Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  Each step of the social ladder had its god or gods, and each subdivision of living-place or work, and each village or city. It is the imperial religion of a great state that is in the process of formation, but that is still no more than a confederation of many little highly individual states, each with its own history and traditions and often its own language.

  Just as the political institutions at the summit tended to grow stronger and to find the formation necessary for an imperial state, so the meditation of the priests tended to bring order into this theological chaos. A syncretism was coming into being, but unhappily through the confused, obscure accounts we can apprehend only a few aspects of it.

  Some gods had risen above the crowd, and through them the Mexican thinkers attempted to bring about the religious synthesis that was essential to them: this they did by endowing the great gods with multiple attributes, by stating that many of the divine names were synonyms for these gods, and by postulating genealogies to link them together. Tezcatlipoca, in particular, seems to have been becoming the guiding principle in the world of gods.

  According to one of the traditions, the first pair begot four sons, who were the creators of the other gods and of the world: the red Tezcatlipoca, identified with Xipe Totec and Camaxtli or Mixcoatl; the black Tezcatlipoca, who was the Tezcatlipoca usually worshipped under that name; the blue Tezcatlipoca, who was no other than Uitzilopochtli; and finally Quetzalcoatl. Thus the positions of a whole series of divine persons are fixed in relation to the four great directions in space and at the same time the number of

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  persons is reduced to two, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl: Uitzilopochtli, a parvenu, a newcomer with his tribe, is integrated; so is Xipe Totec, a foreign god.

  There is a comparable work of synthesis apparent in books like the Borgia and Cospiano manuscripts, which probably come from the regions of Puebla, Tepeaca, Tehuacán and Tlaxcala. 43 Some distant towns, such as Teotitlán on the frontier of Oaxaca, were well known for the wisdom and the meditations of their priests.

  Quetzalcoatl, who was particularly venerated at Cholula in this same region of Puebla, was also one of those whose stature rose high above that of the ordinary run of gods. As we have seen, one tradition made him the equal of Tezcatlipoca. He was the Toltec god, the god of the settled civilised people of the high plateau, the inventor of the arts, of writing and of the calendar; he was the expression of everything that makes life kinder and more lovely, as well as that of the planet Venus, with its message of resurrection. It was right, therefore, to set up against him the sombre northern god of the night sky, of war and magic. For the legend of Tula told how Tezcatlipoca the wizard had turned the beneficent god-king out of his town and condemned the plumed serpent to exile.

  So, at least in some circles, in the calmecac" where the erudite priests studied the many-coloured manuscripts or watched the march of the stars by night, a new conception arose -- that of a divine world dominated by a small number of beings, or mythical personalities, each with many aspects.

  Some went further. The pious king Nezaualcoyotl erected a temple dedicated to 'the unknown god, creator of all things' who was called Tloque Nahuaque, 'he of the immediate vicinity' or Ipalnemohuani, 'he by whom we live'. On the top of this temple was a tower with nine storeys 'which stood for nine heavens, and the tenth, which finished these nine storeys, was painted black and studded with stars outside, while the inside was adorned with gold, gems and precious feathers'. And this god, whom no man 'had either known or seen up to that time' was not represented by any statue or idol. 44

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  This cult in no way hindered Nezaualcoyotlfrom worshipping a great many other gods at the same time. There was no monotheism here, but rather a belief in a supreme god raised above all the others, nameless (since the words which designate him are no more than epithets), with no history in myth, and faceless.

  It is very likely that these philosophical and theological speculations were confined to a small circle of people high in the state and the church. The villagers of the high plateau or the tropical lands would certainly never have admitted that their local gods were inferior to any great deity, and the people of the various districts of the capital no doubt preferred the gods of their little temples, near to them and attached to them by tradition, to the abstract divinities of the priests.

  In any case, one thing is certain, and that is that this religion, with its scrupulous and exacting ritual and the profusion of its myths, penetrated, in all its aspects, deeply into the everyday life of men. Continuously and totally, it moulded the existence of the Mexican nation.

