The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

The tradition existing in Mexico at this period told how the primitive stock inhabiting the land were giants, many of whom had perished by flood, fire, and earthquake. Then came a body of men who wished to reach the sun, and for this purpose they reared a tower. The sun, angered at the presumption of the earth-dwellers in aspiring to share with the gods the dwellings in the heavens, summoned all of the supernatural powers; the building was destroyed; and the guilty mortals were scattered over the earth. A mythical legislator then appears in Central America who teaches the people, the offspring of the giants, the arts of civilized life. The basis of this folklore may not unreasonably be ascribed to the finding of the bones of large extinct animals and, on the site of the Central American ruined cities, of mammoth statues of human beings. The residuum of truth seems to be that the Mexicans of the Conquest were correct in their common tradition that their ancestors had come from the north, and that the country had been gradually occupied by successive swarms of invaders who came south while they were still dependent on hunting game for their food and were finally reduced to settled forms of life by the cultivation of maize. The various tribes who took part in this migration are called by the Mexican word “Nahuatlaca,” used to denote those communities who were dependent on agriculture and followed a nahua or rule of life dictated by a custom administered by hereditary chiefs. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Nahuatlaca had reached the present limits of Costa Rica. That there were aboriginal inhabitants is inferred from the mention of the Otomi, the Huaxtecs, the Totonacs, and the Ulmecs, who at the time of the Conquest occupied districts not overrun by the Nahuatlacan immigration.

In the first stage of the southward movement the Toltecs take the lead; it is stated that, being expelled from their own country, they came from the region of the north by both land and sea. Their chief center in their new land was Tollan, a pueblo which stands on a tributary of the Moctezuma River, a stream which falls into the Gulf of Mexico. This place seems to have been once a center of trade, for the Toltecs had the reputation of being clever craftsmen. In addition to knowledge of preparing skins and of manufacturing clothing and articles of domestic use, they must have become familiar with various metals and with the employment of stone for building. Colored stones and crystals were used in their decorative work; from the coasts were brought the colored shells with which they covered their buildings, and the feathers which were woven into their tapestry. Besides this, they had a reputation for the knowledge of medicinal plants. The ruins of Tollan are extensive; as described by those who saw some of the still extant buildings at the time of the Conquest, they must have been most impressive. Sahogun mentions especially the Chalchiauhapan (On the blue water) because it was built between the two forks of the river. There were richly decorated apartments, four being more magnificent than the rest. One was called the House of Gold, another the House of Green Jade and Turquoise; a third room was covered with colored sea-shells arranged as mosaics, the interstices being filled with silver; the last room was decorated in red stones, combined with colored shells. There were besides four rooms adorned with tapestry made of the plumage of different colored birds. As with Selinus, a famous Greek city in Sicily, the downfall of Tollan must have been sudden, for there was an unfinished building seen in the ruins with remarkable pillars in the form of rattlesnakes, and also a mound in process of construction to be used as a foundation of a building of unusually large size. This fate seems to have overtaken it some centuries before the Spanish conquest, and was probably due to an insurrection among the subordinate pueblos.

The name Toltec came to be used as a synonym for a builder in stone or a worker of metals, and it was due to the influence of this race that the other branches of the Nahuatlaca stock made their progress in the civilizing arts. Not only do they stand out among other peoples of the New World as prominent in the pursuit of useful arts and in artistic achievement, but they deserve a place of honor because the deity they worshipped, Suetzalcohuatl, was not propiatiated by sacrifices of blood, but by offerings of maize, perfumes, and flowers. Probably many of them migrated to the regions of Central America, where they were able to preserve their own traditions. Here can be seen better than in the neighborhood of their ancient capital the specimens of their artistic skill. Some of the Toltecs of the dispersion took refuge at Cholula, which at the time of the Conquest was the chief seat of Toltec arts and religion, and also the center of the slave trade. Not far off is the town of Tlaxcallan.

The dissolution of the Toltec control was followed by a long period marked by successive waves of migration. Some of these nomadic tribes who described themselves as Chichimecs of the sun (Teo Chichimecs) established themselves in the strong places of the mountains, and took possession of Tlaxcallan, making it their center. In time this pueblo and its neighbors became of great importance, emigrants spreading from it over parts of Yucatan and Central America. Even at the time of the Spanish conquest the territory which Tlaxcallan dominated, although it was only forty miles in its greatest length and considerably narrower in breadth, mustered 50,000 warriors.

The spread of the Nahuatlaca race by their various emigrating swarms brought them over all parts of the Mexican plateau, and also to the coast both of the Atlantic and Pacific, but the center of their rule lay in the narrow Valley of Mexico, probably once the crater of an immense volcano surrounded by a girdle of mountains. There were fifty pueblos in the valley placed on or near the four lakes which, by changes in the distribution of land and water, had taken the place of the one large body of water that had once filled the extinct crater. Before the coming of the Nahuatlaca the district was occupied by the Otomis, whose language is still spoken in the neighborhood of Mexico City.

