194. Temples and Sacrifice
In Middle America the fetish bundle and picture altar do not appear, apparently through supersedence by elements characteristic of the next or fourth cult stage, characterized by the temple and the stone altar used in sacrifice. Temples, however, were already in luxuriant bloom among the Maya in their Great Period of 400 to 600 A. D. The beginnings of their remarkable architecture and sculpture must of course lie much farther back; certainly toward the opening of the Christian era, very likely earlier. Before this came the presumptive initial stage of priesthood, with bundles and altar paintings or some local equivalent. If a thousand years be allowed for this phase, the commencement of the priesthood would fall in southern Mexico or Guatemala at least three thousand years ago; possibly much longer. Peru, perhaps, did not lag far behind.
Temples mark the last phase of native American religion, but the most purely religious characteristic of the period, independent of mechanical or æsthetic developments, is human sacrifice. This had long been practised by the Mayas and in Peru, but reached its culmination in the New World and probably on the planet, at least as regards frequency and routine-like character, among the Aztecs. These were a late people, by their own traditions, to rise to culture and power, attaining to little consequence before the fourteenth century. It looks therefore as if human sacrifice had been a comparatively recent practice, perhaps only one or two thousand years old when America was discovered, and still moving toward its peak.
Outside Middle America, human sacrifice was virtually nonexistent. There was considerable cannibalism in the Tropical Forest and Antilles, but no taking of life as a purely ceremonial act. For the Pueblos of the Southwest, there are some slight and doubtful suggestions, but it appears that such deaths as were inflicted were rather punishments than offerings. The one North American people admittedly sacrificing human life were the Pawnee, a Plains tribe, who once a year shot to death a girl captive amid a ritual reminiscent of that of Mexico. This has always been interpreted as suggestive of a historical connection with Mexico. In fact, the Pawnee appear to have moved northward rather recently, and most of their Caddoan relatives had remained not far from the Gulf of Mexico when discovered.
The precise origin of sacrifice is obscure, although it is significant that it was restricted to the area of concentrated population and towns. In Mexico at least there were no domesticated mammals available. The ultimate foundation of human sacrifice is no doubt the widespread and very ancient custom of offerings. It is, however, a long leap from the offering of a pinch of tobacco, a strew of meal, an arrowpoint or some feathers, or even a few bits of turquoise, to the deliberate taking of a life. Possibly the idea of self-inflicted torture served as a connection. The Plains tribes sometimes hacked off finger joints as offerings, and in their Sun Dance tore skewers out of their skins. In the northern part of the Tropical Forest knotted cords were drawn through the nose and out of the mouth—a sufficiently painful process—in magico-religious preparation. In Mexico it was common for worshipers to pierce their own ears or tongues, the idea of a blood offering combining with that of penance and mortification.
It may seem strange that so shocking a custom as human sacrifice represented the climax of American religious development. Yet in a few thousand years more of undisturbed growth, it would probably have been superseded. This is precisely what happened in the Old World, which may be reckoned as about four to five thousand years ahead of the New. In the Old World also the really lowly and backward peoples did not sacrifice men. The practice is a symptom of incipient civilization.
195. Architecture, Sculpture, Towns
To construct stone-walled buildings seems a simple accomplishment, especially in an environment of stratified rocks that break into natural slabs. Such flat pieces pile up into a stable wall of room height without mortar, and a few log beams suffice to support a roof. Yet the greater area of the two continents seems never to have had such structures. Stone buildings are confined to Middle America and the Southwest. Outside these regions only the wholly timberless divisions of the Eskimo make huts of stone, and for their winter dwellings they are limited to choice of this material or blocks of snow. The Eskimo hut is tiny, not more than eight or ten feet across, and the weather is kept out not by any skill in masonry or plastering, but by the rude device of stuffing all crevices with sod. The Eskimo style of “building” in stone would be inapplicable in a structure of pretension. Made larger, the edifice would collapse.
The art of masonry, like agriculture, pottery, and loom weaving, may therefore be set down as having had its origin in Mexico or Peru, or possibly in both. It shows, however, this peculiarity of distribution: at both ends of the area, among the Pueblos of the Southwest in North America and among the Calchaqui of northwest Argentina in South America, living houses were stone-walled. In the intervening regions, most dwellings were of thatch or mud, public buildings of stone. The Aztec, Maya, and Inca areas have therefore left stone temples, pyramids, palaces, forts, and the like, but few towns; the Pueblo and Calchaqui, only towns.[28] How the Middle Americans were first brought to use stone is not known; but a temple built as such being a more specialized, decorative, organized edifice than a dwelling, as well as involving some degree of communal coöperation, it can safely be regarded as a later type than private dwellings. The occurrence of the stone living houses at the peripheries confirms their priority. Evidently masonry was first employed in Middle America for simple public structures: chiefs’ tombs, water works, platforms for worship. In its diffusion the art reached peoples like the Pueblos, who lived in small communities, interred their leaders without great rites, and offered no sacrifices in sight of multitudes. These marginal nations therefore took over the new accomplishment but applied it only to their homes. Meanwhile, however, the central “inventors” of masonry had grown more ambitious and were rearing ever finer and larger structures, until the superb architecture of the Mayas and the consummate stone fitting of the Incas reached their climax.
Stone sculpture grew as an accompaniment. It remained rude in Peru, and chiefly limited to idols, in keeping with the simple, massive style of architecture. But the Mayas covered their structurally bolder and more diversified religious buildings with sculpture in relief and frescoed stucco, and between them set up great carvings of animal and mythical divinities, as well as luxuriantly inscribed obelisks. Their sculpture is æsthetically the finest in America and compares in quality with that of Egypt, India, and China.