Latin-American Mythology (Illustrated Edition). Hartley Burr Alexander

      CHAPTER II

      MEXICO

       Table of Contents

      I. MIDDLE AMERICA

       Table of Contents

      From the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends the great land bridge connecting North and South America, forming a region which might properly be called Middle America. This region divides naturally into several sections. To the north is the body of Mexico, its coastal lands mounting abruptly on the western side, but rising more gradually on the eastern littoral toward the broad central plateau, the shape of which—roughly triangular, with its apex in the lofty mountains of the south—conforms to that of the whole land north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Next to this is the low-lying peninsular region of Yucatan, ascending into mountains toward the Pacific, and forming a great broadening of the southward tapering land. A second bulge is Central America, lying between the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Gulf, and terminating in the thin Isthmus forming an arc about the Bay of Panama.

      The physiography of the region is an index to its pre-Columbian ethnography.²² The northern portion, including Lower California and, roughly, the mainlands in its latitudes, was a region of wild tribes, the best of them much inferior in culture to the Pueblo Indians on the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and the lowest as destitute of arts as any in America. Yuman and Waicurian tribes in Lower California; Seri on the Island of Tiburon and the neighbouring mainland; Piman in the north central and western mainlands; Apache in the desert-like lands south of the Rio Grande; and Tamaulipecan on the east, coasting the Gulf of Mexico—these are the principal groups of this region, peoples whose ideas and myths differ little from those of their kindred groups of the arid South-west of North America. The Piman group, however, possesses a special interest in that it forms a possible connexion between the Shoshonean to the north and the Nahuatlan nations of the Aztec world. Such peoples as the Papago, Yaqui, Tarahumare, and Tepehuane are the wilder cousins of the Nahua, while the Tepecano, Huichol, and Cora tribes, just to the south, distinctly show Aztec acculturation. In general, the Mexican tribes north of the Tropic of Cancer belong, in habit and thought, with the groups of the South-West of the northern continent; ethnically, Middle America falls south of the Tropic.

      Below this line, extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is the region dominated by the empire of the Aztec, marked by the civilization which bears their name.²³ As a matter of fact, although at the time of the culmination of their power this whole region was politically subordinated to the Aztec (it was not completely conquered by them), it contained several centres of culture, each in degree distinct. To the north, about the Panuco, were the Huastec, a branch of the Maya stock; while immediately south of them, and also on the Gulf Coast, were the Totonac, possibly of Maya kinship. The central highlands, immediately west of these peoples, were occupied by the Otomi, primitive and warlike foes of the Aztec emperors. On their west, in turn, the Otomi had a common frontier with Nahuatlan tribes—Huichol, Cora, and others—forming a transitional group between the wild tribes of the north and the civilized Nahua. Quite surrounded by Nahuatlan and Otomian tribes was the Tarascan stock of Michoacan, a group of peoples whose culture certainly ante-dates that of the Nahua, of whom, indeed, they may have been the teachers. Still to the south—their territories nearly conterminous with the state of Oaxaca—were the Zapotecan peoples, chief among them the Zapotec and Mixtec, whose civilization ranks with those of Nahua and Maya in individual quality, while in native vitality it has proved stronger than either.

      The Zoquean tribes (Mixe, Zoque, and others), back from the Gulf of Tehuantepec, form a transition to the next great culture centre, that of the Maya nations. The territories of this most remarkable of all American civilizations included the whole of Yucatan, the greater portions of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the lands bordering on both sides of the Gulf of Honduras. Thus the Mayan regions dominate the strategy of the Americas, since they not only control the juncture of the continents, but, stretching out toward the Greater Antilles, command the passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It is easily conceivable that, had a free maritime commerce grown up, the Maya might have become, not merely the Greeks, but the Romans, of the New World.

      Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua), but also of the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua. In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the meeting-place of the continents.

      The nodes of interest in the culture and history of Middle America are the Aztec and Maya civilizations, which are justly regarded as marking the highest attainment of native Americans.²⁴ Neither Aztec nor Maya could vie with the Peruvian peoples in the engineering and political skill which made the empire of the Incas such a marvel of organization; but in the general level of the arts, in the intricacy of their science, and above all in the possession of systems of hieroglyphic writing and of monumental records the Middle Americans had touched a level properly comparable with the earliest civilizations of the Old World, nor can theirs have been vastly later than Old World culture in origin.

      In a number of particulars the civilizations of the Middle and South American centres show curious parallels. In each case we are in the presence of an aggressively imperial highland (Aztec, Inca) and of a decadent lowland (Maya, Yunca) culture. In each case the lowland culture is the more advanced aesthetically and apparently of longer history. Both highland powers clearly depend upon remote highland predecessors for their own culture (Aztec harks back to Toltec, Inca to Tiahuanaco); and in both regions it is a pretty problem for the archaeologist to determine whether this more remote highland civilization is ancestrally akin to the lowland. Again, in both the apogee of monument building and of the arts seems to have passed when the Spaniards arrived; indeed, empire itself was weakening. The Aztec and the Inca tribes (perhaps the most striking parallel of all) emerged from obscurity about the same time to proceed on the road to empire, for the traditional Aztec departure from Aztlan and the Inca departure from Tampu Tocco alike occurred in the neighbourhood of 1200 a. d. Finally, it was Ahuitzotl, the predecessor of Montezuma II, who brought Aztec power to its zenith, and it was Huayna Capac, the father of Atahualpa, who gave Inca empire its greatest extent; while both the Aztec empire under Montezuma, which fell to Cortez in 1519, and the Inca empire under Atahualpa, conquered by Pizarro in 1524, were internally weakening at the time. But the crowning misfortune common to the two empires was the possession of gold, maddening the eyes of the conquistadores.