In the native languages of Mexico and Central America the name chalchiḥuitl most frequently designates jadeite, but it appears sometimes to have been applied to other stones of a green or greenish-blue color, such as the so-called amazon-stone from the region of the Amazon River, and even occasionally to the turquoise. Thus the talismanic value of the chalchihuitl seems to have depended rather upon its hue and its rarity, than upon its mineralogical character; indeed, among primitive peoples, stones of the same, or closely similar color, although of different composition, often bore the same name, and were conceived to have the same virtues whether talismanic or therapeutic. Writing of the rich gifts sent by Montezuma to Cortés upon the latter’s arrival at San Juan de Ulúa (1519), Bernal Diaz de Castillo mentions[[550]] “four chalchiuites, a kind of green stone of great value, and much esteemed by them [the Indians], more highly, indeed, than we esteem the emerald. They are of a green color.” And he proceeds to state that each one of these stones was said to be worth a great weight of gold.
The statue of the earth-goddess Couatlicue, found in the village of Cozcatlan, Mexico, and now preserved in the National Museum of Mexico, shows, inserted in the cheek, a disk of jadeite.[[551]] Green seems thus to have been the color sacred to this goddess, which may remind us of the attribution of the green emerald to Venus. Indeed, green as the color of foliage and plants must naturally have suggested itself as eminently appropriate for an earth-goddess, just as its significance as a symbol of life and generation connected it with the Goddess of Love.
The story of the emeralds brought from the New World by Hernan Cortés must have been quite familiar to sixteenth century writers, for we find Brantôme applying some details of this story to “a beautiful and incomparable pearl” said to have been brought from Mexico by Cortés on his return to Spain. This he later allowed to slip from his fingers into the sea while showing it to a friend on board the ship that was bearing him toward Algiers; it was lost in the sea, and in the words of Brantôme “vanished from the sight of mankind, unworthy to possess such a miracle of nature.” The loss of this pearl is looked upon by the French writer as a punishment for the “inscription” Cortés had caused to be placed upon it: Inter natos mulierum non surrexit major;[[552]] this refers to John the Baptist and was, as we have seen, engraved upon one of the famous emeralds of Cortés. Brantôme believes that its application to a simple product of nature was sacrilegious and the cause of the object’s loss; he also sees in this loss an omen of the death of the Emperor Charles which occurred shortly afterward, and he draws attention to the fact that the “Africans” called their kings “precious stones.”[[553]]
The Aztec art-workers of the period immediately antedating the Spanish Conquest had attained a high order of skill in the difficult work of inlaying carefully cut and shaped bits of precious material so as to produce some form or design of symbolic or religious meaning. In judging the artistic merit of such work, we must always remember that the Aztec inlayers were only provided with rude and primitive tools and implements for the execution of their task, and extraordinary patience and application must have been necessary to complete some of the objects that have been preserved for us. This art seems only to have been cultivated in ancient Mexico and Central America, and perhaps Peru also; of the Mexican work some twenty-five examples have been saved. The Spaniards, shortly after their first landing, were given an opportunity to judge of the quality of this Aztec inlaying, for among the gifts sent by Montezuma to Cortés, were five such objects, a mask with incrustations of turquoise, so disposed as to figure two intertwined serpents; a crozier, also with turquoise mosaic and ending in a serpent’s head; a pair of large ear-rings of serpentine form decorated with the chalchihuitl stone (perhaps nephrite or jadeite); a mitre of ocelot skin, surmounted by a large chalchihuitl, and also decorated with turquoise mosaic, and a staff of office with similar inlays. A serpent-mask answering to the description of one of Montezuma’s gifts is now in the British Museum and is in a fairly good state of preservation, although unfortunately the two serpent-heads have been lost. Evidently this mask was used in connection with the worship of Quetzalcoatl, the serpent-god, an incarnation of which deity the poor Aztecs at first believed Cortés to be.[[554]]
By courtesy of Dr. Edward H. Thompson.
THE SACRED WELL OF CHICHEN ITZA
Wherein, according to tradition, human victims and votive offerings of great value were cast.
Surpassing this mask in a certain strange and weird interest, and equalling it in artistic workmanship, is another most remarkable Aztec ceremonial mask, also in the British Museum Collection. The foundation of this is the front part of a human skull, and its outer surface has been covered with an incrustation of turquoise and jet mosaic in five alternate bands, the upper, middle and lower ones being of jet, while the two intermediate ones are of shaped pieces of turquoise; part of the nose has been removed and the space covered over by tablets of pink shell; protruding eyeballs are figured by convex disks of polished iron pyrites with a bordering of white shell; a number of the teeth have been broken out. Straps attached at the temples rendered it possible to bind this mask to the face of an idol, or for a priest of high rank to wear it on solemn ceremonial occasions.
Some three hundred yards or more from the great temple pyramid at Chichen Itzá, Yucatan, Mexico, at the termination of the Sacred Way traversed in times of tribulation, of pestilence or famine, by processions of priests conveying sacrifices to be offered to the offended divinities, was the Sacred Well. Into this the priests would throw the ornaments and trinkets dedicated to the gods as peace-offerings. But such inanimate objects were regarded as insufficient, and even animal sacrifices were deemed to be inadequate, and hence it often happened that prisoners of war and fair maidens were cast into the deep, still waters of the Sacred Well.[[555]]
Many fragments of the carved stone ornaments have been recovered from the depths of this Sacred Well, and even in their present imperfect state, they testify to a considerable development of the lapidarian art among the ancient Mayas, and a high degree of artistic skill in the fashioning of such objects of adornment. Undoubtedly those used in this way as sacred offerings were considered to be amulets and therefore to be the more acceptable in the sight of the gods.
That lapis lazuli was as much favored for religious use by the aborigines of the New World as it was in ancient Egypt and in other parts of the Old World, is shown by the recent discovery of twenty-eight carefully formed cylindrical beads of lapis lazuli among some very ancient deposits in the island of La Plata, Ecuador. From the general character of these deposits it is evident that they did not belong to permanent dwellers on the island, and there is every reason to believe that they were left by visitors from the mainland, who came to the island for the performance of certain sacred rites and ceremonies.[[556]]