Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  MEALS

  The Mexican of former times was the same frugal being that he is today. Most of the time he was satisfied with a sparse and meagre diet, primarily composed of maize in the shape of cakes, pottage or tamales, and of beans and huauhtli, or amaranth, seeds and chian, or sage. However, for all that, it is but justice to admit that the diet of the precolumbian plebeian was more varied than the diet of his equivalent today, for it included some plants, both cultivated (like the huauhtli 93 ) and wild, and batrachians and insects, all of

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  which are much less used today, if not totally forgotten. The upper classes, of course, were able to enjoy a much more advanced kind of cookery.

  At dawn, the time of rising, there was no meal, no breakfast: this happened only at about ten o'clock, after some hours of work, and it nearly always consisted of a bowl of atolli, 94 a maize porridge, thick or thin as the case might be, and either sweetened with honey or seasoned with pimento. Rich men and dignitaries could drink cocoa, a luxury imported from the Hot Lands, sweetened with vanilla-scented honey or mixed with green maize, with octli (fermented agave sap) or with pimento. 95

  The main meal was in the middle of the day, for everybody, during the hottest hours; and those that could, followed it with a short siesta. For the common people it was but a brief affair -- maize-cakes, beans, pimento or tomato sauce and sometimes tamales; rarely any meat, such as game, venison or poultry (turkey). Water was their drink. A family, squatting round the hearth on their mats, would eat their frugal meal without spending long over it: the man of the house would often be obliged by his work to be away at noon, and he would eat his lunch, his itacatl, from a bag prepared by his wife in the morning.

  But in rich men's houses dinner was a matter of many and varied dishes. Every day more than three hundred were prepared for Motecuhzoma, and a thousand for the inhabitants of the palace. Before eating, the emperor chose whatever pleased him among the day's dishes -- turkeys, pheasants, partridges, crows, wild or tame ducks, deer, wild boars, pigeons, hares, rabbits. Then he sat down, alone, on an icpalli, and a low table was put in front of him, with a white tablecloth and white napkins.

  'Four very handsome, very clean women gave him water for his hands in the deep finger-bowls that are called xicales (calabashes); other plate-like vessels were held under his hands, and they gave him towels; then two other women brought maize-cakes.' 96 From time to time the sovereign was pleased to honour one of the dignitaries of his suite by giving him one of the dishes that he liked. When he had

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  finished the first and chief course they brought him fruit 'of all the kinds that grow in the country; but he only ate a very little fruit, and that at long intervals.' 97 After this he drank cocoa and washed his hands as he had at the beginning of the meal. Dwarf or hunchbacked buffoons produced their tricks and their jokes: Motecuhzoma took one of the painted, gilded pipes that had been placed within his reach, smoked for a short while, and went to sleep.

  In the emperor's palace at Mexico, and no doubt in the palaces of the allied kings and the great men in the provinces, enough food was made ready to supply the personal suite, the officials, the priests, etc. 'When the sovereign had eaten, he bade his pages or his servants serve all the lords and ambassadors who had come from the various towns, and also the palace guards: there were also fed those who brought up the young men, who are called tepuchtlatoque, as well as the priests of the idols, and the singers and the servants and all those who belonged to the palace and also the workmen, the goldsmiths, the feather-workers, the lapidaries and those who make mosaics, and those who make the splendid shoes for the dignitaries, and the hairdressers who cut their hair.' 98 They were also given cocoa prepared in various ways: Sahagún lists some ten different recipes.

  The skill of the Aztec chefs was shown by a comparable variety in their dishes: the same historian gives seven kinds of maize-cake, six of tamales, many kinds of roast or seethed meat, some twenty made-dishes of poultry, fish, batrachians or insects, and an infinite variety of vegetable, pulse, sweetpotato, pimento and tomato dishes.

