CHAPTER II.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE CIVILIZED NATIONS.
The American Civilization of the Sixteenth Century—Its Disappearance—The Past, a New Element—Dividing line between Savage and Civilized Tribes—Bounds of American Civilization—Physical Features of the Country—Maya and Nahua Branches of Aboriginal Culture—The Nahua Civilization—The Aztecs its Representatives—Limits of the Aztec Empire—Ancient History of Anáhuac in Outline—The Toltec Era—The Chichimec Era—The Aztec Era—Extent of the Aztec Language—Civilized Peoples outside of Anáhuac—Central American Nations—The Maya Culture—The Primitive Maya Empire—Nahua Influence in the South—Yucatan and the Mayas—The Nations of Chiapas—The Quiché Empire in Guatemala—The Nahuas in Nicaragua and Salvador—Etymology of Names.
In the preceding volume I have had occasion several times to remark that, in the delineation of the Wild Tribes of the Pacific States, no attempt is made to follow them in their rapid decline, no attempt to penetrate their past or prophesy a possible future, no profitless lingering over those misfortunes that wrought among them such swift destruction. To us the savage nations of America have neither past nor future; only a brief present, from which indeed we may judge somewhat of their past; for the rest, foreign avarice and interference, European piety and greed, saltpetre, steel, small-pox, and syphilis, tell a speedy tale. Swifter still must be the hand that sketches the incipient civilization of the Mexican and Central American table-lands. For although here we have more past, there is still less present, and scarcely any future. Those nations raised the highest by their wealth and culture, were the first to fall before the invader, their superior attainments offering a more shining mark to a rapacious foe; and falling, they were the soonest lost,—absorbed by the conquering race, or disappearing in the surrounding darkness. Although the savage nations were rapidly annihilated, traces of savagism lingered, and yet linger; but the higher American culture, a plant of more delicate growth and more sensitive nature, withered at the first rude touch of foreign interference. Instead of being left to its own intuitive unfoldings, or instead of being fostered by the new-comers, who might have elevated by interfusion both their own culture and that of the conquered race, the spirit of progress was effectually stifled on both sides by fanatical attempts to substitute by force foreign creeds and polities for those of indigenous origin and growth. And now behold them both, the descendants of conquerors and of conquered, the one scarcely less denaturalized than the other, the curse inflicted by the invaders on a flourishing empire returning and resting with crushing weight on their own head. Scarce four centuries ago the empire of Charles the Fifth, and the empire of Montezuma the Second, were brought by the force of progress most suddenly and unexpectedly face to face; the one then the grandest and strongest of the old world as was the other of the new. Since which time the fierce fanaticism that overwhelmed the New World empire, has pressed like an incubus upon the dominant race, and held it fast while all the world around were making the most rapid strides forward.
THE PAST, A NEW ELEMENT.
No indigenous civilization exists in America to-day, yet the effects of a former culture are not altogether absent. The descendant of the Aztec, Maya, and Quiché, is still of superior mind and haughtier spirit than his roving brother who boasts of none but a savage ancestry. Still, so complete has been the substitution of foreign civil and ecclesiastical polities, and so far-reaching their influence on native character and conduct; so intimate the association for three and more centuries with the Spanish element; so closely guarded from foreign gaze has been every manifestation of the few surviving sparks of aboriginal modes of thought, that a study of the native condition in modern times yields, by itself, few satisfactory results. This study, however, as part of an investigation of their original or normal condition, should by no means be neglected, since it may furnish illustrative material of no little value.
Back of all this lies another element which lends to our subject yet grander proportions. Scattered over the southern plateaux are heaps of architectural remains and monumental piles. Furthermore, native traditions, both orally transmitted and hieroglyphically recorded by means of legible picture-writings, afford us a tolerably clear view of the civilized nations during a period of several centuries preceding the Spanish conquest, together with passing glances, through momentary clearings in the mythologic clouds, at historical epochs much more remote. Here we have as aids to this analysis,—aids almost wholly wanting among the so-called savage tribes, antiquities, tradition, history, carrying the student far back into the mysterious New World past; and hence it is that from its simultaneous revelation and eclipse, American civilization would otherwise offer a more limited field for investigation than American savagism, yet by the introduction of this new element the field is widely extended.
Nor have we even yet reached the limits of our resources for the investigation of this New World civilization. In these relics of architecture and literature, of mythology and tradition, there are clear indications of an older and higher type of culture than that brought immediately to the knowledge of the invaders; of a type that had temporarily deteriorated, perhaps through the influence of long-continued and bloody conflicts, civil and foreign, by which the more warlike rather than the more highly cultured nations had been brought into prominence and power. But this anterior and superior civilization, resting largely as it does on vague tradition, and preserved to our knowledge in general allusions rather than in detail, may, like the native condition since the conquest, be utilized to the best advantage here as illustrative of the later and better-known, if somewhat inferior civilization of the sixteenth century, described by the conqueror, the missionary, and the Spanish historian.
Antique remains of native skill, which have been preserved for our examination, may also be largely used in illustration of more modern art, whose products have disappeared. These relics of the past are also of the highest value as confirming the truth of the reports made by Spanish writers, very many, or perhaps most, of whose statements respecting the wonderful phenomena of the New World, without this incontrovertible material proof, would find few believers among the sceptical students of the present day. These remains of antiquity, however, being fully described in another volume of this work, may be referred to in very general terms for present purposes.
ORIGIN OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.