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Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac




Since writing the above notice of the Pyramid of Xochicalco, I have
come upon a new piece of evidence, which, if it may be depended on,
proves more about the history of this remarkable monument than all the
rest put together. Dupaix made a drawing of the ruins at Xochicalco in
1805, which is to be found in Lord Kingsborough's 'Antiquities of
Mexico,' and among the sculptures of the upper tier of blocks is
represented a reed, with its leaves set in a square frame, with three
small circles underneath; the whole forming, in the most unmistakable
way, the sign 3 Acatl (3 Cane) of the Mexican Astronomical Calendar.

Now it must be admitted that Dupaix's drawing of these ruins is most
grossly incorrect; but still no amount of mere carelessness in an
artist will justify us in supposing him to have invented and put in out
of his own head a design so entirely _sui generis_ as this. It does not
even follow that the drawing is wrong because the sign may not be found
there now; for it was in an upper tier, and no doubt many stones have
been removed since 1805, for building-purposes.

If the existence of the sign 3 Acatl on the pyramid may be considered
as certain, it will fit in perfectly with the accounts of the Mexican
historians, who state that Xochicalco was built by a king of the Toltec
race, and also that the Aztecs adopted the astronomical calendars of
years and days in use among the Toltecs.

It was afternoon when we left Xochicalco and rode on over a gently
undulating country, crossing streams here and there, and had our
breakfast at Miacatlan under a shed in front of the village shop, where
all the activity of the little Indian town seemed to be concentrated.
By the road-side were beautiful tamarind-trees with their dark green
foliage, and the mamei-tree as large as a fine English horse-chestnut,
and not unlike it at a distance. On the branches were hanging the great
mameis, just like the inside of cocoa-nuts when the inner shell has
been cracked off. It appeared that Nature was not acquainted with M. De
La Fontaine's works, or she would probably have got a hint from the
fable of the acorn and the pumpkin, and not have hung mameis and
cocoa-nuts at such a dangerous height.

[Illustration: AZTEC HEAD IN TERRA-COTTA. (From Mr. Christy's
Collection.)]




CHAPTER VIII.



COCOYOTLA. CACAHUAMILPAN. CHALMA. OCULAN. TENANCINGO. TOLUCA.



[Illustration: IXTCALCO CHURCH.]

A little before dark we came to the hacienda of Santa Rosita de
Cocoyotla, another sugar-plantation which was to be our head-quarters
for some days to come. We presented our letter of introduction from the
owner of the estate, and the two administradors received us with open
arms. We were conducted into the strangers' sleeping-room, a long
barrack-like apartment with stone walls and a stone floor that seemed
refreshingly dark and cool; we could look out through its barred
windows into the garden, where a rapid little stream of water running
along the channel just outside made a pleasant gurgling sound.
Appearances were delusive, however, and it was only the change
from the outside that made us feel the inside cool and pleasant. For
days our clothes clung to us as if we had been drowned, and the
pocket-handkerchiefs with which we mopped our faces had to be hung on
chair-backs to dry. Except in the early morning, there was no coolness
in that sweltering place.

In one corner of our room I discerned a brown toad of monstrous size
squatting in great comfort on the damp flags. He was as big as a
trussed chicken, and looked something like one in the twilight. We
pointed him out to the administrador, who brought in two fierce
watchdogs, but the toad set up his back and spirted his acrid liquor,
and the dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred him up with a
bamboo and drove him into the garden, but he left his portrait painted
in slime upon our floor.

