AZTEC 



523 



AZTEC 



teenth century he found that all the southern 

 tribes had been made subject to the Aztecs, 

 who ruled from their central city, Tenochtitlan, 

 now the City of Mexico. One of their deities, 

 Quetzalcoatl, whose appearance on earth they 



AZTEC CALENDAR STONE 



constantly expected, was supposed to be a "fair 

 god," and when this first white man, Cortez, 

 came, they showed a readiness to worship him. 

 But they speedily found that he had come not 

 as a beneficent god but as a conqueror, and 

 under their ruler Montezuma they offered a 

 stubborn, though vain, resistance. Lew Wal- 

 lace's Fair God deals somewhat inaccurately 

 with the legends about Quetzalcoatl; Prescott's 

 Conquest oj Mexico tells the absorbing tale of 



the conquest, although it exaggerates very 

 greatly the development of the Aztec civili- 

 zation. 



The Aztecs, of whose origin nothing is 

 known, seem to have lived in Mexico from the 

 twelfth or thirteenth century. They learned 

 much from the Maya Indians of Yucatan, but 

 much of their civilization they developed 

 themselves, and they showed a considerable 

 knowledge of agriculture, architecture, sculp- 

 ture and various useful arts. Maize and the 

 agave were cultivated, and their feather work, 

 weaving, and pottery showed a high degree of 

 skill. To record events they used a compli- 

 cated picture-writing, and they had a lunar 

 calendar of unsual accuracy. Their temples, 

 much like the Pyramids of Egypt in form, were 

 in charge of a numerous priesthood, for the 

 Aztecs were very religious. This, indeed, was 

 the basis of their worst fault, for their religion 

 demanded of them human sacrifices, and each 

 year thousands of slaves or prisoners of war 

 were put to death with the most incredible 

 cruelty. 



To-day there are living in the villages about 

 the City of Mexico many thousands of de- 

 scendants of these Aztecs, who have lost the 

 civilization of their ancestors but stubbornly 

 refuse to acquire a new one from their Euro- 

 pean neighbors, the Spanish conquerors. The 

 present-day Aztecs are a harmless, timid peo- 

 ple. It is impossible to determine what propor- 

 tion of the great Indian population of Mexico 

 is descended from the Altec group. LJ. 



