[881] Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 105.

[882] Cf. Vol. II. 417; Prescott, i. 13, 163, 193, 196; Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 147; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. 325. It must be confessed that with no more authority than the old Mexican paintings, interpreted through the understanding of old men and their traditions, Ixtlilxochitl has not the firmest ground to walk on. Aubin thinks that Ixtlilxochitl’s confusion and contradictions arise from his want of patience in studying his documents; and some part of it may doubtless have arisen from his habit, as Brasseur says (Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, May, 1855, p. 329), of altering his authorities to magnify the glories of his genealogic line. Max Müller (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 322) says of his works: “Though we must not expect to find in them what we are accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled with migrations, wars, dynasties and revolutions, such as were cherished in the memory of the Greeks in the time of Solon.” In addition to his Historia Chichimeca and his Relaciones, (both of which are given by Kingsborough, while Ternaux has translated portions,)—the MS. of the Relaciones being in the Mexican archives,—Ixtlilxochitl left a large mass of his manuscript studies of the antiquities, often repetitionary in substance. Some are found in the compilation made in Mexico by Figueroa in 1792, by order of the Spanish government (Prescott, i. 193). Some were in the Ramirez collection. Quaritch (MS. Collections, Jan., 1888, no. 136) held one from that collection, dated about 1680, at £16, called Sumaria Relacion, which concerned the ancient Chichimecs. Those which are best known are a Historia de la Nueva España, or Historia del Reyno de Tezcuco, and a Historia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, if this last is by him.

[883] Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, May, 1855, p. 326.

[884] In his Quatre Lettres, p. 24, he calls it the sacred book of the Toltecs. “C’est le Livre divin lui-même, c’est le Teoamoxtli.”

[885] Brasseur’s Lettres à M. le due de Valmy, Lettre seconde.

[886] Catálogo, pp. 17, 18.

[887] Brasseur, Bibl. Mex. Guat., p. 47; Pinart-Brasseur Catal., no. 237.

[888] It has been announced that Bandelier is engaged in a new translation of The Annals of Quauhtitlan for Brinton’s Aboriginal Literature series. Cf. Bancroft, iii. 57, 63, and in vol. v., where he endeavors to patch together Brasseur’s fragments of it. Short, p. 241.

[889] Humboldt says that Sigüenza inherited Ixtlilxochitl’s collection; and that it was preserved in the College of San Pedro till 1759.

[890] Giro del mondo, 1699, vol. vi. Cf. Kingsborough, vol. iv. Robertson attacked Carreri’s character for honesty, and claimed it was a received opinion that he had never been out of Italy. Clavigero defended Carreri. Humboldt thinks Carreri’s local coloring shows he must have been in Mexico.

[891] Cf. the bibliog., in Vol. II., p. 425, of his Storia Antica del Messico.

[892] We owe to him descriptions at this time of the collections of Mendoza, of that in the Vatican, and of that at Vienna. Robertson made an enumeration of such manuscripts; but his knowledge was defective, and he did not know even of those at Oxford.

[893] Robertson was inclined to disparage Clavigero’s work, asserting that he could find little in him beyond what he took from Acosta and Herrera “except the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada and Boturini.” Clavigero criticised Robertson, and the English historian in his later editions replied. Prescott points out (i. 70) that Clavigero only knew Sahagún through the medium of Torquemada and later writers. Bancroft (Nat. Races, v. 149; Mexico, i. 700) thinks that Clavigero “owes his reputation much more to his systematic arrangement and clear narration of traditions that had before been greatly confused, and to the omission of the most perplexing and contradictory points, than to deep research or new discoveries.”

[894] See Vol. II. p. 418. Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Hist. des Nations Civilisées, p. xxxii. Clavigero had described it.

[895] He had collected nearly 500 Mexican paintings in all. Aubin (Notices, etc., p. 21) says that Boturini nearly exhausted the field in his searches, and with the collection of Sigüenza he secured all those cited by Ixtlilxochitl and the most of those concealed by the Indians,—of which mention is made by Torquemada, Sahagún, Valadés, Zurita, and others; and that the researches of Bustamante, Cubas, Gondra, and others, up to 1851, had not been able to add much of importance to what Boturini possessed.

[896] This portion of his collection has not been traced. The fact is indeed denied.

[897] Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional (Madrid, 1746); Carter-Brown, iii. 817; Brasseur’s Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 26; Field, Ind. Bibliog., no. 159; Pinart, Catalogue, no. 134; Prescott, i. 160.

[898] Brasseur, Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 152.

[899] Prescott, i. 24. Harrisse, Bib. Am. Vet., calls Veytia’s the best history of the ancient period yet (1866) written.

[900] A second ed. (Mexico, 1832) was augmented with notes and a life of the author, by Carlos Maria de Bustamante; Field, Ind. Bibliog., no. 909; Brasseur’s Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 68.

[901] Prescott, i. 133. Gama and others collected another class of hieroglyphics, of less importance, but still interesting as illustrating legal and administrative processes used in later times, in the relations of the Spaniards with the natives; and still others embracing Christian prayers, catechisms, etc., employed by the missionaries in the religious instruction (Aubin, Notice, etc., 21). Humboldt (vol. xiii., pl. p. 141) gives “a lawsuit in hieroglyphics.”

There was published (100 copies) at Madrid, in 1878, Pintura del Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México, Codice en geroglíficos Méxicanos y en lengua Castellana y Azteca, Existente en la Biblioteca del Excmo Señor Duque de Osuna,—a legal record of the later Spanish courts affecting the natives.

