CHAPTER XV.
NAHUA ARTS AND MANUFACTURES.
Metals Used and Manner of Obtaining Them—Working of Gold and Silver—Wonderful Skill in Imitating—Gilding and Plating—Working in Stone—Lapidary Work—Wood Carving—Manufacture of Pottery—Various Kinds of Cloth—Manufacture of Paper and Leather—Preparation of Dyes and Paints—The Art of Painting—Feather Mosaic Work—Leaf-Mats—Manner of Kindling Fire—Torches—Soap—Council of Arts in Tezcuco—Oratory and Poetry—Nezahualcoyotl's Odes on the Mutability of Life and the Tyrant Tezozomoc—Aztec Arithmetical System.
Gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead were the metals known to and used by the Nahuas. The latter, however, is merely mentioned, and nothing is known about where it was obtained or for what purposes it was employed. We have only very slight information respecting the processes by which any of the metals were obtained. Gold came to the cities of Anáhuac chiefly from the southern Nahua provinces, through the agency of traders and tax-gatherers; silver and tin were taken from the mines of Taxco and Tzompanco; copper was obtained from the mountains of Zacatollan, the province of the Cohuixcas, and from Michoacan. Nuggets of gold and masses of native copper were found on the surface of the ground in certain regions; gold was chiefly obtained, however, from the sand in the bed of rivers by divers. It was kept, in the form of dust, in small tubes or quills, or was melted in small pots, by the aid of hollow bamboo blow-pipes used instead of bellows, and cast in small bars. Prescott tells us that these metals were also mined from veins in the solid rock, extensive galleries being opened for the purpose. Quicksilver, sulphur, alum, ochre, and other minerals were collected to a certain extent and employed by the natives in the preparation of colors and for other purposes.[584] The use of iron, though that metal was abundant in the country, was unknown. Such metals as they had they were most skillful in working, chiefly by melting and casting, and by carving, but also to some extent by the use of the hammer. We have no details of the means employed to melt the harder metals, besides the rude blow-pipe and furnace mentioned in connection with gold.
For cutting implements copper was the only metal used, but it was hardened with an alloy of tin until it sufficed to cut the hardest substances nearly as well as steel.[585] The pure and softer metal was used to make kettles and other vessels. Copper tools were, however, rare compared with those of stone, and seem to have been used chiefly in working wood where a sharp and enduring edge was required. Such tools usually took the form of axes and chisels. Sticks for working the ground, the nearest Nahua approach to the plow, were also often tipped with copper, as we have seen. Metal was not much used in making weapons, not being found in swords or arrow-heads, but employed with obsidian in spearheads and on the maza, or club. Both copper and tin dishes and plates are mentioned but were not in common use. In the manufacture of implements of copper and tin these metals were wrought by means of stone hammers and not cast.[586]
GOLD AND SILVER SMITHS.
No branch of Nahua art was carried to a higher degree of perfection than the ornamental working of gold and silver. The conquerors were struck with admiration on beholding the work of the native goldsmiths; they even in some cases frankly acknowledge that they admired the work more than the material, and saved the most beautiful specimens from the melting furnace, the greatest compliment these gold-greedy adventurers could pay to native art. Many of the finer articles were sent as presents and curiosities to European princes, who added their testimony to that of the conquerors, pronouncing the jewelry in many instances superior to the work of old-world artists. Azcapuzalco was the headquarters of the workers in gold and silver.[587] The imitation of natural objects, particularly animals, birds, and fishes, was a favorite field for the display of this branch of Nahua talent. The conqueror Cortés tells us that Montezuma had in his collection a counterfeit in gold, silver, stones, or feathers, of every object under heaven in his dominions, so skillfully made, so far as the work in metal was concerned, that no smith in the world could excel them. This statement is repeated by every writer on the subject. Dr Hernandez, the naturalist, in preparing a treatise on Mexican zoology for Philip II., is said to have supplied his want of real specimens of certain rare species by a resort to these imitations.[588] The native artists are said to have fashioned animals and birds with movable heads, legs, wings, and tongues, an ape with a spindle in its hands in the act of spinning and in certain comic attitudes; and what particularly interested and surprised the Spaniards was the art—spoken of by them as a lost art—of casting the parts of an object of different metals each distinct from the rest but all forming a complete whole, and this, as the authorities say, without soldering. Thus a fish was molded with alternate scales of gold and silver, plates were cast in sections of the same metal, and loose handles were attached to different vessels.[589]
GILDING AND PLATING.
After the Spaniards came, the native artisans had a new and wide field for the display of their skill, in imitating the numerous products of European art. A slight examination, often obtained by stealthily looking into the shop windows, enabled them to reproduce and not unfrequently to improve upon the finest articles of jewelry and plate.[590]