"But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects and commence anew; using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society."[139]
Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been impossible. It is not so much the facts as the interpretations of the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their misinterpretations are interesting and instructive when once we rightly understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the truth.
The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules, is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted. Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's Dinner." Very good. But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."[140] When Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have been so,—there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool, but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "Since cursive writing was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for two reasons: firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine. An acid beer (pulque), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was a common beverage of the Aztecs; but it is hardly supposable that even this was used at dinner."[141]
To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative. From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As for the place where the pulque was kept, it was a venial slip of the pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on to call it "beer"? The pulque was neither the one nor the other; for want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable" that pulque was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined with Montezuma, know so much more about such things than Cortes and Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]
The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the walls of a room, The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements. we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be cut with flint or copper chisels,[143] and are ready to entertain the suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000 men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such unconscionable yarns as about the size of the armies they have thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent; things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of Indian society which he knew more minutely and profoundly than any other man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference between Aztecs and Iroquois.[144] In this way he did injustice to his own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.
In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the student, Importance of the middle period of barbarism. as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led to the age that could write the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the upper end. Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the former; perhaps if he had lived long enough to profit by the work of Schliemann and Bandelier, he might have found equally apt ones in the latter. Mr. Bandelier's researches certainly show that the ancient city of Mexico, in point of social development, stood somewhere between the two.
How that city looked may best be described when we come to tell what its first Spanish visitors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon a reasonable estimate of their testimony, pleasure-gardens, menageries and aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought pottery, exquisite featherwork, brilliant mats and tapestries, silver goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of highly seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats, ballad singers and dancing girls,—such things were to be seen in this city of snake-worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a tree-fern simulates a tree.
