Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  Nevertheless, the Mexican woman must not be thought of as a kind of perpetual minor: although she lived in a society dominated by men she was by no means as subjugated as might be supposed at first. In former times women had held the supreme power, as at Tula, for example; 45 and it even appears that a woman, Ilancueitl, 46 was at the origin of the royal power in Mexico. At least in the beginning, the royal blood ran through the female side, and Ilancueitl brought the Toltec lineage of Colhuacán to Mexico, thus allowing the Aztec dynasty to lay claim to descent from the famous line of Quetzalcoatl. 47

  -183-

  At a later period, there is the example of a plebeian of the humblest origin becoming the tlatoani of a province because of his marriage with a daughter of the emperor Itzcoatl. 48 There is no doubt that as time went on the power of the men grew greater, and that there was a continually-increasing tendency to shut the woman up between the four walls of the house. But she retained her own property, and she could do business, entrusting her goods to itinerant traders, 49 or exercise certain professions, such as those of priestess, midwife or healer, in which she enjoyed a high degree of independence. The profession of the auianime, whom the Spanish chroniclers tend to treat as whores although at the same time they state that 'they gave their bodies for nothing', 50 was not only recognised, but valued; they had their own place reserved for them, beside the young warriors whose companions they were, in the ceremonies of religion. 51

  Some customs betray a certain antagonism between the sexes: sometimes it was the boys and the young men who attacked the women in the street with pillows, occasionally getting more than they bargained for in return, and sometimes it was the girls who jeered at the uncouth young warriors and insulted them bitterly.

  During the festivities of the month Uey Tozoztli, the girls went in procession, with their faces painted and their arms and legs decorated with feathers, carrying the consecrated ears of maize; and if a boy ventured to say anything to them, they would turn on him, shouting 'Really, here is a long-haired creature (that is, one who has not yet been in battle) that is talking. But what have you got to say? You had better go and do something so that you can have your hair cut, hairy. Or perhaps you are really only a woman like me?' Then the boys would try to put a good face on it by replying with an assumed coarseness, 'Go and cover your belly with mud. Go and drag yourself about in the dust.' But among themselves the discomfited young men would say 'The words of the women are piercing and cruel; they wound our hearts. Let us go and volunteer for the war. Perhaps then, my friends, we shall have a reward.' 52

  -184-

  The old women who had outlived the time when they had to be submissive to their husbands, or who had outlived the husbands, had a great deal of independence; they were much respected, and, like the old men, they were allowed to drink their octli from time to time. In reading the texts one sees them hurrying to help their daughters or their relations, or devoutly attending the innumerable ceremonies in which they had a part to play. They were matrons and they were matchmakers, and they were always there when there was a family feast, at which they would have their place at table and the right to make long speeches. In a country in which age in itself confers privileges, an old woman is among those whose advice is asked for and listened to, even if it is only by those of her immediate neighbourhood.

  The Mexican woman, during her life as a wife and a mother, or from about her twentieth year to her fiftieth, had a great deal to do. Perhaps the kings' favourites could cultivate poetry, but the ordinary Indian woman, with her children, her cooking, her weaving and the countless duties of a housewife, had little time to spare. In the country, she also shared in the work on the land; and even in the towns she looked after the poultry.

  It is difficult to say whether there was very much adultery. The extremely rigorous repression and the frequent references to the execution of adulterers in literature seem to show that the community was aware of a serious danger and that it reacted violently against it, in something of the same manner that it did against drunkenness. The punishment was death for both. They were killed by having their heads crushed by a stone: the women, however, were strangled first. 53 Not even the highest dignitaries could escape this punishment. But although the law was so severe, it insisted that the crime should be thoroughly proved, and the testimony of the husband alone counted for nothing: impartial witnesses were necessary to confirm his evidence, and the husband who killed his wife, even if he found her in the very act, was also liable to the death-penalty. 54

  Perhaps the best known and the most dramatic example of adultery in the history of ancient Mexico also comes from

  -185-

  the chronicles of the royal house of Texcoco. Among the secondary wives of king Nezaualpilli was a daughter of Axayacatl, the Aztec emperor. This princess, although she was little more than a child, 'was so vicious and so devilish that if she found herself alone in her apartments and surrounded by those who served her (elsewhere Ixtlilxochitl says that there were no fewer than two thousand of them) and who, because of the splendour of her name, respected her, she would indulge in a thousand extravagances. This reached such a point that if she saw a handsome and wellshaped young man whose form agreed with her tastes and inclinations, she would give secret orders that he should enjoy her charms. When she had satisfied her desires, she would have him killed and a statue made in his likeness. She would adorn this statue with gorgeous clothes and jewels of gold and precious stones, and she would have it put in the room in which she usually passed her time. There were enough of these statues to go almost round the walls. When the king went to see her and asked her what these statues were for, she replied that they were her gods. For his part, he believed her, knowing how religious the Mexicans were, and how deeply attached to their false gods.'

