turnity, his cold reasoning devoid of mobility and imagination. His look is gloomy, and a general air of melancholy hangs over him; his very dance and music lack gayety; his song is lugubrious; yet the more vivacious woman can evoke a smile which for sweetness belies the customary trait, and reveals a deep vein of gentleness that favors the attribute of patience under adversity, of fidelity and constancy. While rather chaste and frugal, he has not been trained in provident habits, and yields readily to the cup, though not more so than could be expected from persons in his condition. He shares in the general indolence of his surroundings; and kept in ignorance, he yields readily to superstition, and incorporates puerile and ridiculous fancies and practices in his worship, impressing the beholder with the idea that he is less intelligent than is really the case. Indeed, he is docile, and grasps any lessons easily enough, though not impulsively; but he lacks creative power; his speech and writing are rather bare, and his art servile imitation. These defects are due in part to the lack of opportutunity for development, and vary somewhat in different parts of the country, where environment and change of condition have evolved characteristics that may still be classed as distinctively tribal.[1]
On the whole the Indian mind has not the breadth, strength, or subtilty of the European; and this was early intimated by the Spaniards in withholding from
- ↑ Many writers, with the beggarly idlers of the capital ever before them, have been led to exaggerate his defects, calling him cunning, false, and vindictive, or pusillanimous and atrocious, as Mancera writes in Doc. Inéd., xxi. 445, while sympathizing friars extol inordinately his virtues. Las Casas dwells on his ingenuity and goodness; Zumárraga on his chastity, favored indeed by stolidity of nature; Motolinia on his prudence and wide capacity for acquiring anything, and herein Clavigero agrees by declaring him fully as able as a Spaniard. Humboldt invests him with a natural logic, with a ready perception; Mora makes him persevering and temperate; and Alaman, Portilla, and others exhibit a non-committal description of traits. Many of the contradictory attributes may be explained by the claim that Indian children are more precocious than whites, but the latter certainly attain a higher degree of maturity. The Tlascaltecs held themselves rather high on the strength of the special privileges accorded them since the conquest; a love for litigation augmented their poverty. The adjoining Cholultecs, with few claims to nobility, were more sober and prosperous.
