Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by Edward B. Tylor

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 Cacahuamilpán.

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.

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 Cacahuamilpán 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.