  Among the dishes that the rulers particularly liked may be mentioned tamales stuffed with meat, snails or fruit -the last being served with clear poultry soup; frogs with pimento sauce; white fish (iztac michi) with red pepper and tomatoes; axolotls, a kind of newt peculiar to Mexico and considered a great delicacy, with yellow peppers; fish served with a sauce made of crushed calabash-seeds; other fish with a sharp fruit not unlike our cherries; winged ants; agave worms (meocuilin); maize and huauhtli pottages, salted or sugared, with pimento or honey; French beans

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  (exotl); and various kinds of roots, including the camotli, or sweet potato. 99

  As the ancient Mexicans had neither fat nor oil, they could not fry; everything was either grilled or more often boiled and very highly peppered and seasoned. As they had no cattle either, the meat part of their diet came solely from game and the two domesticated creatures, the turkey and the dog.

  Central Mexico, at that time, was very rich in game -rabbits, hares, deer, wild pigs (peccaries), birds such as pheasants, crows, doves, and above all the innumerable species of wildfowl that filled the lakes. This wealth in the lakes and the marshes had been a happy compensation for the wretchedness of the Aztecs in the early days, and in the sixteenth century the people still drew a considerable share of their food from these birds, which, at given seasons, arrived in hosts to settle on the water and make their nests in the reeds and the rushes. 100

  Furthermore -- and this was no doubt something that had persisted from the days when the tribe had barely managed to keep itself in the marshes -- the Mexicans ate a wide variety of things that came from the water -- frogs, axolotls, tadpoles (atepocatl), fresh-water shrimps (acociltin), little water-flies (amoyotl), aquatic larvæ (aneneztli), white worms (ocuiliztac) and even the eggs that a water-fly, the axayacatl, laid in enormous quantities upon the water and which were eaten as a sort of caviar under the name of ahuauhtli. Poor people and the lakeside peasants skimmed a floating substance from the surface which was called tecuitlatl ('stone dung'); it was something like cheese, and they squeezed it into cakes; they also ate the spongy nests of water-fly larvæ.

  Those things were the meat of poverty, which the tribe had been happy enough to find, no doubt, when it was lowly and poor, and by the sixteenth century they were no more than supplements in the diet of the humblest people. But even the rich and the lords themselves did not scorn batrachians, some reptiles, such as the iguana (quauhcuetzpalin), and some ants, nor the agave-worms, which are still

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  thought of as a great delicacy in Mexico today. And then, since the empire had stretched to reach both the oceans, they had learnt the delights of sea-fish, turtles, crabs and oysters. 101

  The turkey (totolin: the male was called uexolotl, from which comes the present guajalote) was a native of Mexico, and it had been domesticated there from the earliest times. The Spaniards often called it 'the chicken of the country'. It the was chief inhabitant of the farm-yard or poultry-run, and each family had some in its garden, next to the house. The poorer people ate turkey only on great occasions, however.

  As for the dog, it was a particular hairless kind which was fattened for eating. Its flesh was no doubt less esteemed than that of the turkey, for Sahagún tells us that 'in dishes the turkey-meat was put on top, and the dog underneath, to make it seem more (para hacer bulto)'. 102 However, a great many of these creatures were reared, and the chronicler Muñoz Camargo states that he had some of them himself well after the conquest. 103 The custom died out because of the introduction of European cattle, and also, it appears, because the killing of the dogs was inextricably mixed with certain pagan ceremonies and it was opposed by the Spanish authorities.

  For the same kind of reason the Spanish clergy and missionaries laboured against the growing of the amaranth (huauhtli). From the point of view of the material well-being of the Mexicans they h
ad only too much success; but in their eyes this plant, which gave a considerable harvest, was too closely bound to the native religion. 104 It is known, however, that the ancient Mexican thought of their four food-plants as almost equally valuable: they were maize (centli) which was revered above all as the essential source of life, the bean (etl), amaranth and sage.

