Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

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  course of time all the civilised tribes of Mexico have used either the one form or the other: we need mention no more than the funerary chambers of the Mayas of Palenque and those of the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs of Monte Albán, and the famous pyre of Quetzalcoatl -- for the tradition of the Toltecs was that of cremation. 98 The nomadic peoples of the north buried their dead, but adopted the Toltec custom: at least the chief families did so. King Ixtlilxochitl of Texcoco was the first ruler of that dynasty whose body was burnt 'according to the rites and ceremonies of the Toltecs'. 99 It is probable that the old settled nations of the plateau practised burial; and this would explain why the dead who had been marked out by Tlaloc and his fellows should have had this form of interment reserved for them.

  In Aztec times the two kinds of ceremony existed side by side, and the family's choice was determined only by the manner of the death. Important people were solemnly buried in vaulted underground chambers. 100 The anonymous conquistador tells how he himself took part in the opening of a tomb in which they found a dead man seated upon a chair, with his shield, his sword and his jewels about him: the tomb contained gold to the value of three thousand castellanos. 101 Father Francesco di Bologna also describes an 'underground chapel' in which the body was seated upon an icpalli, splendidly dressed and surrounded by weapons and gems. 102

  When the dead man had been a very high dignitary or a ruler, some of his wives and servants were killed, 'those who, of their own free-will, wished to die with him'; 103 and they were buried or cremated, as the case might be, so that they should be able to follow him in the hereafter.

  When the cremation of a body was intended, it was dressed in its best clothes and fastened in a squatting position, with the knees drawn up to the chin; then the whole was wrapped in several layers of cloth kept in place by bands, so as to form a kind of funerary bundle or mummy. Dead kings are always shown like this in historical records.

  This mummy was then carefully decorated with paper and feather ornaments, and a mask of carved stone or

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  mosaic was fixed in the place of the face. 104 Rulers were adorned, like Uitzilopochtli, with royal and sacred ornaments, or with clothes bearing the great god's symbols. 105 Then, to the sound of the funeral chants, miccacuicatl, the corpse, watched over by the elders, was burnt upon a pyre. When the cremation was over, the ashes and the bones were collected and put into a jar, together with a piece of jade, the symbol of life; and this jar was buried in the house. The ashes of the emperors were preserved in the temple of Uitzilopochtli.

  Some of the dead, as we have seen, had been chosen by the gods for a life beyond death: for the 'companions of the eagle' and for the 'valiant women' there was to be joy of the sun's palaces, full of light and sound; and for those beloved of Tlaloc an endless peaceful happiness, careless and idle, in the warm gardens of the east. But most of the dead were held to go under the earth, into the dark world of Mictlan. To help the dead man in the bitter trials that he would have to overcome, they gave him a companion, a dog which they killed and burnt together with him. There were also offerings burnt for him eighty days after the funeral, and again at the end of a year and again after two, three and four years. It was thought that when the four years had passed, the dead man would have arrived at the end of his journey among the shadows; for then he would have reached the 'ninth hell', the last region of Mictlan, the place of his eternal rest. 106

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  CHAPTER SIX

  WAR

  War. The meaning of war in religious myth and its legal justification: casus belli: chivalry in the negotiations leading to the declaration of war: conduct of war: negotiations for peace: why the Mexicans were overcome by the Spanish invaders.

  War (yaoyotl) was so important a preoccupation with the Aztecs and it held so great a place in the structure of their society and the life of their state that it seems necessary to treat it separately.

  We have already seen the general idea of the nature of war and the religious and mythical connotations that it possessed. Sacred war was a cosmic duty: it was symbolised by the double glyph atl-tlachinolli ('water' -- that is, 'blood' -and 'conflagration') which, like an obsession, continually recurs in all the bas-reliefs of the teocalli of Sacred War. 1 Men, by waging war, complied with what had been the will of the gods since the beginning of the world.

