The education that was received by women among the early Mexicans may be illustrated by a reference to the story of The Lady of Tula. Among the Tezcucans, at least at one time, concubinage was recognized as a legitimate appanage of royalty, and the Lady of Tula was one of the concubines of Nezahualpilli, son of the great monarch Nezahualcoyotl and his successor as ruler of the Tezcucan nation. The son of this latter king entered into a correspondence with the Lady of Tula, and, as the offence was capital, the youth was slain by royal command; but we are not concerned so much with the sadness of his fate or with the Roman severity of his father as with the characteristics of the woman who tempted him from his allegiance to his royal sire. It is told of her that, though of humble birth, she possessed most remarkable endowments of mind, that she wrote beautiful verse, and that she was often consulted upon grave matters by the king and his ministers. She was given a separate establishment, and maintained almost regal state. The information that we have of this woman discloses a very high feminine status among the Tezcucans; and as the chronicler of her powers expresses little or no surprise concerning them, we may assume that such education and standing as she enjoyed were not uncommon among Mexican women, even if not in so high a degree as in the case of the Lady of Tula.
To return to the women of the true Aztecs. When the young girl had emerged from the conventual school she took her place in society as one of its rightful factors. She participated on equal terms with the men in all social functions, eating with them at the banquet and taking part in all the festivities which were so congenial to the somewhat superficial nature of that people. It is true that at the banquets she sat apart from the men, as did also the married women; but this was simply a custom, not a result of inferior status. These banquets were carried on in a style not inferior to the feasts of the old Romans; the tables were covered with flowers, and bowls of water and cotton napkins were furnished to each guest, that they might perform before eating the ablutions which were as formal with the Aztecs as with the Mussulmans. There were golden chafing dishes and cups and platters, as well as table ornaments of the precious metal, which was very common among the Mexicans. The feasts of the wealthy, if we may credit the accounts of early writers, were sumptuously provided with delicacies, such as venison, peccaries, rabbits, "tuzas,"--a species of mole,--fish of many names, turtles, iguanas, turkeys, quails, and numerous other kinds of birds. Vegetables and fruits of several varieties completed the dishes. The variety and quality of food here indicated suggest an epicurean supply rather than the frugal dietary to which the Aztecs are reputed to have been accustomed. Before eating it was de rigueur to smoke, the tobacco being in the form of cigars or used in pipes, the former being held in dainty holders of tortoise shell or silver; but we are not informed whether or not the women participated in this part of the feast. We do, however, know that after the banquet was concluded the elder women as well as the men drank pulque, the national beverage, often to a state of intoxication; but the young of both sexes were rigorously excluded from this portion of the entertainment. The youths and maidens danced while their elders drank--a custom which has not wholly ceased in our own civilization; and we can find in the whole proceeding on these festal occasions more likeness to modern entertainments than is found even by the old Spanish writer who tells us that, after the distribution of gifts with which the entertainment came to a close, the guests dispersed, "some commending the feast, and others condemning the bad taste or extravagance of their host, in the same manner as with us."
While the home discipline of children, like that in the public schools, was of a very severe type, the relations of the Aztec maiden to her parents, after she had arrived at maturity, were of the closest and tenderest description. They enjoined upon her, with loving solicitude for her well-being and felicity, simplicity of manners and conversation, personal neatness, modesty of demeanor, and reverence for her husband when she became a wife. They showed her an affection and consideration which were in conformity with the highest type of social culture, and in return were regarded and treated with respect and love.