When the migration took place, Tezcuco, situated on the northeastern shore of the lake, became a dominant pueblo, and was at the head of a considerable confederacy. On the western side of the lake was another group of pueblos known as the Tecpanecs, who were rivals of Tezcuco. Here there settled about the year 1200 a vagrant tribe of the Chichimecs; the new arrivals were named by the Tecpanecs crane people or Aztecs, probably from their habit of wading in the marshy shores of the lake while engaged in fishing. The newcomers proved industrious, and in the course of time reclaimed the marshy island, building on the land two towns, the villages of Tenochtitlan (place of a prickly pear) and Tlatelolco (place of a hill). According to Aztec folklore, when they took possession of the island, they found on it a prickly pear tree growing on a rock and on this rock they saw an eagle devouring a snake. This fable is still recalled in the present arms of the republic of Mexico.

The two Aztec pueblos on the lake remained distinct communities until 1473, a fact which suggests their being built on separate islands, according to the traditional account. By help of the Aztecs, who were skilled in the art of war, the Tecpanec confederacy made great advances in dominating the valley. There was a little contest with Tezcuco when the confederates demanded from its people the usual tribute of cotton cloth; Tezcuco was taken and handed over to the Aztecs as a reward for their valuable services. The growing importance of the island pueblos soon, however, aroused the jealousy of the Tecpanecs and they resolved to suppress the two island communities by transferring the inhabitants to the shores of the lake. In the war which followed, though many of the people of the islands were at first reluctant to try conclusions with their powerful neighbors, the counsels of their warlike leader, Ischohuatl, prevailed. Azcapozalco, the center of the Tecpanec confederacy was captured, and with this conquest, which took place in or about the year 1428, Tenochtitlan or Mexico became the dominant power in the valley.

The island pueblos showed a statesmanlike policy in dealing with their neighbors; Tezcuco was restored to something like an autonomous position, and in the group of pueblos in the valley, of which the island communities were now the head, an equitable distribution of the tribute formerly collected by the Tecpanecs was made. Tezcuco also, and Tlacopan, a Tecpanec pueblo, were given a specific district over which to preside, and were allowed to pursue untrammeled their own line of conquest. To secure the dominant power of Mexico, causeways were built in three directions to the shore, and with other works constructed on two of the lakes, by which the straits between the lakes of Tezcuco and Xochimilco were bridged, a strong fortified place came into existence which was practically impregnable. The warlike and aggressive traditions of Ischohuatl were so well maintained throughout the ninety-two years between the formation of the confederacy and the advent of the Spanish invaders that large tracts of country outside of the valley were turned into tributary regions.

A considerable portion of this work of expansion was done by Ischohuatl’s successor, his nephew Montezuma the First, who ruled over Tenochtitlan for twenty-eight years (1436-1464). During his reign the limits of Mexican rule were extended nearly to those formed by the Spaniards, the area of conquest being decided largely by commercial reasons. Wherever in the Pacific district there were honey, cacao, tangerines, precious stones, copal gums, cinnabar, and gold, that region was marked out for absorption. These Pacific regions extended 800 miles in length and, because of the value of their products, were the most important of all the Mexican dominion. On the side of the Gulf of Mexico the eastern part of the present state of Vera Cruz was rendered tributary; from this district the most prized object of exportation was the quetzalli feathers used for standards and for warriors’ plumes. There was trade from Mexico with the Caribs on the Gulf, for Columbus met, in 1502, a Carib vessel having a cargo of cotton cloaks, tunics, skirts, Mexican swords, stone knives, bronze hatchets and bells, pans for smelting bronze, and cacao. From the time of Montezuma I to the reign of the second of the name, the sovereignty was held by three brothers in succession. During this period there was a revolt of the sister community of Tlatelolco, the suppression of which brought to an end the long existing equality in the confederation headed by this pueblo. Apart from this the boundaries of the tributary area do not seem to have been enlarged.

Altogether there are found in the roll of tributary pueblos 358 names when Montezuma II was dominant chief (1502-1520). These were small industrial settlements in all of which a particular kind of tribute was prepared; some sent cotton cloths, others raw cotton, others timber for fuel or building; from others came weapons, deerskins, tobacco. The tributes were generally paid annually in prescribed quantities. Under this system the great bulk of the population, the Nahuatlacan peasantry, were condemned to a life of severest toil of all kinds done in behalf of the warrior and priestly classes. The warriors, too, every twenty days, had to take the field, partly as a military exercise, partly also to provide the human sacrifices that, according to their old elaborate Mexican ritual, had to be offered to the gods. The priests took charge of the prisoners, prepared them for the sacrifices, divided the flesh of the victims, and arranged their skulls in the precincts of the temple, this being the method of keeping a regular toll of the offerings. There were more commonplace tasks of the priestly order, the Teopixqui, that must have filled up the intervals between the frequent great sacrificial festivals. In each teopan, or temple dedicated to a divinity, the sacred fire was kept ever burning; besides, there was the regular offering of incense, four times a day, at sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight. To keep up this sequence of devotion and also the prescribed immolations, at stated intervals the heavens were scrutinized with official vigilance day and night. At midnight all those attached to the teopan were aroused for the solemn offering of blood that took place in a penitential chamber, each worshiper supplying his share of blood by tearing his own body with a strap of aloe thorns.