  According to the legend, the Four Hundred CloudSerpents (Centzon Mimixcoa, the northern stars), which had been created by the higher gods to give food and drink to the sun, abandoned their duty. 'They took a jaguar and did not give it to the sun. They decked themselves with feathers; they went to bed with their feather-ornaments on; they slept with women and they became drunk with the wine of tziuactli.' So the sun spoke to the men, who were born after the Mimixcoa, and said to them, '"My sons, you must now destroy the Four Hundred Cloud-Serpents, for they do not give anything either to our father or to our mother," . . . and it was thus that war began.' 2

  But as well as its mythico-religious aspect, war had another

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  side: it was the imperialistic cities' means of conquest, and as such, it acquired a justificatory legal basis. The official version of the three allied cities, Mexico, Texcoco and Tlacopan, was founded upon two pseudo-historical claims: it was asserted that the three dynasties had succeeded the Toltecs, who had ruled over all central Mexico, by right; and at the same time that, thanks to the house of Texcoco, the descendants of the Chichimec conquerors, they had a kind of suzerainty over the whole country. 'The three rulers thought of themselves as lords and masters over all the others, basing themselves upon the right that they claimed to have over the whole country, which had belonged to the Toltecs, whose heirs and successors they were, and upon the fresh conquest of the land by the great Chichimec, Xolotl, their ancestor.' 3 From this point of view, any city that was independent and intended to stay independent, was a rebel.

  In practice, a casus belli was needed to attack a city or a province. The most usual arose from attacks on the travelling pochteca, or traders. If they were robbed, pillaged and even perhaps massacred, then the military forces of the empire at once prepared to avenge them. The documents make it clear that a refusal to trade or the breaking-off of commercial relations was considered to be tantamount to a declaration of war. Ixtlilxochitl justifies the undertakings of the central cities by stating as the motive that the others 'had not agreed to trade or communicate with our people'. 4

  The Mexicans set out for the conquest of the isthmus of Tehuantepec after the inhabitants of several towns in that region had killed nearly all the members of a caravan of merchants. 5 The cause of the war between Mexico and the neighbouring city of Coyoacán was the rupture of the traditional trading relations. 'The Mexican women set off, carrying fish, frogs and ducks . . . to sell them at Coyoacán. Guards who had been placed on the roads thither took away everything that they had brought. They went back to Tenochtitlan weeping and moaning . . .' After this insult the Mexican women no longer went to the market at Coyoacán; and the chief of that city, seeing this, addressed

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  his dignitaries and said to them, 'Brothers, you see that the Mexican women do not come to the market any more: this is no doubt because of the insults that we have offered them. Let us then get our weapons ready, our shields and our swords . . . for soon we shall see the Mexicans coming, led by the banner of the eagle and the tiger.' 6

  There were other accepted casus belli. A ruler, having called his council to get it to take the final decision, was required to show the reasons that appeared to him to justify an expedition. 'If it was because merchants had been killed, the council would answer that it was a good reason and a just cause, meaning thereby that trade and business are a natural right, like hospitality and welcome for travellers, and that it was lawful to make war against those who did not observe this rule. If it was a messenger who had been killed, or if the ruler gave some other minor reason, the council said to him, as many
as three times, "Why do you want to make war?" meaning thereby that that was not a just nor a sufficient cause. But if the ruler called them together several times, the council yielded in the end.' 7

  To judge by the Mexican chronicles, some wars broke out solely for political reasons, that is, because one city distrusted the undertakings of another and decided to attack by way of defence. The people of Atzcapotzalco declared war against Tenochtitlan the day after the election of Itzcoatl, 'because of the hatred of the Mexicans that filled their hearts'; and fearing no doubt that the new sovereign would lead his tribe in a career of conquest, they determined to crush the menace in its beginnings and to exterminate the Mexicans. 8

  Fifty years later, the emperor Axayacatl decided to launch an attack upon Tlatelolco, Mexico's twin city; for he was persuaded that its ruler was trying to ally himself secretly with the neighbouring cities in order to make war on Tenochtitlan at the first opportunity. When there was a high degree of tension and distrust between cities, the most trivial incident could set off the conflict: in fact, it was the scolding and the insults of the market-women of Tlatelolco that began the war between these two. 9

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  Generally speaking, however, the war, the fighting itself, only started after long and painful negotiations. When Atzcapotzalco, having decided to wipe out the Aztecs, began hostilities by pushing their forward posts to the outskirts of the city, several Mexican embassies were still able to cross the lines, with the enemy's permission, to try to negotiate peace.

