Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

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  brought to the temple by her mother; the woman would give the priest a censer and some copal (incense), and this would establish a reciprocal agreement. But it was only when she was a grown girl (ichpochtli) that the novice would go into religion, with the title of priestess -- or literally 'woman-priest', ciuatlamcazqui. As long as she kept this title she was bound to celibacy: but it was quite possible for her to marry 'if she were asked in marriage, if the words were properly said, if the fathers, the mothers and the notables agreed.' 38 An unusually solemn marriage service took place, and then she left the temple for her home. But it appears that many preferred to give themselves up entirely to religion.

  One finds a great many priestesses ministering on various occasions in the traditional accounts. The feast of the great goddess Toci (our grandmother) was directed by a woman, a ciuaquacuilli: another priestess, called the iztacciuatl, 'the white woman', was in charge of the physical preparation of certain ceremonies, particularly the sweeping of the holy places 39 and the lighting of the fires.

  During Quecholli, the fourteenth month, a great many women went to the temple of Mixcoatl, the hunter and warrior, to take their children to the old priestesses there: they took the children and danced with them in their arms. Then the mothers, having made the priestesses a present of sweetmeats or delicacies, 40 took their children away again. This ceremony lasted all the morning.

  During the month of Ochpaniztli it was the young priestesses of the goddess of maize who played the most important part in the religious celebrations. Each of them represented the goddess, and each carried seven ears of maize wrapped in rich cloth 41 on her back: their faces were painted, their arms and legs adorned with feathers. Singing, they went in procession with the priests of the same goddess; and at sunset they threw handfuls of coloured maize and calabash seeds to the crowd, who struggled and scrambled for them, because they were a token of wealth and plenty for the coming year.

  Torquemada 42 states that some of these young priestesses

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  took vows for one year or more to win some favour from heaven, such as the heating of an invalid or a happy marriage: but it seems that they never took vows for ever. They were guarded, supervised and taught by old women, and they looked after the temple, offering incense before the images of the gods at nightfall, at midnight and at dawn; they also wove cloaks for the priests and the idols.

  From priesthood to divination, to medicine and at last to magic, so good shades into evil, respect into fear and hatred: on its shadowy frontiers the world of religion merged with that of the malignant warlock and the sorcerer.

  Divination in the true sense of the word was not only permitted but practised, by a particular class of priests called tonalpouhque. They were educated in the monastery schools, for it was there that a knowledge of the characters used in the divinatory calendar was taught; and indeed this knowledge formed an integral part of the higher education. In this context it is worth remembering the importance of augury in the palmy days of Rome. But it seems that these soothsayers did not become members of a temple when they were qualified; they set up on their own account. Neither business nor income can have lacked, for every family necessarily went to a soothsayer whenever a child was born: furthermore, there was no important occasion in life, marriage, leaving for a journey or a military expedition, etc., whose date was not fixed by the soothsayers, either at the request of private persons or of officials. Each of these consultations was paid for by a meal, by presents, 'several cloaks, some turkeys and a load of victuals.' 43

  The doctors, men and women, were officially recognised, although their sphere was not always far from that of the black magicians; and they openly took part in many ceremonies. The midwives should also be mentioned: these women helped at the birth of the child, but more than that, they harangued it with the necessary moral and religious speeches, and (the soothsayers having been duly consulted) endowed it with its 'baptismal' name. They had a highly respected position in society; and no doubt they were quite well-to-do.

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  Finally, at the opposite pole of the religious world from the priests, them were the magicians, the sorcerers, 44 the formidable experts in spells, who were believed to have such wide and multifarious powers. They could change themselves into animals; they knew magic words 'that bewitch women and turn affections wherever they choose'; and their spells could kill from a great way off. There were men magicians and women magicians; and they kept their dark practices hidden. But for all that they were known well enough for people to come by night to buy their aid. It was said that their power came from their having been born under a malignant sign -- 'one -- rain', or 'one -- wind' -- and that for their purposes they always waited for a day that came under a sign favourable to them. The figure nine, which was the figure of the night-gods and of hell and of death, was particularly auspicious for them.

  One of the most frequently-mentioned crimes of sorcery consisted of theft -- fifteen or twenty magicians would combine to rob a family. They would come to the door by night, and by means of certain charms they would strike the people of the house motionless. 'It was as if they were all dead, and yet they heard and saw everything that happened . . . The thieves lit torches and looked through the house to find what there was to eat. They all ate quite calmly, and none of the people could hinder them, for they were all as who should say turned to stone and out of their senses. Then when the sorcerers had eaten and thoroughly satisfied themselves they went into the store-room and granaries and took everything they found there, clothes, gold, silver, precious stones and feathers . . . and it is even said that they did a great many foul things to the women of the house.'

