The judicial system at Mexico was elaborate and efficient; justice was administered by a hierarchy of special officials, at the head of whom stood the Ciuacoatl or Chief Justice. This office, however, appears to have had its military aspect, in so far as the holder acted as commander of the Mexican contingent when the confederate forces went out to battle. The Tlacatecatl also acted as a high judicial functionary. The judges were selected by the king and highest officials from past students at the Calmecac, men of middle age full of experience and of unimpeachable integrity, who were “neither drunkards, nor amenable to bribes, nor liable to be influenced by favouritism nor passion.” They received state maintenance, and if convicted of taking bribes or of delivering unjust sentences were punished with death. Each of the subject provinces maintained two judges at the three confederate towns, to whom the rulers assigned lands and service, and the ordinary courts opened in the morning, as soon as the judges had taken their seats at the mat-covered tribunal. Their midday meals were brought to them in court, and, after a short rest, they remained sitting until two hours before sunset. The high court sat in an apartment in the palace called Tlacxitlan, and dealt principally with high affairs of state and matters affecting the higher ranks, though it also pronounced sentences upon the cases sent up by the lower court. The latter, composed of representatives of the calpulli, also sat in the palace, in a room called Teccalli, and dealt with the affairs of the general public, sending its decisions to the Tlacxitlan for pronouncement of sentence. Important and difficult cases were reserved for a special court of thirteen judges headed by the ruler, which sat every eighty days. In the provinces there were a number of local courts of limited jurisdiction, from which cases of any importance were sent to the capital for trial, and there existed besides in the capitals a number of small courts, such as the market court, which dealt summarily with small offences, but from which appeal could be made to the higher courts. In the case of offenders of high rank the case was sometimes tried in the home of the criminal who, if found guilty, was executed there in private. Important tributary towns, as stated above, were often allowed considerable independence as regards judicial matters, and the rulers were allowed to judge their own people according to the local laws. Below the judges were a number of minor officials, apparitors and the like, as well as a military town-watch which kept order at night. Penalties varied in proportion to the gravity of the offence, from fines, payable in textiles, and flogging, to mutilation and death by the rod, the strangling-cord or by stoning. At Tezcoco a celebrated code, invented by the king Nezahualcoyotl, was in force, and the Mexican and Tacuban codes were based on this to a large extent; moreover, cases were often sent to Tezcoco for trial. Condemned criminals were shut up in cages to await execution, which usually took place upon some day considered appropriate, such as 1. quiauitl or 4. eecatl. Theft was punished in various ways; in unimportant cases the thief was compelled to make restitution, in cases more grave he became the slave of the complainant; if he had stolen gold or jewels, he was sacrificed to Xipe at the goldsmiths’ festival. Stealing corn from the fields was punished with death, and though this sentence may seem severe, the crime was the less excusable because corn was planted along the roadsides for the use of wayfarers. The death penalty was also inflicted for wrongful assumption of the insignia belonging to the highest offices, for murder, adultery (by stoning), sorcery (by sacrifice), disobedience or desertion in war, injury to a royal messenger, or shifting a landmark. The laws against drunkenness were particularly strict; in the case of the young this offence was often punished with death, the accused, if of low rank, being publicly clubbed to death so that his fate might serve as an example. Rank could not save a man, though it gave him the privilege of being executed in private. Less aggravated cases were punished by degradation in the case of a noble, accompanied by public hair-cutting and the destruction of the culprit’s house. Only the elderly were permitted the free use of octli, though men over thirty were allowed a moderate supply at festivals and when engaged upon hard manual labour. In other cases special permission had to be obtained from some official superior before the intoxicating liquor could be drunk without fear of punishment. These regulations, though severe, were extremely salutary, a fact which is proved by the outburst of drunkenness which took place after the conquest, when the old régime was swept away. Punishment was often inflicted upon a tributary town by demanding victims for sacrifice, as in the case of Quiauiztlan in Vera Cruz, the inhabitants of which were ordered to provide twenty men and women for this fate because they had received the Spaniards. The Tarascan ruler, at the time of the greatest development of the Michoacan peoples, was assisted in government by two ministers analogous to the Mexican Ciuacoatl and Tlacatecatl respectively. The judicial code was much the same, though little definite is known concerning it save that the death penalty was inflicted for the wrongful appropriation of land, the head of the criminal being set up on the violated boundary. Among the Chichimec, adultery was punished with death, each member of the tribal group shooting four arrows at the guilty couple. The Mexicans held slaves, or rather bondsmen, in some numbers, and the slave-class consisted of criminals, prisoners of war, and individuals sold into slavery. Persons in extreme poverty could pledge themselves or their children, and we read that in the reign of Montecuzoma many of the better-class families were reduced to such straits by a famine lasting two years that they fell into slavery. By orders of the king these unfortunates were sought out and ransomed by him at twice the price paid for them. It is said that the sale of a slave required two witnesses, and that slaves could not be sold without their own permission, except those who wore heavy wooden collars as runaways or insubordinate. A peculiar form of slavery existed, in accordance with which an indigent family could bind itself to supply one or more slaves perpetually to some lord, the individual in servitude being changed every few years. If a slave-woman died as the result of an intrigue with a free man, the latter became the slave of her master; but if a child was born and both survived, it became the property of the father and was free-born. Slaves were well treated on the whole, though they were liable to be sacrificed. They were considered as under the protection of Tezcatlipoca, and at one of his feasts were accorded absolute licence as at the Roman Saturnalia.
CHAPTER VI—MEXICO: CRAFTS, DRESS, AND DAILY LIFE
For most practical purposes the Mexicans at the date of the Spanish conquest were living in an age of stone. It is true that they both knew and worked two metals with great facility, namely, gold and copper, especially the former; but gold is useless as a material from which to make implements, and copper was not sufficiently plentiful to be employed very freely. Both these metals were therefore utilized principally in the manufacture of ornaments, though copper tools were employed in wood-carving and a few minor arts.
Fig. 19.—Stone and obsidian implements.
1, 2. Obsidian scrapers.
3–5. „ flakes.
6, 7. „ perhaps for inlay.
8. Chert knife-blade.
9. Obsidian core, from which flakes have been struck.