About Mexico - Past and Present/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE HABITATIONS OF CRUELTY.
THE Aztecs believed in the immortality of the soul, both of men and of beasts. Heroes who died in battle and those who sacrificed themselves to the gods had the highest place their heaven could offer. They were supposed to be in the service of the Sun, and that after singing in his train as he passed through the heavens their souls went to beautify the clouds and birds and flowers with colors
"Bright as a disbanded rainbow."
Even women and little children—especially those who died in the service of the gods—had as bright a hope as heathenism could offer. After death the women spent four years in heaven, and then were permitted to become birds, with the privilege of coming back to the scenes of earth if they wished, to live on honey and flowers. Hell was merely a place of darkness.
Yet, with these comparatively agreeable provisions for the future, the Aztec religion, wherever it prevailed, made this world "the region and shadow of death" The Psalmist must have had in mind such a religion as this when he prayed that God would have respect to the covenant, since the "dark places of the earth were full of the habitations of cruelty." Never, in any nation, was human sacrifice carried to so frightful an extent as among these refined and cultured Indian tribes. The practice had been common among the Aztecs from the earliest times, and gave to the whole race a fierce and gloomy character which made them hated by all their neighbors. The position which they gained as head of the three confederate tribes afforded them an opportunity to engraft this hideous custom on the milder worship of the people around the lake. For about one hundred years, or during the time of this supremacy, human sacrifices and the sacrificial eating of human flesh prevailed throughout Mexico as never before. About the time of the Spanish conquest the burden of such a religion became intolerable, and Mexico seemed as ripe for destruction as was old Sodom or the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full. From Yucatan, on the far south-east, to the most distant of the Nahua tribes, on the north, the altars reeked with human blood. The practice was so universal, and so many victims were at last demanded, that death in this terrible form must have stared every one in the face. A large tribe on the Pacific slope was so nearly exterminated in one of the wars begun and carried on to obtain captives for sacrifice that men were not left to till the ground or work the mines; all who had not been slain outright in defending their homes were borne away to die on Aztec altars. A colony was sent over from Mexico city to take possession of the empty houses and unharvested fields, while the. proud cities enthroned on the shore of the lake sought for other communities to lay waste. If silent walls could speak, many a beautiful city among the scores now in mournful ruin throughout Mexico could tell of scenes of carnage when, in the name of the gods they all worshiped, the foe came down upon them in 
In these days of unbelief there are some who doubt the accounts given by both Spanish and native historians of human beings kept to fatten like cattle in a stall, of still-palpitating bodies thrown from the high altar down to the captor and his friends, who stood waiting to receive this horrible provision for a decorous feast to be eaten as sacred food at the command of the gods. But these writers, though differing from each other in many things, agree in their testimony concerning this. Cortez, who is apt to be more moderate in his statements than his followers, says of one of the Nahua tribes in his letters to the king, "These people eat human flesh—a fact so notorious that I have not taken the trouble to send Your Majesty any proof of it." During the siege of Mexico the Tlascalan allies of Cortez subsisted largely on the bodies of the slain, and Montezuma himself was reproved by his Spanish visitors for this horrible practice.
One of the descendants of Hungry Fox, the great Tezcucan chief, wrote in Spanish an interesting history of his people. In this he says that his great ancestor became disgusted with the sacrifices and cannibal feasts in which they engaged during their connection with the Aztecs, and that before their confederacy was broken up he made an effort to put a stop to all such practices and to return to the milder rites of their star-worshiping ancestors. But his voice was raised in vain; the old priests shook their matted locks and protested against his innovations. They pointed to Tenochtitlan, across the lake, as an instance of the glory and success to be won by the faithful votaries of the war-god. To give weight to their influence, the tide of battle began to turn against the three confederate tribes, and Hungry Fox was obliged to yield to the popular clamor for human victims wherewith to appease the anger of Humming-Bird, the insatiable war-god.
Every month in the year had its bloody festivals. At one of these the handsomest and bravest of all the captives was for one year named Tezcaltipoca, after one of the principal gods, and was obliged to illustrate by his life and death the vanity of all earthly things. For one year he was dressed in the most elegant and costly robes, housed in the most luxurious dwelling the city afforded, married to four beautiful girls and regaled with flowers, music and sweet odors; his table was loaded with dainties and his couch was royal in its comfort and decoration. At the end of that time he was carried away from his splendid home and gay attendants, stripped of his raiment and led with solemn burial-chants to a little temple outside the city to die on the altar. As the fatal knife descended the old priest called on the gazing crowd to note this scene as the end of his sermon on life. Three times a year, Tlaloc, god of storms, demanded a human sacrifice. His home was in the fiery crater of Popocatepetl. In March, when the people prayed that the clouds which overhung his throne might pour out an abundance of rain on the ever-thirsty earth, little children were offered. Three times each year women were sacrificed. Once, in its closing days, when Talconian, mother of all gods, held high festival, a female prisoner suffered. She was obliged to dance until the last moment, then was beheaded and skinned and had her body thrown at the feet of the war-god. At one time two perfect victims were called for at once—one for the war-god, the other for Tezcaltipoca. At the time corresponding with our month of October, during a feast called "the Coming of the Gods," the priests scattered cornmeal on the floor in the place where the gods were expected to enter, hoping to find the sacred footprints of this chief deity. They were not likely to be disappointed for want of contrivance on the part of these "medicine-men."[1]
How far the priests were able to deceive themselves is shown by their long and severe penances. They fasted sometimes to the verge of starvation. They pierced themselves with thorns, bled their ears and cut holes in their tongues, through which sticks were thrust. It must have been difficult for a priest thus maimed to speak intelligibly. In times of great calamity an Aztec chief and a number of his followers are said to have offered their lives as a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of their country. Priests have been known to retire to the wilderness for a year's mortification of the flesh. Building a small hut, the devotee lived there alone, without light or fire and with scarcely enough of uncooked maize to keep himself alive. No man could go through this "great fast" more than once in a lifetime.