[902] Humboldt describes these collections which he knew at the beginning of the century, speaking of José Antonio Pichardo’s as the finest.

[903] Notice sur une collection d’antiquités Mexicaines, being an extract from a Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’Écriture figurative des Anciens Mexicains (Paris, 1851; again, 1859-1861). Cf. papers in Revue Américaine et Orientale, 1st ser., iii., iv., and v. Aubin says that Humboldt found that part of the Boturini collection which had been given over to the Mexican archivists diminished by seven eighths. He also shows how Ternaux-Compans (Crauatés Horribles, p. 275-289), Rafael Isidro Gondra (in Veytia, Hist. Ant. de Mex., 1836, i. 49), and Bustamante have related the long contentions over the disposition of these relics, and how the Academy of History at Madrid had even secured the suppression of a similar academy among the antiquaries in Mexico, which had been formed to develop the study of their antiquities. It was as a sort of peace-offering that the Spanish king now caused Veytia to be empowered to proceed with the work which Boturini had begun. This allayed the irritation for a while, but on Veytia’s death (1769) it broke out again, when Gama was given possession of the collection, which he further increased. It was at Gama’s death sold at auction, when Humboldt bought the specimens which are now in Berlin, and Waldeck secured others which he took to Europe. It was from Waldeck that Aubin acquired the Boturini part of his collection. The rest of the collection remained in Mexico, and in the main makes a part at present of the Museo Nacional. But Aubin is a doubtful witness.

Aubin says that he now proposed to refashion the Boturini collection by copies where he could not procure the originals; to add others, embracing whatever he could still find in the hands of the native population, and what had been collected by Veytia, Gama, and Pichardo. In 1851, when he wrote, Aubin had given twenty years to this task, and with what results the list of his MSS., which he appends to the account we have quoted, will show.

These include in the native tongue:—

a. History of Mexico from a.d. 1064 to 1521, in fragments, from Tezozomoc and from Alonso Franco, annotated by Domingo Chimalpain (a copy).

b. Annals of Mexico, written apparently in 1528 by one who had taken part in the defence of Mexico (an original).

c. Several historical narratives on European paper, by Domingo Chimalpain, coming down to a.d. 1591, which have in great part been translated by Aubin, who considers them the most important documents which we possess.

d. A history of Colhuacan and Mexico, lacking the first leaf. This is described as being in the handwriting of Ixtlilxochitl, and Aubin gives the dates of its composition as 1563 and 1570. It is what has later been known as the Codex Chimalpopoca.

e. Zapata’s history of Tlaxcalla.

f. A copy by Loaysa of an original, from which Torquemada has copied several chapters.

[904] The chief of the Boturini acquisition he enumerates as follows:—

a. Toltec annals on fifty leaves of European paper, cited by Gama in his Descripcion histórica. Cf. Brasseur, Nations Civilisées, p. lxxvi.

b. Chichimec annals, on Indian paper, six leaves, of which ten pages consist of pictures, the original so-called Codex Chimalpopoca, of which Gama made a copy, also in the Aubin collection, as well as Ixtlilxochitl’s explanation of it. Aubin says that he has used this account of Ixtlilxochitl to rectify that historian’s blunders.

c. Codex on Indian paper, having a picture of the Emperor Xolotl.

d. A painting on prepared skin, giving the genealogy of the Chichimecan chiefs, accompanied by the copies made by Pichardo and Boturini. Cf. Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, 2d ser., i. 283.

e. A synchronical history of Tepechpan and of Mexico, on Indian paper, accompanied by a copy made by Pichardo and an outline sketch of that in the Museo Nacional.

Without specifying others which Aubin enumerates, he gives as other acquisitions the following in particular:—

a. Pichardo’s copy of a Codex Mexicanus, giving the history of the Mexicans from their leaving Aztlan to 1590.

b. An original Mexican history from the departure from Aztlan to 1569.

c. Fragments which had belonged to Sigüenza.

[905] Notice sur une Collection, etc., p. 12.

[906] Hist. des Nations Civilisées (i. pp. xxxi, lxxvi, etc.; cf. Müller’s Chips, i. 317, 320, 323). Brasseur in the same place describes his own collection; and it may be further followed in his Bibl. Mex.-Guat., and in the Pinart Catalogue. Dr. Brinton says that we owe much for the preservation during late years of Maya MSS. to Don Juan Pio Perez, and that the best existing collection of them is that of Canon Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona. José F. Ramirez (see Vol. II. p. 398) is another recent Mexican collector, and his MSS. have been in one place and another in the market of late years. Quaritch’s recent catalogues reveal a number of them, including his own MS. Catálogo de Colecciones (Jan., 1888, no. 171), and some of his unpublished notes on Prescott, not included in those “notas y ecclarecimientos” appended to Navarro’s translation of the Conquest of Mexico (Catal., 1885, no. 28,502). The several publications of Léon de Rosny point us to scattered specimens. In his Doc. écrits de l’Antiquité Amér. he gives the fac-simile of a colored Aztec map. A MS. in the collection of the Corps Legislatif, in Paris, and that of the Codex Indiæ Meridionalis are figured in his Essai sur le déchiffrement, etc. (pl. ix, x). In the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, n. s., vol. i., etc., we find plates of the Mappe Tlotzin, and a paper of Madier de Montjau, “sur quelques manuscrits figuratifs de l’Ancien Méxique.” Cf. also Anales del Museo, viii.

