The Conquistadors (14 page)

A more unpleasant version of the flight is that Achitometl, king of Culhuacán, allowed them to settle in Tizapán, a snake-infested area in what is now the district of Mexico City known as San Ángel. He also gave them his daughter, no doubt seeking an alliance with them against rival cities. Instead of marrying her to their chief, however, they killed and skinned her, and when, at their invitation, Achitometl visited them, he was taken into a dark idol-room to burn incense to their god, lit the flame and was faced in the sudden flare, not by Huitzilopochtli, but by a priest dressed in the skin of his daughter. If this is true, and even if it were done with the intention of driving the Tenochcas into the safety of the reed marches, it presents a revolting picture of priests whose minds were twisted and evil.

The reed territory, indicated by Huitzilopochtli's instructions to settle where they saw an eagle feeding, was a clever choice, for the rock islands gave security and the water a means of transport. Moreover it was the meeting point of three city-kingdom boundaries, so that thereafter the Tenochcas were subject to no particular king and could ally themselves first with one and then with another. It was on these advantages that the ultimate greatness of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was based. But it took time; the first rude settlement was built in the water about 1325 and it was not until the beginning of the fifteenth century that the city began to emerge as a military power. It then rapidly extended its domain and influence until it rivalled the old-established city of Texcoco.

From this brief summary of the origins and background of the Aztecs it will be seen that – extraordinary though their race was – they were not the creators of the advanced civilization that the conquistadors found at Tenochtitlan. They inherited it, and there is no evidence that they contributed very much to that inheritance. Nevertheless, the city they built out into the waters of Texcoco Lake was one of the wonders of the world. The map on p. 136 [Unfortunately, for copyright reasons maps have been removed from this book] shows its Venetian construction, the enormous extent of it, its complex yet precise military design, the great focal centre of its temples, palaces and market place. As with the city itself, the culture they inherited and adapted for their own needs is best shown in illustration. We shall concern ourselves here primarily with the psycho-religious reasons for their disintegration and defeat in the face of a small and determined force of Spanish adventurers.

The Tenochcas had come out of the wilderness with one god, Huitzilopochtli – god of the sun and god of war also. They now had others to worship; in particular, Tezcatlipoca, the sky god, Tlaloc, the rain god, and Quetzalcoatl, god of learning or Feathered Serpent. But their paramount god remained Huitzilopochtli, and the demands of this terrible idol, combined with the revised version of the old Toltec god, Tezcatlipoca, became such that, in the end, their military power, though extending throughout most of Middle America, was aimed less at empire than at providing captive sacrifices. Indeed, a warrior's prowess was assessed, not by the men he killed, but by the number of captives he brought in to join the endless stream climbing the steps of the temples to end their lives on the sacrificial stones. This subordination of the warrior to a limited objective undoubtedly had a bearing on the low ratio of killed to wounded in the Spanish ranks.

The Aztec belief that the natural forces to which their geographical situation exposed them could be explained in human terms, and that by representing those forces in idolic form they could influence them by propitiation, is a part of almost every pagan religion. The introduction of human sacrifice was sparing at first, the ultimate offering to propitiate the gods at the time of supreme disaster. Even at its height, when captive humans stood in queues waiting to have their hearts torn out, the Aztecs seem to have shunned those refinements of human cruelty – the flaying alive, the plucking out of nerve threads – practised by their North American cousins. Their cannibalism was initially a ritual affair, the truncated limbs going to the family of the warrior who had made the capture. It grew, however, to be such a habit that one of the conquistadors, writing anonymously, was driven to state categorically that they ‘value it more highly than any other food in the world; so much so, that they often go off to war and risk their lives just to kill people to eat'.

Nevertheless, the revolting nature of their religious rites should not blind us to the fact that the Aztecs were the culmination of a remarkable cultural development and that they were in many respects as advanced as the Spaniards. In manners, dress, design and architecture they rivalled medieval Europe; the largest of their temples were almost as grand as the pyramids of Egypt, their gardens as beautiful as Babylon; their stonework matched the structures of ancient Greece; their plastered and lime-washed palaces were as fine as those of Moorish Spain.