The Indian choir chanted the Oracion as we had heard it the night
before at Temisco, and then came the calling over of the raya. After
that we walked about the place, and sat talking in the open corridor.
Owners of estates, and indeed all white folks living in this part of
the country were beginning to feel very anxious about their position,
and not without reason. Ordinary political events excite but little
interest in these Indian districts, and so trifling a matter as a
revolution and a change of people in power does not affect them
perceptibly. The Indians are absolutely free, and have their votes and
their civil privileges like any other citizens. All that the owners of
the plantations ask of them is to work for high wages, and hitherto
they have done this, but for years it has been becoming more and more
difficult to get them to work. All they do with the money when they get
it, is to spend it in drinking and gambling, if they are of an
extravagant turn of mind; or to bury it in some out-of-the-way place,
if they are given to saving. If they were whites or half-caste Mexicans
they would spend their money upon fine clothes and horses, but the
Indian keeps to the white cotton dress of his fathers, and is never
seen on horseback. Now this being the case, it does not seem
unreasonable that they should not much care about working hard for
money that is of so little use to them when they have got it, and that
they should prefer living in their little huts walled with canes and
thatched with palm-leaves, and cultivating the little patch of
garden-ground that lies round it--which will produce enough fruit and
vegetables for their own subsistence, and more besides, which they can
sell for clothes and tobacco. A day or two of this pleasant easy work
at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they
should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think
the hacendados, but there is worse behind. The Indians have been of
late years becoming gradually aware that the government of the country
is quite rotten and powerless, and that in their own districts at
least, the power is very much in their own hands, for the few scattered
whites could offer but slight resistance. The doctrine of "America for
the Americans" is rapidly spreading among them, and active emissaries
are going about reminding them that the Spaniards only got their lands
by the right of the strongest, and that now is the time for them to
reassert their rights.

The name of Alvarez is circulated among them, as the man who is to lead
them in the coming struggle--Alvarez the mulatto general, whose hideous
portrait is in every print-shop in Mexico. He was President before
Comonfort, and is now established with his Indian regiments in the hot
pestilential regions of the Pacific coast.

The undisguised contempt with which the Indians have been treated for
ages by the whites and the mestizos has not been without its effect.
The revolution, and the abolition of all legal distinctions of caste
still left the Indians mere senseless unreasoning creatures in the eyes
of the whiter races; and, if the original race once get the upper hand,
it will go hard with the whites and their estates in these parts. Only
a day or two before we came down from Mexico, the government had
endeavoured to quarter some troops in one of the little Indian towns
which we passed through on our way from Temisco. But the inhabitants
saluted them with volleys of stones from the church-steeple and the
house-tops, and they had to retreat most ignominiously into their old
quarters among "reasonable people."

I have put down our notions on the "Indian Question," just as they
presented themselves to us at the time. The dismal forebodings of the
planters seem to have been fulfilled to some extent at least, for we
heard, not long after our return to Europe, that the Indians had
plundered and set fire to numbers of the haciendas of the south
country, and that our friends the administradors of Cocoyotla had
escaped with their lives. The hacienda itself, if our information is
correct, which I can hardly doubt, is now a blackened deserted ruin.

At supper appeared two more guests besides ourselves, apparently
traders carrying goods to sell at the villages and haciendas on the
road. In such places the hacienda offers its hospitality to all
travellers, and there was room in our caravanserai for yet more
visitors if they had come. Our beds were like those in general use in
the tropics, where mattresses would be unendurable, and even the
pillows become a nuisance. The frame of the bed has a piece of coarse
cloth stretched tightly over it; a sheet is laid upon this, and another
sheet covers the sleeper. This compromise between a bed and a hammock
answers the purpose better than anything else, and admits of some
circulation of air, especially when you have kicked off the sheet and
lie fully exposed to the air and the mosquitos.

I cannot say that it is pleasant to wake an hour or two after going to
bed, with your exact profile depicted in a wet patch on the pillow; nor
is it agreeable to become conscious at the same time of an intolerable
itching, and to find, on lighting a candle, that an army of small ants
are walking over you, and biting furiously. These were my experiences
during my first night at Cocoyotla; and I finished the night, lying
half-dressed on my bed, with the ends of my trousers-legs tied close
with handkerchiefs to keep the creatures out. But when we got into our
saddles in the early morning, we forgot all these little miseries, and
started merrily on our expedition to the great stalactitic cave of
Cacahuamilpan.

