Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8) / Aboriginal America

by Unknown

The first Montezuma died in 1469, and the choice for succession fell on his grandson, the commander of the Mexican army, Axayacatl, who at once followed the usual custom of raiding the country to the south to get the thousands of prisoners whose sacrifice should grace his coronation. Nezahualcoyotl, the other principal allied chieftain, survived his associate but two years, dying in 1472, leaving among his hundred children but one legitimate son, Nezahualpilli, a minor, who succeeded. This gave the new Mexican ruler the opportunity to increase his power. He made Tlatelulco tributary, and a Mexican governor took the place there of an independent sovereign. He annexed the Matlaltzinca provinces on the west. So Axayacatl, dying in 1481, bequeathed an enlarged kingdom to his brother and successor, Tizoc, who has not left so warlike a record. According to some authorities, however, he is to be credited with the completion of the great Mexican temple of Huitzilopochtli. This did not save him from assassination, and his brother Ahuitzotl in 1486 succeeded, and to him fell the lot of dedicating that great temple. He conducted fresh wars vigorously enough to be able within a year, if we may believe the native records, to secure sixty or seventy thousand captives for the sacrificial stone, so essential a part of all such dedicatory exercises. It would be tedious to enumerate all the succeeding conquests, though varied by some defeats, like that which they experienced in the Tehuantepec region. Some differences grew up, too, between the Mexican chieftain and Nezahualpilli, notwithstanding or because of the virtues of the latter, among which doubtless, according to the prevailing standard, we must count his taking at once three Mexican princesses for wives, and his keeping a harem of over two thousand women, if we may believe his descendant, the historian Ixtlilxochitl. His justice as an arbitrary monarch is mentioned as exemplary, and his putting to death a guilty son is recounted as proof of it.

Ahuitzotl had not as many virtues, or perhaps he had not a descendant to record them so effectively; but when he died in 1503, what there was heroic in his nature was commemorated in his likeness sculptured with others of his line on the cliff of Chapultepec.[846] To him succeeded that Montezuma, son of Axayacatl, with whom later this ancient history vanishes. When he came to power, the Aztec name was never significant of more lordly power, though the confederates had already had some reminders that conquest near home was easier than conquest far away. The policy of the last Aztec ruler was far from popular, and while he propitiated the higher ranks, he estranged the people. The hopes of the disaffected within and without Anáhuac were now centred in the Tlascalans, whose territory lay easterly towards the Gulf of Mexico, and who had thus far not felt the burden of Aztec oppression. Notwithstanding that their natural allies, the Cholulans, turned against the Tlascalans, the Aztec armies never succeeded in humbling them, as they did the Mistecs and the occupants of the region towards the Pacific. Eclipses, earthquakes, and famine soon succeeded one another, and the forebodings grew numerous. Hardly anything happened but the omens of disaster[847] were seen in it, and superstition began to do its work of enervation, while a breach between Montezuma and the Tezcucan chief was a bad augury. In this condition of things the Mexican king tried to buoy his hopes by further conquests; but widespread as these invasions were, Michoacan to the west, and Tlascala to the east, always kept their independence. The Zapotecs in Oajaca had at one time succumbed, but this was before the days of the last Montezuma.

His rival across the lake at Tezcuco was more oppressed with the tales of the soothsayers than Montezuma was, and seems to have become inert before what he thought an impending doom some time before he died, or, as his people believed, before he had been translated to the ancient Amaquemecan, the cradle of his race. This was in 1515. His son Cacama was chosen to succeed; but a younger brother, Ixtlilxochitl, believed that the choice was instigated by Montezuma for ulterior gain, and so began a revolt in the outlying provinces, in which he received the aid of Tlascala. The appearance of the Spaniards on the coasts of Yucatan and Tabasco, of which exaggerated reports reached the Mexican capital, paralyzed Montezuma, so that the northern revolt succeeded, and Cacama and Ixtlilxochitl came to an understanding, which left the Mexicans without much exterior support. Montezuma was in this crippled condition when his lookouts on the coast sent him word that the dreaded Spaniards had appeared, and he could recognize their wonderful power in the pictured records which the messenger bore to him.[848] This portent was the visit in 1518 of Juan de Grijalva to the spot where Vera Cruz now stands; and after the Spaniard sailed away, there were months of anxiety before word again reached the capital, in 1519, of another arrival of the white-winged vessels, and this was the coming of Cortés, who was not long in discovering that the path of his conquest was made clear by the current belief that he was the returned Quetzalcoatl,[849] and by his quick perception of the opportunity which presented itself of combining and leading the enemies of Montezuma.[850]

