Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  In a society that was so hungry for renown, a society in which renown based upon services rendered counted for so much to everybody (the remarkable exception of the business-men will be dealt with later), the fighting-men had an enviable and an envied position. When a father treated his son to one of those improving lectures that were so usual among the Aztecs he always proposed them as the model for imitation. Their superiority was continually made evident, not only by their clothes and marks of rank, but by their privileges on ritual and ceremonial occasions. In the eighth month of the year, which was called Uey tecuilhuitl, 'the high feast of the dignitaries', for example, only 'the captains and other brave men accustomed to the usages of war' were allowed to join in the great sacred dance that took place at night, at the foot of the pyramids in the holy city, by the light of huge braziers and torches held up by the young men. They danced by pairs, and each pair of warriors was joined by a woman (one of the auianime, the companions of the unmarried soldiers) with her hair loose on her shoulders, dressed in a fringed, embroidered skirt. The dancers wore jewels according to their rank: a quachic had the right to a lip-ornament in the shape of a bird, an

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  otomitl to one shaped like the leaf of a water-plant. They all wore turquoise disks in their ears. The dance went on for several hours; and sometimes the emperor came to take part in it. 18

  In the following month, Tlaxochimaco, there was an equally solemn dance in honour of Uitzilopochtli, in front of his teocalli; but this dance was at noon, for Uitzilopochtli was the god of the sun at its height. Here the warriors were arranged according to their rank, first the quaquachictin and the otomi, then the tequiuaque, 19 then the young men who had made one prisoner, then the 'elder brothers', the distinguished solders who acted as instructors, and lastly the youths from the district schools. 'And they held hands, one woman between two men and one man between two women, as in the dances of the common people in Old Castille; and as their dance wound about they sang. The most seasoned in war, who were in the first row, held their women by the waist, as if they were embracing them; but the others, the less distinguished (in military rank) were not allowed to go so far.' 20

  There were many other occasions upon which the warriors were the centre of admiring public attention and honour: it was the case, for example, when, every four years, there was the celebration of the feast of the god of fire, and the emperor and his chief ministers, covered with ornaments of gems and feathers, danced the 'dance of the dignitaries'; or on the days that had the sign ce xochitl, 'one -- flower', when the sovereign gave them rich presents, amid songs and dances; or, of course, every time the victorious army came home from an expedition, making its entry into the city by one of the raised causeways, with welcoming elders and the din of teponaztli and trumpets attending them from as far out as the shore of the lake.

  If it is true that these dignitaries did not form a nobility in the European sense of the word, it is equally true that at the time of which we are speaking there was an inclination to make distinctions hereditary -- distinctions that were originally attached only to an office. The son of a tecuhtli did not fall to the level of a maceualli, of a plebeian; by the

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  right of his birth alone he had the title of pilli, whose primary meaning is 'child' or 'son', but which had acquired the sense of 'son (of a tecuhtli)', or, as the Spaniards would say, of hidalgo, 'son of somebody (of importance)'.

  In theory the pilli had no privileges, and in order to rise in the army, the administration or in religion he was to work as hard as any maceualli. In fact he had many advantages from the beginning, derived from the standing of his father and a higher education in the calmecac instead of the local school. It was among the pilli that the emperor most readily found his officials, judges and ambassadors; and the pilli as a group may be placed half-way between the people and the ruling class, forming a reservoir that could be drawn upon to meet the constantly increasing needs of a constantly growing administration.

  A nobility was therefore coming into being. But still it must not be forgotten that the pilli who did nothing outstanding during his lifetime left his children no distinction. The prestige of the tecuhtli scarcely lasted beyond one generation unless it were revived by fresh exertions. 21

  As the empire grew and the undertakings of the state became more and more varied so necessarily the duties of its servants became more specialised. It is very difficult to form an exact opinion of the functions of those officials whose titles have come down to us: it is likely that most of these titles no longer had any relation to their literal meaning, resembling in this the titles used in the Roman or Byzantine empire, or in France in the days of the kings. The tlillancalqui was probably no more 'the keeper of the dark house' than the Constable of France was the person in charge of the stables. But for all that, we can discern three classes of officials in the time of Motecuhzoma II.

  In the first place there were the governors of certain cities or strongholds. Although they had the military title of tlacochtecuhtli, 'the lord of the spears', of tlacateccatl and even tlacatecuhtli, or more rarely tezcacoacatl, 'he of the mirror-serpent', or tlillancalqui, 22 their duties must to a large extent have been civil and administrative. Several towns had two governors at the same time -- Oztoman, for

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  example, and Zozolan and Uaxyacac (Oaxaca) -- so it is likely that one of the governors looked after the administration and the other the command of the garrison.

  The generic name for the officials occupied with administration and more particularly with the taxes was calpixque, 'house-attendants', translated by the conquering Spaniards and the chroniclers as 'major-domos'. 23 They were chosen from among the pilli, and their principal duty was to organise the cultivation of the lands set aside for the payment of the tax, and to receive the grain, merchandise and provisions that each province was to furnish at fixed intervals and see to its transport as far as Mexico.