  These conversations broke down before the determination of the men of Atzcapotzalco to be done with this dangerous tribe; but up to the end the coming and going of the envoys and their interviews with the enemy sovereign were surrounded with the traditional ceremony. When at least it appeared that no possibility of peace remained, the atempanecatl Tlacaeleltzin 10 was charged with a last embassy to the ruler of Atzcapotzalco. He brought him the gifts of a cloak, a feather crown and some arrows. The enemy king thanked him and begged him carry his acknowledgments to Itzcoatl; then he gave him a shield, a sword and a splendid warrior's suit, 'desiring him to do his best to return to his place safe and sound.' 11 All this passed according to the rules of a courteous and chivalrous ceremonial, which required that enemies who were about to engage should treat one another with all the marks of esteem.

  At the time when the alliance of the three cities was at the height of its power, it scrupulously observed complex rules before entering into a war. The idea that underlay their approach was that the city which was intended to be incorporated into the empire really already belonged to it by a certain kind of right -- this was the official theory mentioned earlier on -- and if the city accepted this, if it agreed without a struggle, then it was not even required to pay tribute -- a voluntary 'gift' would be enough, and the Mexican state would not even send an official to collect it. Everything would be based upon a friendly agreement. 12

  Each of the three imperial cities had its own ambassadors, who played their successive parts in the proceedings which were intended to make the province in question submit without a war.

  First the ambassadors of Tenochtitlan, the quauhquauhnochtzin, 13 presented themselves before the authorities of

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  the place. They spoke in particular to the elders, dwelling upon the miseries that arise from war. Would it not be far more simple, they asked, if your sovereign were to accept 'the friendship and the protection of the empire'? All that was required was that the lord should give his word 'never to be an enemy to the empire, and to let the traders and their people come and go, buy and sell'.

  The ambassadors also asked that the ruler should admit an image of Uitzilopochtli into his temple upon a footing of equality with that of the greatest local god, 14 and send a present to Mexico in the shape of gold, gems, feathers and cloaks. Before they withdrew, they gave the people with whom they had been speaking a certain number of shields and swords, 'so that it might never be said that they had been defeated by treachery'. They then left the town and went to camp at some place on the road, leaving the people of the province twenty days (one native month) to reach a decision. 15

  If there were no decision at the end of this time, or if the city would not agree, the ambassadors of Texcoco, the achcacauhtzin, 16 arrived. They gave the lord of the place and his dignitaries a solemn warning -- 'If, after a fresh interval of twenty days, they did not submit, the lord would be punished with death, in conformity with the law that laid down that his head should be broken with a mace, unless he were killed in battle or taken prisoner and sacrificed to the gods. In the same way the other knights of his household and his court would be punished according to the wishes of the three heads of the empire. When this warning had been given to the lord and all the nobles of his province, if they submitted within twenty days, they would be made to give a yearly present to the three sovereigns, but not to a very great amount; and they were all admitted to the grace and friendship of the three sovereigns. If the (local) lord refused, then at once the ambassadors anointed his right arm and his head with a certain liquid that should allow him to withstand the furious attack of the army of the empire. They set a tuft of feathers, the tecpillotl ("sign of nobility"), fixed by a band of red leather, upon his head, and

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  gave him a present of many shields, swords and other weapons.' After this they went to join the first ambassadors to wait until the end of the second respite.