  The sorcerers, then, were severely condemned by public opinion and severely punished by the law. If they were caught they were either hanged or sacrificed before an altar, their hearts being torn out. 45 In the reign of Chimalpopoca a man of Cuauhtitlán and his wife were sentenced to death because they had stupefied a peasant from Tenayuca by charms, and had stolen his maize during his aleep. 46

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  Apart from this minority of dangerous outcasts all the classes that have just been mentioned, warriors, officials and priests, had the common character of directors in society and state. Together they made up a ruling order: it was an order of recent origin, vigorous, and continually strengthened by the new blood brought in by the plebeians, who could accede to the highest offices, whether they were military, adminstrative or religious. Birth played its part, but it was still personal merit that raised a man, and lack of it that lowered him. The Mexican always bore in mind that honours were no more stable than running water, and that a man born noble might die a slave. 47

  It appears that an aristocratic reaction took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the reign of Motecuhzoma II, and that the reactionaries tried to expel the sons of plebeians from the higher places: according to the documents, however, this affected only the embassies that went abroad, for 'it was not decent that the maceuales should go into kings' palaces'. 48 It is possible that this reaction might have gone on to the point of bringing a purely hereditary nobility into existence: but there was a strong influence that worked in the other direction every day -- the continual pressure of war and conquest, which brought brave and ambitious men up to the top.

  When one reflects upon this ruling clam's way of life one is much struck by the fact that one of its essential sections, the priests, lived in austere poverty, and that the others, the soldiers and the civil servants, only came by wealth, in the form of estates, houses, slaves, clothes, victuals, jewels, etc., as a consequence of their rank or office. Wealth was not pursued for itself; it came as a function of increasing power and official expenses. It was an income and not a capital. The only thing that really counted in the tecuhtli's eyes was reputation.

  Another class existed, however, in which these values were reversed, a class preoccupied with wealth, not only indifferent to prestige but a
verse to it. It was a class below the level of the ruling class, but it was in the act of rising towards it -- a class so different, with its own customs, its laws

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  and organisation, that it almost belonged to another world.

  A RISING CLASS: THE TRADERS

  A very great many Mexicans engaged in trade, some from time to time, and some continuously. There were the peasants who sold their maize, vegetables and poultry in the market; the women who sold all sorts of cooked meals in the streets; the merchants who sold cloth, shoes, drink, skins, pots, rope, pipes, and various useful objects; and the fishermen who daily brought in their fish from the lake, and frogs and shellfish. These small and medium traders did not form a distinct class of the population. The name of pochteca, traders, was kept for the members of the powerful corporations which were in charge of foreign trade and which had the monopoly of it.

  They organised and guided the caravans of porters which went from the central valley to the remote, almost legendary provinces on the Pacific coast or on the Gulf. There they sold the produce of Mexico -- cloth, rabbit's-hair blankets, embroidered clothes, golden jewels, obsidian and copper earrings, obsidian knives, cochineal dye, medicinal herbs and herbs for making scent, and they brought back such luxurious things as the translucid green jade, chalchiuitl, emeralds, quetzalitztli, sea-shells, tortoiseshell to make the stirring-spoons for cocoa, jaguar and puma skins, amber, parrot, quetzal and xiuhtototl plumes. Their trade, therefore, consisted in the export of manufactured goods and the import of luxurious foreign commodities.

  It may be observed, in passing, that these exchanges are not in themselves enough to explain the economic relations between the Cold Lands of the centre and the Hot Lands of the south-east. Jewels of gold were exported, but gold was not imported: cotton cloth was sent out, but cotton yarn was not brought in. It was the tribute or the taxes that the provinces were obliged to pay that provided Mexico with its raw materials: for example, the Mixtec province of Yoaltepec had annually to send in 40 gold discs, each a finger thick and about 2 inches across; the province of Tlachquiauco 20 calabashes of gold-dust and those of

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  Quauhtochco and Ahuilizapan 1,600 bales of cotton. 49 Then raw materials were worked up in Mexico, and having become cloth or jewels they continued their journey towards the south on the shoulders of the porters led by the pochteca.

  There were merchant guilds 50 in some ten towns or large villages of the central plateau -- Texcoco, Atzcapotzalco, Uitzilopochco, Uexotla, Cuauhtitlán, Coatlinchan, Chalco, Otumba, and of course at Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. It was in Tlatelolco before the Mexicans annexed it and while it was still independent that the pochteca seem to have had the greatest influence. They lived in seven districts, and one of these was called Pochtlan, which gave them their name: each of the districts had a commercial court or seat' -- literally a mat, petlatl. If Chimalpahin is to be believed, it was only in the year 12 tecpatl, 1504, that 'inpeuh pochtecayotl Mexico' -- that trading began in Mexico: 51 he means, no doubt, that at this late date the guild was officially organised, after the manner of the pochteca of Tlatelolco and at their instigation, they having been Mexican citizens for thirty-one years.

  The Tlatelolcan merchants, for their part, had begun in the early days of the fifteenth century, when the tiatoaxi Tlacateotl, who came to the throne in 1407, reigned over their city; and we are told that it was they who first brought fine cotton cloth to the then still countrified people of the lake-city. 52 Under the second ruler of Tlatelolco, Quauhtlatoa ( 1428-1467) they imported lip-ornaments, feathers, and the skins of wild animals; under Moquiuixtli, their last independent sovereign, the list of the goods that they brought back from their distant long voyages was much longer, and cocoa figures prominently in it, having by then become the usual drink of the better sort of people. The guild had at its head two chiefs, the pochtecatlatohque, 'merchant lords', whose name carried the honorific suffix --tzin.

