Rambles by Land and Water; or, Notes of Travel in Cuba and Mexico

by Benjamin Moore Norman

At this point I shall probably be interrupted, by the inquisitive reader, with the question, whether I am not overturning my own position, by insisting that the ancient Aztecs, and their works, must necessarily live in tradition, while I allow that the Mexican Indians retain no memory of their ancestors. I conceive not. The ruins to which I refer, are not those of the Mexican and Tezcucan cities, which were sacked by the Spaniards, almost demolished, and then rebuilt in a comparatively modern style of architecture. Of those we need no native tradition. The Spanish histories have told us all that we can know of them.

But even of these, as the Spaniards found them, we have no certain evidence that the people who then occupied them, were the sole builders. We have both tradition and history to justify us in asserting that they were not. Another race had preceded them, and filled the country with their works of genius and art. The Toltecs, whose advent into the territory of Anahuac, is placed as far back as the seventh century of the Christian era, were not inferior to the Aztecs in refinement, and the knowledge of the mechanic arts. To them the Aztec paintings accord the credit of most of the science which prevailed among themselves, and acknowledged them as the fountain head of their civilization. The capital of their empire was at Tula, north of the Mexican valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be seen there at the time of the conquest. To the same people were ascribed the ruins of other noble edifices, found in various places throughout the country, so vast and magnificent, that, with some writers, "the name, Toltec, has passed into a synonyme for architect." Following in their footsteps, and acknowledging them as their teachers, it would not be strange if the Aztecs should, in some instances, have occupied the buildings they left behind, and employed the remnant that still remained in the country, in erecting others.

But, without insisting upon this conjecture, it is clear that there were other and earlier builders than the Aztecs. The Toltecs passed away, as a nation, a full century, according to the legend, before the arrival of the Aztecs. Their works filled the country. Accounts of them abounded in the Tezcucan tablets. They were celebrated by the Aztec painters. They were still magnificent and wonderful in ruins, when the Spaniards arrived. And yet, among the present race of Indians in Mexico, there is no tradition respecting them, no knowledge of their origin, no interest whatever in their history.

From these premises, we have a choice of two conclusions. Either the ruined buildings and cities of Anahuac are not the work of the comparatively modern race of Aztecs, or the present Indians are not the descendants of that race. That the former conclusion is true, I think there cannot be a doubt. The latter may be true, also, to a great extent. That refined and haughty people may have wasted entirely away under the grinding yoke of their new task-masters, and the indolent inefficient slaves, that remain as their nominal representatives, may be only the degenerate posterity of inferior tribes, the vassals of the Mexican crown.

Another consideration which strongly favors the view I have taken, with respect to the antiquity of these ruins, is the character of the ruins themselves, and the condition in which they are found. That they do not all belong to one race, nor to one age, it seems to me no careful or candid observer can deny. They are of different constructions, and different styles of architecture. They are widely different in their finish and adornments. And they are in every stage of decay, from a habitable and tolerably comfortable dwelling, to a confused mass of undistinguishable ruins. In all these particulars, as well as in the gigantic forests which have grown up in the walls and on the terraces of some of them, and the deep deposit of vegetable mould which has accumulated upon others, they are clearly seen to belong to different and distant ages, and consequently to be the work of many different artists. That some of them were the work of the Toltecs, is well substantiated, as we have already seen. What portion of the great area of ruins to assign to them, I know not. But if, as one of the most cautious and judicious historians supposes, they were the architects of Mitla, Palenque and Copan, thus fixing the date of those magnificent cities several centuries anterior to the rise of the Aztec dynasty, they could not have been the first of the American builders. Their works are still in a comparatively good state of preservation, and may remain, for ages to come, the dumb yet eloquent monuments of their greatness; while others, not only in their immediate vicinity, but in different parts of the country, are crumbled, decayed, scattered, and buried, as if long ages had passed over them, before the foundations of the former were laid. There is every thing in the style and appearance of the ruins to favor this conclusion, and to confirm the opinion, that some of them are farther removed in their origin from the Toltecs, than the Toltecs are from us. Some of those described in the preceding chapters of this work, are manifestly many ages older than those of Chi-chen, Uxmal and others in Yucatan, which I visited on a former occasion.

Having extended these remarks somewhat farther than I intended, perhaps I ought to apologize to the reader for asking his attention, a few moments, to another problem growing out of this subject, which has given rise to more discussion, and been attended with less satisfaction in its results, than any other. I refer to the origin of the ancient American races. From what quarter of the globe did they come? And how did they get here?

The last question I shall not touch at all. It will answer itself, as soon as the other is settled. And, if that cannot be settled at all—if we are utterly foiled in our efforts to ascertain whence they came—it will be of little avail to inquire for the how.

The learned author of "The Vestiges of Creation," and other equally profound speculators of the Monboddo school, would probably find an easy way to unravel the enigma, on their sceptical theory of the progressive generation of man. But regarding the Mosaic history as worthy not only of a general belief, but of a literal interpretation, I cannot dispose of the question in that summary way. I would rather meet it with all its seemingly irreconcilable difficulties about it, or not meet it at all, than favor the subtle atheism of these baptized canting Voltaires, and relinquish my early and cherished faith, that man is the immediate offspring of God, the peculiar workmanship of his Divine hand. There is nothing soothing to my pride of reason, nothing grateful to my affections, nothing elevating to my faith, in the idea that man is but an improved species of monkey, a civilized ourang-outang, with his tail worn off, or driven in.

There is but one solitary tradition among all the American races, bearing upon the general question of their origin; and that, singularly enough, is universal among them. It represents them as coming from northwest. From what other portion of the world, from what distance, at what time, and in what manner, it does not in any way declare, or intimate. Whether it was five centuries ago, or fifty, there is not, I believe, a single tribe that pretends to know, or to guess. And yet there is not a tribe on this side the great northern lakes, among whom this general tradition of the migration of their ancestors from the northwest, is not found. There are many and various traditions among them in respect to other matters, presenting many and curious coincidences with the traditionary and fabulous history of some of the oldest nations in the world. But, on this point, the origin of their own races, they have nothing to say, except that, at a remote period of antiquity, their fathers came from the northwest.

With such an index as this, pointing so decidedly and unchangeably to Behring's strait, where the coast of Asia approaches within fifty miles of that of America, it would seem, at first sight, that the question might be easily answered. And so it could be, but that some authors are more fond of conjecture than of certainty, of doubt than of probability. To those who believe, with Moses, that the peopling of the earth commenced in Asia, there is manifestly no mode of accounting for the population of America, so natural as that to which this one omni-prevalent tradition points. It would have been considered abundantly sufficient and satisfactory, if it had not been continually involved with other questions, on the solution of which it does not necessarily depend.