Daily Life of the Aztecs Read online

  The majority of the houses, with their windowless façades hiding a private life led in the interior courtyards, must have been like those of an Arab town, except that they were built along straight roads and canals. In the suburbs there were probably still to be found the primitive huts of the early days, with their walls made of reeds and mud, and their roofs of grass or straw: but on the other hand, the nearer one came to the great teocalli and the imperial palaces, the grander and the more luxurious the houses became; there were the palaces of the high officials and those that the provincial dignitaries had to keep up in the capital, and then the official buildings such as the House of the Eagles, a sort of military club, the calmecac, or higher colleges, the tlacochcalli, or arsenals.

  There was no monotony in all this. Here and there, from among the close-packed roofs, the pyramid of a local temple would rise up: in some streets the houses served as stalls for jewellers, or for goldsmiths, or for workers in feathers: in others there would be the warehouses of the merchants. And although there was little free space apart from the great squares, Mexico was not a town without verdure: each house had its own inner court, and the

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  Aztecs have always had a passion for flowers. There were still the mixed flower and vegetable gardens of the country round the suburban huts, sometimes made on the floating chinampas; and the flat roofs of the great men's palaces were crowned with green.

  'The principal streets,' writes Cortés, 29 'are very wide and very straight. Some of these, and all the smaller streets, are made as to the one half of earth, while the other is a canal by which the Indians travel in boats. And all these streets, from one end of the town to the other, are opened in such a way that the water can completely cross them. All these openings -- and some are very wide -- are spanned by bridges made of very solid and well-worked beams, so that across many of them ten horsemen can ride abreast.'

  This description is confirmed by another witness 30 : half of each street was surfaced with beaten earth, like brick paving, and the other half was occupied by a canal. He adds, 'There are also great streets where there is water and nothing else; and these are used only for boats and barges, according to the custom of the country; for without these no one could move about the streets nor come out of their houses.' And he speaks of the people 'talking as they go along, some on the land, the others on the water.' This whole network of streets was cut by wooden bridges which could be removed if necessary, as the Spaniards found to their cost when the Aztecs drove them out of the town.

  Throughout its whole extent, even to its centre (for one could row into the palace of Motecuhzoma) Mexico was a city of lake-dwellers, and it was joined to the shore by the three raised causeways that Cortés and Díaz speak of. The northern causeway, starting from Tlatelolco, reached the land at Tepeyacac, at the foot of the hills where the sanctuary of Tonantzin, the mother-goddess, 'our revered mother', used to be, and where there is now the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The western causeway linked Tenochtitlan with the satellite town of Tlacopan. The third, to the south, made a fork, of which the south-west arm finished Coyoacán, and the eastern at Iztapalapan. At the junction of the arms stood a two-towered redoubt, surrounded by a

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  high wall with two gates in it, and entirely commanding the approaches. It seems that it was only the southern causeway that had been fortified in this way: for it was from this side that the forces of Uexotzinco, an unconquered city on the other side of the volcanoes, might one day launch an attack.

  These raised roads were as much dikes as causeways, and the shallowness of the lake had made the building of them comparatively easy: the construction had begun with two parallel lines of piles, and then the space between them had been filled with stones and beaten earth. Here and there the dike was broken to let the water flow under wooden bridges, for the lake had quite violent currents at times, and it would have been dangerous to bottle them up. The roads that were thus formed by the top of the dikes were amply wide enough, as Cortés says, 31 for eight horsemen abreast: the one that ran from Iztapalapan to Mexico was about five miles long, and, according to Bernal Díaz, 32 it 'ran so straight that it bent neither little nor much.'

  The causeways showed the main lines along which the city had developed from its original centre: one axis ran from north to south along the line from Tepeyacac to Tlatelolco to the great temple of Tenochtitlan and so to Coyoacán; and another from west to east, from Tlacopan to the middle of Tenochtitlan. Eastwards the town had been stopped by the open lake, and one had to go by water to Texcoco, the starting-place for the inland journey towards the mysterious Hot Lands, which had always fascinated the Indians of the high central plain.

