Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

The Aztecs were in the “bronze age” of industrial development. Various tools, as hoes, chisels and scrapers, ornaments, as beads and bells, formed of an alloy of tin and copper, and copper plates of a crescentic shape were used as a circulating medium in some districts. In welding and hammering gold and silver they were the technical equals of the goldsmiths of Europe of their day. Most of their cutting instruments, however, were of stone.

They were lovers of brilliant colors, and decorated their costumes and buildings with dyed stuffs, bright flowers, and the rich plumage of tropical birds. Such feathers were also woven into mantles and head-dresses of intricate designs and elaborate workmanship, an art now lost. Their dyes were strong and permanent, some of them remaining quite vivid after four centuries of exposure to the light.

In order to obtain the materials used in their arts and to exchange their completed products, they carried on an active commerce, both domestic and foreign. All the cities had market days, when the neighboring country people would flock in great numbers to town, and the journeys of their merchants extended far toward the Isthmus of Panama.

The national religion was a polytheism built up on a totemic worship; that is, it was originally a nature worship grafted upon the superstitious devotion paid to the presiding genius of the gens. Huitzilopochtli was the chief divinity of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, Quetzalcoatl was especially adored at Cholula, and the two Tezcatlipocas, the one dark and one white, were other prominent mythical figures. According to the myth these four were brothers, but engaged in a series of contentions among themselves, which repeatedly wrecked the world.[187]

The Nahuas were by no means the only nation who had made decided progress in culture. In Michoacan, to the northwest of the valley of Mexico, dwelt the Tarascos. They spoke a totally different tongue, but according to Aztec legend had accompanied the Nahua from a northern region into their Mexican homes. Physically they are described as a taller and handsomer folk than the Nahuas, with a language singularly vocalic and musical. Bold in war, they were never subject to the Aztecs, and appear to have been their equals in the arts. They constructed houses of stone, and made use of a hieroglyphic writing to preserve the records of their ancestors.[188]

The Mixtecs and Zapotecs were neighboring tribes, who lived on and near the Pacific above the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. By tradition both nations came together from the north; “mixtecatl” in Nahuatl means “people from the cloudy land.” To them are attributed the remarkable edifices of Mitla, stone-built structures, whose walls are elaborately ornamented with rude stone mosaics in meander designs or “grecques.” The roofs seem to have been supported by solid pillars of granite, some of which are still in place. Of the age or purposes of these buildings we know nothing, as they were deserted and in ruins when first visited by the Spaniards.

There are many smaller tribes in Mexico of independent stocks, but a catalogue of their names would be of little use. The most widely distributed are the Otomis. They are of small stature, dolichocephalic, and averse to civilization. According to tradition they are the oldest occupants of the land, possessing it before the arrival of the Nahuas. Their language in singularly difficult, nasal and primitive. In form it is almost monosyllabic, with a tendency to isolation. This has led some writers to believe it akin to the Chinese, for which there is not the slightest ground.

5. The Inter-Isthmian Group.

Between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and that of Panama the continent narrows to a point, and the pressure of the population advancing from both directions forced a large number of diverse nationalities into a limited area. Only one of these could lay claim to a respectable civilization, most of the others living in primitive savagery.

This people, the Mayas, occupied the whole of the peninsula of Yucatan, and the territory south of it to the Pacific Ocean. It was divided into a number of independent tribes, the principal of which were the Quiches and Cakchiquels, in the present State of Guatemala. In all there were about eighteen dialects of the tongue, each of which can easily be recognized as a member of the stock.