The manner of the victims' death afforded scope for variety. They were often dressed in fancy costumes and made to dance in character. Sometimes, like gladiators, they fought for their lives on a large stone platform in the great square of the city. The goddess of harvests was propitiated by a human victim ground between millstones like the corn the deity was asked to bestow.
Every expedition in time of war, every trading-party which set out on its travels, the election of a head-chief, the inauguration of a new one or the dedication of a temple was marked by extraordinary sacrifices. When the great teocallis in Mexico was dedicated, in 1486, forty thousand persons are said to have been sacrificed to the terrible war-god. We would believe this to be an exaggeration but for the fact that the skulls were preserved in houses called zompantli, or "skull-place." One Spaniard, who was curious enough to count these ghastly relics arranged in order, gives the number as one hundred and thirty-six thousand.
Among the pretexts by which the victims were persuaded to yield up their lives was one common among Romanists when a young woman enters a convent. She goes to become the bride of Christ; so the Aztec girls were given to the gods. A story is told of one poor woman who was so determined to forego this honor that she fought for life. In her case it seemed that self-surrender was necessary to make the sacrifice acceptable, and after struggling with her for a while they let her go.
The most solemn of all festivals was that of "year-binding," as it was called, which marked the close of the cycle of fifty-two years. The people were taught that in the course of ages the world was to be four times destroyed and renewed, and that each of these events was to be looked for at these semi-centennial periods. As the time drew near they gave themselves up to gloom and despair. They did penances for past sins, and then faithlessly threw away their idols altogether, broke up their furniture, rent their clothes, neglected field and mine, workshop and garden, and ended by a fast of thirteen days. The holy fire which had been kindled fifty-two years before on the temple-roofs was now suffered to die out, and the people sat down in a darkness of soul over which pitying angels must have wept. As the old year died the priests marched in solemn procession to a lofty hill a few miles outside the city, bearing with them the fairest of victims-—some noble young chieftain taken in battle and reserved until this fateful day to be offered in sacrifice. He was stretched across the altar with his face upturned to the sky, while the shaggy-haired priests stood about him chanting their wild temple-hymns. Would the gods accept the sacrifice, or would the spirits of evil prevail? Unseen by mortal eyes, the air was full of them. From the poorest hut by the lake-side to the most lordly pueblo in the land, men were waiting in breathless silence for an answer. Mothers covered the faces of their little ones lest malignant deities engaged in the battle supposed to be going on in the air should swoop down and carry them away. The devoted father cut his ears till the blood flowed, hoping thus to avert all evil from his family. All eyes gazed aloft till the Pleiades, slowly gliding through the heavens, should pass the zenith. The suspense grew awful. Would Tlaloc, god of storms, rise in his fury from his throne on yonder volcano and sweep the valley with a whirlwind? Would their queenly cities go down in the salt floods of Tezcuco, or would an earthquake prelude the mighty catastrophe which would ruin a guilty world? Slowly the moments pass. The stars go by overhead, and then, at a signal from priestly hands, a shout rends the air. The Seven Stars have crossed the dreaded line: the world is safe for another fifty years. The sacred fire is now kindled anew in the bleeding breast of the victim on the altar, and fleet runners carry it to temples, cities and hamlets far and wide. The people give themselves up to fourteen days of feasting and merriment. They refurnish their houses, spin and weave, and plant their fields. Life flows on as of old. But, in its best estate, all Mexico sat in darkness. Some there were, no doubt, who felt after God, sitting in humble silence at his feet, or as good stewards dispensed his bounty to others. To such his love and fatherly pity must have been revealed, since "in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him." But no song of joyful trust has floated down to us out of the dense darkness that covered the land. There was many a cry like that of Solomon—"Vanity of vanities"—many a prayer for mercy, but none had reached the firm foundation where the triumphant Psalmist stood when he sang, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof."
- ↑ On the island of Cozumel, one of the sacred places visited by thousands of pilgrims from Mexico, the Spaniards found a huge image standing close against an inner wall of the temple. Behind this was a private door belonging to the priests, which opened through this wall into the back of the idol, whereby a priest entered and from his safe hiding-place answered the prayers of the people in an audible voice.