Prescott, however, remarks that notwithstanding such attributes "the idea of unity—of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposes—was too simple, or too vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man."
The Aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen dii majores and over 200 dii minores. To each of these a special day was assigned in the calendar, with its appropriate festival. Chief of them all was that bloodthirsty monster Huitsilopochtli, the hideous god of war—tutelary deity of the nation. There was a huge temple to him in the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of human victims was being constantly poured out.
The terrible name of this Mexican Mars has greatly puzzled scholars of the language. According to one derivation, the name is a compound of two words, humming-bird and on the left, because his image has the feathers of that bird on the left foot. Prescott naturally thinks that "too amiable an etymology for so ruffian a deity." The other name of the war-god, Mexitl (i. e., "the hare of the aloes"), is much better known, because from it is derived the familiar name of the capital.
Quetzalcoatl.
The god of the air, Quetzalcoatl, a beneficent deity, who taught Mexicans the use of metals, agriculture, and the arts of government. Prescott remarks that
he was doubtless one of those benefactors of their species who have been deified by the gratitude of posterity.
There was a remarkable tradition of Quetzalcoatl, preserved among the Mexicans, that he had been a king, afterward a god, and had a temple dedicated to his worship at Cholula[16] when on his way to the Mexican Gulf. Embarking there, he bade his people a long farewell, promising that he and his descendants would revisit them. The expectation of his return prepared the way for the success of the tall white-skinned invaders.
In the Aztec agriculture, the staple plant was of course the maize or Indian corn. Humboldt tells us that at the conquest it was grown throughout America, from the south of Chile to the River St. Lawrence; and it is still universal in the New World. Other important plants on the Aztec soil were the banana, which (according to one Spanish writer) was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother Eve; the cacao, whose fruit supplies the valuable chocolate; the vanilla, used for flavoring; and most important of all, the maguey, or Mexican aloe, much valued because its leaves were manufactured into paper, and its juice by fermentation becomes the national intoxicant, "pulque." The maguey, or great Mexican aloe, grown all over the table-land, is called "the miracle of nature," producing not only the pulque, but supplying thatch for the cottages, thread and cords from its tough fiber, pins and needles from the thorns which grow on the leaves, an excellent food from its roots, and writing-paper from its leaves. One writer, after speaking of the "pulque" being made from the "maguey," adds, "with what remains of these leaves they manufacture excellent and very fine cloth, resembling holland or the finest linen."
The itztli, formerly mentioned as being used at the sacrifices by the officiating priest, was "obsidian," a dark transparent mineral, of the greatest hardness, and therefore useful for making knives and razors. The Mexican sword was serrated, those of the finest quality being of course edged with itztli. Sculptured figures abounded in every Aztec temple and town, but in design very inferior to the ancient specimens of Egypt and Babylonia, not to mention Greece. A remarkable collection of their sculptured images occurred in the place or great square of Mexico—the Aztec forum—and similar spots. Ever since the Spanish invasion the destruction of the native objects of art has been ceaseless and ruthless. "Two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last Montezuma and his father," says Prescott, "cut in the solid rock, in the beautiful groves of Chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century [i. e., the eighteenth], by order of the government." He further remarks: