Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
Of their talk I could catch only a few words, but several times I heard repeated the name Itzacoatl, and frequent reference was made to the Twenty Lords. I gathered, too, that the name of the officer was Tizoc, and that the name of the elder of the two warriors, a swarthy man, was Ixtlilton.
While the disagreeable process of disarming us was going on I spoke to Fray Antonio of the curious possibilities suggested by the knowledge of fire-arms which the Priest Captain, alone among all the Aztlanecas, so obviously possessed; and he, in reply, bade me remember what Tizoc had told us of the use that Itzacoatl made of wax-matches in lighting the sacred fire.
"Can it possibly be, then, that he is in communication with the outside world?" I exclaimed. As I uttered these words I glanced at Itzacoatl, and the expression on his face was that of one who listens intently, and who is greatly enraged by what he hears. At the same moment Rayburn cried: "That man understands Spanish. He is listening to you."
Even apart from his stately surroundings, his dress and especially the shining green feathers which were so conspicuous a part of it would have informed me that this man was a priest of very exalted rank; and the conditions of our presentation to him assured me that he was none other than the Priest Captain, Itzacoatl.
Then Itzacoatl, standing with one foot upon the monk's dead body, and grasping still the spear that he had planted in that noble heart, cried out, triumphantly, "Behold the victory and the vengeance of our Aztec gods!" And the multitude, swayed backward from the very threshold of the Christian faith, shouted together in one mighty voice, "Victory and vengeance for our gods!"
With an alertness that was astonishing in one of his years, Itzacoatl rose quietly from the throne; and as he pointed to us with a commanding gesture, he asked, sharply, why we had been allowed to retain our arms, and ordered them to be taken away from us; which order troubled us greatly, and also occasioned us a very lively surprise.
Thus, gradually, two parties were built up within the State: that of the priests, which strongly seconded the disposition that Itzacoatl manifested to make the spiritual power absolutely supreme, and that of the nobles and people of the higher class, which sought to maintain the Council's ancient rights in matters temporal.
Until the time of Itzacoatl, each successive priest captain, in the long line that here had ruled, had exercised so discreetly his theocratic rights, and in all ways had shown such wisdom in his government, that no conflict had arisen between the temporal and the spiritual powers. And thus wisely had Itzacoatl governed in the early years of his reign.
Therefore it was with a keen curiosity that we listened and Tizoc needed, to induce him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had suggested to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest Captain Itzacoatl with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be fought out to the very death.
What I most longed for was the establishment of such friendly relations with Itzacoatl that I could carry out a systematized series of scientific investigations among the Aztlanecas before the impending crash of discovery came; and my keenest regret at that moment was caused by the conviction that the incapacity of Itzacoatl to understand the value of scientific inquiry into such curious ethnologic facts would result in his mere vulgar killing of me, whereby a precious store of knowledge would be withheld from the world at large.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking