Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

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  In the same spirit, it was related of Motecuhzoma II, that hunting in the gardens outside the city he made the mistake of plucking an ear of maize that had already formed, without asking the peasant's leave. 'Lord, you who are so powerful,' said the peasant, 'how can you steal an ear from me? Does not your own law condemn a man to death for stealing an ear of maize or its value?'

  'That is true,' replied Motecuhzoma.

  'Well then,' said the gardener, 'why have you broken your own law?'

  The emperor then offered to give him back his ear, but the peasant refused. Motecuhzoma gave him his own cloak, the imperial xiuhayatl, and said to his dignitaries, 'This poor man has shown more courage than anybody here, for he has dared to reproach me to my face with having broken my own laws.' And he raised the peasant to the rank of tecuhtli, entrusting him with the government of Xochimilco. 40

  What is interesting about these improving little tales is not that they do or do not describe real facts, but that they show the feelings of the time. This was what a good sovereign ought to be -- one who would listen to complaints and remonstrances, merciful, master of himself. He was the culminating point of the community and the state, and he was to incarnate all those virtues which his time thought the most valuable and which the people expected to maintain the rightful order in the common interest.

  THE ARTS AS A SETTING FOR LIFE

  The arts provided the setting of civilised life, which was pre-eminently that of the upper classes, with a quality and a refinement which call to mind the golden age of the Toltecs. Mexican culture had no notion of art for art's sake, and sculpture, painting, jewellery, mosaic, featherwork and the art of the miniaturist all combined to express the beliefs of the time and its deepest tendencies, to mark the degrees of rank and to surround everyday activities with forms that had always been appreciated. 41

  Architecture has already been treated in Chapter I, and we will not speak of it again in this place; but the great

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  buildings were filled with statues and covered with basreliefs, 42 a very great proportion of which were based upon religion. Profane sculpture was not wanting, however: it existed, and sometimes one finds the vigorously carved head of a man of the people, sometimes the familiar plants and animals of the country, sometimes, formalised and hieratic, the great deeds of the emperors or historic scenes, such as the conquests of Tizoc or the dedication of the great temple by his successor.

  The emperors liked to leave their stone or golden likenesses behind them, and one of the very few gold figurines that escaped the Spanish melting-pot represents Tizoc. 43 Fourteen sculptors carved the statue of Motecuhzoma II at Chapultepec, and they were rewarded with immense quantities of cloth, cocoa and victuals as well as receiving two slaves each. 44

  Some monuments were decorated with frescoes. In central Mexico the tradition of fresco painting goes back as far as the civilisation of Teotihuacán, and it was particularly full of life in the region between Mexico and the Mixtec mountains. Aztec mural painting vanished with the buildings of Tenochtitlan; but in places far from the centre, such as Malinalco, traces of it are still to be seen. 45

  But although the frescoes that adorned the walls of the temples and the palaces were destroyed when the walls themselves collapsed before the attack of guns or pickaxes, Mexican painting has survived in the form of the pictographic manuscripts, some of which have come down to us. It is an art somewhere between writing and miniaturepainting, with its delicate, scrupulously-worked glyphs and its representation of historic or mythical scenes. 46

  The tlacuilo or tlacuiloani, the painter-scribe, was very much respected, whether he worked for the temples, the law or the administration. The ancient Mexicans loved their books, and when the fanatical hands of Zumárraga hurled thousands upon thousands of precious manuscripts into the fire, the flames destroyed a very great part of their culture.

  It was above all the minor arts that made life more

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  decorative, for they were applied, with great success, to everything from the humblest earthenware dish to jewels of gold: nothing was vulgar; nothing showed the signs of hasty workmanship or the naked pursuit of effect and profit. The conquerors were astonished by the extraordinary and luxurious productions of the craftsmen of Tenochtitlan, the goldsmiths, lapidaries and feather-workers.

  These tolteca -- for as we have seen, they were called by this honourable title, by way of showing that they were in the direct tradition of the golden age -- knew how to smelt and model gold and silver, carve the hardest stones, make the scrupulously-formed mosaics of dazzling feathers which decorated the shields, the flags and the cloaks of the chiefs and the gods. The means at their disposal for the creation of all these delicate wonders were a few tools made of stone, copper and wood, moistened sand for wearing down jade or crystal, and above all an infinite patience and an astonishing sureness of taste.

  The goldsmiths used the cire perdue method for making statuettes of Indians of foreign tribes, animals (tortoises, birds, fishes, crustaceans, lizards) and necklaces decorated with little bells and metal flowers: these are examples mentioned by Aztec informants. They were acquainted with the enhancing of the colour of gold by an alum-bath, and they hammered and chiselled it in sheets and leaves.

  The lapidaries worked rock-crystal, amethyst, jade, turquoise, obsidian, mother of pearl, etc., with instruments made of reed, and sand and emery. They also set out little pieces of stone in beautiful mosaics upon a background of bone, stucco or wood.

  The amanteca, the feather-workers, either fixed their precious tropical feathers on light reed frameworks by tying each one with cotton, or stuck them on to cloth or paper so as to form mosaics in which certain effects of colour were obtained by transparency. This was a typically and exclusively Mexican art, which lingered in the form of little feather pictures after the conquest, and then disappeared entirely. 47 Almost nothing has survived of these fragile masterpieces.

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  The imperial official who entered into contact with the Spaniards after their landing in the region of Vera Cruz 'took several excellently-worked, very rich golden objects out of a chest and caused to be brought ten loads of white cloth made of cotton and feathers, things very well worth seeing'. 48 According to native sources, Motecuhzoma sent Cortés the following presents: first, a costume of Quetzalcoatl, which included a turquoise mask, a plume of quetzal feathers, a great jade disk with a gold round in the middle of it, a shield made of gold and mother of pearl, decorated with quetzal plumes, a mirror encrusted with turquoises, a bracelet of gems and golden bells, a turquoise head-dress and sandals ornamented with obsidian.

  The second present was a costume of Tezcatlipoca, which particularly included a feather crown, a gold breastplate and a looking-glass.

  Then there was a costume of Tlaloc, with a crown of green plumes and jade earrings, a jade disk and a golden disk, a turquoise sceptre and golden bracelets and anklets. The list goes on with a mitre of jaguar-skin adorned with plumes and gems, turquoise and gold earrings, a jade and gold breastplate, a shield made of gold and quetzal plumes, a golden mitre with parrot-feathers and a mitre made of thin sheets of gold. 49

  Among the treasures that Cortés received from Motecuhzoma II and which he sent to Charles V in July 1519 one finds, among other things, 2 'wheels' 10 spans (6 feet 10 inches) wide, the one made of gold to represent the sun and the other of silver for the moon; a golden necklace of eight sections with 183 small emeralds and 232 garnets set in it and 27 little golden bells hanging from it; a wooden helmet covered over with gold; a gold sceptre studded with pearls; 24 shields made of gold, feathers and mother of pearl; 5 fishes, 2 swans and other birds of cast and moulded gold; 2 large gold shells and 1 gold crocodile with filigree decorations; several head-dresses, mitres, plumes, fans and fly-whisks, all made of gold and feathers. 50

  As the Aztec empire grew, so the life of the Mexicans became more and more luxurious and sumptuous, for their<
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  boundaries reached to the tropical countries that produced the feathers, the Mixtec mountains where the gold was found as gold-dust in the streams, and those parts of the Gulf coast where the best jade came from; the statues of the gods were clothed with feather cloaks, and the dignitaries, abandoning the austerity of former times, adorned themselves with brilliant plumes, chiselled gems and jewels of gold. As we have seen, men of the highest class loved learning the lapidary's art and themselves carved jade or turquoise.

