First Weekly Question

I suppose it is worth trying out the question on my readers for clarity before inflicting it on my students.

Week 1 Question

The assigned reading in the textbook, and the excerpt from Bernal Diaz del Castillo's The Conquest of New Spain (1632), tell us quite a bit about how the Spanish conquistadors regarded the Aztecs (or Mexica, as they called themselves). Describe the motivations and justifications that the Spanish had for their conquest of the Aztecs. What do the readings tell us about Aztec views of conquest and power? How would you describe the range of beliefs of Spaniards about their rights to conquer the Indians? Were Spaniards of one opinion about the rightness of what happened? If the situations were reversed, how would the Aztecs have treated the Spanish?

While I am not going to impose the following reading on my students (since it is a bit amateurish work I did as an undergrad), I thought some of you might find it interesting and enlightening.

Aztec Human Sacrifice

by Clayton E. Cramer

What distinguishes human sacrifice from the other intentional homicides to which mankind is so very prone? Human sacrifice is a religious ritual in which a person, sometimes voluntarily, more often not, is consecrated to a god, then killed in a prescribed manner. While the purpose of human sacrifice varies from culture to culture, it is different from capital punishment in that those killing the sacrifice do not consider him or her a criminal. Indeed, the high standards for selecting victims often prevents combining human sacrifice with capital punishment.

Human sacrifice is not a peculiarly New World phenomenon. Indeed, human sacrifice appears to have been widespread throughout the world in different eras.[1] The pre-Christian Celts performed human sacrifice (drowning of females), as did China (the king's immediate servants were buried with him, at least intermittently, until the 17th century).[2] The Carthaginians, like the Phoenicians from whom they are descended, sacrificed children to their chief god, Baal Hammon — and other Mediterranean civilizations criticized them at the time for doing so.[3] The Scythians not only sacrificed captured enemies to their war god, but also sacrificed and buried a chieftain's wives, principal servants, and "50 men from his bodyguard" with the chieftain.[4] The funeral of the Mongol Genghis Khan required the strangulation of "forty girls young enough to be virgins."[5]

Not surprisingly, Christianity played a part in the ending of human sacrifice in those places where the sword backed up the cross. Other religions and even the effectively secular government of the Roman Empire also suppressed human sacrifice. Both Tiberius and Claudius prohibited Celtic human sacrifice (apparently to a god of the sun), and St. Patrick did likewise in Ireland several centuries later. British colonialism demanded that sacrifice to Dravidian village goddesses substitute animals for people, and Buddhism similarly replaced human sacrifice with dough offerings in Tibet.[6]

Human sacrifice in Mexico was not uniquely Aztec. Some other New World cultures engaged in human sacrifice, including the Maya ("young maidens were drowned in sacred wells"), and the Incas.[7] The Incas engaged in high-altitude burial of live children, though some dispute exists whether this particular form of human sacrifice was originally an Inca rite, or a custom of local tribes that the Incas adopted.[8] Spanish accounts of Inca sacrifices, as well as archaeological evidence, suggests that the child, before being buried alive, was made drunk with alcohol.[9] Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca described a Texas coastal tribe that killed their male children in response to dreams, though it is unclear from Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca's account if these were strictly human sacrifice.[10]

Previous cultures of central Mexico, such as the Teotihuacan, had engaged in both human sacrifice and cannibalism. At Azcapotzalco a bowl "contained the remnants of the piéce de résistance, the upper legs and hips of a human being, the most succulent portions for festive consumption." Individuals buried under temple foundations and "shallow dishes, cut from the top of skulls, testify to other rituals involving sacrifice and death."[11] Sacrificial knives, depictions of human hearts, blood as a sacred liquid, child sacrifices to the rain god, and the cult of the Flayed God (from which came the custom of dressing up in human skins), were part of Teotihuacan culture as well.

