MORGAN] A MESS OF TRASH. 247 
amused himself by watching the performances of his jugglers and tum- 
blers, whose marvellous feats of strength and dexterity I shall describe in 
another place; at other times there was dancing, accompanied by singing 
and music. * * * The more solid food was followed by pastry, sweet- 
meats, and a magnificent dessert of fruit. The only beverage drank was 
chocolate, of which about fifty jars were provided; it was taken with a 
spoon, finely wrought of gold or shell, from a goblet of the same material 
Having finished his dinner, the king again washed his hands in water brought 
to him, as before, by the women After this, several painted and gilt pipes 
were brought, from which he inhaled, through his mouth or nose, as best 
suited him, the smoke of a mixture of liquid amber and an herb called 
tobacco. This siesta over, he devoted himself to business, and proceeded 
to give audience to foreign ambassadors or deputations from cities in the 
empire, and to such of his lords and ministers as had business to transact 
with him.”? 
In this account, although founded upon those of Diaz and Cortes, and 
showing nothing essentially new, we have the final growth of the story to 
the present time, but without any assurance that the limits of its possible 
expansion have been reached: The purification of our aboriginal history, 
by casting out the mass of trash with which it is so heavily freighted, is forced 
upon us to save American intelligence from deserved disgrace. Whatever 
may be said of the American aborigines in general, or of the Aztecs in 
particular, they were endowed with common sense in the matter of their 
daily food, which cost them labor, forethought, and care to provide. The . 
picture of Indian life here presented is simply impossible. Village Indians 
in the Middle Status of barbarism were below the age of tables and chairs 
for dinner service; neither had they learned to arrange a dinner to be eaten 
socially at a common table, or even to share their dinner with their wives 
and children. Their joint-tenement houses, their common stores, their com- 
munism in living, and the separation of the sexes at their meals, are genuine 
Indian customs and usages which explain this dinner. It was misconceived 
by the Spaniards quite naturally, and with the grotesque results herein 
1Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 174-178. 
