It is difficult to reconcile these revolting usages with a people that had made great advance in civilisation. American writers have tried to palliate the abominable practices of their ancestors, on the ground that they shared them in common with every other nation in the early stage of their history. In their eyes the Aztecs, if not commendable, were at least pardonable, and Orozco y Berra says that “human sacrifices originate from an error of the mind rather than from evil disposition; that it is the result of an exaggerated religious feeling, and not a real desire to do evil. That this institution, if philosophically considered, is not deserving of the intempestive lamentations of a few sentimental moralists.”[15] “The horror I feel,” he adds, “for the revolting abuse of human sacrifice, yields to what I feel for utter impiety; I will go further, and say that I prefer human sacrifice to atheism, as I prefer the ignorant negro who bows before his fetish, to a free-thinker.” Obviously Orozco is animated with the same spirit as his ancestors. An Aztec of the olden time would have adduced better reasons, for he held that to be sacrificed on the altar of his god was even more glorious than to die in battle, since it ensured him a speedy passage into paradise; and as the enemy was never slain if there were a chance of taking him alive, the number of those who disappeared was a fixed quantity. The same argument is urged in favour of cannibalism, but it is at least doubtful if it ever existed as an institution among other civilised nations. Men, however cruel, do not feed on one another, unless obliged by an absolute necessity; and cannibalism, which no doubt existed with all primitive populations, only continued among those who were deprived of sufficient space where they could hunt and feed their flocks, and who were reduced to a scanty supply of roots and herbs for their subsistence. This was observed among the Caraïbs at the time of the Conquest; in the islands of the Pacific, in Australia, where the soil is so poor, that although cannibalism prevails, the increase of population has to be kept down, and the recent introduction of pigs in the islands has diminished but not eradicated this ancient practice, which has never flourished with races provided with bears, reindeer, horses, and herds. This usage, which at first was a necessity, became a sacred tradition with the Aztecs, with whom religion was all-powerful; it directed the State, presided over the minutest details of domestic life, and as the influence of the priests was unbounded, peasants and princes had to bow their necks to their tyranny. They cannot be called cannibals, however, in the coarsest sense of the word, for they did not feed on human flesh to gratify their appetite, but as a duty, and in obedience to their religion; and during the long and terrible siege of Mexico not a single case of cannibalism is recorded against them by ancient authorities. Whence did they derive this religious practice? Not from the nations of the ancient continent with whom they have so much in common, for at that time cannibalism was no longer practised among the nomadic tribes of Eastern Asia; nor from Japan or China, where the people had always lived on the produce of the soil; it is probable that they received it from the Caraïbs of the Antilles and the Polynesian races of the Pacific, who made them forget the mild teachings and higher civilisation of the Toltecs.
WRONG SACRIFICIAL COLLAR.
RIGHT SACRIFICIAL COLLAR.
We give the drawings of two yokes: No. 1 is the yoke which up to the present time has been universally accepted as that used for securing the victim during the sacrifice, of which several specimens are to be seen in Mexican museums and in our own Trocadéro, but which, owing to the cylindrical shape of the arch, measuring some sixteen inches in height by about seven in width, we maintain could never have been used for the purpose assigned to it; whereas No. 2, which we claim to have unearthed, answers in our opinion exactly to the requirements of a yoke for such a purpose. It is almost the width of the Techcatl, and is concave on its lower surface, which makes it a perfect fit for a convex stone; it has, moreover, a round hollow in the centre, sufficiently large to steady a man’s neck, so that the priest had only to apply this yoke to prevent any movement, when, to use Father Duran’s expression, he let fall his sharp silex knife and the victim opened “like a pomegranate.”[16]
Notwithstanding the assertion of most historians respecting the work of the Aborigines, it is difficult to account how with the tools they were acquainted with they could cut not only the hardest substances, but also build the numerous structures which are still seen in Mexico and Central America, together with the sculptures, bas-reliefs, statues, and inscriptions like those we reproduce. These monuments were innumerable, of all dimensions, and according to Leon y Gama,[17] there was no town or settlement which did not possess on the stones of its walls, on the rocks of its mountains, the year of its foundation, its origin, and the history of its progress engraved in symbols and characters which could only be read by the Indians themselves. It is all the more inexplicable that they should have only used stone implements, that copper was abundant, and that they knew how to temper and make it nearly as hard as steel. The method employed by stone sculptors, however, has in all probability been lost.
Clavigero[18] says that stone was worked with tools of hard stone; that copper hatchets were used by carpenters, and also to cultivate the soil and to fell trees; and Mendieta writes that both carpenters and joiners used copper tools, but that their work was not so beautiful as that of the sculptors on stone who had silex implements.[19]
Some historians have proved to their own satisfaction that copper was unknown to the Indians; but had they taken the trouble to read, however slightly, any authority on the subject, they would have paused before they advanced a theory which is entirely at variance with all writers, both ancient and modern. It is an ascertained fact that very rich copper-mines have been worked since the Conquest;[20] and in 1873, whilst sinking a shaft in a copper-mine at Aguila, in the State of Guerrero, the miner lost suddenly the vein; and on examining the cause of the accident an excavation was found 4 ft. 4 in. long, 4 ft. 9 in. deep, and over 3 ft. wide, in which was a rich copper vein from 2 to 4 in. in thickness. The engineer, Felipe Lorainzar, could see no sign of iron or powder having been used, but the walls showed marks of fire; and both the copper ore and the rock in which it was embedded, were shattered and split in various places. In the rubbish were found 142 stones of different dimensions, shaped like hammers and wedges, the edges of which were blunt or broken; these stones were of a different substance from the surrounding rock, clearly indicating that the mine had originally been worked by the natives.[21]