The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (81 page)

Archaeological surveys suggest that some small kingdoms of this era had an administrative hierarchy of no more than three levels. Having previously crossed the rubicon to monarchy, however, these societies had no intention of giving up the trappings of kingship. Each attempted to maintain its own royal lineage, however modest its territory.

Each of these petty kingdoms was referred to as an
altepetl,
a word that combined the Nahuatl terms for land and water. On average, an altepetl had an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people, several thousand of whom resided at the capital.

While legendary histories describe the ethnic groups of this era as “arriving” in the Basin of Mexico and “settling” in specific localities, the archaeological record shows that many of those localities had already been occupied for centuries. We suspect that such long-term occupations reflect the presence of Nahuatl-speaking commoners, who farmed the land and provided long-term stability for each community. The migrations referred to in the legends were probably those of royal lineages who, like the great Ang families of the Konyak Naga, moved from place to place as older lineages declined and communities were left leaderless. Such a scenario is supported by the later actions of the Mexica, who, as we shall see, repeatedly asked other communities to send them a leader of royal blood.

According to their own oral history, Mexica leaders were not sufficiently elite to rule their own altepetl. From 1250 to 1298 they lived as vassals of Azcapotzalco. Then, from 1299 to 1323, they became vassals of Culhuacan. Eager to establish their own royal lineage, the Mexica asked the ruler of Culhuacan to give them his daughter, claiming that she would be both their sovereign and the bride of their main deity. Keeping one’s vassals happy often involved sending them a noble marriage partner, so the Mexica got their princess.

If the oral histories are to be believed, however, the Mexica then committed an incredible faux pas: they decided to honor the princess by deifying her. This ritual involved dressing the princess as a goddess, sacrificing her, skinning her corpse, and having a priest dance in her skin.

The ruler of Culhuacan was invited to the dance, recognized his daughter, and was horrified. Soon the Mexica were forced to flee, taking refuge on a pair of swampy islands in the central lake. These islands lay in a buffer zone between the territories of Azcapotzalco, Texcoco, and Culhuacan, a familiar venue for the founding of a new rank society. The Mexica named one island Tenochtitlan, “Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus,” and the other Tlatelolco, “Where There Are Earthen Mounds.”

Would this be the end of the Mexica? Not a chance.

THE AZTEC: A FIFTH-GENERATION STATE

According to Mexica legend, the most important moment in their migration from Aztlan was their discovery of an idol in a cave. The idol was that of Huitzilopochtli, “Hummingbird on the Left,” the patron deity who told them to call themselves Mexica.

Huitzilopochtli’s mother was the widowed goddess Coatlicue, “She of the Serpent Skirt.” One day as she swept the earth on Coatepec, a mythical “Serpent Hill” near Tula, she was miraculously impregnated by a ball of feathers. Her daughter Coyolxauhqui (the embodiment of the moon) was angered by her mother’s licentious behavior. Coyolxauhqui encouraged her 400 brothers (the stars of the southern sky) to decapitate their mother.

This event would later be commemorated in a colossal statue of the beheaded Coatlicue, with blood gushing from her neck in the form of serpents. The statue portrays Coatlicue as a bruiser, an offensive tackle in a rattlesnake skirt, a goddess only a ball of feathers could love. Her most winsome accessory was a necklace of severed hands and hearts.

Despite her beheading, Coatlicue gave birth to a warrior son, Huitzilopochtli, who emerged from his mother’s womb fully armed. He chopped his sister Coyolxauhqui into pieces, hurled her remains to the base of Coatepec hill, and drove his 400 brothers from the sky. This myth is believed to symbolize the sun’s daily banishment of the moon and stars.

The Mexica survived through deal-making and hard work, including the reclamation of farmland from swampy lakeshore. By 1376, enough time had elapsed so that their sacrifice of the Culhuacan princess had been forgiven. The occupants of Tenochtitlan petitioned for, and received, a prince from Culhuacan named Acamapichtli (1376–1395). Tlatelolco, for its part, received a prince from Azcapotzalco. The two new royal lineages thus created were, of course, considered junior (and therefore subordinate) to the ones from which they had been derived.

One of the major political trends of this period was the growing power of Tezozomoc, the king of Azcapotzalco. Soon he moved aggressively on Texcoco and drove its ruler, Nezahualcoyotl, into exile. Nezahualcoyotl, considered the most eminent sage and poet of his time, sought refuge with allies in Puebla and Tlaxcala. As he fled, he composed a poem as touching as the lament written by the Sumerians in response to the destruction of Ur:

I am bent over, I live with my head bowed beside the people.