  Everything was under its domination: public life and private life; each stage of each person's progress from birth to death; the rhythm of time; the arts and even games -nothing escaped. It was this religion which, like a powerful frame, upheld the whole edifice of Mexican civilisation: so, when once this frame was broken by the invaders, it was not surprising that the entirety should have fallen in ruins.

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  CHATER FOUR

  A MEXICAN'S DAY

  The house, furniture and gardens. Different kinds of house: mats, chests, seats, various pieces of furniture: heating and lighting: the hearth, centre of the house: the splendour of the gardens--Getting up, washing and dressing, clothes. Personal cleanliness and baths: hairdressing: women's beauty and its care: men's and women's clothes: sandals: luxury in clothes and ornaments--Business, work, ceremonies. Farming work: state business and public service: the priests: law-suits: holidays and rites: various trades--Meals. The time of meals: Mexican cooking and its natural resources: banquets: tobacco and narcotics: alcohol and drunkenness.--Games and amusements. Hunting: the ball-game: gambling--The Rhythm of day and night. Measurement of time in a clockless civilisation: intervals marked by priestly instruments: nocturnal activity.

  THE HOUSE, FURNITURE AND GARDENS

  The sky above the volcanoes grows pale. The morning star shines with the brilliance of a gem and to greet it the wooden gongs beat on the temple-tops and the conchs wail. There are still wafts of mist over the water, in the icy air of this altitude, but they dissolve in the first rays of the sun. Day has begun. People are waking up in all the houses, great and small, from one end of the city to the other and in the lakeside villages and solitary huts.

  With their wicker fans the women blow on the fire that smoulders between the hearth-stones, and then, kneeling before the metlatl of volcanic stone they begin grinding the maize. The work of the day begins with this dull rumble of the grinder: it has begun like this for thousands of years. A little later comes the rhythmic slapping of the women gently flattening the maize-dough between their hands to make the pancake-like tortillas or tlaxcalli.

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  In the gardens and courtyards there are the gobbling turkeys busily picking about: naked or sandalled feet pad along the earth roads: paddles stir the water of the canals. Everyone hurries towards the day's work. Very soon the men are all gone, to the city or into the fields, often carrying their itacall (luncheon) in a bag; and the women stay at home.

  In a town like Mexico there were naturally great differences between the various kinds of house, according to the rank, the wealth or the profession of the people who lived in them. At the one extreme stood the palaces of the emperor and the dignitaries, huge constructions with both a public and private character and with many rooms, and at the other the peasants' huts in the suburbs, made of mud and wattle, with grass roofs.

  Most of the houses were made of sun-dried brick: the more modest constructions had only one main room -- the kitchen would be a little separate building in the courtyard. The number of rooms increased with the family's wealth: an average type of house had a kitchen, a room where the whole family slept, and a little domestic shrine: the bathroom (temazcalli) was always built separately. If it was possible, the number of rooms was increased; and there was a tendency to reserve one or more for the women.

  Craftsmen had their workshops a
nd traders their warehouses. The site upon which each house was built was rarely completely covered by the buildings: there was an inner courtyard, a garden where the children could play in the perpetually spring-like weather of Tenochtitlan, and the women could weave and spin. Most of these plots were bordered on at least one side by a canal and each family had its own landing-place: it was thus that the merchants could come by night to store their goods without being seen. 1

  The houses, grand or simple, hardly differed at all in their furnishing. This was reduced, as it is in the East, to a point that would mean discomfort to us. The beds were no more than mats, many or few, finer or coarser: a sort of bed-curtain might be set up over them, as in the case of the beds the Spaniards were given in Axayacatl's palace. 'However great a lord he might be, no one had any bed

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  other than this kind,' says Bernal Díaz. 2 And this was in a royal palace. Among the common people a single mat answered the purpose, and during the daytime it was a seat.

