[199] The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, p. 499.
[200] General History of America, Lond. ed., 1725, Stevens’ Trans., iii, 188.
[201] History of Mexico, Philadelphia ed., 1817, Cullen’s Trans., i, 119.
[202] Herrera, Hist. of Amer., iii, 110.
[203] History of Mexico, loc. cit., i, 162.
[204] Clavigero, Hist. of Mex., i, 229: Herrera, iii, 312: Prescott, Conq. of Mex., i, 18.
[205] The Aztecs, like the Northern Indians, neither exchanged or released prisoners. Among the latter the stake was the doom of the captive unless saved by adoption; but among the former, under the teachings of the priesthood, the unfortunate captive was offered as a sacrifice to the principal god they worshiped. To utilize the life of the prisoner in the service of the gods, a life forfeited by the immemorial usages of savages and barbarians, was the high conception of the first hierarchy in the order of institutions. An organized priesthood first appeared among the American aborigines in the Middle Status of barbarism; and it stands connected with the invention of idols and human sacrifices, as a means of acquiring authority over mankind through the religious sentiments. It probably has a similar history in the principal tribes of mankind. Three successive usages with respect to captives appeared in the three sub-periods of barbarism. In the first he was burned at the stake, in the second he was sacrificed to the gods, and in the third he was made a slave. All alike they proceeded upon the principle that the life of the prisoner was forfeited to his captor. This principle became so deeply seated in the human mind that civilization and Christianity combined were required for its displacement.
[206] There is some difference in the estimates of the population of Mexico found in the Spanish histories; but several of them concurred in the number of houses, which, strange to say, is placed at sixty thousand. Zuazo, who visited Mexico in 1521, wrote sixty thousand inhabitants (Prescott, Conq. of Mex., ii, 112, note); the Anonymous Conqueror, who accompanied Cortes also wrote sixty thousand inhabitants, “soixante mille habitans” (H. Ternaux-Compans, x, 92); but Gomora and Martyr wrote sixty thousand houses, and this estimate has been adopted by Clavigero (Hist. of Mex., ii, 360), by Herrera (Hist. of Amer., ii, 360), and by Prescott (Conq. of Mex., ii, 112). Solis says sixty thousand families (Hist. Conq. of Mex., l. c., i, 393). This estimate would give a population of 300,000, although London at that time contained but 145,000 inhabitants (Black’s London, p. 5). Finally, Torquemada, cited by Clavigero (ii, 360, note), boldly writes one hundred and twenty thousand houses. There can scarcely be a doubt that the houses in this pueblo were in general large communal, or joint-tenement houses, like those in New Mexico of the same period, large enough to accommodate from ten to fifty and a hundred families in each. At either number the mistake is egregious. Zuazo and the Anonymous Conqueror came the nearest to a respectable estimate, because they did not much more than double the probable number.
[207] League of the Iroquois, p. 78.
[208] Herrera, iii, 194, 209.