  The Codex Mendoza shows that the cities that were subject to tribute were obliged to furnish the Aztec collectors with considerable quantities of these four commodities each year. The seeds of the last two could be made into tzoalli and chianpinolli, refreshing and nourishing gruel; and an oil not unlike linseed oil was extracted from the seeds of sage and used for paint.

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  The period between the two harvests, the time in June and July when ends would barely meet, was a time of anxiety and extreme hunger for the Indians of those days, as it still is for those who live in the remote country or the infertile parts. 'Then men were hungry indeed; then the grains of maize cost a great deal; and then was the time of great dearth.' 105

  In Mexico the government tried to remedy this situation by distributing victuals to the people during the month Uey tecuilhuitl. The emperor 'showed his good-will towards the common people' by causing them all to be given tamales and maize-porridge. Elsewhere people were obliged to revert to gathering wild plants, in the manner of those who lived before agriculture. The Aztecs may have reproached the Otomí with stooping so low as to eat unclean animals, such as snakes, rats and lizards, 106 but they themselves were obliged to seek the edible wild plants, the quilitl (quelites in modern Hispano-Mexican); and they could distinguish the use and appearance of a wonderful variety of them. Sahagún describes a great many species, 107 including the huauhquilitl or wild amaranth, which was particularly valued. The peasant women sold them in the markets: the mother of the emperor Itzcoatl himself had sold quilitl in the marketplace of Atzcapotzalco. 108

  In spite of its apparent abundance, nature was hard on men in Mexico. Famines often occurred; every year there was the threat of shortage, and agricultural techniques were too primitive to he able to contend with uncommon emergencies, such as swarms of locusts, sudden multitudes of rodents, excessive falls of rain or snow. One of the chief tasks of the native government was the accumulation of sufficient reserves in the granaries to cope with these disasters: in 1450 the three rulers of the allied cities distributed the saved-up stores of grain of ten years and more. 109 But still there was always the need for stop-gap foods, animal or vegetable, in an emergency; and the primitive nomad, living by hunting and gathering, continually shows through the settled farmer. In time of dearth the peasants of the central plateau would slip back through many centuries.

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  As we have seen, the Mexicans breakfasted in the middle of the morning and dined at the beginning of the afternoon. The second meal was also the last, for most of them, unless they should happen to take a gruel (thirst-quenching and nourishing at the same time) made of maize, amaranth or sage before going to bed. But those who stayed up, dignitaries or merchants giving a feast or a banquet, would sup abundantly, and often all night long.

  Stores had to be procured in advance for one of these banquets -- maize, beans, pulses, peppers, tomatoes, eighty or a hundred turkeys, a score of dogs, twenty loads of cocoa. The guests came towards midnight. 'When they had all come, they were given water for washing their hands and then the meal was served. Once this was done with, they washed their hands again and their mouths and then cocoa and pipes were handed about. Lastly the guests were given cloaks and flowers as presents.' 110 Here one is concerned with a gathering of rich merchants. The feasts went on until the dawn, with dances and songs, and the party broke up only in the morning, after a last cup of scented cocoa, redolent of honey and vanilla.

  Tobacco, as it has already been pointed out, had a great place. Guests, at least among the ruling class and the merchants, were given pipes ready for smoking at the end of the meal. These were cylindrical tubes, with no separate bowl, and they were made of reed, or perhaps sometimes of baked clay; they were highly decorated, and they were charged with a mixture of tobacco, charcoal and liquidambar. 111 One thus had a kind of large aromatic cigar; and its taste must have been rather unlike that which is expected in a cigar today. There was not very much smoking between meals. Strolling about with a pipe in one's hand was a mark of nobility and elegance.

  Tobacco was widely used in medicine and in religious ceremonies. It was thought to have pharmaceutical virtues and a religious value, and in some ceremonies the priests carried a calabash filled with tobacco on their back. The use of the plant among the laity in the pre-cortesian period does not seem to have spread to the common people.