  PUBLIC BUILDINGS, SQUARES AND MARKET-PLACES

  There were certainly maps of Mexico in the days before Cortés. It is impossible that the Aztec administration, which had scribes continually keeping the land-registers and tax-accounts up to date, should have neglected the capital itself. Besides, we know that the first duty of each calpullec was the keeping and if necessary the revision of the 'paintings' which showed his district and its subdivision among the families.

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  Unfortunately, none of these documents has been preserved. The Mexican national museum of anthropology and history does have one precious fragment, the 'agave-paper map', which is certainly only a little later than the conquest; but the piece that is left shows no more than a small part of the town to the east of Tlatelolco. Such as it is, however, this plan 33 gives a good idea of the structure of the districts, with their equal plots marked off by canals and streets and cut by the main traffic-arteries. I only mention the clumsy plan attributed to Cortés for the sake of completeness: it is almost entirely useless, with its childish embellishments and its little pictures in which the villages around the city are shown crowned by towers in the European manner.

  Furthermore, as the buildings of Tenochtitlan were the victims of a systematic vandalism almost without a parallel in history both during the siege and immediately after the surrender of the emperor Cuauhtemotzin, it is exceedingly difficult to say exactly where the open spaces were, or to describe their surrounding edifices. One can only base oneself upon the more or less exact accounts of the chroniclers and upon the results of that amount of archeological digging that has been possible in the heart of the modern city; though one may also argue by analogy and reconstitute the main lines of the public buildings of Mexico by the example of the Aztec architecture outside the capital which the conquerors left alone, especially the pyramid of Tenayuca. 34

  The central square of Tenochtitlan seems to have coincided almost exactly with the present Zócalo of Mexico City. It was therefore a rectangle of some 175 by 200 yards, with its shorter sides on the north and south. The northern side was limited by a part of the precinct of the great temple, which at this point was dominated by the pyramid of a temple of the sun; the south was bordered by a canal running from east to west; the east by the houses of high dignitaries, most probably of two storeys; and the west by the front of the imperial palace of Motecuhzoma II, which stood where the palace of the president of the republic now stands. The palace which had belonged to Axayacatl ( 14691481) and in which the Spaniards stayed when they first

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  arrived in Mexico, stood immediately to the north of the houses of the dignitaries, and its western front looked on to the precinct of the great temple. This huge square was reached by the canal already mentioned, by the causeway from Iztapalapan, which ran along the side of Motecuhzoma's palace to end at the south gate of the temple, or by a variety of smaller streets. The causeway from Tlacopan followed very nearly the line of the present Calle Tacuba, and running along the side of Axayacatl's palace, came out in the western precinct of the temple. 35

  The subsoil of the modern Zócalo as well as the foundations of the buildings that surround it are literally crammed with the remains of Aztec sculpture, statues and pieces of broken monuments and bas-reliefs. It has
been possible to dig out some of them, particularly the stone of Tizoc, the famous Aztec calendar, and the teocalli of the holy war. Others, whose position is known, are still waiting to be recovered: yet many others are certainly lost for ever. Although it is somewhat spoiled by shops and commercial buildings, this great central square is splendid enough today, with its cathedral and the presidential palace; but what a prodigious effect it must have had upon the beholder in the Tenochtitlan of Motecuhzoma. State and religion combined their highest manifestations in this one place, and they gave a deep impression of their majesty: the white fronts of the palaces, their hanging gardens, the variegated crowds perpetually coming and going in the great gateways, the crenellated wall of the teocalli, and standing away one beyond another in the distance like a people of unmoving giants, the pyramids of the gods, crowned by their manycoloured sanctuaries, where the clouds of incense rose between banners of precious feathers. The upward sweep of the temples and the long tranquillity of the palaces joined there, as if to unite both the hopes of men and the divine providence in the maintenance of the established order.

