BOOK II.ANCIENT AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY.
CHRONOLOGY.
CHRONOLOGY.
CHRONOLOGY.
Althoughconsiderable progress has been made during the last few years in clearing away the mists that hang over most of the problems connected with American antiquities, much still remains to be done before we can give a distinct or satisfactory answer to many of the questions that arise regarding them. We cannot yet say positively whether the Toltecs, the Aztecs, and other tribes who inhabited the Valley of Mexico, were successive waves of one great immigration from the North, or whether they belonged to different races of mankind. We cannot tell whether there was any connection between the civilisation of Mexico and Peru. The historical difficulties are far from being settled, and, more than all these, it is still a matter of doubt whether American civilisation is wholly original and indigenous, or whether any portion of it was derived from the Old World.
The one consolatory fact in all this perplexity seems to be, that the materials certainly do exist by which it can be removed. So soon as any one conversant with such inquiries will undertake the investigation on the spot, he will be able to arrange all the buildings into chronological series, and fix at least their approximate dates. He will also be able to say how far the buildings in one province are akin to those in another, and to separate those which belong to other races; and he will be able to tell us whether there is any essential similarity between the styles of the Old and the New World, or whether the latterbe really original. Whenever a sufficient number of photographs reach Europe the investigation may be undertaken here, but it will be very much easier on the spot. Hitherto the great difficulty has been that the drawings of American monuments—especially those published by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough—cannot be depended upon. The one bright exception to this censure are those of F. Catherwood,[174]both those which he published separately, and those with which he illustrated the works of Mr. Stephens.[175]Had that artist undertaken to classify his work in a chronological series, he doubtless could have done it; but as the arrangement of the plates is purely topographical, and they are so far reduced to a common denominator by the process of engraving, the classification can hardly now be attempted by one not familiar with the buildings themselves. In the meanwhile there seems no good reason for doubting the conclusion which he and Mr. Stephens arrived at, that the cities which they rediscovered were those which were inhabited and in the full tide of their prosperity at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The buildings which we now see in ruins were probably then all in use, and many may have been in progress and unfinished at the time of that great disaster. On the other hand, it is extremely doubtful if any building in Central America can date from five centuries before that event: in Mexico some may be older, but their title to greater antiquity has not yet been satisfactorily made out.
Whatever uncertainty may exist with regard to Mexican history, there is nothing in it that can strictly be stigmatised as fabulous. The Mexicans do not pretend to any very remote antiquity or divine descent. There are no heroes who live thousands or tens of thousands of years; nor any of the other extravagances that usually mark the dawn of history in the Old World. On the contrary, the Mexican annals modestly commence with the arrival of the Toltecs in Anahuac in the 5th or 6th century, and with the beneficent teaching of a stranger, Quetzalcoatl, who lived among them, taught them architecture and the agricultural arts, instructed them in their religious duties, and then, like Lycurgus fifteen centuries earlier, left them by sea, promising to return.
For 300 or 400 years from this time the Toltecs lived in peace and prosperity, covering the table-land, it is said, with their monuments. But evil times came; famine, internecine wars, and disasters—interpreted as evidences of the wrath of the gods—drove them from their homes, and they migrated, it is said, southwards to Yucatan;where it is usually assumed that they erected the architectural monuments we now find in that country.
Central America is, however, one of the most fertile countries in the world, and capable of supporting—indeed did support—an immense population with very little labour; so it seems probable that it was inhabited long before the time mentioned.[176]This, however, by no means militates against the idea that the Toltecs may have been the first to communicate to their new country many of the arts they had elaborated in Anahuac. Indeed, it is to such a combination of two not very dissimilar races that all the greatest results in art or civilization have been attained in other parts of the world, and it may have been the case here also.
Politically the annals of Anahuac are a blank between the departure of the Toltecs and the arrival of the Aztecs in the middle of the 12th century. These seem to have been a people of different race from the former occupants of the valley, but sufficiently akin to take up the previous civilization; and being reinforced by successive immigrations of tribes of the same race, and speaking apparently similar languages, they had at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards fully repeopled the valley and elaborated a very considerable degree of civilization.
Again everything we read of, and every indication we have, leads us to suppose that the greatest development of civilization in Mexico took place immediately before the Spanish Conquest, and thus that the time of highest prosperity was that which directly preceded its destruction. Four centuries had apparently sufficed to convert a tribe of Red Indians into a tolerably civilized community. Whatever their civilization may have been, it could not have attained a very permanent character, for it vanished like a phantom at the first touch of the European; and the remnants of the Indians who still remain are as incompetent creatures as exist in any part of the world.
Till the investigations of the ethnologist are further advanced, it is impossible to feel any great confidence in the various theories that have been advanced on this subject. Without wishing to put it forward as a thing to be relied upon, it appears to me that the following scheme meets more nearly than any other the requirements of the case, while it amalgamates more perfectly the various facts ascertained by scientific men.
