preparation of this section we have frequently quoted from it. The practice of self-bleeding has its origin in other mutilations, although the Aztecs shed human blood in the worship of the sun.
Word Of The Day