  But something happened to betray the Aztec princess's secret. She was so imprudent as to give one of her lovers (he being still alive) a jewel that her husband had given her. Nezaualpilli, filled with suspicion, arrived one night at the young woman's apartments. 'The women and the servants told him that she was asleep, hoping that the king would go away, as he had done before. But distrusting them, he went into the bedroom to awake her. He found nothing there but a statue, stretched on the bed and crowned with a wig.' During this time the princess was making merry with three young men, of excellent family.

  All four were condemned to death and executed, as well as a great number of her accomplices in adultery and assassination, in the presence of an immense crowd. These events contributed not a little towards the embittering of the relations between the house of Texcoco and the imperial family of Mexico, which, although it hid its resentment,

  -186-

  never forgave the allied king for the punishment that the Aztec princess had suffered. 55

  There was little question of divorce in ancient Mexico. Desertion of the conjugal domicile by either the husband or the wife constituted grounds for the dissolution of the marriage. The courts could authorise a man to repudiate his wife if he proved that she was sterile or unconscionably neglectful of her household duties. On her side, the wife could complain against her husband and have judgment in her favour if he were convicted of beating her, for example, or of not maintaining her or of abandoning the children: in this case the court gave her custody of the children, and the conjugal property was equally divided between the two former spouses. The divorced woman was free to marry again whenever she chose. 56

  Marriage, whether it was calm or troubled, marked the entry of the Mexican into adult society. 'From the time that they (the young people) were married, they were registered with the other households . . . and, although the country was full of people, and indeed overflowed with them, they were all taken into account.' 57 A married man had a right to a piece of the land that belonged to his calpulli and to the occasional distributions of victuals or clothes. He was a fully-privileged citizen, and the reputation that he had in his neighbourhood depended largely upon the decency of his f
amily life and the care with which he brought up his children.

  There is no doubt that the Mexicans, behind the stiff formalism of their family relationships, loved their children tenderly. Nopiltze, nocuzque, noquetzale, 'sweet son, my jewel, my precious feather' -- this is a father speaking to his boy. 58 When a woman was pregnant the news was a matter for great joy in both the families, and for festivities to which the relations and the great men of the neighbourhood or the village were invited.

  After a banquet, and while the guests smoked their pipes, an elder would speak in the name of the future father, and addressing the important men he would say, 'Relations and my lords, I would like to say a few boorish and clumsy

  -187-

  words, since you have all come together here, by the will of our god Yoalli Eecatl ('the night wind', Tezcatlipoca), who is in all places. It is he who has given you life up to this time, to you who are our shelter and our protection, you who are like the pochotl, which gives so much shade, and the ahuehuetl, which shelters the animals under its branches. In the same way you, my lords, you are the protectors and the preservers of the small and humble people who dwell in the mountains and upon the plains. You look after the poor soldiers and warlike men, who look upon you as their prop and their comfort. No doubt you have your anxieties and cares, and that we cause you pain and distress . . . Listen, my lords who are here, and all of you old men and old women with whitened heads: you must know that our god in his mercy has granted . . . (here the name of the pregnant woman) recently married, a precious stone, a splendid feather.'

  The orator still had a long course to run, in which he would call dead forebears to memory, 'who are at rest in the caves, in the waters, in the underworld'. Then in succession would come a second orator in the names of the relatives; then one of the important guests, who would address himself particularly to the young woman, comparing her to a piece of jade and to a sapphire, and reminding her that the life that she carried within her came from the holy pair Ometecuhtli-Omeciuatl; then the young woman's father and mother, and lastly she herself, to thank those who had come and to ask whether she deserved the happiness of having a child. In the words that she was to say, in the conventional phrases, one detects that uncertain note, that anxiety in the face of what is to come, which sounds so often in the expression of the Aztec mind. 59

  A pregnant woman was under the protection of the goddesses of fertility and of health, of Teteoinnan, the mother of the gods, patroness of the midwives, who was also called Temazcalteci, 'the grandmother of the steambath', and of Ayopechtli or Ayopechcatl, the little feminine deity of childbed. We know the text of a prayer, a true magical formula, which was sung to invoke the last-named goddess.

  -188-

  'Down there, where Ayopechcatl lives, the jewel is born, a child has come into the world.

  'Down there, where Ayopechcatl lives, the jewel is born, a child has come into the world. It is down there, in her own place, that the children are born.

  'Come, come here, new-born child, come here.

  'Come, come here, jewel-child, come here.' 60

  For a long time before the birth of the child, the young woman, at least in the better sort of families, received attentive care. A midwife was chosen for her, and the old relations went to engage her, with great ceremony, to look after the future mother. As soon as she had agreed, though not without first objecting that she was only an 'unfortunate, stupid, unintelligent old woman', the midwife went to her patient's house and lit the fire for a steam-bath. She and the young woman went into the temazcalli, taking great care that the bath was not too hot, and she palpated her client's belly to find out how the baby lay.