Our day's journey had two objects; one was to see the cave, and the
other to visit the village close by,--one of the genuine unmixed Indian
communities, where even the Alcalde and the Cura, the temporal and
spiritual heads of the society, are both of pure Indian blood, and
white influence has never been much felt.

[Illustration: INDIANS MAKING & BAKING TORTILLAS. (After Models made by
a Native Artist.)]

A ride of two or three hours from the hacienda brought us into a
mountainous district, and there we found the village of Cacahuamilpan
on the slope of a hill. In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the
little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of
one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all
directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden
hard for a floor. Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was
a bright sunny look about the whole place; but to Englishmen,
accustomed to the innumerable appliances of civilized life, it seems
surprising how very few and simple are the wants of these people. The
inventory of their whole possessions will only occupy a few lines. The
_metate_ for grinding or rubbing down the maize to be patted out into
tortillas, a few calabashes for bottles, and pieces of calabashes for
bowls and cups, prettily ornamented and painted, and hanging on pegs
round the walls. A few palm-leaf mats (petates) to sleep upon, some
pots of thin unglazed earthenware for the cooking, which is done over a
wood-fire in the middle of the floor. A chimney is not necessary in
houses which are like the Irishman's coat, consisting principally of
holes. A wooden box, somewhere, contains such of the clothes of the
family as are not in wear. There is really hardly anything I can think
of to add to this catalogue, except the agricultural implements, which
consist of a wooden spade, a hoe, some sharp stakes to make the drills
with, and the machete--which is an iron bill-hook, and serves for
pruning, woodcutting, and now and then for less peaceful purposes.
Sometimes one sees women weaving cotton-cloth, or _manta_, as it is
called, in a loom of the simplest possible construction; or sitting at
their doors in groups, spinning cotton-thread with the _malacates_, and
apparently finding as much material for gossip here as elsewhere.

The Mexicans spun and wove their cotton-cloth just in this way before
the Conquest, and malacates of baked clay are found in great numbers in
the neighbourhood of the old Mexican cities. They are simple, like very
large button-moulds, and a thin wooden skewer stuck in the hole in the
middle makes them ready for use. Such spindles were used by the
lake-men of Switzerland, but the earthen heads were not quite the same
in shape, being like balls pierced with a hole, as are those at present
used in Mexico.

The Indians here had not the dull sullen look we saw among those who
inhabit the colder regions; and, though belonging to the same race,
they were better formed and had a much freer bearing than their less
fortunate countrymen of the colder districts.

Our business in the village was to get guides for the cavern. While
some men were gone to look for the Alcalde, we walked about the
village, and finally encamped under a tree. One of our men had got us a
bag full of fruit,--limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a
large kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which
we ate without knowing what they were. Though rather insipid, the limes
are deliciously refreshing in this thirsty country; and they do no
harm, however enormously one may indulge in them. The whole
neighbourhood abounds in fruit, and its name _Cacahuamilpan_ means "the
plantation of _cacahuate_ nuts."

It soon became evident that the Alcalde was keeping us waiting as a
matter of dignity, and to show that, though the white men might be held
in great estimation elsewhere, they did not think so much of them in
this free and independent village. At last a man came to summon us to a
solemn audience. In a hut of canes, the Alcalde, a little lame Indian,
was sitting on a mat spread on the ground in the middle, with his
escribano or secretary at his left hand. Other Indians were standing
outside at the door. The little man scarcely condescended to take any
notice of us when we saluted him, but sat bolt upright, positively
bursting with suppressed dignity, and the escribano inquired in a loud
voice what our business was. We told him we wanted guides to the cave,
which he knew as well as we did; but instead of answering, he began to
talk to the Alcalde. We quite appreciated the pleasure it must have
been to the two functionaries to show off before us and their assembled
countrymen, who were looking on at the proceedings with great respect;
and we had not minded affording them this cheap satisfaction; but at
last the joke seemed to be getting stale, so we proceeded some to sit
and some to lie down at full length, and to go on eating limes in the
presence of the August company. Thereupon they informed us what would
be the cost of guides and candles, and we eventually made a bargain
with them and started on foot.