From the European point of view, however, it was a civilization full of the strangest anomalies. Picture-writing was highly developed. By this means records could be accurately kept, events and scenes faithfully portrayed. But it was largely useless for the conveying of ideas and impossible to adapt in the Chinese manner to a written language. They had considerable knowledge of astronomy. Indeed, their religion was a peculiar mixture of astrology and what may reasonably be described as necromancy, the priesthood the interpreters, not only of the word of their gods, but of the stars. The book of fate – the
tonalamatl
– was consulted at the birth of a child, and at marriage. Every action – whether personal or political – stemmed from the priesthood, who were as powerful an influence as they were in the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

Circumstances, chiefly climatic and geographical, produce the variety of racial characteristics and the politico-religious organization of individual civilizations.

So it was with the Aztecs. The Valley of Mexico – they called it Anahuac, which means beside the waters – positioned only 18 degrees north of the equator, has one of the most perfect climates in the world. Where the coast swelters in great heat, here in the
tierra templada,
more than seven thousand feet up, the climate is temperate, the soil rich. But the land which Cortés described by crumpling a sheet of parchment in his fist and saying ‘There is your map of Mexico', is thick with old volcanoes, and though names like Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl may make strange music to our ears, to the Aztecs these were mountains of dread, capable of belching forth fire and smoke and burning ash. It was these towering volcanic vents, always there, always a part of their visual horizon, that dominated their lives, so that they felt themselves to be a part of the natural forces of their universe, and sought always to propitiate and to be in tune with the rhythm of those forces. Life, and the land in which they lived, was as capricious as the gods they served. The idol representations of these gods were grotesque, and, like much of their design in pottery, stone and precious metals, reveal a certain affinity with the poorer cultures of the North American Indians. In the case of the Aztecs, however, the grotesqueness of their idols was highly symbolic, the significance of each item of grotesquery and adornment matching the complexity of their beliefs and religious rituals.

Their administrative system, however, was not much inferior to that of sixteenth-century Europe. All power stemmed from the monarchy. But their kings were not hereditary. They were chosen from the ruling house by a small number of electors, who subsequently constituted a sort of privy council and became the crown's principal advisers. Thus, there was continuity of stable government with their kings trained from birth to the position they might attain by election. As might be expected in a martial race, the successful candidate must have distinguished himself as a warrior in battle, though by the time Moctezuma the Second came to the throne, the priesthood had reached such a dominant position of power that the choice of the electors was greatly influenced by his position in the priesthood. His enthronement involved complicated rites at the great temple built by his uncles: he first of all pierced his ears, arms and legs with sharp slivers of bone and then, streaming with blood, he took two quails, cut off their heads and sprinkled the blood on the altar flame. Mounting to the top of the teocalli, he entered the great idol-room of Huitzilopochtli, kissed the earth, pierced his body again, sprinkled the blood of more quails around the room, and finally he incensed the four corners of it. It was the king of Texcoco who crowned him, placing on his head a mitre-shaped covering of the most superb featherwork ornamented with gold and jewels.

His palace was designed and constructed as the administrative centre of the Aztec world. It included council chambers and courts of justice, and besides providing accommodation for himself, his wives and his personal attendants, it also housed his bodyguard, which was much like a court, since it included the
chief nobles of the state. It was thus a huge rambling place, the seat of government for all the vassal cities and provinces of the Aztec empire, the centre of power. What that power amounted to is at least indicated by one Spanish writer's claim that thirty of the greatest caciques, who resided part of the year in Mexico, could each count a hundred thousand vassals on their estates. And since these great estates, and others much smaller, were built up through grants of land made as a reward for military service and entailed obligations in the event of war, the whole system was essentially feudal.

