Footnote 123: They can be most conveniently stated in connection with the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below, vol. ii. p. 278. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised paper on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear that he has taken these facts into the account.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 124: I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting Clavigero's statement that the office of tlacatecuhtli "should always remain in the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as the eleven who were actually elected were all closely akin to one another. In point of fact it did remain "in the house of Acamapitzin."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 125: H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent demeanour of the people toward Montezuma, though perhaps overcoloured, are not so absurd as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr. Morgan was sometimes too anxious to reduce Montezuma to the level of an Iroquois war-chief.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 126: As I have elsewhere observed in a similar case:—"Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga." Beginnings of New England, p. 121.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 127: See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the Council of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, op. cit. p. 696. The letter recommends that to increase the security of the Spanish hold upon the country the roads should be made practicable for beasts and wagons. They were narrow paths running straight ahead up hill and down dale, sometimes crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 128: The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it form a caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient Mexico, nor were there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans," "merchants," etc. See Bandelier, op. cit. p. 599.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 129: See the copious references in Tylor's Primitive Culture, ii. 340-371; Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, The Bible for Young People, i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170, 316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the subject with much learning.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 130: Spencer, Princip. Sociol., i. 287; Tylor, op. cit. ii. 345.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 131: Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with details, refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's Inferno, Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. p. 64.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 132: See below, vol. ii. p. 283.[Back to Main Text]