  One of the prime duties of the sovereign since the beginning of the city had been 'the defence of the temple of Uitzilopochtli'. It was this task that the magnates had specifically entrusted to the second emperor, Uitziliuitl

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  ( 1395-1414), and to Itzcoatl, the true founder of the Aztec power. 36

  It seems that the third ruler, Chimalpopoca, wished to enlarge the temple; and perhaps, if the weakness of his city and his own personal misfortune allowed it, 37 he did begin to build: but the first really important works were undertaken in the reign of Motecuhzoma I Ilhuicamina. 38 This emperor had the idea of asking the neighbouring cities to join in the enterprise, and more or less willingly Colhuacán, Cuitlahuac, Coyoacán, Mizquic and Xochimilco agreed to supply the necessary materials, particularly stone and lime. The people of Chalco, however, refused their help, and this was one of the causes of the long war that ended in their defeat.

  The work lasted two years. The temple was built on a pyramid, whose top was reached by three flights of steps: the chief flight was on the south face, the others on the east and west, and the sum of all these steps was 360, which was the number of days in the year with the unfortunate five last days cut off -- that is to say, 120 steps in each flight. The building was inaugurated in 1455 after the victory of Motecuhzoma I over the Huaxtecs, and the Huaxtec prisoners were the first of the temple's sacrifices. 39

  That, at any rate, is the tradition: but it may be asked whether this does not assign an earlier date to the temple than the truth allows. For if in fact the edifice had already reached its full size in the time of Motecuhzoma I, it is difficult to see what the labours of the subsequent reigns can have accomplished. There is every reason to think that the teocalli of Uitzilopochtli was built up in successive stages, like most of the Mexican pyramids: similarly it is most probable that the temple, as it was rebuilt by Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, was not as large as it was to become in later days.

  Axayacatl did something towards the equipment of the building that his predecessor had left him: he set up the huge sacrificial stone, the quauhtemalacatl, (the disk of stone of the eagles') which was said to have been brought from Coyoacán by 50,000 men with ropes and rollers. But

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  it was in the reigns of Tizoc and Auitzotl 40 that the great teocalli was finished and assumed the appearance in which it was first to be seen by the Europeans.

  In the national museum of Mexico there is a sculptured stele that commemorates its inauguration. This shows the two emperors, each with the hieroglyphic of his name, and it is dated chicuei acatl, 'eight -- reed', or 1487 by our reckoning. Tizoc, who had apparently begun the new work, had only been dead one year.

  In the Codex Telleriano-Remensis 41 we see two stages in this undertaking. Under the reign of Tizoc, in naui acatl, 'four -- reed' or 1483, 'the first stone was laid in the great temple that the Christians found when they first came into this country.' In the painting that shows the following year, macuilli tecpatl, 'five--flint', the glyph that means the year has a line connecting it with a drawing of a pyramid made of four elements; raised on a four-angled base, with two blood-stained stairways: a cactus, the symbol of Tenochtitlan, stands upon the topmost platform. The Spanish gloss reads, "The village of Tzinacantepec rebelled against its overlords, the Mexicans. They attacked it and made such a butchery that scarcely a soul was left alive, for all the prisoners were taken to Mexico to be sacrificed there in the great temple, which was at that time still unfinished.'

