MEXICAN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. 27 



very probable that hundreds of the unfortunate Zapotec inhabitants of Mitla and 

 Huaxaca, or Oajaca, who had become prisoners to Aheutzotl, in previous wars, 

 swelled the splendid but brutal sacrifice of human victims, with which the great 

 temple of Mexico was dedicated in 1487. 1 



Very soon after the first success of Cortez in the city of Mexico, the people of 

 Oajaca sent embassies to claim his protection; and, as soon as the country was 

 absolutely conquered, and the victor had learned the value of the region from the 

 reports of Alvarado and the Spaniards who began to settle there, he seems to 

 have selected it as his own particular domain. When the crown raised him to the 

 dignity of " Marquess of the Valley of Oajaca," he was endowed with a vast tract 

 of land in the province, and there is no doubt that his twenty large towns, and 

 twenty-three thousand vassals, were to be found mainly within the boundary of 

 his Zapotec territory. These facts are mentioned to show that the acts of Cortez 

 himself indicate the value of the region in which Mitla lies ; and, in all likelihood, 

 illustrate the degree of civilization it possessed prior to the Aztec conquest. It is 

 to be regretted that there are so few traces of the ancient Zapotec tribes, and that 

 we are left to grope in the dark, with scarcely a cobweb to guide us through the 

 ruined labyrinth of their history. The great natural features and characteristics 

 of the region remain of course the same ; and from its general salubrity, its fertility 

 of soil, the nature of its productions, its geological structure, and beauty of natural 

 scenery, we may fairly suppose that its famous "valley" possessed many attractions 

 similar to those which induced the Aztecs to make their lodgement in the Vale of 

 Anahuac. Zachila, which is a corruption of the word ZaachillattoS, as written in an 

 ancient MS. seen by Dupaix, is situated in the midst of the great Valley of Oajaca, 

 and, in former times, is said to have been the seat and court of the Zapotec kings. 

 Ten or twelve leagues southeastwardly from the town of Oajaca, engulfed in a deep 

 valley, crested with cerros whose dry, sterile, and poorly watered soil is probably 

 more prolific of snakes and poisonous insects than of anything else, lies the modern 

 village of San Pablo-Mitlan. Its name was derived from Mictlan, or Miquitlan, 

 " a place of sadness," which it probably received from the Aztecs, while the Zapotec 

 appellation seems to have been Liuba or Leoba, " the tomb." It is here that we 



1 The cruelty of the Mexican sacrifices of human beings lias always been one of the principal argu- 

 ments against the civilization, and in favor of the barbarism of the Aztecs. All religion includes the 

 idea of sacrifice — spiritual or physical — actual or symbolical. The Christian sacrifices his selfish nature ; 

 the Idolater propitiates by victims. The Aztec sacrifice arose, probably, from a blended motive of 

 propitiation and policy. The human sacrifice by that people was, perhaps, founded on the idea that 

 the best way of getting rid of culprits, dangerous people, and prisoners of war taken in immense 

 numbers, and whom it was impossible to support or retain in subjection without converting a large 

 portion of their small kingdom into a jail — was to offer them to their gods. It is true, that savage 

 nations, such as the Africans of Dahome, &c, admit the purest barbaric notions of human sacrifice ; 

 but can such cruel contradictions be attributed — with their more brutal motives — to the Aztecs, who, in 

 other respects, possessed so many titles to civilization 1 Still, it must be admitted, that if we regard 

 the grossness of the Aztec idolatry alone, at the time of the conquest, we could form no idea of that 

 people's intellectual progress in other respects. Yet their architecture, laws, government, private 

 life, and astronomical knowledge, show that their social condition was much more refined than their 

 faith, so that we must suppose the Valley of Anahuac was full of priestcraft and superstition, and that 

 its cultivated society was in advance of its religion. 