  In fact it was a mat (petlatl) set upon a low platform made of earth or, for more solemn occasions, of wood, that was the seat, not only in private houses but everywhere -- in law-courts, for example. The word petlatl was even used to mean a court or an office of the administration. A more highly-evolved chair existed, however -- the icpalli made of wood or wickerwork and with a back -- and in the manuscripts emperors and dignitaries are often shown sitting in them. 3

  They were low chairs, without feet: the cushion upon which one sat cross-legged rested directly on the ground. The back, which leaned backwards a little, came somewhat higher than the sitter's head. These icpalli were made particularly at Cuauhtitlán, which had to supply four thousand a year and as many mats, by way of tax. 4 The furniture meant for the emperor was covered with cloth or skins, and adorned with gold. 5

  A family's clothes, pieces of cloth and jewels were kept in wickerwork chests called petlacalli, 6 a word which also means the state treasure and is found in the name of the official, the petlacalcatl, in charge of the finances of the empire. These frail coffers, which were only covered baskets, offered no real resistance to thieves; nor did the lockless doors, and from this arose the extreme severity of the laws against theft. When it was desired to protect things very thoroughly they were closed in behind a false. 7 wall in the house: Motecuhzoma did this to hide the treasure of Axayacatl. Mats, chests and a few seats, and all these woven out of reeds or rushes, that was the furniture of an Aztec house, rich or poor. In the emperor's palace, and no doubt among the dignitaries, there were also a few low tables and richly-ornamented wooden screens which served to keep off the excessive heat of the fire or to cut off a part of the room for a time. 'If it was cold,' says Díaz, 8 'they made (for Motecuhzoma) a great fire of embers with bark that made no smoke and that smelt very pleasant; and so that these

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  embers should not give more heat than he wanted, they put before the fire a kind of plank [sic] adorned with gold and having representations of idols upon it . . . and when he began to eat, a wooden door all decorated with gold was put in front of him, so that he should not be seen eating.'

  In passing, one may observe the worthy Díaz' difficulty at this point, for he had obviously never seen a screen at home, in Spain. It is also clear from this description that even among the great men there was no dining-room: meals were eaten anywhere at all.

  Thus furnished, or rather thus devoid of furniture, these houses must have appeared naked and cold, with their floors of beaten earth or flags and their whitewashed walls. It is probable, however, that the walls of the richer houses were decorated with frescoes or were hung with coloured cloth or skins. When guests were invited, the inside of the house was ornamented with flowers and branches. For heating there were wood fires -- the importance of wood as a fuel is emphasised by the frequent mention of it in literature -- or braziers: they were not really very efficient methods of heating, and although the Mexican climate does not run to extremes of cold, the Aztecs must have shivered on their mats on those winter nights when the temperature fell suddenly. Yet the Aztecs were happier than the Romans, whose system of heating was not much better; for at least they were sure of being able to get warm again in the sun, when the day was come, for the winter is the dry season in Mexico. As for the lighting, it was no less primitive: resinous torches of pine-wood (ocotl) were used indoors, and outside links and huge braziers piled with resinous wood served for public lighting when circumstances -- a religious ceremony, for example -- called for it. 9

  In the middle of every house, particularly the most unassuming, there was the hearth, the image and the incarnation of the 'Old God' the god of fire. The three stones between which the logs were burnt or upon which the pots rested had therefore a sacred character: the mysterious power of the god was within them, and anyone who offended the fire by walking on the hearth-stones was sure to die very soon. 10

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  Fire was held in particular veneration by the merchants: during the night before the departure of a caravan they would gather at the house of one of their number, and standing before his hearth they would sacrifice birds, burn incense and throw magic figures cut out of paper into the flames. On their return they gave the fire its share of the feast with which they celebrated the fortunate outcome of their voyage. 11

  The luxury of the great houses did not reside in their furnishing, whose simplicity has been described, nor in their comfort, which was hardly better than that of the simplest dwellings, but in the size and number of their rooms and perhaps even more in the variety and splendour of their gardens.