Cf. for further mention of collections the Revue Orientale et Américaine; Cyrus Thomas in the Am. Antiquarian, May, 1884 (vol. vi.); and the more comprehensive enumeration in the introduction to Domenech’s Manuscrit pictographique. Orozco y Berra, in the introduction to his Geografia de las Lenguas y Carta Etnográfica (Mexico, 1864), speaks of the assistance he obtained from the collections of Ramirez and of Icazbalceta.

[907] See Vol. II. p. 418.

[908] See Vol. II. p. 418. Bandelier calls this French version “utterly unreliable.”

[909] This is Beristain’s title. Torquemada, Vetancurt, and Sigüenza cite it as Memorias históricas; Brasseur, Bib. Mexico-Guat., p. 122.

[910] Cf. “Les Annales Méxicaines,” by Rémi Siméon in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, n. s., vol. ii.

[911] It is cited by Chavero as Codex Zumárraga.

[912] Hist. Nat. Civ., ii. 577.

[913] Aboriginal Amer. Authors, p. 29. Cf. Bandelier’s Bibliography of Yucatan in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., vol. i. p. 82. Cf. the references in Brasseur, Hist. Nat. Civ., and in Bancroft, Nat. Races, v.

[914] Cf. Mem. of Berendt, by Brinton (Worcester, 1884).

[915] Cf. Brinton on the MSS. in the languages of Cent. America, in Amer. Jour. of Science, xcvii. 222; and his Books of Chilan Balam, the prophetic and historical records of the Mayas of Yucatan (Philad., 1882), reprinted from the Penn Monthly, March, 1882. Cf. also the Transactions of the Philad. Numismatic and Antiquarian Soc.

[916] This is in the alphabet adopted by the early missionaries. The volume contains the “Books of Chilan Balam,” written “not later than 1595,” and also the “Chac Xulub Chen,” written by a Maya chief, Nakuk Pech, in 1562, to recount the story of the Spanish conquest of Yucatan.

[917] This was in 1843, when Stephens made his English translation from Pio Perez’s Spanish version, Antigua Chronologia Yucateca; and from Stephens’s text, Brasseur gave it a French rendering in his edition of Landa. (Cf. also his Nat. Civilisées, ii. p. 2.) Perez, who in Stephens’s opinion (Yucatan, ii. 117) was the best Maya scholar in that country, made notes, which Valentini published in his “Katunes of Maya History,” in the Pro. of the Amer. Antiq. Soc., Oct., 1879 (Worcester, 1880), but they had earlier been printed in Carrillo’s Hist. y Geog. de Yucatan (Merida, 1881). Bancroft (Nat. Races, v. 624) reprints Stephens’s text with notes from Brasseur.

The books of Chilan Balam were used both by Cogolludo and Lizana; and Brasseur printed some of them in the Mission Scientifique au Méxique. They are described in Carrillo’s Disertacion sobre la historia de lengua Maya ó Yucateca (Merida, 1870).

[918] Brasseur, Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 30. See Vol. II. p. 429. The Spanish title is Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan.

[919] From the Proc. of the Amer. Philos. Soc., xxiv.

[920] Cf. Bandelier in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., vol. i. p. 88.

[921] The second edition was called Los tres Siglos de la Dominacion Española en Yucatan (Campeche and Merida, 2 vols., 1842, 1845). It was edited unsatisfactorily by Justo Sierra. Cf. Vol. II. p. 429; Brasseur, Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 47.

This, like Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor’s Historia de la Conquista de la Provincia de el Itza, reduccion, y progressos de la de el Lacandon, y otras naciones de Indios Barbaros, de la mediacion de el Reyno de Gautimala, a las Provincias de Yucatan, en la America Septentrional (Madrid, 1701), (which, says Bandelier, is of importance for that part of Yucatan which has remained unexplored), has mostly to do with the Indians under the Spanish rule, but the books are not devoid of usefulness in the study of the early tribes.

Of the modern comments on the Yucatan ancient history, those of Brasseur in his Nations Civilisées are more to be trusted than his introduction to his edition of Landa, which needs to be taken with due recognition of his later vagaries; and Brinton has studied their history at some length in the introduction to his Maya Chronicles. The first volume of Eligio Ancona’s Hist. de Yucatan covers the early period. See Vol. II. p. 429. Brinton calls it “disappointingly superficial.” There is much that is popularly retrospective in the various and not always stable contributions of Dr. Le Plongeon and his wife. The last of Mrs. Le Plongeon’s papers is one on “The Mayas, their customs, laws, religion,” in the Mag. Amer. Hist., Aug., 1887. Bancroft’s second volume groups the necessary references to every phase of Maya history. Cf. Charnay, English translation, ch. 15; and Geronimo Castillo’s Diccionario Histórico, biográfico y monumental de Yucatan (Mérida, 1866). Of Crescencio Carrillo and his Historia Antigua de Yucatan (Mérida, 1881), Brinton says: “I know of no other Yucatecan who has equal enthusiasm or so just an estimate of the antiquarian riches of his native land” (Amer. Hero Myths, 147). Bastian summarizes the history of Yucatan and Guatemala in the second volume of his Culturländer des alten Amerika.

[922] Yucatan, ii. 79.

[923] See C. H. Berendt on the hist. docs. of Guatemala in Smithsonian Report, 1876. There is a partial bibliography of Guatemala in W. T. Brigham’s Guatemala the land of the Quetzal (N. Y., 1887), and another by Bandelier in the Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., vol. i. p. 101. The references in Brasseur’s Hist. Nations Civilisées, and in Bancroft’s Native Races, vol. v., will be a ready means for collating the early sources.

