CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
THE TYPE AND EVOLUTION OF MEXICAN RELIGION
If, like the necromancers of old, we possessed the power to summon the shades of the dead before us, and employed this dread authority to recall from the place of shadows the spirit of a member of the priesthood of ancient Mexico, in order that we might obtain from him an account of the faith which he had professed while in the body, it is improbable that we would derive much information regarding the precise significance of the cult of which he was formerly an adherent without tedious and skilful questioning. He would certainly be able to enlighten us readily enough on matters of ritual and mythology, calendric science and the like; but if we were to press him for information regarding the motives underlying the outer manifestations of his belief, he would almost certainly disappoint us, unless our questionary was framed in the most careful manner. In all likelihood he would be unable to comprehend the term “religion,” of which we should necessarily have to make use, and which it would seem so natural for us to employ; and he would scarcely be capable of dissociating the circumstances of his faith from those of Mexican life in general, especially as regards its political, military, agricultural, and artistic connections.
Nor would he regard magic or primitive science as in any way alien to the activities of his office. But if we became more importunate, and begged him to make some definite statement regarding the true meaning and import of his [[2]]religion ere he returned to his place, he might, perhaps, reply: “If we had not worshipped the gods and sacrificed to them, nourished them with blood and pleasured them with gifts, they would have ceased to watch over our welfare, and would have withheld the maize and water which kept us in life. The rain would not have fallen and the crops would not have come to fruition.”[1] If he employed some such terms as these, our phantom would outline the whole purport of the system which we call Mexican religion, the rude platform on which was raised the towering superstructure of rite and ceremony, morality and tradition, a part of which we are about to examine.
The writer who undertakes the description of any of the great faiths of the world usually presupposes in his readers a certain acquaintance with the history and conditions of the people of whose religion he treats. But the obscurity which surrounded all questions relating to Mexican antiquity until the beginning of this century formerly made it essential that any view of its religious phase should be prefaced by an account of the peoples who professed it, their racial affinities, and the country they occupied. This necessity no longer exists. The ground has been traversed so often of late, and I have covered it so frequently in previous works,[2] that I feel only a brief account of these conditions is necessary here, such, in a word, as will enable the reader to realize circumstances of race, locality, and period.
The people whose religious ideas this book attempts to describe were the Nahua of pre-Colombian Mexico, a race by no means extinct, despite the oft-repeated assertions of popular novelists, and which is now usually classed as a branch of the great Uto-Aztecan family of the North American Indian stock. They spoke, and their descendants still speak, a language known as the Nahuatl, or Nahuatlatolli (“speech of those who live by rule” or “by ritual observance”). At the era of the Spanish invasion of their country in 1519 [[3]]they had succeeded in overrunning and reducing to their dominion practically all that part of modern Mexico which lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They were, in all probability, immigrants from the north, and their art-forms, no less than their physique and beliefs, have led certain writers to form the opinion that they came originally from the neighbourhood of British Columbia, or that they had a common origin with the Indian tribes which inhabit that region at the present time.
However this may be, the first Nahua immigrants would appear to have entered the Valley of Mexico at some time during the eighth century of our era. But the Aztecâ, part of a later swarm of Nahua, do not seem to have descended upon it until the middle of the thirteenth century, or to have founded the settlement of Mexico-Tenochtitlan until about the year 1376. At the period of their arrival in the valley they were a barbarous tribe of nomadic hunters, wandering from place to place in search of fresh hunting-grounds, precisely as did many North American Indian tribes before reservations were provided for them. Gradually, by virtue of their superior prowess in war, they achieved the hegemony of the Plateau of Anahuac, which boasted a tradition and civilization at least five hundred years old. These they proceeded to assimilate with marvellous rapidity, as is not infrequently the case when a race of hunters mingles with a settled agricultural population. Indeed, in the course of the century and a quarter which intervened between the founding of Mexico and the period of the Spanish Conquest, they had arrived at such a standard of civilization as surprised their Castilian conquerors. When the Aztecâ, abandoning their wandering life, finally settled in the Valley of Anahuac, upon the site of Tenochtitlan, now the city of Mexico, they embarked upon a series of conflicts with their neighbours, which ended in the complete subjection of these peoples.
The races over whom they exercised a kind of feudal sway were many and diverse, and only the more important of these can be mentioned here. To the north [[4]]dwelt the hunting Chichimecs, a related people, and the Otomi, a semi-barbarous folk, probably of aboriginal origin, and speaking a distinct language. To the west dwelt the Tarascans, whose racial affinities are unknown, or, at least, dubious. South of the Rio de las Balsas were situated the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, whose language somewhat resembled that of the Otomi and who possessed a larger measure of civilization. On the East Coast were found the Huaxtecs and Totonacs, races of Maya origin, and south-east of these lay the Olmecs, Xicalancas, and Nonoualcas, of older precedence in the land. Beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were found the Maya, a people of relatively high civilization, whose origin is obscure, and into the question of whose relationship I do not propose to enter in this place.