What may be the Aztec's peculiar addition to the custom of human sacrifice is that such sacrifices sometimes involved thousands of victims over a few days. This appears to be distinctive in the history of human sacrifice.[12] The popular image of Aztec human sacrifice is of a prisoner of war, sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli, the sun god, by a priest ripping out the still beating heart. Yet this was a relatively merciful death compared to the less common forms. In sacrifices to Huehueteotl, the fire god, the captives were bound hand and foot, and dropped, one by one, on to burning coals:

Before death could intervene to put an end to their suffering the priests fished out the captives with large hooks and wrenched the hearts from their blistered bodies.[13]

Many sacrificial rites included ceremonial cannibalism, though mercifully, the Aztecs waited until the heart had been removed before carving up the meal.[14]

Perhaps more distressing to the Spaniards were the sacrifices not of adults, but of children. Ten of the eighteen 20-day months of the Aztec year had human sacrifices as part of the ritual calendar; four of the ten involved children. Even the driest description of the rituals is horrifying: "Child sacrifice to Tlálocs to bring rain;... fertility rite, drowning boy and girl in canoe filled with hearts of sacrificial victims;... sacrifice of slave girl impersonating goddess..."[15] A nearly contemporary account indicates that child sacrifice to the rain god also included sealing slave children five or six years of age in a cave to die.[16] Recent archaeological digs at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan corroborate both written and drawn accounts of such sacrifices. One recent discovery includes the skeletal remains of 42 children apparently sacrificed to Tláloc, from infants up to the age of 7 or 8.[17]

There is an element to Aztec human sacrifice that complicates simple outrage at this callous and bloody disregard for human life. One historian claims that the sacrifices appear to have accepted their fate as either inevitable or even desirable. At least for some types of sacrifice, the captives were regarded as a "personification of the god." Furthermore, there was a fatalism associated with the Indian religions that caused many captives to accept calmly deaths that must have been extraordinarily painful. In addition, those sacrificed to the god of rain believed that they were going directly to a paradise not available to those who died of old age.[18]

Motolinía's account of Aztec sacrifice (done closer in time to the events in question, but also when outrage at human sacrifice was more strongly felt) denies the willingness of the victims:

Let no one think that any of those whom they sacrificed by killing them and cutting out their hearts, or by any other form of death, were voluntary victims. On the contrary, they were sacrificed by force, bitterly mourning their death and frightful suffering.[19]

With the gruesome details now having been laid out on the table, what is their significance from the standpoint of the Spanish destruction of the Aztec culture? It seems clear that the Spanish felt a genuine repulsion at these bloody rites. From the standpoint of the moral code of Christianity, the destruction of this culture as an abomination would have been completely justified. Indeed, the Old Testament gave sanction to the extermination of entire tribes that engaged in child sacrifice. To the Spaniards, merely destroying the Aztec temples and religion must have seemed generous and merciful.

Bibliography

Besom, Thomas, "Another Mummy," Natural History 100:4 [April, 1991] 66-67.

Broda, Johanna, David Carrasco, and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1987).

Coles, Bryony, and John Coles, People of the Wetlands: Bogs, Bodies, and Lake-Dwellers (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1989).

Davies, Nigel, The Aztecs: A History (London: Sphere Books, 1977).

Dillon, Myles, "Celtic Religion." Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 3:1071.

Faherty, Robert L., "Sacrifice," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 16:128-135.

Lamb, Harold, The March of the Barbarians (New York: Literary Guild of America, Inc., 1940).

Linwen, Lou, "Living Buried With Dead 5,200 Years Ago," Beijing Review 33:5-6 [January 29, 1990], 44-45.

Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos, The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, transl. Doris Heyden, (London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 1988), 77.

Motolinía, Toribio, Motolinía's History of the Indians of New Spain, transl. Elizabeth Andros Foster, (Berkeley: The Cortes Society, 1950; reprinted Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973).

Monaghan, John, "Sacrifice, Death, and the Origins of Agriculture in the Codex Vienna," American Antiquity 55:3 [July, 1990], 559-569.

Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, Alvar, Relation of Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, transl. Buckingham Smith (New York: 1871; reprinted Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, Inc., 1966).

Rice, Tamara Talbot, "Scythians," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 16:438-442.

"Sati," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), VIII:913.