[924] Scherzer and Brasseur are somewhat at variance here.

[925] “There are some coincidences between the Old Testament and the Quiché MS. which are certainly startling.” Müller’s Chips, i. 328.

[926] Wanderungen durch die mittel-Amerikanischen Freistaaten (Braunschweig, 1857—an English translation, London, 1857).

[927] Leclerc, no. 1305.

[928] H. H. Bancroft, Nat. Races, ii. 115; iii., ch. 2, and v. 170, 547, gives a convenient condensation of the book, and says that Müller misconceives in some parts of his summary, and that Baldwin in his Ancient America, p. 191, follows Müller. Helps, Spanish Conquest, iv. App., gives a brief synopsis,—the first one done in English.

[929] Max Müller dissents from this. Chips, i. 326. Müller reminds us, if we are suspicious of the disjointed manner of what has come down to us as the Popul Vuh, that “consecutive history is altogether a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any conception. If we had the exact words of the Popul Vuh, we should probably find no more history there than we find in the Quiché MS. as it now stands.”

[930] Cf. Aborig. Amer. Authors, p. 33.

[931] The names of the gods in the Kiché Myths of Central America (Philad., 1881), from the Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. He gives his reasons (p. 4) for the spelling Kiché.

[932] Cf. Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., vol. i. 109; and his paper, “On the Sources of the Aboriginal Hist. of Spanish America,” in the Am. Asso. Adv. Sci. Proc., xxvii. 328 (Aug., 1878). In the Peabody Mus. Eleventh Report, p. 391, he says of it that “it appears to be for the first chapters an evident fabrication, or at least accommodation of Indian mythology to Christian notions,—a pious fraud; but the bulk is an equally evident collection of original traditions of the Indians of Guatemala, and as such the most valuable work for the aboriginal history and ethnology of Central America.”

[933] Hist. Nat. Civ., i. 47. S’il existe des sources de l’histoire primitive du Méxique dans les monuments égyptiens et de l’histoire primitive de l’ancien monde dans les monuments Américains? (1864), which is an extract from his Landa’s Relation. Cf. Bollaert, in the Royal Soc. of Lit. Trans., 1863. Brasseur (Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 45; Pinart, no. 231) also speaks of another Quiché document, of which his MS. copy is entitled Titulo de los Señores de Totonicapan, escrito en lengua Quiché, el año de 1554, y traducido al Castellano el año de 1834, por el Padre Dionisio José Chonay, indígena, which tells the story of the Quiché race somewhat differently from the Popul Vuh.

[934] See Vol. II. p. 419.

[935] It stands in Brasseur’s Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 13, as Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan (Solola), histoire des deux familles royales du royaume des Cakchiquels d’Iximché ou Guatémala, rédigé en langue Cakchiquèle par le prince Don Francisco Ernantez Arana-Xahila, des rois Ahpozotziles, where Brasseur speaks of it as analogous to the Popul Vuh, but with numerous and remarkable variations. The MS. remained in the keeping of Xahila till 1562, when Francisco Gebuta Queh received it and continued it (Pinart Catalogue, no. 35).

[936] See Vol. II. 419; Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 564; Bandelier in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., i. 105. Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts., ii. 391) says that it is now acknowledged that the Recordacion florida of Fuentes y Guzman is “full of exaggerations and misstatements.” Brasseur (Bib. Mex.-Guat., pp. 65, 87), in speaking of Fuentes’ Noticia histórica de los indios de Guatemala (of which manuscript he had a copy), says that he had access to a great number of native documents, but profited little by them, either because he could not read them, or his translators deceived him. Brasseur adds that Fuentes’ account of the Quiché rulers is “un mauvais roman qui n’a pas le sens commun.” This last is a manuscript used by Domingo Juarros in his Compendio de la historia de la ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1808-1818, in two vols.—become rare), but reprinted in the Museo Guatemalteco, 1857. The English translation, by John Baily, a merchant living in Guatemala, was published as a Statistical and Commercial History of Guatemala (Lond., 1823). Cf. Vol. II. p. 419. Francisco Vazquez depended largely on native writers in his Crónica de la Provincia de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1714-16). (See Vol. II. p. 419.)

[937] See note in Bancroft, iii. 451.

[938] Vol. II. 419. Helps (iii. 300), speaking of Remesal, says: “He had access to the archives of Guatemala early in the seventeenth century, and he is one of those excellent writers so dear to the students of history, who is not prone to declamation, or rhetoric, or picturesque writing, but indulges us largely by the introduction everywhere of most important historical documents, copied boldly into the text.”

[939] Vol. II. 419.

[940] Vol. II. 417.

[941] E. G. Squier printed in 1860 (see Vol. II. p. vii.) Diego Garcia de Palacio’s Carta dirigida al Rey de España, año 1576, under the English title of Description of the ancient Provinces of Guazacupan, Izalco, Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula in Guatemala, which is also included in Pacheco’s Coleccion, vol. vi. Bandelier refers to Estevan Aviles’ Historia de Guatemala desde los tiempos de los Indios (Guatemala, 1663). A good reputation belongs to a modern work, Francisco de Paula Garcia Pelaez’s Memorias para la Historia del antiguo reyno de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1851-53, in three vols.).

