together, the road guarded by the great snake and the great alligator, the eight deserts and the eight hills; they gave him garments to protect him from the cutting wind, and buried a little dog by his side to carry him across the nine waters. Then the royal body was invested in the mantles of his patron-gods, especially that of the war-god, for Mexican kings were warriors; on his face was placed a mask of turquoise mosaic, and a green chalchihuite-stone as a heart between his lips. In older times the dead king was buried on a throne with his property and dead attendants round him. But after cremation came in a mourning procession of servants and chiefs carrying the body to the funeral pyre to be burnt by the demon-dressed priests, after which the crowd of wives and slaves were exhorted to serve their lord faithfully in the next world, were sacrificed and their bodies burnt. Common people would not thus be provided with a ghostly retinue, but their simpler funeral ceremonies were as far as they went similar to those of their monarch.
The staple food of the Mexicans before the conquest has continued
with comparatively little change among the native race, and has
even been adopted by those of European blood. Maize
or Indian corn was cultivated on patches of ground
where, as in the Hindu jûm, the trees and bushes were
burnt and the seed planted in the soil manured by the ashes. A
Agriculture and food.
sharp-pointed planting stick, a wooden shovel, and a bronze-bladed
hoe called a coatl were the simple implements. The Mexicans
understood digging channels for irrigation, especially for the cultivation
of the cacahuatl, from which they taught the Europeans to
prepare the beverage chocollatl; these native names passed into
English as the words cacao, or coco and chocolate. Other vegetables
adopted from Mexico are the tomato (tomatl) and the chilli,
used as flavouring to native dishes. The maize was ground with a
stone roller on the grinding stone or metlatl, still known over Spanish
America as the metate, and the meal baked into thin oval cakes called
by Aztecs tlaxcalli, and by Spaniards tortilla, which resemble the
chapati of India and the oatcake of Scotland. The Mexicans were
also skilful makers of earthen pots, in which were cooked the native
beans called by the Spanish frijoles, and the various savoury stews
still in vogue. The juice extracted by tapping the great aloe
before flowering was fermented into an intoxicating drink about the
strength of beer, octli, by the Spaniards called pulque. Tobacco,
smoked in leaves or cane-pipes or taken as snuff, was in use,
especially at feasts. In old times Mexican clothing
Clothing and Ornaments.
Metalwork.
was of skins of woven aloe and palm fibre, but at the
time of the conquest cotton was largely cultivated in
the hot lands, spun with a spindle, and woven in a rudimentary
loom without a shuttle into the mantles and breech-cloths of the
men and the chemises and skirts of the women, garments often of
fine texture and embroidered in colours. Ornaments of gold and
silver, and jewels of polished quartz and green chalchihuite were
worn—not only the ears and nose but the lips being pierced for
ornaments. The artificers in gold and silver melted
the metals by means of a reed-blowpipe and cast them
solid or hollow, and were also skilled in hammered work and
chasing, as some fine specimens remain to show, though the famous
animals modelled with gold and silver, fur, feathers and scales
have disappeared. Iron was not known, but copper and tin ores
were mined, and the metals combined into bronze of much the same
alloy as in the Old World, of which hatchet blades and other instruments
were made, though their use had not superseded that of
Obsidian and other sharp stone flakes for cutting, shaving, &c.
Metals had passed into a currency for trading purposes, especially
quills of gold-dust and T-shaped pieces of copper, while coco-beans
furnished small change. The vast size of the market-squares with
their surrounding porticos, and the importance of the caravans of
merchants who traded with other nations, show that mercantile
had risen into some proportion to military interests. Nor was the
wealth and luxury of Mexico and surrounding regions without a corresponding
development of art. The stone sculptures
Art and Pastime.
such as that remaining of Xochicalco, which is figured
by Humboldt, as well as the ornamented woodwork,
feather-mats, and vases, are not without artistic merit. The often-cited
poems attributed to Nezahualcoyotl may not be quite genuine,
but at any rate poetry had risen above the barbaric level, while the
mention of ballads among the people, court odes, and the chants of
temple choirs would indicate a vocal cultivation above that of the
instrumental music of drums and horns, pipes and whistles, the
latter often of pottery. Solemn and gay dances were frequent, and
a sport called the bird-dance excited the admiration of foreigners
for the skill and daring with which groups of performers dressed as
birds let themselves down by ropes wound round the top of a high
mast, so as to fly whirled in circles far above the ground. The ballgame
of the Mexicans, called tlachtli, was, like tennis, the pastime
of princes and nobles; special courts were built for it, and the ball
of india-rubber (perhaps the first object in which Europeans became
acquainted with this valuable material) might not be touched by
the hands, but was driven against the walls by blows of the knee or
elbow, shoulder or buttock. The favourite game of patolli has been
already mentioned for its similarity to the pachisi of modern India.
