Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

Imagination might easily expand a napkin into a table-cloth, provided a table existed to spread it upon; but in this case, without duly considering the relation between the two, the table-cloth has been created, but the table refuses to appear. The napkin business, therefore, seems to have been slightly overdone. Finally, the call of the scattered household to dinner by kettle-drums and whistling savors too strongly of Indian ways and usages to be diverted into a summons to the dancers, as Herrera suggests. This Aztec dinner-call, on a scale commensurate with a large communal household, would have been lost to history but for the special use discerned in it to decorate a tale. It recognizes the loitering habits of an Aztec household, and perhaps the irregularity of the dinner-hour.

Passing over the descriptions of Sahagun, Clavigero, and Prescott, who have kindled into enthusiasm over this dinner of Montezuma, Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft shall be allowed to furnish us with the very latest version. "Every day," he remarks, "from sunrise until sunset the antechambers of Montezuma's palace in Mexico were occupied by six hundred noblemen and gentlemen, who passed their time lounging about and discussing the gossip of the day in low tones, for it was considered disrespectful to speak loudly or make any noise within the palace limits. They were provided with apartments in the palace, and took their meals from what remained of the superabundance of the royal table, as did after them their own servants, of whom each person of quality was entitled to from one to thirty according to his rank. These retainers, numbering two or three thousand, filled several outer courts during the day. The king took his meals alone in one of the largest halls of the palace…. He was seated upon a low leather cushion, upon which were thrown various soft skins, and his table was of a similar description, except that it was larger and rather higher, and was covered with white cotton cloths of the finest texture. The dinner-service was of the finest ware of Cholula, and many of the goblets were of gold and silver, or fashioned with beautiful shells. He is said to have possessed a complete service of solid gold, but as it was considered below a king's dignity to use anything at table twice, Montezuma, with all his extravagance, was obliged to keep this costly dinner-set in the temple. The bill of fare comprised everything edible of fish, flesh, and fowl that could be procured in the empire or imported beyond it. Relays of couriers were employed in bringing delicacies from afar…. There were cunning cooks among the Aztecs, and at these extravagant meals there was almost as much variety in the cookery as in the matter cooked. Sahagun gives a most formidable list of roast, stewed, and broiled dishes, of meat, fish, and poultry, seasoned with many kinds of herbs, of which, however, that most frequently mentioned is chile. He further describes many kinds of bread, all bearing a more or less close resemblance to the Mexican tortilla … then tamales of all kinds, and many other curious messes, such as frog spawn and stewed ants, cooked with chile…. Each dish was kept warm on a chafing-dish placed under it. Writers do not agree as to the exact quantity of food served up at each meal, but it must have been immense, since the lowest number of dishes given is three hundred and the highest three thousand. They were brought into the hall by four hundred pages of noble birth, who placed their burdens upon the matted floor and retired noiselessly. The king then pointed out such viands as he wished to partake of, or left the selection to his steward, who doubtless took pains to study the likes and dislikes of the royal palate. The steward was a functionary of the highest rank and importance; he alone was privileged to place the designated delicacies before the king upon the table; he appears to have done duty both as royal carver and cup-bearer; and, according to Torquemada, to have done it barefooted and on his knees. [Footnote: The 'cup-bearer' agrees reasonably well with the 'window-curtains.'] Everything being in readiness, a number of the most beautiful of the king's women entered, bearing water in round vessels called Xicales, for the king to wash his hands in, and towels that he might dry them, other vessels being placed upon the ground to catch the drippings. Two other women at the same time brought him some small loaves of a very delicate kind of bread, made of the finest maize flour, beaten up with eggs. This done, a wooden screen, carved and gilt, was placed before him that no one might see him while eating. There were always present five or six aged lords, who stood near the royal chair barefooted and with bowed heads. To these, as a special mark of favor, the king occasionally sent a choice morsel from his own plate. During the meal the monarch amused himself by watching the performances of his jugglers and tumblers, whose marvellous feats of strength and dexterity I shall describe in another place; at other times there was dancing, accompanied by singing and music…. The more solid food was followed by pastry, sweetmeats, and a magnificent dessert of fruit. The only beverage drank was chocolate, of which about fifty jars were provided; it was taken with a spoon, finely wrought of gold or shell, from a goblet of the same material. Having finished his dinner, the king again washed his hands in water brought to him, as before, by the women. After this, several painted and gilt pipes were brought, from which he inhaled, through his mouth or nose, as best suited him, the smoke of a mixture of liquid amber and an herb called tobacco. This siesta over, he devoted himself to business, and proceeded to give audience to foreign ambassadors or deputations from cities in the empire, and to such of his lords and ministers as had business to transact with him." [Footnote: Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 174-178.]