[942] For details follow the references in Brasseur’s Nat. Civil.; Bancroft’s Nat. Races; Stephens’s Nicaragua, ii. 305, etc. See the introd. of Brinton’s Güegüence (Philad., 1883), for the Nahuas and Mangues of Nicaragua.

[943] Leclerc, no. 1070. Bancroft summarized the history of these ancient peoples in his vol. ii. ch. 2, and goes into detail in his vol. v.

[944] He condenses the early Mexican history in his Mexico, i. ch. 7. There are recent condensed narratives, in which avail has been had of the latest developments, in Baldwin’s Ancient America, ch. 4, and Short’s North Americans of Antiquity.

[945] Mrs. Alice D. Le Plongeon has printed various summarized popular papers, like the “Conquest of the Mayas,” in the Mag. Amer. Hist., April and June, 1888.

[946] A list of Squier’s published writings was appended to the Catalogue of Squier’s Library, prepared by Joseph Sabin (N. Y., 1876), as sold at that time. By this it appears that his earliest study of these subjects was a review of Buxton’s Migrations of the Ancient Mexicans, read before the London Ethnolog. Soc., and printed in 1848 in the Edinb. New Philosoph. Mag., vol. xlvi. His first considerable contribution was his Travels in Cent. America, particularly in Nicaragua, with a description of its aboriginal monuments (London and N. Y., 1852-53). He supplemented this by some popular papers in Harper’s Mag., 1854, 1855. (Cf. Hist. Mag., iv. 65; Putnam’s Mag., xii. 549.) A year or two later he communicated papers on “Les Indiens Guatusos du Nicaragua,” and “Les indiens Xicaques du Honduras,” to the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (1856, 1858), and “A Visit to the Guajiquero Indians” to Harper’s Mag., 1859. In 1860, Squier projected the publication of a Collection of documents, but only a letter (1576) of Palacio was printed (Icazbalceta, Bibl. Mex., i. p. 326). He had intended to make the series more correct and with fewer omissions than Ternaux had allowed himself. His material, then the result of ten years’ gathering, had been largely secured through the instrumentality of Buckingham Smith. (See Vol. II. p. vii.)

[947] “Art of war and mode of warfare of the Ancient Mexicans” (Peabody Mus. Rept., no. x.).

“Distribution and tenure of lands, and the customs with respect to inheritance among the ancient Mexicans” (Ibid. no. xi.).

“Special organizations and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans” (Ibid. no. xii.).

These papers reveal much thorough study of the earlier writers on the general condition of the ancient people of Mexico, and the student finds much help in their full references. It was this manifestation of his learning that led to his appointment by the Archæological Institute,—the fruit of his labor in their behalf appearing in his Report of an Archæological Tour in Mexico, 1881, which constitutes the second volume (1884) of the Papers of that body. In his third section he enlarges upon the condition of Mexico at the time of the Conquest. His explorations covered the region from Tampico to Mexico city.

[948] Library of Aboriginal American Literature, (Philadelphia.)

[949] James H. McCulloh, an officer of the U. S. army, published Researches on America (Balt., 1816), expanded later into Researches, philosophical and antiquarian, concerning the original History of America (Baltimore, 1829). His fifth and sixth parts concern the “Institutions of the Mexican Empire,” and “The nations inhabiting Guatemala” (Field, no. 987).

G. F. Lyon’s Journal of a residence and tour in the Republic of Mexico (Lond., 1826, 1828).

Brantz Mayer’s Mexico as it was and as it is, and his more comprehensive Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican (Hartford, 1853), which includes an essay on the ancient civilization. Mayer had good opportunities while attached to the United States legation in Mexico, but of course he wrote earlier than the later developments (Field, no. 1038).

The distinguished English anthropologist, E. B. Tylor’s Anahuac; or, Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern (London, 1861), is a readable rendering of the outlines of the ancient history, and he describes such of the archæological remains as fell in his way.

H. C. R. Becher’s Trip to Mexico (London, 1880) has an appendix on the ancient races.

F. A. Ober’s Travels in Mexico (1884).

[950] The important papers are:—Tome I. Brasseur de Bourbourg. Esquisses d’histoire, d’archéologie, d’ethnographie et de linguistique. Gros. Renseignements sur les monuments anciens situés dans les environs de Mexico.—Tome II. Br. de Bourbourg. Rapport sur les ruines de Mayapan et d’Uxmal au Yucatan. Hay. Renseignements sur Texcoco. Dolfus, Montserrat et Pavie. Mémoires et notes géologiques.—Tome III. Doutrelaine. Rapports sur les ruines de Mitla, sur la pierre de Tlalnepantla, sur un mss. mexicain (avec fac-simile). Guillemin Tarayre. Rapport sur l’exploration minéralogique des régions mexicaines. Siméon. Note sur la numération des anciens Mexicains.

[951] He says the work is very rare. A copy given by him is in Harvard College library. Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 26.

[952] His Palenqué, at a later day, was published by the French government (Quatre Lettres, avant-propos).

[953] Introduction of his Hist. Nations Civilisées.

[954] Tome I. xcii. et 440 pp. Les temps héroïques et l’histoire de l’empire des Toltèques.—Tome II. 616 pp. L’histoire du Yucatan et du Guatémala, avec celle de l’Anahuac durant le moyen âge aztèque, jusqu’à la fondation de la royauté à Mexico.—Tome III. 692 pp. L’histoire des Etats du Michoacan et d’Oaxaca et de l’empire de l’Anahuac jusqu’à l’arrivée des Espagnols. Astronomie, religion, sciences et arts des Aztèques, etc.—Tome IV. vi. et 851 pp. Conquête du Mexique, du Michoacan et du Guatémala, etc. Etablissement des Espagnols et fondation de l’Eglise catholique. Ruine de l’idolâtrie, déclin et abaissement de la race indigène, jusqu’à la fin du xvi^e siècle.

