Diary in America, Series Two

by Frederick Marryat

It is, however, in Mexico and Peru, that we must look for the most enlightened and the most wealthy of the Indian race. On the representations of Montesini, who travelled in South America, the learned Rabbi Menassah Ten Israel, as I have said before, wrote his famous work La Esperanza de Israel, which he published in Amsterdam, in 1650, endeavouring with great zeal to prove, that the Indians in North and South America were the descendants of the missing tribes; and Cromwell, to whom the work was dedicated, was greatly interested in the evidences produced on that occasion. Montesini, travelling through the province of Quif found that his Indian guide was a Jew, and pursuing his inquiries, discovered that immense numbers lived behind the Cordilleras. Francis, the name of his guide, admitted to Montesini, that his God was called Adonal, and that he acknowledged Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as his ancestors, and they claimed to have descended from the tribe of Reuben.

Acosta contends that they have a tradition relative to the deluge; that they preserve the rite of circumcision; they offer the first-fruits, and in Peru they eat the Paschal Lamb; they believe in the resurrection, and clothe the dead with the richest equipage. Lopez de Gomara says, that some of them, and not all, are circumcised. Acosta continues, “the Mexicans point out the various stations as their ancestors advanced into their country, and it is precisely the route which they must have held, had they been emigrants from Asia.”

Menassah Ten Israel declares, that the Indians of Mexico had a tradition, that their magnificent place of worship had been built by a people who wore their beards, and were more ancient than their Incas. In the Universal History of 1748, it is affirmed, that the Mexicans and other American Indians rend their garments, in order the more effectually to express grief—the Hebrew custom at this day.

Lopez de Gomara states, that the Mexicans offer sacrifices of the first-fruits, and, when Cortez approached Mexico, Montezuma shut himself up for the space of eight days in fasting and prayer. Emanuel de Moreas and Acosta say, that the Brazilians marry in their own tribes and families; and Escorbatus affirms, that he frequently heard the southern tribes repeat the sacred notes Ha-le-lu-yah. Malvenda states, that several tomb-stones were found in St. Michael’s, with ancient Hebrew characters.

When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, the Cholula was considered a holy city by the natives, with magnificent temples, in which the High Priest Quetza-colt preached to man, and would permit no other offerings to the Master of Life than the first-fruits of the harvest. “We know by our traditions,” said the venerable Prince Montezuma to the Spanish General Cortez, “that we who inhabit this country are not the natives but strangers who come from a great distance.”

Don Alonzo Erecella, in his history of Chili, says, the Araucanians acknowledge one Supreme Being, and believe in the immortality of the soul; and the Abbé Clavigero declares, that they have a tradition of the great deluge. The laws and ceremonies of the Peruvians and Mexicans have, no doubt, been corrupted in the course of many ages, both in their sacrifices and worship.

Their great and magnificent temple, evidently in imitation of that erected by Solomon, was founded by Mango Capac, or rather by the Inca Vupanque, who endowed it with great wealth. Clavagero and De Vega, in their very interesting account of this temple say, “what we called the altar was on the east side of the temple. There were many doors to the temple, all of which were plated with gold, and the four walls the whole way round were crowned with a rich golden garland, more than an ell in width. Round the temple were five square pavilions, whose tops were in the form of pyramids. The fifth was lined entirely with gold, and was for the use of the Royal High-Priest of sacrifices, and in which all the deliberations concerning the temple were held. Some of the doors led to the schools where the Incas listen to the debates of the philosophers, sometimes themselves explaining the laws and ordinances.”

Mexico and Central America abound in curiosities, exemplifying the fact of the Asiatic origin of the inhabitants; and it is not many years ago, that the ruins of a whole city, with a wall nearly seven miles in circumference, with castles, palaces, and temples, evidently of Hebrew or Phoenician architecture, was found on the river Palenque. The thirty-fifth number of the Foreign Quarterly Review contains an interesting account of those antiquities.

The ruins of this city of Guatemala, in Central America, as described by Del Rio in 1782, when taken in conjunction with the extraordinary, I may say, wonderful antiquities spread over the entire surface of that country, awaken recollections in the specimens of architecture which carry us back to the early pages of history, and prove beyond the shadow of doubt, that we who imagined ourselves to be the natives of a new world, but recently discovered, inhabit a continent which rivalled the splendour of Egypt and Syria, and was peopled by a powerful and highly cultivated nation from the old world. When we speak of what is called Mexican antiquities, we must not confound the rude labours of modern times, with the splendid perfections which distinguished the efforts of those who reared the Egyptian pyramids, and built the temples of Thebes and Memphis. It is not Mexican antiquities, but the antiquities of Tultecan; and in addition to the ruins of Palenque, on this our continent, there are pyramids larger than those of Sachara in Egypt, at Cholula, Otamba, Paxaca, Mitlan, Tlascola, and on the mountains of Tescoca, together with hieroglyphics, planispheres and zodiacs, a symbolic and Photenic alphabet; papyrus, metopes, triglyphs, and temples and buildings of immense grandeur; military roads, aqueducts, viaducts, posting stations and distances; bridges of great grandeur and massive character, all presenting the most positive evidences of the existence of a powerful enterprising nation, which must have flourished two thousand years before the Spanish conquest. Take, for example, the description of the temple at Palenque, which Lord Kingsborough, in his travels, not only declares was built by the Jews, and is a copy of Solomon’s temple, but which, no doubt, is precisely the model of the temple described by Ezekiel. Travellers speak of it in the following terms:

“It may be appropriately called an ecclesiastical city, rather than a temple. Within its vast precincts there appear to be contained (as indeed was, in some measure, the case with the area that embraced the various buildings of Solomon’s temple) a pyramidal tower, various sanctuaries, sepulchres; a small and a large quadrangular court, one surrounded, as we have said, by cloisters; subterranean initiatory galleries beneath; oracles, courts of justice, high places, and cells or dwellings for the various orders of priests. The whole combination of the buildings is encircled by a quadrilateral pilastered portico, embracing a quadrangular area, and resting on a terraced platform. This platform exhibits the same architectural model, which we have described as characterising the single temples. It is composed of three graduated stuccoed terraces, sloping inwards, at an angle of about seventy degrees, in the form of a truncated pyramid. Four central staircases (one facing each of the cardinal points) ascend these terraces in the middle of each lateral façade of the quadrangle; and four gates fronting the same cardinal points, conduct from the top of each staircase into the body of the building, or into the great court. The great entrance, through a pilastered gateway, fronts the east, and descends by a second flight of steps into the cloistered court. On the various pilasters of the upper terrace are the metopes, with singular sculptures. On descending the second staircase into the cloistered court, on one side, appears the triple pyramidal tower, which may be inferred, from the curious distribution of little cells which surround the central room of each story, to have been employed as a place of royal or private sepulture. It would be pronounced a striking and tasteful structure, according to any architectural rule. On another side of the same cloistered court is the detached temple of the chief god, to whom the whole religious building appears to have been devoted, who appears to have been the great and only god of the nations who worshipped in this temple. Beneath the cloisters, entered by staircases from above, are what we believe to be the initiatory galleries. These opened into rooms, one of which has a stone couch in it, and others are distinguished by unintelligible apparatus carved in stone. The only symbol described as found within these sacred haunts is, however, perfectly Asiatic, and perfectly intelligible; we mean two contending serpents. The remnant of an sitar, or high place, occupies the centre of the cloistered quadrangle. The rest of the edifice is taken up with courts, palaces, detached temples, open divans, baths, and streets of priestly cells, or houses, in a greater or less degree of dilapidation.”