  Gold and silver aroused less desire and admiration than plumes and gems -- the plumes and gems that perpetually recur in the language of verse and rhetoric. Lords and poets, traders and craftsmen, they were all fascinated by the gilded green of the quetzal plumes, the turquoise blue-green of the feathers of the xiuhtototl, the splendid yellow of parrot-feathers, the translucent green of the great pieces of jade brought from Xicalanco, the red of garnets and the dark lucidity of obsidian; and the polychromatic brilliance of all these things surrounded men's lives with an aura of splendour and beauty.

  THE ARTS OF LANGUAGE, MUSIC AND DANCING

  The Mexicans were proud of their language, Nahuatl, which, by the beginning of the sixteenth century had become the common tongue, the koinè, of the whole vast country. 'The Mexican language is considered the mothertongue, and that of Texcoco is thought the noblest and the purest. 51 All the languages other than this were held to be coarse and vulgar . . . The Mexican language spreads over the whole of New Spain . . . and the others are thought barbarous and strange . . . It is the richest and fullest language that is to be found. It is not only dignified but also soft and pleasing, lordly and of a high nobility, succinct, easy and flexible.' 52

  In fact, Nahuatl has all the qualities that are necessary in the language of a civilisation. It is easy to pronounce; it is harmonious and distinct. Its vocabulary is very rich, and the structure of the language allows the creation of all

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  necessary words, and most particularly of abstract terms. It is excellently adapted for the expression of all shades of thought and all the aspects of the physical world. It is as well adapted to the lapidary concision of annals as to the flowery rhetoric of speeches or to poetic metaphor. As the basis or raw material of a literature it could hardly be surpassed.

  At the time of which we are speaking, the Aztecs' system of writing was a compromise between ideogram, phoneticism and simple representation or pictography. The symbol for defeat -- a blazing temple -- the glyph for war, atl-tlachinolli, night, shown by a black sky and a closed eye, and the chronological signs, are ideograms. The syllables or groups of syllables tlan (teeth, tlan-tli), te (a stone, tetl), quauh (a tree, quauitl), a (some water, atl), tzinco (the lower part of a human body, tzintli), acol (acolli, the elbow), pan (a flag, pantli), ix (an eye, ixtolotli), teo (a sun, translated as god, teotl), coyo (a round hole, coyoctic), tenan (a wall, tenamitl), tecu (a diadem and hence a lord, tecuhtli), icpa (a ball of thread, icpatl), mi (an arrow, mitl), yaca (a nose, yacatl) and many others all provide examples of phoneticism: the conventional images, often highly formalised, which represent the objects that have been listed, are used to write the sounds, even if there is no reference whatever to the objects themselves. Thus the name of the village of Otlatitlan is shown by a reed, otlatl (an ideogram) and by teeth, tlan, (a phonogram).

  In practice the two systems were combined, and colour was also used: the word tecozauhtla was represented by a stone (tetl) upon a yellow background (cozauic), the word tlatlauhquitepec by a formalised mountain (tepetl) painted red (tlatlauhqui). 53 And mythical or historical scenes were simply represented by the characters together with the glyphs corresponding to their names and, where it was called for, by the signs dating the event.

  In its state at that time, this writing did not permit the exact notation of spoken language. It was adapted for summarising events, and by a mixture of phonograms, symbols and representations it provided a basis for memory.

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  Historical accounts, hymns and poems had to be learned by heart, and the books acted as prompters to the memory. This was one of the principal aspects of the education that the priests of the calmecac gave their young men. 'They carefully learnt the songs that were called the songs of the gods, written in the books. And they carefully learned the account of days, the book of dreams and the book of the years.' 54

  Fortunately in the period that followed the conquest, thanks to enlightened men like Sahagún, a certain number of Indians learnt to write in Latin characters, and they used this tool -- infinitely better than anything they had had up to that time -- to transcribe those native books that had not been destroyed or to set down what they had learnt by heart. In this way something, though no doubt a very small part, of the ancient Mexican literature was saved.

