Alamo Ranch: A Story of New Mexico

by Sarah Warner Brooks

"'All was now festivity. Joy had replaced despair. Houses were cleansed and refurnished. Dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with chaplets and garlands of flowers, the people thronged in gay procession to the temples to offer up their oblations and thanksgivings. It was the great secular national festival, which few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to see again.'

"Although we find in the counsels of an Aztec father to his son the following assertion, 'For the multiplication of the species God ordained one man only for one woman,' polygamy was nevertheless permitted among this people, chiefly among the wealthiest classes.

"Marriage was recognized as a religious ceremony, and its obligations strictly enjoined. Their women, we are told, were treated with a consideration uncommon among Indian tribes. It is recorded that their tranquil days were diversified by the feminine occupations of spinning, feather-work, and embroidery, and that they also beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads, and partook with their lords in social festivities.

"Their entertainments seem to have been grand and costly affairs. Numerous attendants, of both sexes, waited at the banquet; the halls were scented with perfumes, flowers strewed the courts, and were profusely distributed among the arriving guests.

"As they took their seats at the board, cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before them; for, as in the heroic days of Greece, the ceremony of ablution before and after eating was punctiliously observed by the Aztecs. The table was well provided with meats, especially game, among which our own Thanksgiving bird, the turkey, was conspicuous. These more solid dishes were flanked by others of vegetables, and with fruits of every variety found on the North American Continent.

"The different viands were skilfully prepared, with delicate sauces and pungent seasoning, of which the Mexicans were especially fond. They were further regaled with confections and pastry; and the whole was crowned by an 'afterclap' of tobacco mixed with aromatic substances, to be enjoyed in pipes, or in the form of cigars, inserted in holders of tortoise shell or silver. The meats were kept warm by chafing-dishes. The table was ornamented with vases of silver (and sometimes of gold) of delicate workmanship.

"We are told by the chroniclers that agriculture was, before the Conquest, in an advanced state. There were peculiar deities to preside over it, and the names of the months and of the religious festivals had more or less reference to it. The public taxes were often paid in agricultural produce. As among the Pueblos, Aztec women took part in only the lighter labors of the field,—as the scattering of the seed, the husking of the ripened corn.

"Maize, or Indian corn, the great staple of the North American continent, grew freely along the valleys, and up the steep sides of the Cordilleras, to the high table-land. Aztecs were, we are told, well instructed in its uses, and their women as skilled in its preparation as the most expert New England or Southern housewife.

"In these equinoctial regions, its gigantic stalk afforded a saccharine matter which supplied them with a sugar but little inferior to that of the cane itself (which, after the Conquest, was introduced among them). Passing by all their varieties of superbly gorgeous flowers, of luxuriously growing plants, many of them of medicinal value, and since introduced from Mexico to Europe, we come to that 'miracle of nature,' the great Mexican aloe, or maguey, which was, in short, meat, drink, clothing, and writing material for the Aztec, as from its leaves was made their paper, somewhat resembling Egyptian papyrus, but more soft and beautiful.

"Specimens of this paper still exist, preserving their original freshness, and holding yet unimpaired the brilliancy of color in hieroglyphical painting. It is averred that the Aztecs were as well acquainted with the uses of their mineral as of their vegetable kingdom, deftly working their mines of silver, lead, and tin. It has, however, been contended by Wilson, in his 'New Conquest of Mexico,' that, in spite of Cortez's statement to the contrary, 'it is not to be supposed that the Spaniards found the Aztecs in the possession of silver, since its mining requires a combination of science and mechanical power unknown and impossible to their crude civilization.' He considerately allows them the capability of gathering gold from their rich soil.