  If this new period of twenty days elapsed and the 'rebellious' city still would not submit, then a third embassy, sent this time by the king of Tlacopan, came to give a last warning. These envoys addressed the warriors of the city particularly, 'since it was they who would have to bear the brunt of the war'. They gave them a third and last respite, and stated that if they were to persist in their refusal, the imperial armies would devastate their province, that the prisoners would be carried off as slaves and the city reduced to the condition of a dependency. Before withdrawing they gave swords and shields to the officers and men, and then they joined the two earlier embassies.

  When the last period of twenty days had expired, the city and the empire were ipso facto in a state of war. Yet even then they waited, if it were possible, for the augurs to point out a favourable date for the opening of the campaign -one of the thirteen signs beginning with ce itzcuintli, 'one -dog', for example, the series consecrated to the god of the fire and the sun. 17

  The Mexicans, then, knowingly deprived themselves of the advantage of surprise. Not only did they leave their opponents all the time necessary to prepare their defence, but they even supplied them with arms, even if it were no more than a symbolic quantity of them. This whole behaviour, these embassies, speeches and gifts very clearly demonstrate the chivalrous ideal of the warrior in American antiquity.

  It should also be recognised that underlying this there was the idea that war was truly a divine judgment, that in the long run it was the gods who decided the outcome, and that this decision should have its full value without being perverted in the very beginning, which would be the case if the struggle were too unequal or if the enemy were taken by surprise so that he could not fight.

  At the same time, with that mixture of idealism and rude

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  common sense which is so often found among the Indians, they had no hesitation in using all the ruses of war. Before ever hostilities began they sent secret agents into the enemy territory; these men, who were called quimichtin (literally 'mice'), wore the clothes and the head-dress of the country and spoke its language. Disguised traders were also sent on these missions, and they returned to the provinces that they had formerly travelled through as itinerant merchants. 18

  These were dangerous missions, for the people of the cities were on their guard. In a country made up of little separate divisions in which everybody was known by his neighbours and in which costume, language and customs differed from one place to another, it was difficult to pass unnoticed; and the detecte
d spy was put to death at once, together with his accomplices. 19 But if, on the other hand, the spy came safely home and gave an exact account 'of the peculiarities and the weaknesses of the place and of the negligence or the vigilance of the people' he was given lands as a reward.

  Ruses of war were also much used in battle. Bodies of troops would pretend to flee in order to draw the enemy into an ambush: by night, warriors would dig trenches that they covered with foliage or straw and in which they would hide, only coming out when the hoodwinked enemy was unprepared to meet their attack 20 -- the emperor Axayacatl won the battle of Cuapanoayan by just such a stratagem, and conquered the valley of Toluca. 21

  What would now be called the engineers were responsible for other kinds of operation: in 1511 the Aztecs took the fortified town of Icpatepec on the top of a precipitous mountain by climbing the cliffs with ladders that were made on the spot. 22 Villages on the lake islands were attacked by raft-borne commandoes; in the Codex Nuttall there is a picture of such an attack by three warriors standing in boats that almost sink under their weight, while beneath them swim fishes, crocodiles and serpents. 23

  The basic armament of the Mexican warrior was made up of the round shield, the chimalli, made of wood or reeds, and covered with feathers and mosaic or metal ornaments,

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  and the wooden sword, the macquauitl, whose cutting-edges of obsidian could inflict terrible wounds. As missile weapons they had the bow, tlauitolli, and above all the spear-thrower, atlatl, with which they propelled darts (mitl) or javelins (tlacochtli).

  Some nations, such as the Matlaltzinca of the valley of Toluca, used the sling; and the half-savage Chinantecs of the mountains of Oaxaca had long, stone-tipped lances. The Aztec warriors wore a kind of tunic stuffed with cotton, the ichcahuipilli, by way of armour, and helmets, more decorative than functional, made of wood, feathers or paper, loaded with ornaments and plumes. Each chief could be distinguished in the turmoil of battle by a flag or an emblem: these precious and fragile constructions of reeds and feathers, gems and gold, were fixed to their shoulders; and each had its own particular name. Only those whose rank and exploits entitled them to it might use one of these ensigns. 24