When the maiden finally attained the dignity of wifehood, her condition was hardly changed. She received from her husband the utmost respect of demeanor, and she was--of course we are considering the women of the upper classes--freed from all obligation of service. She had maidens to wait upon her and to do the tasks of the household, over which she ruled much as did a feudal chatelaine in the days of chivalry in Europe; and a favorite amusement with the Aztec wives consisted in listening to their maidens rehearse traditionary tales and ballads. When there came to her the further dignity of motherhood, she was the recipient of congratulatory visits from her friends and neighbors--male as well as female--from whom she received gifts of dresses, ornaments, or flowers, in token of sympathy and regard. These visits of ceremony were regulated by a code, unwritten but as thoroughly understood and binding as that which regulates similar forms in our own social world. In short, the Aztec woman, whether as maiden, wife, or mother, received universal acknowledgment of her rightful place in the structure of society and was in almost all respects the peer of her Caucasian sister in status and indeed in civilization. Most of what has thus far been written is applicable to the women of the lower classes as well as to their richer and more cultured countrywomen, at least so far as concerns the estimation in which they were held and their place in the household and in their appropriate society. Of course, even as with us, the women of the lower classes labored; but their labors were as a rule not severe. The Aztecs were primarily an agricultural people, and their women assisted in the toil necessary to the tillage of the soil, but their labors were of the lighter kinds; they sowed the seed and husked the corn, but they did not reap or garner, while they would doubtless have rebelled in mass had they been required to undertake the more laborious tasks incident to irrigation or actual tillage. Even the slave women, though these of course were doomed to harder service than the wives and daughters of freemen, were not generally condemned to wearing toil. Indeed, the institution of slavery, except in the cases of prisoners taken in war,--a small class of slaves, since such prisoners were usually sacrificed to the gods,--was milder among the Aztecs than among any people of whom there is historical record; the slave could marry at will, could hold property, and could even possess slaves of his own, while, as has been already said, the child of a slave was independent of the status of his parent.
It is unfortunately true that there can be found but few names of women of importance in the history of the Aztecs or indeed of the Conquest itself; nearly all that is to be learned is general and not particular in its import. Though the blood of many of the women of that period, intermingled with that of the Spanish cavaliers, flows in the veins of a very large number of the Mexicans of to-day, there is yet no trustworthy record of particular names or fames. It is indeed recorded that Alvarado, one of the right-hand men of Cortés, married the daughter of Xicotencatl, a Mexican chief; but she was a Tlascalan, not an Aztec. So, as space would fail in the compass of a large volume to tell of all the civilizations which surrounded that of the Aztecs, and also as Doña Luisa, as she was called by the Spaniards after her baptism into the Christian faith, did nothing more meritorious than to bear to Tonitiuh--"the Sun"--as Alvarado was called by the Mexicans, because of his bright face and golden hair, a number of children who became by intermarriage the sires and mothers of some of the noblest families of Castile, she does not deserve particular chronicle here. It may, however, be well to take advantage of the introduction of this incident to make the statement that marriage between the followers of Cortés and his successors and the native maidens--who must first, as an unalterable rule, embrace the tenets of Christianity, which had borne its earliest message to them in the flame and steel of the massacre of their parents and kinsmen--was adopted as a matter of policy and resulted in the foundation of many lines which have continued to the present day.
Though there is no typical Aztec woman to present as representative of her sex and country, there is one whose name is so welded with the history of the fall of the Aztec power that a brief sketch of her story may be given here. She was of Mexican birth, but had been sold by her unprincipled mother as a slave, the mother thereby securing for her son by a second marriage the estate which would otherwise have fallen to the girl. When Cortés reached his first harbor on his road to Tenochtitlan, as the Aztec capital was called, the cacique of Tabasco presented him with several slaves, among whom was this girl, called by the Spaniards Doña Marina, and by the Mexicans Malinche. She was of great beauty and of a high degree of intelligence, and she soon came within the notice of Cortés by acting as interpreter for him when he was embarrassed by his inability to communicate with the Aztec embassy. She did not at that time speak Spanish, but she managed to interpret through an intermediary, and she soon became proficient in the language of the men with whom her lot was now thrown, from one of whom she learned more than the Castilian tongue.
The beauty of the young girl, whose charms are said by Spanish writers to have been extraordinary, soon captivated the heart of Cortés, and he first made her his secretary and then his mistress. At least so the fashion of our time would term her, but there can be little doubt that in the eyes of Marina, reared amid traditions of polygamy, there was nothing of wrong in her union with Cortés, and it may be noted that such a good and moral man as Father Olmedo had for her no word of reproof but rather of blessing. At all events, she openly lived with Cortés as his wife and by him had a son, Don Martin Cortés, acknowledged by his father, and who afterward became comendador of the Military Order of Saint lago.