The business of war was highly organized. As in the Roman Empire, all vassal states had to supply their quota of warriors. There were also military orders, similar to those in Spain, which provided the élite of the army. They had their own distinctive liveries, their own insignia, which was sometimes reproduced in carving on their wooden helmets, and they were granted special privileges. The maturer warriors were distinguished by their dress, the richness of which was in proportion to their prowess, and the war chiefs carried frameworks on their backs brilliantly peacocked with feathers. The military unit, the equivalent of the legion, or regiment, was about eight thousand warriors, sub-divided into some twenty companies, each under its junior commander. Every unit and every tribe had its own brilliant standard of featherwork, so that the cumulative effect of a large Mexican force was one of fantastic colour.

Disobedience to command was punishable by death. But that was not the spur to valour that was to shock even the battle-hardened Spanish men-at-arms. To the Mexicans war was a religious rite, the human equivalent of the perpetual struggle of the elemental forces of nature. To be in battle was to be in tune with the terrible rhythms of the universe. From early youth they toned up their muscles in the ball court, hips and elbows thrusting like lightning at the solid rubber ball as they endeavoured to drive it through the rings set along the side wall. This highly energetic game goes back to the Formative period in the first millenium B.C. and may well have been what anthropologists would now describe as a ‘displacement activity' designed to divert aggressive instincts and so reduce the dangers of war. The Aztecs, however, used it simply as a means of exercise. When there were no campaigns to fight, their warriors engaged in formalized, gladiatorial combats known as the War of Flowers. This was something akin to the jousting tournaments of European chivalry; warriors slain were cremated with full honours, for their spirits were translated to the Aztec Valhalla, and captured warriors went glorying to their deaths on the sacrificial stone. War was the sublimation of earth's cataclysmic struggles. But there was a softer side to it. There were hospitals for warriors wounded in battle, even for the sick and permanently disabled, and the diplomatic immunity of envoys was strictly observed, provided they kept to the main tracks.

Communication between Mexico and the outlying provinces was by runners specially trained from youth. With posthouses every two leagues, which is every 5.2 miles, information could be relayed very swiftly indeed. The royal table in Mexico is believed to have been served regularly with fish within twenty-four hours of its having been caught in the Gulf sea over two hundred miles away, an average courier speed of almost ten miles an hour over the mountains.

The revenues of the state were derived partly from tribute and partly from taxes. These were levied primarily on the produce of the land. But there were, nevertheless, taxes on manufactured goods. The crown itself possessed vast estates which contributed direct to the exchequer. Tribute from conquered cities and tribes was levied by tax-gatherers who could call on local garrisons to enforce their demands. And since any defaulter could be arrested and sold into slavery, the system was open to abuse. In the absence of coinage, tribute was in the form of produce and goods, which was paid into the granaries and warehouses provided in each town centre, and then transported to Mexico on the backs of the
tamemes,
or carriers. The following detailed list gives some idea of the tribute exacted and the sort of products that the conquered territories yielded:

20 chests of ground chocolate; 40 pieces of armour, of a particular device; 2,400 loads of large mantles, or woven cloth; 800 loads of small mantles, of rich wearing apparel; 5 pieces of armour, of rich feathers; 60 pieces of armour, of common feathers; a chest of beans; a chest of chian; a chest of maize; 8,000 reams of paper; likewise 2,000 loaves of very white salt, refined in the shape of a mould, for the consumption only of the lords of Mexico; 8,000 lumps of unrefined copal; 400 small baskets of white refined copal; 100 copper axes; 80 loads of red chocolate; 800 xícaras, out of which they drank chocolate; a little vessel of small turquoise stones; 4 wooden chests full of maize; 4,000 loads of lime; tiles of gold, of the size of an oyster, and as thick as the finger; 40 bags of cochineal; 20 bags of gold-dust, of the finest quality; a diadem of gold, of a specified pattern; 20 lip-jewels of clear amber, ornamented with gold; 200 loads of chocolate; 100 pots or jars of liquid-amber; 8,000 handfuls of rich scarlet feathers; 40 ‘tiger'-skins; 1,600 bundles of cotton.