  After the annexation of Tlatelolco, the traders of that city and those of Tenochtitlan were closely associated, although the two bodies retained their individuality. Their chiefs, who numbered three or five, were old men; and for this reason they no longer went out on the tiring and perilous

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  voyages, but entrusted their goods to the younger pochteca to be sold on their account. They supervised the departure of the caravans and presided over the ceremonies at their going and their coming back; they represented the guilds before the emperor, and they judged all law-suits within the trading class, not merely cases to do with commerce but cases of every kind. Their courts could pronounce all sentences, including that of death.

  This privilege was all the more striking because in matters of justice there were no other exceptions whatever in Mexican society, and the emperor's courts judged everybody, from the tecuhtli to the maceualli. The pochtecatl alone stood outside this rule. In many respects the traders formed a nation within a nation: unlike the soldiers and even the priests they did not draw recruits from the common people -- they were traders from father to son. They all lived together in the same districts, and they married among themselves. They had their own gods, their own feasts, and they worshipped in their own manner, for during their long journeys they had no priests but themselves.

  We have seen the very marked graduation that existed in the ruling class: the same applied to the merchants, and there were many ranks interposed between the chiefs and the young trader setting out on his first voyage. There were the tecuhnenenque, 'travelling lords', respected for their long and dangerous expeditions; the naualoztomeca, 'disguised traders', who wore the clothes and spoke the language of the hostile tribes in order to reach the mysterious Tzinacantlan 53 to buy amber and quetzal plumes; the tealtianime, who had offered slaves in sacrifice; the teyaualouanime, 'those who surround the enemy', and the tequanime, the 'wild beasts'. The last two sound strange, applied to traders; but the truth is that their commerce was a continual adventure. The farther they were from Mexico the more dangerous their life became. They were thought to be spies as well as merchants -- as indeed they were -- and they had to contend with the hostility of the tribes who were as yet unconquered. Their goods aroused the cupidity of the highlanders: brigands attacked their caravans; and the

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  pochlecatl had to transform himself into a warrior in order to survive.

  This in fact was the original cause for the rise of the merchant class in the social system of the ancient city. In the reign of Auitzotl a column of Mexican traders was surrounded in a village of the Anahuac Ayotlan, on the Pacific side of the isthmus of Tehuantepec. They were besieged by contingents from different tribes, but fighting continuously they held out for four years, and when the future emperor Motecuhzoma, who was then tlacochcalcatl, came at the head of a Mexican army to extricate them he met the victorious pochteca on the road, laden with the spoils of their attackers.

  With their hair down to their waists and their air of exhaustion and of triumph, these merchant-warriors made an extraordinary impression in Mexico, where they were received by the emperor with great magnificence. When they were welcomed at the palace, they laid at Auitzotl's feet the standards and the insignia made of precious feathers that they had captured in battle. He called them 'my uncles' and at once gave them the right to wear jewels of gold and feather ornaments -- a right that was limited to their particular holidays, however, whereas the ruling class had the privilege without any restrictions.

  According to Sahagήn the spokesman who answered Auitzotl in the name of the merchants said, 'We, your uncles, the pochteca who are here, we have risked our heads and our lives, and we have laboured day and night; for although we are called traders and although we seem to be traders, we are captains and soldiers who, in a disguised fashion, go out to conquer.' 54 This is a remarkable speech, for it must be seen as the expression of a kind of legal fiction designed to allow the merchants certain social advantages and to justify to the soldiers what would fo
rmerly have appeared intolerable effrontery. In fact, it was untrue to say that the pochteca were camouflaged soldiers: they were primarily and above all merchants. But the very conditions of their trading sometimes brought them into military action; and in this respect the siege that they were able to

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  withstand in the isthmus of Tehuantepec was of decisive importance in their history. This side of their life was really quite secondary, in spite of everything, but nevertheless it was this side that was most emphazised from that time onwards. Auitzotl and after him Motecuhzoma II saw how useful these tireless traders could be to the empire; for it may be said that in these two reigns conquest followed the caravan, and the flag took the place of the merchant's cloth. As a recompense the trader was officially supposed to have taken up his calling only to dissemble his true character, which was that of a warrior -- a pious falsehood that nevertheless allowed the mercantile class to rise in a society of whose fundamental principle it remained fundamentally ignorant.

  And indeed what a total opposition there was between the way of life of a pochtecatl and that of the ruling class. The one was wholly taken up with service and reputation, the other with the pursuit of personal gain. The high official wore the embroidered cloak and the plume of his rank with pride; the trader went meekly along in a patched and homely garment. If one met him with his porters and their costly burdens he would softly deny that he could be the owner -- he was only an intermediary. On his return from a voyage he would bring his goods to the warehouse by night, secretly over the water of the lake, and store them under the name of a relation or a friend.