  This literature was 'so varied and so wide that no other people who had reached the same degree of social development possessed anything that approached it.' 55 It covered all aspects of life, for its aim was to help the memory to retain the whole accumulated knowledge of the foregoing generations, their religious ideas, myths, ritual, divination, medicine, history, law, and in addition to all this it included a great deal of rhetoric and lyric and epic poetry. 56

  It was divided into prose and verse: prose for instructive treatises, mythical and historical narratives; verse (usually trochaic) for religious or profane poems. Many accounts or descriptions which with us would have been in prose, were learnt in Mexico in the form of poetry or rhythmic verses, as being easier to memorize. Rhetorical and poetic style made the utmost use of the language's possibilities. The richness of Nahuatl allowed the piling-up of near-synonyms, separated from one another by faint shades of meaning, for the description of the one deed; and although this may give a certain tautological air in translation, in the original it can be exquisite.

  In order to say that the sorcerer Titlacahuan took on the appearance of an old man, the literal expression of the Aztec narrator is, 'He transformed himself into a little old

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  man, he changed himself, he disguised himself, he became very much bowed, his head became quite white, his hair quite white.' 57 Another very common stylistic usage is that of expressing an idea by the juxtaposition of two words, forming a binominal term, as mixtitlan ayauhtitlan (in the clouds, in the mist), meaning 'mysteriously'; noma nocxi (my hand, my foot), 'my body'; in chalchiuitl in quetzalli (jade, feathers), 'richness' or 'beauty; itlatol ihiyo (his word, his breath) 'his speech'; in xochitl in cuicatl (flower, song) 'a poem', etc.

  The same tendency is to be seen in that parallelism, continually sought after in poems and treatises, which consists of setting two phrases with the same signification side by side: choquiztli moteca, ixayotl pixahui, 'sorrow overflows, tears fall'. 58 Phonetic parallels were also esteemed, as well as assonances and alliterations. All these figures, together with often exceedingly elaborate metaphors, were the mark of fine language, the speech of the well-bred, civilised man.

  Just as the style of the annals was generally dry, succinct and reduced to the barest relation of the facts, so that of speeches was flowery and even, to our taste, turgid and bombastic. Some examples have already been given, but it is impossible to over-emphasize the extraordinary appetite of the Mexicans for this philosophico-moral rhetoric. They could make untiring speeches upon any subject whatsoever, and endlessly answer one another with commonplaces, in the Latin rhetoric sense of generally accepted ideas, upon which they would throw the cloaks of their metaphors, by way of exercise. 'They were much addicted to the art of oratory . . . During their harangues they sat upon their heels, without touching the ground; they did not look up or raise their eyes; they did not spit or make gestures, and they did not look you in the face. When a speaker had finished, he rose and withdrew with his face lowered, without turning his back, very modestly.' 59

  On all public occasions, or those of private life, there would be positive tournaments of eloquence, whether t
he matter in question was the election of an emperor, the birth

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  of a baby, the departure of a merchant-caravan or a marriage.

  Poetry was no less esteemed. The dignitaries and their families -- and this included some most distinguished women -- prided themselves upon poetic excellence. At Texcoco, where everything to do with fine language was particularly honoured, one of the four great councils of government was called 'the council of music and the sciences'. As well as the execution of the laws relating to worship and witchcraft, its functions included the encouragement of poetry: it organised competitions, and at the end of them the king presented valuable gifts to the prizewinners. 60

  There were scholarly noblemen who were occasional poets, the most illustrious of them being the king Nezaualcoyotl himself; and there were also professional poets in the service of great men; these celebrated the deeds of heroes, the grandeur of royal houses and also the delight and sadness of life. These poets taught singing and music in the 'houses of song' (cuicacalli) that were attached to the palaces or maintained by the districts.

  The very name of the poet (cuicani, the singer) shows that poem and song were synonymous, for the poem was always sung or at the very least declaimed to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The text of some poems is preceded by a notation that shows the rhythm of the teponaztli, whose beat was to sustain the recital. 61

  Certain poems show that the poet was conscious of his high mission--

  I chisel the jade, I pour gold in the crucible:

  Here is my song!

  I inlay the emeralds:

  Here is my song. 62