Alamo Ranch: A Story of New Mexico

by Sarah Warner Brooks

"'Their civilization,' he goes on to say, 'was, at the first, of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce virtues of the Aztec were all his own. They refused to submit to European culture—to be engrafted on a foreign stock. They gradually increased in numbers, made marked improvements both in polity and military discipline, and ultimately established a reputation for courage as well as cruelty in war which made their name terrible throughout the valley.' In the early part of the fifteenth century—nearly a hundred years after the foundation of the city—that remarkable league—of which it has been affirmed that 'it has no parallel in history'—was formed between the states of Mexico and Tezcuco, and the neighboring little kingdom of Tlacopan, by which they agreed mutually to support each other in their wars, offensive and defensive, and that in the distribution of the spoil one-fifth should be assigned to Tlacopan and the remainder be divided—in what proportions is uncertain—between the two other powers.

"What is considered more remarkable than the treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with which it was kept.

"During a century of uninterrupted warfare that ensued no instance, it is declared, occurred in which the parties quarrelled over the distribution of the spoil. By the middle of the fifteenth century the allies, overleaping the rocky ramparts of their own valley, found wider occupation for their army, and under the first Montezuma, year after year saw their return to the Mexican capital, loaded with the spoils of conquered cities, and with throngs of devoted captives.

"No State was able long to resist the accumulated strength of the confederates; and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the arrival of the Spaniards, the Aztec dominion reached across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific."

Here Mr. Morehouse ended his paper on the Toltecs, and the Koshare, with many thanks for his interesting account of these ancient races, supplemented his information by a general discussion of the genuineness of the accepted authorities for the early history of the Aztecs and of the time of Montezuma.

"Prescott," said the Minister, "traces some points of resemblance between the history of the Aztecs and that of the ancient Romans; especially in polity and military success does he compare them."

"Unfortunately," observed the Antiquary, "the earlier records of the Mexican people can only be scantily gleaned from oral tradition and hiero-graphical paintings."

"Later, however," remarked the Journalist, "we have the seemingly more definite and reliable accounts of the Spanish chronicles."

"These," returned the Minister, "being usually ecclesiastic, have warped their record to suit their own bigoted views; consequently, much of the narrative popularly known as Mexican history is to be taken with more than the proverbial pinch of salt."

"It has," said the Journalist, "been urged by realistic critics of our own fascinating historian—Prescott—that since he drew his historic data, with the exception of the military record of the Spaniards, from these unreliable sources, his history is little other than the merest romance. Plainly, the assertions of some of the chroniclers are scarce more worthy of credence than the equally fascinating adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, and the impossible stories of Baron Munchausen. 'Bernard Diaz'—that enigmatical personage from whom many of Prescott's data are drawn—tells us that the Aztecs actually fattened men and women in cages, like spring chickens, for their sacrifice, and asserts that at the dedication of one of their temples a procession of captives two miles long, and numbering seventy-two thousand persons, were led to sacrifice! By the way, it has, however, been latterly proved that the so-called sacrificial stone, now exhibited in the National Museum of Mexico, is not a relic of the Aztecs, but of the earlier Toltecs (who were not addicted to human sacrifice), and is as innocent of human blood as the Calendar Stone, referred to the same period. The critics of Diaz have detected in his account constant blunders in many important matters, and his glaring geographical errors would seem to prove that, though he claims to have been, all through the Conquest, the very shadow of Hernando Cortez, he has never even been in the country he describes!"