On looking at the map of the State of Mexico, there is to be seen a
river which stops suddenly on reaching the mountains of Cacahuamilpan,
and begins again on the other side, having found a passage for itself
through caves in the mountain for six or seven miles. Not far from the
place where this river flows out of the side of the hill, is a path
which leads to the entrance of the cave. A long downward slope brought
us into the first great vaulted chamber, perhaps a quarter of a mile
long and eighty feet high; then a long scramble through a narrow
passage, and another hall still grander than the first. At the end of
this hall is another passage leading on into another chamber. Beyond
this we did not go. As it was, we must have walked between one and two
miles into the cavern, but people have explored it to twice this
distance, always finding a repetition of the same arrangement, great
vaulted chambers alternating with long passages almost choked by fallen
rocks. In one of the passages, I think the last we came to, the roaring
of the river in its subterranean bed was distinctly audible below us.

Excepting the great cave of Kentucky, I believe there is no stalactitic
cavern known so vast and beautiful as this. The appearance of the
largest hall was wonderful when some twenty of our Indian guides
stationed themselves on pinnacles of stalagmite, each one holding up a
blazing torch, while two more climbed upon a great mass at one end
called the altar, and burnt Bengal lights there; the rest stood at the
other extremity of the cave sending up rockets in rapid succession into
the vaulted roof, and making the millions of grotesque incrustations
glitter as if they had been masses of diamonds: All the quaint shapes
that are found in such caverns were to be seen here on the grandest
scale, columns, arched roof, organ-pipes, trees, altars, and squatting
monsters ranged in long lines like idols in a temple. There may very
well be some truth in the notion that the origin of Gothic architecture
was in stalactites of a limestone cavern, so numerous and perfect are
the long slender columns crowned with pointed Gothic arches.

Our procession through the cave was a picturesque one. We carried long
wax altar-candles and our guides huge torches made of threads of
aloe-fibre soaked in resin and wrapped round with cloth, in appearance
and texture exactly like the legs and arms of mummies. As we went, the
Indians sang Mexican songs to strange, monotonous, plaintive tunes, or
raced about into dark corners shouting with laughter. They talked about
adventures in the cave, to them of course the great phenomenon of the
whole world; but it did not seem, as far as we could hear, that they
associated with it any recollections of the old Aztec divinities and
the mystic rites performed in their honour.

No fossil bones have been found in the cavern, nor human remains except
in one of the passages far within, where a little wooden cross still
marks the spot where the skeleton of an Indian was found. Whether he
went alone for mere curiosity to explore the cave, or, what is more
likely, with an idea of finding treasure, is not known; nothing is
certain but that his candle was burnt out while he was still far from
the entrance, and that he died there. I said no fossil remains had been
found, but the level floors of the great halls are continually being
raised by fresh layers of stalagmite from the water dropping from the
roof, and no one knows what may lie under them. These floors are in
many places covered with little loose concretions like marbles, and
these concretions in the course of time are imbedded in the horizontal
layers of the same material.

As we left the entrance hall and began to ascend the sloping passage
that leads to daylight, we saw an optical appearance which, had we not
seen it with our own eyes, we could never have believed to be a natural
effect of light and shade. To us, still far down in the cave, the
entrance was only illuminated by reflected light; but as the Indians
reached it, the direct rays of sunlight fell upon them, and their white
dresses shone with an intense phosphoric light, as though they had been
self-luminous. It is just such an effect that is wanting in our
pictures of the Transfiguration, but I fear it is as impossible to
paint it upon canvas as to describe it in words.

Next morning our friend Don Guillermo said good-bye to us, and started
to return post-haste to his affairs in the capital. We stayed a few
days longer at Cocoyotla, never tiring of the beautiful garden with its
groves of orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, and the river which, running
through it, joins the stream that we heard rushing along in the cavern,
to flow down into the Pacific.