Marina was a loving, faithful, tenderhearted woman, and she was in all ways true to her Spanish lover and to his countrymen, frequently extricating them from grave difficulties by her advice, given with knowledge of the natures as well as customs of the Mexicans. Perhaps this was only to be expected; but it is remarkable, and speaks volumes for her character, that she was always held in affectionate honor by the Mexicans themselves, though she dwelt in the camp of their oppressors. In truth, Marina time and again used her influence with Cortés on the side of mercy, and she always displayed a profound sympathy with the misfortunes of the Mexicans, notwithstanding the fact that she may have in some ways aided their foes and tyrants. Even though the act which more than aught else struck terror into the souls of the Indians--the cutting off of the hands of fifty Tlascalans, who had come to the camp of Cortés in the garb of ambassadors but were suspected of being spies--was directly traceable to the watchfulness of Marina in the cause of the man she loved, she was never held culpable by the natives for her guardianship, though this resulted so disastrously to those who, if not precisely her countrymen, were assuredly more nearly of consanguineous race than were those whom she defended from them. It was these people too, who, after their desperate but vain struggle with the Spaniards, whose arms and valor proved invincible against overwhelming numbers, were the most faithful allies of Cortés in his battles with the Aztecs. Muñoz Camargo relates that, among other tokens of their friendship, they presented numbers of "beautiful maidens" to the Conqueror and his companions.
All through the wonderful march to the capital, through the honorable reception accorded to Cortés, through the siege which was the consequence of Spanish treachery, through the "Terrible Night," which saw the banishment of Spanish power for a time from Tenochtitlan, through the long march back to the coast, through all perils, as through all triumphs, Marina stood by the side of her lover, watchful of his welfare, wise in suggestion, tender in helpfulness, in all things a noble type of woman. When the unhappy Montezuma was made prisoner within his own capital, Marina alone of those who surrounded him never forgot the reverence that was due to the monarch, and it was she who nursed him most tenderly when he lay dying under the wounds inflicted by his own outraged subjects. It was she who most uncomplainingly bore the privations of the siege, she who most bravely met the terrors of the "Noche Triste;" and it may be said that it was she more than any other single man or woman, Alvarado and Sandoval not excepted, who helped Cortés to establish the Spanish rule in Mexico.
The question of the gratitude of Cortés for these services and for her love is one that is to be settled by each reader of history according to his own ideas of the form which true appreciation should take. The facts are simple enough. In 1525 she was with the Conqueror at Coatzacualco, the province which could claim the honor of being her birthplace. Here, by accident, she came into contact with her own mother, who had sold her into slavery and who was now naturally terrified at meeting her injured daughter in a situation of power; but Marina, with her natural generosity, embraced her parent, assured her of her forgiveness, and even made her many presents, apparently in the wish to regain that affection which had once been hers in her babyhood. This was the last time that Marina appears by the side of Cortés; on the expedition to Honduras, made shortly afterward, he gave her away to Don Juan Xamarillo, a knight of Castile, who wedded her according to the rites of the Catholic Church. Here then is the question which each must decide for himself: Was Cortés just and generous in thus making disposition for the honorable and safe future of the woman who loved him, or was he merely ridding himself of one who had grown to be an encumbrance? It is impossible to answer; it is not even known whether the marriage was arranged with the sanction of Marina or whether it was a piece of tyranny on the part of the Conqueror, of venality on the part of Don Juan, of heartbroken docility on the part of Marina. Nor is there any record of the further life of the latter by which to decide the probabilities of her marriage being more than a mere contract; from the time of the completion of the ceremony the gentle Marina fades from the page of history. It is certain indeed that she was given estates in Coatzacualco,--possibly the bribe which induced Don Juan to wed the mistress of his captain,--but it is not even known that she lived to take possession of those estates. Except for the unmerited persecution and shameful torture undergone by her son, Don Martin Cortés, we are never again reminded in history that Marina had lived to be the right hand of one of the greatest conquerors of all time, to prove the most valuable ally found by the fierce enemies of her native land, and yet to be held in lasting honor alike by conquerors and conquered.