[967] “No writer,” says Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 674), “has been more prolific in pictures of pomp, regal wealth and magnificence, than Bernal Diaz. Most of the later writers have placed undue reliance on his statements, assuming that the truthfulness of his own individual feelings was the result of cool observation. Any one who has read attentively his Mémoirs will become convinced that he is in fact one of the most unreliable eye-witnesses, so far as general principles are concerned.... Cortes had personal and political motives to magnify and embellish the picture. If his statements fall far below those of his troopers in thrilling and highly-colored details, there is every reason to believe that they are the more trustworthy.... In the descriptions by Cortes we find, on the whole, nothing but a barbarous display common to other Indian celebrations of a similar character.”
Bandelier’s further comment is (Ibid. ii. 397) “A feudal empire at Tezcuco was an invention of the chroniclers, who had a direct interest, or thought to have one, in advancing the claims of the Tezcucan tribe to an original supremacy.”
Bandelier again (Ibid. ii. 385) points out the early statements of the conquerors, and of their annalists, which have prompted the inference of a feudal condition of society; but he refers to Ixtlilxochitl as “the chief originator of the feudal view;” and from him Torquemada draws his inspiration. Wilson (Prehist. Man, i. 242) holds much the same views.
[968] Peabody Mus. Tenth Rept. vol. ii. 114.
[969] Bandelier (“Art of War, etc.,” in Peabody Mus. Rept. x. 113) again says of De Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Américaines, that it is “a very injudicious book, which by its extravagance and audacity created a great deal of harm. It permitted Clavigero to attack even Robertson, because the latter had also applied sound criticism to the study of American aboriginal history, and by artfully placing both as upon the same platform, to counteract much of the good effects of Robertson’s work.”
[970] Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 114.
[971] In regard to the nature of the chief-of-men we find, among much else of the first importance in the study of the Mexican government, an exposition in Sahagún (lib. vi. cap. 20), which seems to establish the elective and non-hereditary character of the office. It was “this office and its attributes,” says Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 670), “which have been the main stays of the notion that a high degree of civilization prevailed in aboriginal Mexico, in so far as its people were ruled after the manner of eastern despotisms.” Bandelier (Ibid. ii. 133) says: “It is not impossible that the so-called empire of Mexico may yet prove to have been but a confederacy of the Nahuatlac tribe of the valley, with the Mexicans as military leaders.” His argument on the word translated “king” is not convincing.
[972] Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 435.
[973] Introd. to Conquest of Mexico. See Vol. II. p. 426. In the Appendix to his third volume, Prescott, relying mainly on the works of Dupaix and Waldeck, arrived at conclusions as respects the origin of the Mexican civilization, and its analogies with the Old World, which accord with those of Stephens, whose work had not appeared at the time when Prescott wrote.
[974] Houses and House Life, p. 222.