It is generally admitted that two races of men are found, either now living or whose remains are found in Mexican sepulchres. One of these is said to be allied to the Esquimaux, or races of that class,the other to the Red Indians. The former, I cannot help thinking, represent the Toltecs. It does seem that all along thewest coast of America, from Behring’s Straits to California, races have always existed more or less closely allied to the Kamtchatdales or Esquimaux; and these may, at some early period, have advanced to the plains of Mexico. If they were of that blood there is no difficulty in understanding how they became builders.
On the other hand there seems little doubt that the Aztecs were Red Indians, allied to those tribes who, so far as we know, always inhabited the Valley of the Mississippi and the countries to the eastward of it. They may have been capable of taking up an earlier civilization, and, if their blood was mixed at all with the earlier inhabitants, of carrying it further; but in themselves they are utterly unprogressive and incapable of developing any attributes of civilized life.
In Yucatan we certainly have another race, but whether they were Caribs, or some other people whose traces have been lost, cannot now be easily ascertained. In Peru, and possibly also further north, there is certainly a strongly developed Polynesian element, and there may be other races still; but these four alone, mixed in varying quantities, are more than sufficient to account for all the varieties we find there in the course of our inquiries.
There still remains one question which is more germane to our present subject than even the others; though perhaps on the whole still more difficult to answer. It is this: Are the civilization and arts of the ancient Americans original and indigenous, or did they receive any impulse from the natives of the Old World? One part of this may easily be disposed of. The absence of all domestic animals, the possession of only one of the cereals, the total ignorance of alphabetic writing and of the use of iron—though the country is full of the ore—and many other minor facts, seem sufficient to prove that no immigration of tribes or families could have taken place in such numbers as to bring their animals, their grain or their materials, with them. This, however, by no means precludes the possibility of many missionaries having reached their shores, who, though bringing nothing but what they carried in their brains, could communicate doctrines, teach arts, and improve processes, and so communicate much of the civilization of the countries from which they came.
Without laying too much stress on the somewhat mythic story of Quetzalcoatl, though there seems no good reason for doubting its main features, we have only to refer to the history of India between 250B.C.and 700A.D.to see what missionary zeal prevailed in those days. Asoka set the example, and by his missionaries and their successors the doctrines of Buddha were propagated from the shores of theMediterranean to the Yellow Sea; or, what is more to our purpose, we have only to read the travels of Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang to see what dangers by land and sea the Chinese missionaries between the 4th and 7th centuries were prepared to brave in the service of the faith. It probably would have been easier to travel to Mexico from ChinaviâBehring’s Straits than to reach India through Central Asia, and to return from Ceylon by sea. Whether or not such a journey was ever accomplished, is another question. I do not think that either Neumann[177]or D’Eichthal[178]have at all made out a satisfactory case to prove that the country of Fusang, from which the pilgrim Hoei Shin returned to China in the year 499, was Mexico. On the contrary, the evidence of the domestic animals, &c., he speaks of, and other important details, all seem to tell the other way. It looks more as if Vancouver Island, or the coast thereabout, was the place indicated. But are there any remains of a half-civilized people there? Be this as it may, the story, which is authentic as far as it goes, seems to prove that Northern America was in communication with Northern Asia in the 5th century.
D’Eichthal’s argument, that the Mexican sculptures are Buddhist, seems even more groundless. I have carefully examined the examples he adduces, and, from a tolerably intimate acquaintance with Buddhist art in Asia, may be permitted to say that I can see no trace of it in Mexico. If the argument were based on that Serpent-worship which almost everywhere underlies Buddhism in the Old World, it would not be so easy to refute it. There is a very considerable likeness between the sculptured forms of the Serpent-worship in the Old and in the New World. But it is a serious question, whether this arose from a similar instinct in the two races, or was communicated from the one to the other. My present impression is in favour of some intercommunication in so far as Serpent-worship is concerned.
Our knowledge of the architecture of Eastern Asia and of Western America is not yet sufficiently precise to enable us to base any very pointed argument upon it. It is curious, however, that as we advance eastward from the Valley of the Euphrates at every step we meet with forms of art becoming more and more like those of Central America. When we reach the sea we encounter at Suku in Java a teocalli, which is almost identical with that of Tehuantepec.[179]In Cambodia we have teocallis at Bakong and Bakeng, and no one would be startled if told that representations of some of the temples atOngcor Thom in Cambodia were really taken from buildings found in Yucatan. In China many of the crinkum-crankums of their art find their close counterparts in America. But for the distance and the geographical difficulties, no one probably would hesitate to admit that the architecture of America may have been borrowed from the Old World. But how did it cross the ocean? At present that barrier seems almost insurmountable. But it may not always remain so: the inquiry is still in its infancy, and the tendency of all recent researches has been to show that there were more means of communication and a more direct connection between the nations of the world in ancient times than we have hitherto been disposed to believe was likely or even possible.