  Then she gave her advice: the woman was to abstain from chewing tzictli, for fear that the baby's palate and gums should swell, which would prevent it from feeding; she was neither to let herself grow angry nor to be frightened, and the household was told to give her anything that she longed for. If she were to look at red objects, the child would be born askew. If she went out at night, she was to put a little ash in her blouse or her belt, otherwise she might be terrified by ghosts. If she were to look at the sky during an eclipse the child would be born with a hare-lip, unless the mother had taken the precaution of carrying an obsidian knife under her clothes, against the skin. It was also said that if the father, going out at night, were to see a phantom, the child would have a heart-disesse. 61 In short, a whole network of prohibitions and traditional precepts surrounded the mother during the entire period before the birth, and even the father too, in order, as they thought, to protect the child.

  The midwife alone had the management of the lying-in: she took charge of the household, prepared the food and the baths, and massaged the patient's belly. If the birth was

  -189-

  delayed, the woman was given a draught made from ciuapatli 62 (Montanoa tomentosa), which, taken as an infusion, causes strong contractions: if this did not answer, then they turned to the last resort, a drink made of water in which a piece of the tail of a tlaquatzin, or opossum, had been mixed. This brew was thought to bring about an immediate and even violent delivery. 63

  If baths, massage and medicines had no effect, the midwife shut herself into a room with the patient. She invoked the goddesses, particularly Ciuacoatl and Quilaztli. If she saw that the child was dead within its mother, she took a flint knife and cut the foetus to pieces. 64

  It was clearly understood that a woman who died in childbirth was upon the same footing as a warrior who died in battle or as a sacrifice. 'After her death, her body was cleaned; her head and her hair were washed with soap and they dressed her in her best new clothes. And her husband carried her on his back to the place where she was to be buried. The dead woman's hair was left loose and untied. All the midwives and the old women gathered to go with the body; they carried shields and swords, and as they went they made the cries of warriors about to attack. The young men called telpopochtin (these were the inmates of the telpochcalli) came out to meet them and struggled to take the woman's body away from them . . .

  'The dead woman was buried at sunset . . . in the courtyard of the temple dedicated to the goddesses called the heavenly women or ciuapipiltin (princesses) . . . and her husband and his friends guarded her four nights running to prevent anyone from stealing the body. The young warriors watched to see if they might steal it, for they considered it as something holy or divine; and if, in fighting with the midwives, they succeeded in getting it, then at once, and in front of these very women, they would cut off the middle finger of the left hand. And if they could steal the corpse by night, they would cut off this same finger and the hair, and keep them as relics. The reason why the warriors tried to take the finger and the hair of the dead woman was this: when they went to war they put this hair

  -190-

  or this finger in their shields, and they said that because of it they would be brave and valiant . . . that the hair and the finger would give them strength and that they blinded the eyes of their enemies.

  'It was said that the woman (dead in childbed) did not go to the underworld but into the palace of the sun, and that the sun took her with him because of her courage . . . The women who are killed in war or who die at their first lying-in, are called mociuaquetzque (valiant women), and they are numbered among those who die in battle. They all go to the sun, and they live in the western part of the heavens; and that is why the old people called the occident ciuatlampa (the women's side) . . . The women welcomed the sun at the zenith and went down with him as far as the west, carrying him on a litter made of quetzat-plumes. They marched before him, shouting with joy, fighting, making much of him. They left him in the place where the sun goes down, and there those of the lower world came to receive him.' 65

  The destiny of the 'valiant woman' in the hereafter was therefore exactly the equivalent, the counterpart, of that of the warriors who died in battle or upon the sacrificial stone. The warriors accompanied the sun from its rising to its height, and the wome
n from the zenith to its setting. The women had become goddesses, and therefore they were called the ciuateteo 'the divine women'. Their sufferings and their death earned them apotheosis. They were the formidable deities of the twilight, and on certain nights they appeared at the crossroads and struck those that met them with paralysia. 66 They were identified both with the occidental goddesses of Tamoanchan, the western paradise, and with the monsters of the end of the world.

  SICKNESS AND OLD AGE

  The ancient Mexicans' ideas on sickness and medicine and their practices were an inextricable mixture of religion, magic and science. There was religion, for certain deities were held either to send illnesses or to heal them; there was magic, for generally the illness was attributed to the black

  -191-

  magic of some sorcerer, and it was by magic that the remedy was sought; and there was science, for Aztec medicine had in some respects a curiously modern appearance, with its knowledge of the properties of plants and minerals and the use of bleeding and of baths. There is no doubt, however, that of these three factors, the first two were by far the most important; and of these two, magic predominated over religion. The physician (ticitl), either man or woman, was above all a sorcerer, but a benign sorcerer, accepted and approved by the community; whereas the caster of spells, the black magician, was condemned.

  Among the Nahua Indians of the present day in the Sierra de Orizaba, sickness is attributed to four possible causes: the introduction of a foreign body into the person of the sufferer by black magic; injuries or death inflicted upon the sufferer's totem, his animal double or naualli, by an enemy or a malignant wizard; the loss of the tonalli, a term which is used for the soul and the vital breath, as well as the sign under which the patient was born and thus his fate or destiny; and lastly the 'airs' -- in Spanish aires and in Nahuatl ehecatl cocoliztle, 'airs of sickness' -- the invisible and baleful influences that float about mankind, particularly at night. 67