The accounts given by Spanish writers of the Central Americans in their state after the Spanish conquest are very scanty in comparison with the voluminous descriptions of Aztec life. They bring out perfectly, however, the fact of close connexion between the two civilizations. Some Central-American peoples were actually Mexican in their language and culture, Central-American Culture. especially the Pipils and a large part of the population of Nicaragua. The investigations made by Dr Walter Lehmann in Central America (1907–1909), prove that these Mexican elements were extended through Guatemala, Salvador, a small part of Nicaragua (the territory of the Nicaraos) and on several places in the peninsula of Nicoya (Costa Rica) amongst the autochthonous Chorotega or Mangue. It is an error of the Spanish authorities to pretend that the Pipil civilization in Guatemala and Salvador is not older than the time of King Ahuitzotl (c. 1482–1486). The language spoken by the Pipils of Salvador (Balsam Coast) is a very old dialect of the Mexican language of the highland of Mexico. It has preserved in the conjugation and in the formation of the plural older forms than the classical Nahuatl itself. The separation of the Pipils from the chief tribes of the Nahuatl branch happened centuries before the conquest, and they developed a singular and characteristic civilization, which can be seen in the wonderful stone-reliefs and sculptures of Sta Lucia de Cozumalhuapa on the Pacific coast of Guatemala.
Dr Lehmann’s archaeological and linguistic researches, especially in Salvador and Nicaragua, also enabled him to prove another very important fact, viz. that these Pipils, who may be descendants from the peoples of the Mexican Plateau, migrated into territories previously occupied by an older race of Mayan origin. The archaeological and linguistic evidence proves also that a great part of Salvador and Honduras was once occupied by peoples of the Maya race—Pokomam, Chorti and perhaps other unknown tribes. They left typical Mayan ruins in Honduras (Tenampua) and in Salvador (Opico near Tehuacan, Quelepa near San Miguel), which seem, however, to be destitute of Mayan hieroglyphic inscriptions. The easternmost limit of prehistoric Mayan civilization, on the Pacific coast of Central America, is Fonseca Bay, with the island of Zacate Grande.
It is noteworthy that archaeological objects of the type characteristic of northern Honduras (Ulloa Valley) have been found on the Pacific coast of Salvador. A strange stone sculpture of the so-called Chac-Mol type, known before only from the country of the Tarascs, from Tlaxcala and Chichen Itza, was discovered in Salvador (Ahuachapan).
In the nearly unexplored central part of Nicaragua Dr Lehmann found fragments of painted polychrome clay pottery similar to objects known from the Ulloa Valley (Honduras) amongst other ceramic pieces which seem to have been left by the ancestors of the Sumo Indians, now extinct in that territory. It is possible that these remains of Mayan pottery came into central Nicaragua as articles of commerce.
It is significant that Mayan civilization cannot be traced in any other part of Nicaragua or Costa Rica.
The above-mentioned prehistoric Mayan peoples lived in contact with “barbarous” nations and with another little-known civilized race. The barbarians belonged to the great family of the Sumo-Misquito Indians, the civilized race was that of the Chorotega or Mangue (Dirian, Orotiñan, &c.). The Sumo-Misquito Indians occupied the Atlantic coast and the interior of Nicaragua and Honduras, where they still live in small tribes; a dialect of the hitherto unknown Sumo languages is the Matagalpan, now extinct in Nicaragua, and nearly identical with the Matagalpan is the language spoken by the Indians of Cacaopera in Salvador (Ultra-Lempa territory). There is no doubt that, at the time of the Pipil invasion, tribes of the Sumo-Misquito family were the immediate neighbours of the Pipils towards the east and north. This fact is proved by the names of some places in Salvador, e.g. Santiago Nonohualco, San Juan Nonohualco and San Pedro Nonohualco. The word Nonohualco signifies in the Mexican language a place where a language changes, where another idiom begins. To the east of the three places whose names are compounded with “Nonohualco,” must have dwelt, in the time of the Pipil Indians, the Nonoualca, called also by Mexican tribes Chontales or Popoloca. The western neighbours of the Sumo Indians were and are (though few still survive) the Lenca Indians, who formerly occupied large parts of Honduras. A linguistic relationship can be established between all the Indian languages spoken on the Atlantic coast and in the interior of Nicaragua and Honduras. Several tribes, such as the Paya (or Poya) and the Jicaques, form together with the Lenca, Sumo (Matagalpa, Tauakhca and Ulua) and Misquito one great family.
The position of the isolated Xinca (or Sinca) Indians, regarded from this point of view, becomes very interesting. There are scientific reasons to believe that the Xinca also belong to the same great family as the Lenca, Jicaques, Paya, Misquito-Sumo. It may be possible either that these tribes are the autochthonous inhabitants who dwelt in Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua before the immigration of the prehistoric Maya peoples; or else that they invaded this region after it had been deserted by a prehistoric oriental branch of the Maya family.
The Chorotega race had its centre in Nicaragua (Pacific coast) and
at one time extended thence as far as Guanacaste (Costa Rica); at