In his introduction (p. lxxiv) Brasseur gives a list of the manuscript and printed books on which he has mainly depended, the chief of which are: Burgoa, Cogolludo, Torquemada, Sahagún, Remesal, Gomara (in Barcia), Lorenzana’s Cortes, Bernal Diaz, Vetancurt’s Teatro Mexicano (1698), Valades’ Rhetorica Christiana (1579), Juarros, Pelaez, Leon y Gama, etc.

[955] Kirk’s Prescott, i. 10. There are lists of Brasseur’s works in his own Bibliothèque Mex.-Guatémalienne, p. 25; in the Pinart Catalogue, no. 141, etc.; Field, p. 43; Sabin, ii. 7420. Cf. notices of his labors by Haven in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Oct., 1870, p. 47; by Brinton in Lippincott’s Mag., i. 79. There is a Sommaire des voyages scientifiques et des travaux de géographie, d’histoire, d’archéologie et de Philologie américaines, publiés par l’abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (St. Cloud, 1862).

[956] Abor. Amer. Authors, 57.

[957] Cf. Bandelier, Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 93; Field, no. 176; H. H. Bancroft’s Nat. Races, ii. 116, 780; v. 126, 153, 236, 241,—who says of Brasseur that “he rejects nothing, and transforms everything into historic fact;” but Bancroft looks to Brasseur for the main drift of his chapter on pre-Toltec history. Cf. Brinton’s Myths of the New World, p. 41.

[958] Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 176; Baldwin, Anc. America.

[959] Reference may be made to H. T. Moke’s Histoire des peuples Américains (Bruxelles, 1847); Michel Chevalier’s “Du Mexique avant et pendant la Conquête,” in the Revue des deux Mondes, 1845, and his Le Méxique ancien et moderne (Paris, 1863); and some parts of the Marquis de Nadaillac’s L’Amérique préhistorique (Paris, 1883). A recent popular summary, without references, of the condition and history of ancient Mexico, is Lucien Biart’s Les Aztèques, histoire, mœurs, coutumes (Paris, 1885), of which there is an English translation, The Aztecs, their history, etc., translated by J. L. Garnier (Chicago, 1887).

[960] Leclerc, no. 1147; Field, no. 620; Squier, no. 427; Sabin, vii. 28,255; Bandelier in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 116. It has never yet been reprinted. The early date, as well as its rarity, have contributed to give it, perhaps, undue reputation. It is worth from £3 to £4.

[961] Leclerc, no. 1119. See Vol. II. p. 415.

[962] Leclerc, no. 2079; Brasseur, Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 113.

[963] For the Historia de Mexico of Carbajal Espinosa, see Vol. II. p. 428. Cf. Alfred Chavero’s México á través de los Siglos.

[964] Discrediting Gomara’s statement that De Ayllon found tribes near Cape Hatteras who had tame deer and made cheese from their milk, Dr. Brinton says: “Throughout the continent there is not a single authentic instance of a pastoral tribe, not one of an animal raised for its milk, nor for the transportation of persons, and very few for their flesh. It was essentially a hunting race.” (Myths of the New World, 21.) He adds: “The one mollifying element was agriculture, substituting a sedentary for a wandering life, supplying a fixed dependence for an uncertain contingency.”

[965] See Vol. II. p. 98.

[966] It was two years earlier, in 1517, that Hernandez de Cordova had first noticed the ruins of the Yucatan coast, though Columbus, in 1502, near Yucatan had met a Maya vessel, which with its navigators had astonished him.

[967] “No writer,” says Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 674), “has been more prolific in pictures of pomp, regal wealth and magnificence, than Bernal Diaz. Most of the later writers have placed undue reliance on his statements, assuming that the truthfulness of his own individual feelings was the result of cool observation. Any one who has read attentively his Mémoirs will become convinced that he is in fact one of the most unreliable eye-witnesses, so far as general principles are concerned.... Cortes had personal and political motives to magnify and embellish the picture. If his statements fall far below those of his troopers in thrilling and highly-colored details, there is every reason to believe that they are the more trustworthy.... In the descriptions by Cortes we find, on the whole, nothing but a barbarous display common to other Indian celebrations of a similar character.”

Bandelier’s further comment is (Ibid. ii. 397) “A feudal empire at Tezcuco was an invention of the chroniclers, who had a direct interest, or thought to have one, in advancing the claims of the Tezcucan tribe to an original supremacy.”

Bandelier again (Ibid. ii. 385) points out the early statements of the conquerors, and of their annalists, which have prompted the inference of a feudal condition of society; but he refers to Ixtlilxochitl as “the chief originator of the feudal view;” and from him Torquemada draws his inspiration. Wilson (Prehist. Man, i. 242) holds much the same views.

[968] Peabody Mus. Tenth Rept. vol. ii. 114.

[969] Bandelier (“Art of War, etc.,” in Peabody Mus. Rept. x. 113) again says of De Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Américaines, that it is “a very injudicious book, which by its extravagance and audacity created a great deal of harm. It permitted Clavigero to attack even Robertson, because the latter had also applied sound criticism to the study of American aboriginal history, and by artfully placing both as upon the same platform, to counteract much of the good effects of Robertson’s work.”