On Sunday morning the priest arrived on an ambling mule, the favourite
clerical animal. They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you
are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means
necessary, however, that he should ride a mule. I shall not soon forget
the jaunty young monk we saw at Tezcuco, just setting out for a country
festival, mounted on a splendid little horse, with his frock tucked up,
and a pair of hairy goat-skin _chaparreros_ underneath, a broad Mexican
hat, a pair of monstrous silver spurs, and a very large cigar in his
mouth. The girls came out of the cottage doors to look at him, as he
made the fiery little beast curvet and prance along the road; and he
was evidently not insensible to the looks of admiration of these young
ladies, as they muffled up their faces in their blue rebozos and looked
at him through the narrow opening.

Nearly two hundred Indians crowded into the church to mass, and went
through the service with evident devotion. There are no more sincere
Catholics in the world than the Indians, though, as I have said, they
are apt to keep up some of their old rites in holes and corners. The
administradors did not trouble themselves to attend mass, but went on
posting up their books just outside the church-door; in this, as in a
great many other little matters, showing their contempt for the brown
men, and adding something every day to the feeling of dislike they are
regarded with.

We speak of the Indians still keeping up their ancient superstitious
rites in secret, as we often heard it said so in Mexico, though we
ourselves never saw anything of it. The Abbe Clavigero, who wrote in
the last century, declares the charge to be untrue, except perhaps in a
few isolated cases. "The few examples of idolatry," he says, "which can
be produced are partly excusable; since it is not to be wondered at
that rude uncultured men should not be able to distinguish the
idolatrous worship of a rough figure of wood or stone from that which
is rightly paid to the holy images." (There are people who would quite
agree with the good Abbe that the distinction is rather a difficult one
to make.) "But how often has prejudice against them declared things to
be idols which were really images of the saints, though shapeless ones!
In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be
idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the
mystery of the Holy Nativity."

A good illustration of the wholesale way in which the early Catholic
missionaries went about the work of conversion is given in a remark of
Clavigero's. There is one part of the order of baptism which proceeds
thus: "Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his
mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of
the person to be baptized, &c." The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had
to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of
the requisite material for their crowds of converts.

After mass we rode out to a mound that had attracted our attention a
day or two before, and which proved to be a fort or temple, or probably
both combined. There were no remains to be found there except the usual
fragments of pottery and obsidian. Then we returned to the hacienda to
say good-bye to our friends there, before starting on our journey back
to Mexico. All the population were hard at work amusing themselves, and
the shop was doing a roaring trade in glasses of aguardiente. The
Indian who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monte
bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground
solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a
crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him,
silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their
stakes which lay on the ground before the banker. Other parties were
busy at the same game in other parts of the open space before the shop,
which served as the great square for the colony.

Under the arcades in front of the shop a fandango was going on, though
it was quite early in the afternoon. A man and a woman stood facing
each other, an old man tinkled a guitar, producing a strange, endless,
monotonous tune, and the two dancers stamped with their feet, and moved
their arms and bodies about in time to the music, throwing themselves
into affected and voluptuous attitudes which evidently met with the
approval of the bystanders, though to us, who did not see with Indian
eyes, they seemed anything but beautiful. When the danseuse had tired
out one partner, another took his place. An admiring crowd stood round
or sat on the stone benches, smoking cigarettes, and looking on gravely
and silently, with evident enjoyment. Just as we saw it, it would go on
probably through half the night, one couple, or perhaps two, keeping it
up constantly, the rest looking on and refreshing themselves from time
to time with raw spirits. Though inferior to the Eastern dancing, it
resembled it most strikingly, my companion said. It has little to do
with the really beautiful and artistic dancing of Old Spain, but seems
to be the same that the people delighted in long before they ever saw a
white man. Montezuma's palace contained a perfect colony of
professional dancers, whose sole business was to entertain him with
their performances, which only resembled those of the Old World because
human nature is similar everywhere, and the same wants and instincts
often find their development in the same way among nations totally
separated from each other.