  For 1487 the glyph of the year chicuei acatl, 'eight -reed', is joined to a temple, but this time it is certainly a finished temple, with two sanctuaries side by side on the top of the pyramid, one with red on its roof and around its door, the other with blue. The meaning of these details will become apparent later. A line joins the temple to a tlequauitl, a fire-stick; and from the fire-stick escape flames and smoke, which symbolise the ceremonial new fire that was lit for the inauguration of the shrine. Another line leads from the fire-stick to the glyph for Tenochtitlan, and this succession of pictures may thus be read, 'In the year eight -reed the (double) teocalli of Tenochtitlan was inaugurated.' At the side of these there is a man wrapped in an embroidered cloak; he is seated upon a kind of chair with a back, the royal icpalli, and above it there is a sign representing a

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  fabulous water-creature of the lake, the auitzotl: this is the emperor of the same name. And finally, below the picture of the temple and around it there are warriors crowned with white feathers and down, the ritual ornaments of the human sacrifices, together with names of the towns from which they came -- Xiuhcoac, Cuetlaxtlan and Tzapotlan. Below the warriors is written the sign xiquipilli (8,000) twice, and the sign centzontli (400) ten times, which is 20,000 altogether. The drawings may be interpreted, 'On this occasion Auitzotl caused 20,000 warriors to be sacrificed: they came from Xiuhcoac, Cuetlaxtlan and Tzapotlan.' The Spanish gloss is somewhat inexact: it reads, 'The great temple of Mexico was finished and made perfect. The old men say that in that year were sacrificed 4,000 men brought from the provinces overcome in war.'

  We shall return to the sacrifices later, and for the moment we shall confine ourselves to stating that the great temple, in the form that the Spaniards found it in 1519, had been inaugurated by Auitzotl 32 years before. Unfortunately the descriptions and accounts written after the conquest are often obscure: under the name of 'great temple' they treat sometimes the temple of Uitzilopochtli and the complex of religious buildings in the middle of the city, and sometimes the temple of Tlatelolco. We must endeavour to distinguish between these different buildings. 42

  To begin with the temple of Uitzilopochtli itself: it was in fact a double temple, as the Codex Telleriano-Remensis shows it -- and this picture is confirmed by several other documents, for example, the illustrations of the text of Sahagún in the Madrid manuscript, and the Codex of 1576. The pyramid rested upon a rectangular base whose northsouth axis was 110 yards long and its east-west axis 88: the pyramid was made up of four or perhaps five elements, each stage being smaller than the one below it. Only the western face of the pyramid had steps, a very wide double stairway edged by balustrades which finished almost vertically before reaching the platform at the top. The stairs had a balustrade at the edge which began with great serpent's heads: one of these heads was recently exposed in an excavation near the

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  cathedral. The stairway had 114 steps, and it was one of the highest known in Mexico -- the temple of Texcoco had one of 117 and that of Cholula 120, according to Bernal Díaz. The height of the pyramid was probably about 100 feet.

  The two sanctuaries were raised side by side upon the flat top of this enormous plinth: the one on the north, painted white and blue, was sacred to Tlaloc, the very ancient god of rain and green growth; the one on the south, ornamented with carved skulls painted white on a red background, to Uitzilopochtli. Each o
pened towards the west by a wide door that had the sacrificial stone in front of it.

  The twin roofs, pyramidal in shape, were made of a wooden frame covered with cement and lime, and they were prolonged skywards by a kind of wall or crest very like those that are found upon Mayan buildings and which are designed to increase their apparent height. 43 The roof of the sanctuary of Tlaloc was encircled by a wavy wreath of shells to symbolise water, while that of Uitzilopochtli was decorated with butterflies--fire and sun. Where the balustrades ran up to the platform there were statues of men with their hands arranged to hold the poles of the banners that were hoisted on certain great holidays 44 -banners made of the splendid feathers of tropical birds. These flag-holders were a particular characteristic of Toltec architecture and sculpture, which the Aztecs had adopted. 45

  Serpents' heads, side by side, formed a 'hedge of snakes', coatepantli, all round the pyramid: this was also typically Toltec. 46

  Such was the monument that rose in the centre of the city and the empire; colossal yet harmonious in its dimensions, surrounded with veneration and with terror. It was said that uncountable golden jewels and gems had been hidden in the foundations, mixed with the stones and the cement by the order of the emperors: Bernal Díaz avers that this tradition was true and that when the Spaniards destroyed the teocalli they found the buried treasure. 47