[970] Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 114.

[971] In regard to the nature of the chief-of-men we find, among much else of the first importance in the study of the Mexican government, an exposition in Sahagún (lib. vi. cap. 20), which seems to establish the elective and non-hereditary character of the office. It was “this office and its attributes,” says Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 670), “which have been the main stays of the notion that a high degree of civilization prevailed in aboriginal Mexico, in so far as its people were ruled after the manner of eastern despotisms.” Bandelier (Ibid. ii. 133) says: “It is not impossible that the so-called empire of Mexico may yet prove to have been but a confederacy of the Nahuatlac tribe of the valley, with the Mexicans as military leaders.” His argument on the word translated “king” is not convincing.

[972] Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 435.

[973] Introd. to Conquest of Mexico. See Vol. II. p. 426. In the Appendix to his third volume, Prescott, relying mainly on the works of Dupaix and Waldeck, arrived at conclusions as respects the origin of the Mexican civilization, and its analogies with the Old World, which accord with those of Stephens, whose work had not appeared at the time when Prescott wrote.

[974] Houses and House Life, p. 222.

[975] Bancroft (ii. 92) says: “What is known of the Aztecs has furnished material for nine tenths of all that has been written on the American civilized nations in general.”

[976] Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (London, 1861). Tylor enlarges upon what he considers the evidences of immense populations; and respecting some of their arts he adds, from inspection of specimens of their handicraft, that “the Spanish conquerors were not romancing in the wonderful stories they told of the skill of the native goldsmiths.” On the other hand, Morgan (Houses and House Life, 223) thinks the figures of population grossly exaggerated.

[977] Vol. II. p. 427.

[978] When we consider that Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, in spite of rapine, siege and fire, still retain numerous traces of their earliest times, and that not a vestige of the Aztec capital remains to us except its site, we must assume, in Wilson’s opinion (Prehistoric Man, i. 331), that its edifices and causeways must have been for the most part more slight and fragile than the descriptions of the conquerors implied. Morgan instances as a proof of the flimsy character of their masonry, that Cortes in seventeen days levelled three fourths of the city of Mexico. But, adds Wilson, “so far as an indigenous American civilization is concerned, no doubt can be entertained, and there is little room for questioning, that among races who had carried civilization so far, there existed the capacity for its further development, independently of all borrowed aid” (p. 336). The Baron Nordenskjöld informs me that there is in the library at Upsala a MS. map of Mexico by Santa Cruz (d. 1572) which contains numerous ethnographical details, not to be found in printed maps of that day.

[979] Native Races, ii. 159.

[980] Ibid. ii. 133.

[981] Bancroft has recently epitomized his views afresh in the Amer. Antiquarian, Jan., 1888.

[982] Bancroft wrote in San Francisco, it will be remembered.

[983] It was for Bandelier, in his “Social organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans” (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 557), to demonstrate the proposition that tribal society based, according to Morgan, upon kin, and not political society, which rests upon territory and property, must be looked for among the ancient Mexicans.

[984] Morgan’s Houses, etc., 225. Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Rept., vol. ii. 114) speaks of the views advanced by Morgan in his “Montezuma’s Dinner,” as “a bold stroke for the establishment of American ethnology on a new basis.” It must be remembered that Bandelier was Morgan’s pupil.

[985] Ibid. 222.

[986] Morgan says of his predecessors, “they learned nothing and knew nothing” of Indian society.

[987] Ibid. 223.

[988] In this he of course assumes that the ruins in Spanish America are of communal edifices.

[989] Bandelier’s papers are in the second volume of the Reports of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. He contends in his “Art of Warfare among the Ancient Mexicans,” that he has shown the non-existence of a military despotism, and proved their government to be “a military democracy, originally based upon communism in living.” A similar understanding pervades his other essay “On the social organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans.” Morgan and Bandelier profess great admiration for each other,—Morgan citing his friend as “our most eminent scholar in Spanish American history” (Houses, etc., 84), and Bandelier expresses his deep feeling of gratitude, etc. (Archæolog. Tour, 32). This affectionate relation has very likely done something in unifying their intellectual sympathies. The Ancient Society, or researches in the lines of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilization (N. Y. 1877), of Morgan is reflected very palpably in these papers of Bandelier. The accounts of the war of the conquest, as detailed in Bancroft’s Mexico (vol. i.), and the views of their war customs (Native Races, ii. ch. 13), contrasted with Bandelier’s ideas,—who finds in Parkman’s books “the natural parallelism between the forays of the Iroquois and the so-called conquests of the Mexican confederacy” (Archæol. Tour, 32), and who reduces the battle of Otumba to an affair like that of Custer and the Sioux (Art of Warfare),—give us in the military aspects of the ancient life the opposed views of the two schools of interpreters.

[990] Being vol. iv. of the Contributions to No. Amer. Ethnol. in Powell’s Survey of the Rocky Mt. Region. Some of Morgan’s cognate studies relating to the aboriginal system of consanguinity and laws of descent are in the Smithsonian Contributions, xvii., the Smithsonian Misc. Coll. ii., Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci. Trans. vii., and Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci. Proc., 1857.

[991] Morgan in this, his last work, condenses in his first chapter those which were numbered 1 to 4 in his Ancient Society, and in succeeding sections he discusses the laws of hospitality, communism, usages of land and food, and the houses of the northern tribes, of those of New Mexico, San Juan River, the moundbuilders, the Aztecs, and those in Yucatan and Central America. Among these he finds three distinct ethnical stages, as shown in the northern Indian, higher in the sedentary tribes of New Mexico, and highest among those of Mexico and Central America. S. F. Haven commemorated Morgan’s death in the Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Apr., 1880.