Schobinger, Juan, "Sacrifices of the High Andes," Natural History 100:4 [April, 1991] 62-69.

Vaillant, George C., Aztecs of Mexico: Origin, Rise, and Fall of the Aztec Nation, 2d ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966).

Warmington, Brian H., "History of North Africa," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 13:145-155.

Widengren, Geo, "Iranian Religions," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 9:867-872.

[1] The use of the word "appears" shows a sizable problem in itself. In the absence of written accounts, archaeological evidence is insufficient to distinguish capital punishment from human sacrifice. As an example, some of the bodies recovered from Northern European peat bogs are believed to be human sacrifices, but the presence of contemporary accounts of both capital punishment and human sacrifice that roughly mirror the methods of death of these "bodies in the bog" makes it difficult to determine with any certainty how many of these victims were criminals, and how many were ritual offerings. Bryony Coles & John Coles, People of the Wetlands: Bogs, Bodies, and Lake-Dwellers (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1989), 191-197.

[2] Robert L. Faherty, "Sacrifice," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 16:128. Lou Linwen, "Living Buried With Dead 5,200 Years Ago," Beijing Review, 33:5-6 [January 29, 1990] 44-45, describes recent discoveries of human sacrifice as part of chieftain burials in China. Unfortunately, the article is insufficiently detailed to understand how the archaeologists determined that the bodies found in the tomb were buried alive.

[3] Brian H. Warmington, "History of North Africa," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 13:148. Also see Lev. 18:21 (NIV) for prohibitions on sacrificing children to Molech, an Ammonite god similar to Baal Hammon.

[4] Tamara Talbot Rice, "Scythians," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 16:440-441. Geo Widengren, "Iranian Religions," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 9:868-869.

[5] Harold Lamb, The March of the Barbarians (New York: Literary Guild of America, Inc., 1940), 92-93.

[6] Robert L. Faherty, 16:128-131. Myles Dillon, "Celtic Religion," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), 3:1071. The Indian practice of sati, in which a wife either voluntarily or under compulsion joined her husband's funeral pyre, has many components in common with other forms of human sacrifice. "Sati," Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1983), VIII:913. Sati was prohibited by both Mughal rulers, and the British.

[7] Faherty, 16:128-131.

[8] Juan Schobinger, "Sacrifices of the High Andes," Natural History 100:4 [April, 1991] 64-67.

[9] Thomas Besom, "Another Mummy," Natural History 100:4 [April, 1991], 66-67.

[10] Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, Relation of Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, transl. Buckingham Smith (New York: 1871; reprinted Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1966), 102-104.

[11] George C. Vaillant, Aztecs of Mexico: Origin, Rise, and Fall of the Aztec Nation, 2d ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 76-77.

[12] Nigel Davies, The Aztecs: A History (London: Sphere Books, 1977), 169-170. John Monaghan, "Sacrifice, Death, and the Origins of Agriculture in the Codex Vienna," American Antiquity 55:3 [July, 1990] 559-569, interprets a pre-Conquest Mixtec codex concerning the relationship between agriculture and sacrifice. The Mixtecs, while sharing with the Aztec and Teotihuacan cultures the significance of blood and life as symbols of agricultural sacrifice, do not appear to have satisfied their gods with the death of humans, but regarded the burial of their dead as part of, "We eat the Earth and the Earth eats us."

[13] Vaillant, 205.

[14] Vaillant, 200-201. Toribio Motolinía, Motolinía's History of the Indians of New Spain, transl. Elizabeth Andros Foster (Berkeley: The Cortes Society, 1950; reprinted Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1973), 67.

[15] Vaillant, 200-201.

[16] Motolinía, 68. At first glance, the relationship between a god of rain, and caves, seems obscure. However, the Mixtecs believed that "cloud-forming vapor issues from the Earth in several places... The houses of the Rain are caves..." Monaghan, 564.

[17] Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, transl. Doris Heyden (London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 1988), 77. Johanna Broda, David Carrasco, and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 85.

[18] Davies, 171-173.

[19] Motolinía, 64.