Among what are usually reckoned the civilized nations of middle America, there are two considerable centres of a dim history that have little relation with the story which has been thus far followed. One of these is that of the people of what we now call Guatemala, and the other that of Yucatan. The political society which existed in Guatemala had nothing of the known duration assigned to the more northern people, at least not in essential data; but we know of it simply as a very meagre and perplexing chronology running for the most part back two or three centuries only. Whether the beginnings of what we suppose we know of these people have anything to do with any Toltec migration southward is what archæologists dispute about, and the philologists seem to have the best of the argument in the proof that the tongue of these southern peoples is more like Maya than Nahua. It is claimed that the architectural remains of Guatemala indicate a departure from the Maya stock and some alliance with a foreign stock; and that this alien influence was Nahuan seems probable enough when we consider certain similarities in myth and tradition of the Nahuas and the Quichés. But we have not much even of tradition and myth of the early days, except what we my read in the Popul Vuh, where we may make out of it what we can, or even what we please,[851] with some mysterious connection with Votan and Xibalba. Among the mythical traditions of this mythical period, there are the inevitable migration stories, beginning with the Quichés and ending with the coming of the Cakchiquels, but no one knows to a surety when. The new-comers found Maya-speaking people, and called them mem or memes (stutterers), because they spoke the Maya so differently from themselves.

It was in the twelfth or thirteenth century that we get the first traces of any historical kind of the Quichés and of their rivals the Cakchiquels. Of their early rulers we have the customary diversities and inconsistencies in what purports to be their story, and it is difficult to say whether this or the other or some other tribe revolted, conquered, or were beaten, as we read the annals of this constant warfare. We meet something tangible, however, when we learn that Montezuma sent a messenger, who informed the Quichés of the presence of the Spaniards in his capital, which set them astir to be prepared in their turn.

MAP IN BRASSEUR’S POPUL VUH.

It is in the beginning of the sixteenth century that we encounter the rivalries of three prominent peoples in this Guatemala country, and these were the Quichés, the Cakchiquels, and the Zutigils; and of these the Quichés, with their main seat at Utatlan, were the most powerful, though not so much so but the Cakchiquels could get the best of them at times in the wager of war; as they did also finally when the Spaniard Alvarado appeared, with whom the Cakchiquels entered into an alliance that brought the Quichés into sore straits.

A more important nationality attracts us in the Mayas of Yucatan. There can be nothing but vague surmise as to what were the primitive inhabitants of this region; but it seems to be tolerably clear that a certain homogeneousness pervaded the people, speaking one tongue, which the Spaniards found in possession. Whether these had come from the northern regions, and were migrated Toltecs, as some believe, is open to discussion.[852] It has often been contended that they were originally of the Nahua and Toltec blood; but later writers, like Bancroft,[853] have denied it. Brinton discards the Toltec element entirely.

What by a license one may call history begins back with the semi-mythical Zamná, to whom all good things are ascribed—the introduction of the Maya institutions and of the Maya hieroglyphics.[854] Whether Zamná had any connection, shadowy or real, with the great Votanic demi-god, and with the establishment of the Xibalban empire, if it may be so called, is a thing to be asserted or denied, as one inclines to separate or unite the traditions of Yucatan with those of the Tzendal, Quiché, and Toltec. Ramon de Ordonez, in a spirit of vagary, tells us that Mayapan, the great city of the early Mayas, was but one of the group of centres, with Palenqué, Tulan, and Copan for the rest, as is believed, which made up the Votanic empire. Perhaps it was. If we accept Brinton’s view, it certainly was not. Then Torquemada and Landa tell us that Cukulcan, a great captain and a god, was but another Quetzalcoatl, or Gucumatz. Perhaps he was. Possibly also he was the bringer of Nahua influence to Mayapan, away back in a period corresponding to the early centuries of the Christian era. It is easy to say, in all this confusion, this is proved and that is not. The historian, accustomed to deal with palpable evidence, feels much inclined to leave all views in abeyance.