  They were obliged to send the emperor reports upon the state of agriculture and commerce: if a famine should break out, it was for them to tell the emperor and under his orders to exempt the province from the payment of tax or even to open the public stores of corn and distribute it to the people. They were also responsible for the erection of public buildings, for the maintenance of the roads and for the supply of servants for the imperial palaces.

  In each province the calpixqui lived in the chief town, together with his staff, which included a large number of scribes, able to keep the tribute-registers up to date and to draft reports: and no doubt he had deputies in the towns and principal villages of his province.

  Bernal Díaz' account gives some idea of the powers of these officials, and of their formidable authority. The first time the Spaniards met any calpixque was at Quiauiztlan, in the country of the Totonacs, a nation subject to the empire. 24 Some Indians from the same village came running to tell all the caciques who were talking with Cortés that five Mexicans had been seen, the tax-gatherers of Motecuhzoma. On hearing this they went pale, and began to tremble with fear. They left Cortés to himself and went out to welcome them. In all haste they adorned a room with foliage, prepared some food and made a great deal of cocoa, which is the best drink that is to be found among them. When these five Indians came into the village they passed by the place where we were with so much confidence and

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  ride that they walked straight on, without speaking either to Cortés or any of the others of us. They wore rich embroidered cloaks, loin-cloths of the same nature, and their shining hair was raised in a knot on their heads: each had a bunch of flowers in his hand, and he smelt to it; and other Indians, like servants, fanned them with fly-whisks.' And these arrogant representatives of the central authority had no hesitation in calling the Totonac chiefs before them and violently reprimanding them for having presumed to negotiate with Cortés.

  Lastly, the third category of appointed officials, the judges, were nominated by the sovereign either from the exper
ienced and elderly dignitaries or from among the common people. At Texcoco half the higher judges were of noble family and the other half of plebeian origin. 25 All the chroniclers agree in praising the care with which the emperor and his fellow-kings chose the judges, 'taking particular care that they were not drunkards, nor apt to be bribed, nor influenced by personal considerations, nor impassioned in their judgments.' 26

  Their office had an extraordinary respect and authority: at their disposition there was a kind of police-force which, upon their orders, could arrest even the highest officials, in any place whatsoever. Their messengers 'travelled with greatest speed, whether it was day or night, through rain, snow or hail.' 27 Their scribes recorded every case, with the claims of either side, the testimonies and the sentences. They were very much honoured: but woe to the judge who let himself be bought -- from reproof it was but a short pace to dismissal, and sometimes to death. A king of Texcoco had a judge executed for favouring a grandee against a working-man. 28

  All these people, military or civil officials, soldiers, administrators, judges, serving dignitaries or the sons of great men waiting for a post, together with the host of messengers, attendants, clerks and constables who surrounded them, depended upon the secular power. They depended upon the emperor, the head of the state; and they were so many cogs in the huge mechanism of the empire. Beside them,

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  intimately linked by family ties, by education and by the common depth of religious faith, but depending upon another power, was the clergy --beside the servants of the state there were the servants of the gods. The ruling class was divided into these two parallel hierarchies: the one side conquered, administered and judged; the other, by its faithful service in the temples, caused the kindness of the gods to rain down upon the earth.

  Every young pilli was well acquainted with the priestly order from his childhood, since he was brought up in a calmecac, a monastery-school, where he had shared the life and the austerities of the priests. The sons of tradesmen could also go to the calmecac, but on something of a supernumerary or marginal footing. 29 It would seem, then, that the priesthood was only open to members of the ruling class, or at a push to traders' sons: yet Sahagήn 3O insists upon the fact that sometimes the most venerated priests came from very humble families. It must therefore be granted that it was possible for a maceualli to enter the novitiate if he wished: perhaps if he showed an unusual vocation for the priesthood while he was still at the local school his masters could transfer him to the calmecac.

  The novice, literally the 'little priest', was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, who above all others was the god of the priests. When he was between twenty and twenty-two years old, if he decided not to marry and to enter fully into the clerical career, he became a tlamacazqui a priest, and from then onwards he could assume this venerated title, which was in fact the attribute of Quetzacoatl, 31 god, king and high-priest of the legendary Tula. It was also the title given to Tlaloc, the ancient god of rain and fecundity, to the lesser divinities who attended him, and to the splendid, beneficent young god of music and dancing. 32 To be entitled tlamacazqui was, to some degree, to be already the equal of a god.

  Most of the priests probably never went further than this stage. As they became old they would undertake some permanent but subsidiary duties, such as beating upon a drum or helping in the sacrifices; or else they would take

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  charge of a 'parish', and peaceably end their days conducting the services of the local temple. Their rank in the hierarchy was termed quacuilli.

  Others, on the other hand, reached a higher level, and acquired the title of tlenamacac. They could be members of the electoral body that chose the emperor, and it was from among them that the highest dignitaries of the Mexican church were taken.

