Nature, everywhere, conducts her children by the same means to the same ends. This form of ax is a representation of a carpenter’s hatchet. The next cut is from the Mendoza collection, and represents a carpenter at work. He holds one of these hatchets in his hand, and is shaping a stick of timber. The other cut represents a form of copper tool found in Oaxaca, where they were once used in abundance. The supposition is that this implement was used for agricultural purposes—probably as a hoe. The pieces of T-shaped copper said to have been used as money, are diminutive forms of this same tool. The statement is sometimes made that they had a way of hardening copper. “This,” says Mr. Valentine, “is a hypothesis, often noted and spoken of, but which ranges under the efforts made for explaining what we have no positive means to verify or to ascertain.” The presence of metals necessarily implies some skill in mining; but their ability to mine was certainly very limited. Gold and silver were collected by washing the sands. We do not know how copper was mined; the probabilities are that this was done in a very superficial way. Whenever, by chance, they discovered a vein of copper, they probably worked it to an easy depth, and then abandoned it. M. Charney speaks of one such locality, discovered in 1873. In this case they had made an opening eleven feet long, five feet wide, and three feet deep. To judge from appearances, they first heated the rock, and then perhaps sprinkled it with water, and thus caused it to split up.42 This is about all we can discover of their Metallic Age. It falls very far short of the knowledge of metallurgy enjoyed by the Europeans of the Bronze Age; and, with the exception of working gold and silver, it was not greatly in advance of the powers of the North American aborigines.43 Certainly no trace of mining has been discovered at all on the scale of the ancient mines in Michigan.
A few words as to some of their other arts, and we will pass on to other topics. In manufacturing native pottery, they are spoken of as having great skill. The sedentary Indians everywhere were well up in that sort of work.44 They knew how to manufacture cotton cloth, as well as cloth from other articles. We have stated that paper furnished an important article of tribute. They made several kinds of paper. One author states that they made paper from the membrane of trees—from the substance that grows beneath the upper bark.45 But they also used for this purpose a plant, called the maguey plant. This was a very valuable plant to the aborigines, since we are told that the natives managed to extract nearly as great a variety of useful articles from it as does an inhabitant of the East Indies from his cocoa palm. Amongst other articles, they made paper. For this paper, we are told, “the leaves were soaked, putrefied, and the fibers washed, smoothed, and extended for the manufacture of thin as well as thick paper.”46
They used feathers for plumes, fans, and trimmings for clothing. The articles the Spaniards are most enthusiastic in praising is that variety of work known as feather mosaic. They took very great pains with this sort of work. The workman first took a piece of cloth, stretched it, and painted on it, in brilliant colors, the object he wished to reproduce. Then, with his bunch of feathers before him, he carefully took feather after feather, arranging them according to size, color, and other details, and glued each feather to the cloth. The Spanish writers assert that sometimes a whole day was consumed in properly choosing and adjusting one delicate feather, the artist patiently experimenting until the hue and position of the feather, viewed from different points, and under different lights, became satisfactory to his eye.47
This disregard of time is a thoroughly Indian trait of character. Years would be spent in the manufacture of a choice weapon. The impression is given that these feather-workers formed a craft, or order, and that they lived by themselves. But this would be such an innovation on the workings of the gens that there is probably no foundation for it.
We will now consider the subject of religion. We can never judge of the real state of culture of a people by their advance in the arts of government and of living alone. Constituted as men are, they can not help evolving, in the course of time, religious conceptions, and the result is that almost all the races and tribes of men have some system of belief, or, at any rate, some manner of accounting for the present condition of affairs, and some theory as to a future state. It is true that these theories and beliefs are often very foolish and childish, still they are not on that account devoid of interest. From our present standpoint, we can clearly see that the religions belief of a people is a very good index of their culture. At first such conceptions are necessarily rude, but as the people advanced in culture, they become clearer.
Fearing that we will be misunderstood in the last statement, we will state to whom it applies. The Christian world hold that God revealed himself to his chosen people, and that we draw from his Word what is permitted mortals to know of his government and the future world. We make no question but that this is true. But long before there was a Hebrew people there was a Paleolithic race, who doubtless had some vague, shadowy, ill defined idea of supernatural power, and sought, in some infantile way, to appease the same. Afterwards, but long before the glories of Solomon, a Neolithic people were living in Palestine, and the same culture was wide-spread over the world. To this day a large part of the world’s inhabitants have never so much as heard of the Christian religion. It is to such people that we especially refer.
The religious beliefs of the Indians have not been fully studied as yet; but, until that is done, it is scarcely possible to understand and fully weigh what is said as to the religious beliefs of the Mexicans. What we can discern of the religion of the Nahua and Maya tribes shows us that it is not at all probable they had reached a stage of development in which they had any idea of One Supreme, Over-ruling Power. But our scholars differ on that point, many contending that the Mexicans distinctly affirmed the existence of such a God.48 To form such conceptions implies a power of reasoning on abstract topics that is vain to expect of a people in their state of development. We think, therefore, that the idea that they had such a belief, arises from a misconception. Let us see if we can discover how that was.
Nearly all of the North American tribes had some word to express supernatural power. The Iroquois used for this purpose the words “oki” and “otkon.”49 The first meaning of these words is “above.” As used by these Indians, however, they expressed the working of any unseen, mysterious, and, therefore, to them, supernatural power. There was, however, no idea of personality or of unity about it. Other Indian tribes had words to express the same meaning. The English and French explorers translated these words into their languages in various ways. The most common is the rather absurd one of “medicine,” which has passed into common use. Thus, to mention one in very frequent use, we have the expression “Medicine-men”—meaning their priests and conjurers. The same custom prevailed among the higher class of sedentary Indians of Mexico and Central America. The Aztecs used the word “teotl” to express the name meaning; the Mayas, the word “ku;” the Peruvians, “huaca.” But the word used, in each case, meant not so much a personal supreme-being as it did an ill-defined sense of supernatural, mysterious power. This point not being clearly understood, it was quite natural that the early writers understood by these various expressions their name of the First Cause.
In the present state of our knowledge, it is certainly very hard to give an intelligent statement of the religious conceptions of the Maya and Nahua tribes. Among the Nahuas, their conception of creative power was that of a pair—a man and wife. These were not the active agents, however—they engendered four sons, who were the creators. This seems to be a widely extended form of tradition. Two authors, writing about fifty years after the conquest, speak of the four principal deities and statues. They had a great many idols besides—but four were the principal ones.