In this account, although founded upon those of Diaz and Cortes, and showing nothing essentially new, we have the final growth of the story to the present time, but without any assurance that the limits of its possible expansion have been reached. The purification of our aboriginal history, by casting out the mass of trash with which it is so heavily freighted, is forced upon us to save American intelligence from deserved disgrace. Whatever may be said of the American aborigines in general, or of the Aztecs in particular, they were endowed with common sense in the matter of their daily food, which cost them labor, forethought, and care to provide. The picture of Indian life here presented is simply impossible. Village Indians in the Middle Status of barbarism were below the age of tables and chairs for dinner service; neither had they learned to arrange a dinner to be eaten socially at a common table, or even to share their dinner with their wives and children. Their joint-tenement houses, their common stores, their communism in living, and the separation of the sexes at their meals, are genuine Indian customs and usages which explain this dinner. It was misconceived by the Spaniards quite naturally, and with the grotesque results herein presented; but there is no excuse for continuing this misconception in the presence of known facts accessible to all.

There is no doubt whatever that Montezuma was treated with great consideration by all classes of persons. Indians respect and venerate their chiefs. As their principal war-chief, Montezuma held the highest official position among them. He is represented as amiable, generous, and manly, although unnerved by the sudden appearance and the novel and deadly arms of the Spaniards. He had charge of the reception and entertainment of Cortes and his men, who requited him savagely for his hospitality and kindness. But when his home-life is considered, he fared no better than his fellow-householders, sharing with them their common dinner. These accounts, when divested of their misconceptions, render it probable that Montezuma was living with his gentle kinsmen in a house they owned in common; and that what the Spaniards saw was a dinner in common by this household, which, with the women and children, may have numbered from five hundred to a thousand persons. When the scattered members of the household had been summoned, the single daily meal was brought in by a number of persons from the common cook-house in earthen bowls and dishes, and set down upon the floor of an apartment used as a place for dinner in the fashion of Indians. Indians as they were, they doubtless took up these bowls one by one, each containing the dinner of one person divided at the kettle. They ate standing, or it may be sitting upon the floor, or upon the ground in the open court. Indians as they were, the men ate first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. After dinner was over, they were diverted, probably, with music and dancing, and made themselves merry, as well-fed Indians are apt to do. That the same dinner, conducted in a similar manner, occurred at all the houses in the pueblo, large and small, once a day, there can scarcely be a doubt.

The dinner of Montezuma which has gone into history, and been read for three centuries with wonder and admiration, is an excellent illustration of the slender material out of which American aboriginal history has been made. It shows, moreover, as a warning, what results flow from great misconceptions through the constructive faculty of authors.

A confederacy of three Indian tribes, speaking dialects of the same language, was precisely what the Spaniards found in Mexico, and this was all they found. They had no occasion in their accounts to advance a step beyond this simple fact. A satisfactory explanation of this confederacy can be found in similar Indian confederacies. It was a growth from the common institutions of the Indian family. Underneath these delusive pictures a council of chiefs is revealed, which was the natural and legitimate instrument of government under Indian institutions. No other form of government was possible among them. They had, beside, which was an equally legitimate part of this system, an elective and deposable war-chief (Teuchtli), the power to elect and to depose being held by a fixed constituency ever present, and ready to act when occasion required. The Aztec organization stood plainly before the Spaniards as a confederacy of Indian tribes. Nothing but the grossest perversion of obvious facts could have enabled Spanish writers to fabricate the Aztec monarchy out of a democratic organization.

Without ascertaining the unit of their social system, if organized in gentes, as they probably were, and without gaining any knowledge of the organization that did exist, they boldly invented for the Aztecs a monarchy, with high feudal characteristics, out of the reception of Cortes by their principal war-chief, and such other flimsy materials as Montezuma's dinner. This misconception has stood, through American indolence, quite as long as it deserves to stand.

Since the foregoing was written, the investigations of Mr. Bandelier "On the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans" have been published. With the new light thus thrown upon the subject, this chapter should have been re-written. He shows that the Aztecs were composed of twenty gentes or clans. "The existence of twenty autonomous consanguine groups is thus revealed, and we find them again at the time of the conquest, while their last vestiges were perpetuated until after 1690, when Fray Augustin de Vetancurt mentions four chief quarters with their original Indian names, comprising and subdivided into twenty 'barrios'. Now the Spanish word 'barrio' is equivalent to the Mexican term 'calpulli.' Both indicate the kin, localized and settled with the view to permanence." [Footnote: Twelfth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, 1880, p. 591.]

This organization, as was to have been expected, lies at the foundation of their social system. He names the following as among the rights, duties, and obligations of the kinship:

I. The kin claimed the right to name its members.