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  Other far more efficacious narcotics or intoxicants were also in use; and the users of them sought either consolation or prophetic visions. The authors 112 particularly mention the peyotl, a little cactus which is a native of northern Mexico and which brings about coloured hallucinations. 'Those who eat it,' says Sahagún, 'have horrifying or comic visions, and this drunkenness lasts two or three days before going off. This plant is used as a food by the Chichimecs; it sustains them and gives them courage to fear neither battle nor thirst nor hunger; and they say that it preserves them from all danger.'

  Peyotl still plays a great part in the religious life of the Indians of the north-west of Mexico and the south of the United States. 113 Other plants, whose effects have not yet been studied, appear to have been used as narcotics; among them were the vegetative parts of the tlapatl, one of the solanaceæ, and the seeds of the mixitl. But the one most often referred to in literature was a fungus, the teonanacatl ('sacred fungus'), which was served to the guests at the beginning of a banquet. 'The first thing that was eaten at this feast was a little black fungus which makes men drunk and gives them visions: it also inclines them to lechery. They ate it before sunrise . . . with honey; and when they began to grow warm, they started to dance. Some sang, some wept, so drunk were they by reason of these funguses; and others did not sing, but sat quiet in the room, thinking. Some saw they that were going to die, and wept; some saw themselves devoured by a wild beast; some saw themselves taking prisoners upon a battlefield, or else growing rich, or the masters of many slaves. Others saw that they would be convicted of adultery and that by reason of this crime their heads would be crushed; others saw that they would steal and be killed; and there were many other visions. When the drunkenness caused by these funguses had died away, they talked to one another about the visions that they had.' 114

  Perhaps the most surprising point for us in all these descriptions is that there is never at any time any question of alcoholic drinks. Yet the Indians were perfectly well acquainted with an alcoholic drink -- octli (now called

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  pulque), which is obtained by fermenting the sap of the agave, and which is quite like cider. The importance of octli is proved by the very important Rôle played in religion by the gods of drink and drunkenness, those who were called the Centzon Totochtin ('the Four Hundred [innumerable] Rabbits'), the lunar and terrestrial gods of plenty and of the harvest, as well as Mayauel, the goddess of the agave. 115

  But the ancient Mexicans were perfectly well aware of the danger for them and for their civilisation that alcoholic intoxication implied. Perhaps no culture in history has ever set up more rigid barriers against this danger. 'That drink which is called octli,' said the emperor in his address to the people after his election, 'is the root and the origin of all evil and of all perdition; for octli and drunkenness are the cause of all the discords and of all the dissensions, of all revolt and of all troubles in cities and in realms. It is like the whirlwind that destroys and tears down everything. It is like a malignant storm that brings all evil with it. Before adultery, rape, debauching of girls, incest, theft, crime, cursing and bearing false-witness, murmuring, calumny, riots and brawling, there is always drunkenness. All those things are caused by octli and by drunkenness.' 116<
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  When one studies the literature upon the subject, one has the feeling that the Indians were very clearly aware of their strong natural inclination to alcoholism, and that they were quite determined to work against this evil, and to control themselves, by practising an extraordinarily severe policy of repression. 'Nobody drank wine (octli) excepting only those who were already aged, and they drank a little in secret, without becoming drunk. If a drunk man showed himself in public, or if he were caught drinking, or if he were found speechless in the street, or if he wandered about singing or in the company of other drunkards, he was punished, if he were a plebeian, by being beaten to death, or else he was strangled before the young men (of the district) by way of an example and to make them shun drunkenness. If the drunkard were noble, he was strangled in private.' 117

  There were ferocious laws against public drunkenness. The statutes of Nezaualcoyotl punished the priest taken in

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  drunkenness with death; and death was the punishment for the drunken dignitary, official or ambassador if he were found in the palace: the dignitary who had got drunk without scandal was still punished, but only by the loss of his office and his titles. 118 The drunken plebeian got off the first time with no more than having his head shaved in public, while the crowd jeered at him; but the backslider was punished with death, as the nobles were for their first offence. 119