[992] Cf. Bandelier on “the tenure of lands” in Peabody Mus. Repts. (1878), no. xi., and Bancroft in Nat. Races, ii. ch. 6, p. 223.

[993] Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 391) points out that when Martin Ursúa captured Tayasál on Lake Petin, the last pueblo inhabited by Maya Indians, he found “all the inhabitants living brutally together, an entire relationship together in one single house,” and Bandelier refers further to Morgan’s Ancient Society, Part 2, p. 181.

[994] Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 673) accepts the views of Morgan, calling it “a rude clannish feast,” given by the official household of the tribe as a part of its daily duties and obligations.

[995] On the character of the Tecpan (council house, or official house) of the Mexicans, which the early writers translate “palace,” with its sense of magnificence, see Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 406, 671, etc.), with his references. Morgan holds that Stephens is largely responsible for the prevalence of erroneous notions regarding the Mayas, by reason of using the words “palaces” and “great cities” for defining what were really the pueblos of these southern Indians. Bancroft (ii. 84), referring to the ruins, says: They have “the highest value as confirming the truth of the reports made by Spanish writers, very many, or perhaps most, of whose statements respecting the wonderful phenomena of the New World, without this incontrovertible material proof, would find few believers among the skeptical students of the present day.” Bancroft had little prescience respecting what the communal theorists were going to say of these ruins.

[996] Cf. Bancroft’s Cent. America, i. 317. Sir J. William Dawson, in his Fossil Men (p. 83), contends that Morgan has proved his point, and he calls the ruins of Spanish America “communistic barracks” (p. 50). Higginson, in the first chapter of his Larger History, which is a very excellent, condensed popular statement of the new views which Morgan inaugurated, says of him very truly, that he lacked moderation, and that there is “something almost exasperating in the positiveness with which he sometimes assumes as proved that which is only probable.”

[997] Bancroft in his foot-notes (vol. ii.) embodies the best bibliography of this ancient civilization. Cf. Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. ch. 14; C. Hermann Berendt’s “Centres of ancient civilization and their geographical distribution,” an Address before the Amer. Geog. Soc. (N. Y. 1876); Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe; Brasseur’s Ms. Troano; Humboldt’s Cosmos (English transl. ii. 674); Michel Chevalier in the Revue de deux Mondes, Mar.-July, 1845, embraced later in his Du Méxique avant et pendant la Conquête (Paris, 1845); Brantz Mayer’s Mexico as it was; The Galaxy, March, 1876; Scribner’s Mag. v. 724; Overland Monthly, xiv. 468; De Charency’s Hist. du Civilisation du Méxique (Revue des Questions historiques), vi. 283; Dabry de Thiersant’s Origine des indiens du Nouveau Monde (Paris, 1883); Peschel’s Races of Men, 441; Nadaillac’s Les premiers hommes et les temps préhistoriques, ii. ch. 9, etc.

[998] For the bibliography of his works see Brunet, Sabin, Field, etc. The octavo edition of his Vues has 19 of the 69 plates which constitute the Atlas of the large edition. See the chapter on Peru for further detail.

[999] John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, Lond. and N. Y. 1841,—various later eds., that of London, 1854, being “revised from the latest Amer. ed., with additions by Frederick Catherwood.” Stephens started on this expedition in 1839, and he was armed with credentials from President Van Buren. He travelled 3000 miles, and visited eight ruined cities, as shown by his route given on the map in vol. i. Cf. references in Allibone, ii. p. 2240; Poole’s Index, p. 212; his Incidents of Travel in Yucatan will be mentioned later.

Frederick Catherwood’s Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (Lond. 1844) has a brief text (pp. 24) and 25 lithographed plates. Some of the original drawings used in making these plates were included in the Squier Catalogue, p. 229. (Sabin’s Dict. iii. no. 11520.) Captain Lindesay Brine, in his paper on the “Ruined Cities of Central America” (Journal Roy. Geog. Soc. 1872, p. 354; Proc. xvii. 67), testifies to the accuracy of Stephens and Catherwood. These new developments furnished the material for numerous purveyors to the popular mind, some of them of the slightest value, like Asahel Davis, whose Antiquities of Central America, with some slight changes of title, and with the parade of new editions, were common enough between 1840 and 1850.

[1000] Viollet le Duc, in his Histoire de l’habitation humaine depuis les temps préhistoriques (Paris, 1875), has given a chapter (no. xxii.) to the “Nahuas and Toltecs.” Views more or less studied, comprehensive, and restricted are given in R. Cary Long’s Ancient Architecture of America, its historic value and parallelism of development with the architecture of the Old World (N. Y. 1849), an address from the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1849, p. 117; R. P. Greg on “the Fret or Key Ornament in Mexico and Peru,” in the Archæologia (London), vol. xlvii. 157; and a popular summary on “the pyramid in America,” by S. D. Peet, in the American Antiquarian, July, 1888, comparing the mounds of Cholula, Uxmal, Palenqué, Teotihuacan, Copan, Quemada, Cohokia, St. Louis, etc. John T. Short summarizes the characteristics of the Nahua and Maya styles (No. Amer. of Antiquity, 340, 359). There are chapters on their architecture in Bancroft, Nat. Races, ii.; but the references in his vol. iv. are most helpful.