  Two high-priests, equal in power, reigned jointly over this church. The one, quetzalcoatl totec tlamacazqui, 'the plumed serpent, priest of our lord', was in charge of the worship of Uitzilopochtli; the other, quetsalcoatl Tlaloc tlamacazqui, 'the plumed serpent, priest of Tlaloc', of that of Tlaloc. The two gods dominated the great teocalli together, as we have seen; and in the same manner their two high-priests dominated the religious hierarchy.

  The title of 'plumed serpent' which they had in common sealed them with that sanctity which the myth recognised in the Toltec god-king Quetzalcoatl; and, in short, they were his representatives and successors. 'Among these priests,' says Sahagήn, 33 'the best were chosen to become the supreme pontiffs, who were called quequetzalcoa, which means successors of Quetzalcoatl . . . No heed was paid to birth in this choice, but only to morals and observance of religion, knowledge of doctrine and purity of life. Those were chosen who were humble, righteous and peaceable, earnest and reasonable, not given to levity, but sober, severe and scrupulous in morals, full of love and charity, compassion and friendship for all, god-fearing and devout.' This, it must be admitted, is uncommonly warm praise, coming from the pen of a Catholic monk.

  These two high-priests were, according to the same authority, 'equal in status and in honour'; and they were surrounded by the deepest respect -- the emperor himself went in person to visit them. Their double presence at the head of the religious world consecrated the union of the two basic ideologies of Mexico, which the Aztecs had brought together when they became the ruling nation. On the one side there was Uitzilopochtli, the solar god of

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  war and near relation of the hunting gods, the pattern of the soldier and the prototype of the sacrificed victim who is to be reborn for a carefree immortality as a bird: and on the other Tlaloc, the old rain-god and god of the farmer's plenty, who without fighting makes the maize spring up and all the plants that men eat, the benign wizard who keeps famine and drought away. On the one hand the religion of the warlike nomad and on the other that of the settled peasants, each with its own vision and its own paradise.

  Under the two high-priests there were many 'prelates' who were responsible either for some given branch of religious activity or for the worship of some particular god. 34 The most important of them, the secretary-general of the church, as it were, had the title of Mexicatl teohuatzin, 'the venerable (-tzin) Mexican in charge of the gods'; he was chosen by the two quequetzalcoa, and 'he controlled other less important priests, somewhat like bishops, and he saw to it that everything to do with divine worship in all places and provinces was carried out diligently and perfectly, according to the laws and customs of the former pontiffs . . . he controlled all matters concerning the worship of the gods in the provinces subjected to Mexico.' His competence also included the discipline of the priestly body and the supervision of the education given in the calmecac. His assistants were the uitznauac teohuatzin, who was principally concerned with ritual, on the one hand, and on the other the tepan teohuatzin, who attended to questions that concerned education.

  A treasurer, the tlaquimiloltecuhtli, 35 had care of the holy vessels and other religious objects, and of the temples' estates. The wealth of the gods was enormous: there were not only the buildings and their land, the statues, the countless implements of worship, which were of great value, and the offerings of provisions and clothes, continually brought by the faithful, but also the agricultural land which the ecclesiastical corporations let out or had worked for them, and their share of the tribute from the subjected provinces.

  The piety of the emperors rained gifts upon the temples.

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  At Texcoco 36 fifteen important villages and their dependencies were set aside solely for their maintenance and repair and for supplying them with wood for their never-extinguished fires. At Mexico there was the same arrangement: 37 some villages furnished the temples with maize, wood, meat and incense, and paid no other kind of tax. The temples, therefore, had special granaries beside them; and these contained important reserves not only of the provisions for the priests but also of those which they gave to the poor and sick -- they had hospitals at Mexico, Texcoco, Cholula and other places. The managemen
t of all these properties must have called for a very considerable staff of scribes in the treasurer's department.

  There appear to have been an exceedingly large number of priests assigned to the various gods: no deity would have been satisfied with less than his own 'household', a chief priest, ministrants and novices. The four hundred gods of drink and drunkenness were served by an equal number of priests, under the guidance of the Ometochtzin, the 'venerable two-rabbit', whose name was the same as that of one of these gods. This was a very general practice; each priest bore the name of the god he served and whom, serving, he incarnated. The rites had proliferated to an enormous extent, and a host of priests busied themselves over the accomplishment of this or that particular task; for the division of labour had reached a very high pitch: for example, the ixcozauhqui tzonmolco teohua was responsible only for the supplying of wood to the temple of the fire-god, and the pochilan teohua yiacatecuhtli for the organisation of the feast of the god of the merchants.

  Clearly it was essential that the calendar of feasts should be kept up to date, and the sequence of ceremonies exactly followed: this very important duty was entrusted to the epcoaquacuiltzin, 'the venerable minister of the temple of the rain', who, in spite of his limiting title, had authority, under the uitznuac teohuatzin, over the entirety of the religious scene, at least in its material aspect.

  Women were by no means excluded from the priesthood. Some twenty or forty days after her birth, a girl might be