  The palace of king Nezaualcoyotl at Texcoco was a rectangle more than a thousand yards long by some eight hundred wide. 12 Part of this space was occupied by public buildings -- council chambers, courts, offices, armouries -and part by private -- the king's apartments, the harem, the apartments intended for the sovereigns of Mexico and Tlacopan: in all they amounted to more than three hundred rooms. The rest was given over to the gardens 'with many fountains, ponds and canals, many fish and birds, and the whole planted with more than two thousand pines . . . and there were several mazes, according to where the king bathed; and once a man was in he could not find the way out . . . and farther on, beside the temples, there was the bird-house, where the king kept all the kinds and varieties of birds, animals, reptiles and serpents that they brought him from every part of New Spain; and those which were not to be had were represented in gold and precious stones -which was also the case with the fish, both those of the sea and those that lived in the rivers and lakes. So no bird, fish or animal of the whole country was wanting here: they were there either alive or figured in gold and gems.'

  Besides his palace at Texcoco the same king had had gardens planted in other places, particularly at Tetzcotzinco. 'These parks and gardens were adorned with rich and sumptuously ornamented alcázars 13 with their fountains,

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  their irrigation channels, their canals, their lakes and their bathing-places and wonderful mazes, where he had had a great variety of flowers planted and trees of all kinds, foreign and brought from distant puts . . . and the water intended for the fountains, pools and channels for watering the flowers and the trees in this park came from its spring: to bring it, it had been necessary to build strong, high, cemented walls of unbelievable size, going from one mountain to the other with an aqueduct on top which came out at the highest part of the park.' The water accumulated first in a reservoir beautified with historical bas-reliefs 'which the first bishop of Mexico, brother Juan de Zumárraga, had broken, because he believed that they had to do with idolatry', and thence it flowed off by two principal canals, the one to the north, the other to the south, running through the gardens and filling basins, where sculptured stelæ were reflected in the surface. Coming out of one of these basins, the water 'leapt and dashed itself to pieces on the rocks, falling into a garden planted with all the scented flowers of the Hot Lands, and in this garden it seemed to rain, so very
violently was the water shattered upon these rocks. Beyond this garden there were the bathing-places, cut in the living rock . . . and beyond them the castle that the king had in this park and in which still other rooms and halls were seen, and many of them; one was a very large hall with a court in front of it, and it was there that he received the kings of Mexico and Tlacopan and other great lords when they came to enjoy themselves with him: the dances and the other spectacles and delights took place in this court . . . The whole of the rest of this park was planted, as I have said, with all kinds of trees and scented flowers, and there were all kinds of birds apart from those that the king had brought from various parts in cages: all these birds sang harmoniously and to such degree that one could not hear oneself speak. Outside the gardens and beyond a wall the country began, full of deer, rabbits and hares.' 14

  Has the hispanified Indian chronicler Ixtlilxochitl, himself descended from Nezaualcoyotl, let himself be carried

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  away by pride in the dynasty? The remaining traces of the gardens of Tetzcotzinco, alas, give but a faint idea of their former splendour; but they confirm Ixtlilxochitl in the essentials. The cascades, the sheets of water and the flowerbeds have vanished, but the empty reservoirs are still to be seen cut in the rock; the aqueduct, the steps and the terraces are still there. 15

  Besides, the conquerors saw comparable marvels from the time they first came into the valley of Mexico. They passed the night before their entry into the capital at Iztapalapan: Díaz was entranced by the palace in which they stayed -- 'so large and well-built in the best kind of stone, with the rooftimbers made of cedar and other sweet-smelling woods -ery big rooms, and what was particularly worth seeing, patios covered over with cotton awnings. When we had looked through all this, we went into the garden; it was delightful to walk in it, and I was never weary of observing the variety of the plants and their perfumes, the flower-beds, many fruit-trees and roses [sic] of the country, and a pool of sweet water. There was another extraordinary thing: large boats could come right into this orchard from the lake.' And the old Spanish soldier, writing his memoirs many years later, adds sadly, 'Ahora todo está por el suelo, perdido, que no hay cosa.' Now all that is fallen, lost: nothing is left any more. 16