For this I am weeping, I am wretched!

I have remained alone beside the people on earth.

How has Your heart decided, Giver of Life?

Dismiss Your displeasure! Extend Your compassion!

I am at Your side, You are God.

Perhaps You would bring death to me?

Sometime between 1426 and 1428, Tezozomoc of Azcapotzalco was succeeded by Maxtla, who apparently had no love for either Tenochtitlan or Tlatelolco. One of his first acts was to arrange the murders of both islands’ rulers.

These political assassinations brought to a boil years of simmering resentment of Azcapotzalcan despotism. The leaders of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco sent messengers to Nezahualcoyotl, Texcoco’s ruler-in-exile, plotting revenge. They were joined by Tlacopan, an altepetl just south of Azcapotzalco, whose people felt special antipathy for Maxtla. Soon the conspiracy spread to kingdoms in Puebla and Tlaxcala, well outside the Basin of Mexico.

One of the first acts of the rebels was to restore Texcoco’s exiled ruler to power. The allies then began taking away some of Azcapotzalco’s subject territories and encouraging others to defect. By 1428 they had effectively isolated Azcapotzalco and defeated Maxtla.

While different in detail, the overthrow of Azcapotzalco was analogous to the overthrow of the Denkyira by Osei Tutu’s Asante-led alliance. The Mexica ruler who played Osei Tutu’s role was Itzcoatl (“Obsidian Serpent”), who succeeded the murdered ruler of Tenochtitlan. Itzcoatl did not create a golden stool to celebrate his winning of independence for Tenochtitlan. He did, however, discard his official seat of reed bundles for a throne made of woven mats, and he directed his prime minister to burn all the old Mexica picture-writing so that he could give his people a more glorious (albeit revisionist) history.

The large towns of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan now decided that as long as they maintained their political and military alliance, no other altepetl could resist them. They therefore embarked on their own campaign of political expansion. In the course of their conquests, the spoils of war were divided into five equal portions. Tenochtitlan and Texcoco provided the bulk of the warriors and received two portions each; Tlacopan received one portion for transporting provisions to the battlefield.

It was only at the level of this Triple Alliance between Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan that an Aztec empire could have been created. No single altepetl had the political and military power to succeed on its own; it would have suffered the same fate as Azcapotzalco. In order to cement their alliance, the royal houses of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan began to intermarry in such a way that their rulers would be related as uncles, nephews, or cousins.

Over the next century the population of the Basin of Mexico grew to an estimated 1.5 million. This estimate is based on two sources: colonial Spanish documents and a fine-scale archaeological survey of the Basin of Mexico by William Sanders, Jeffrey Parsons, and Robert Santley.

By the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Basin of Mexico had at least 60
altepemeh
(the plural of altepetl) with average populations of 15,000 to 30,000. Each altepetl included a town of about 3,000 people and a series of smaller rural communities. These towns and villages provided the second, third, and fourth levels of the Aztec administrative hierarchy; the Triple Alliance constituted Level 1. Texcoco and Tlacopan had populations of about 25,000 each. Estimates for the population of Tenochtitlan range from a low of 60,000 to a high of 300,000. The islands of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, once thought of as refuge areas, were now connected to the mainland by three major causeways and thousands of canoes.

Aztec Society

By the time the Spaniards arrived, the Mexica had possessed their own royal house for 152 years, and their society was as highly stratified as that of their Toltec predecessors. Anyone born into the ruling stratum was known as a
pilli,
or hereditary noble. The
pipiltin
(the plural of pilli) received special education in an elite school called a
calmecac,
where they learned how to behave as aristocrats. Pipiltin wore sandals in public and were allowed to wear cotton mantles extending below the knee (
Figure 70
).

Some pipiltin rose by achievement and public service to become
tecuhtin,
or major nobles. Judges, governors, the rulers of conquered cities, generals of the army, and highly ranked civil officials were all tecuhtin. They paid no taxes and were given official residences, subsisting on income from lands set aside for their office. By right of membership in a noble family, the tecuhtin also had access to the products of other fields.

The Mexica ruler was known as
tlatoani,
“he who speaks [for us].” He was chosen from among the eligible tecuhtin by a council of 100 noble electors. In theory the council could choose the best person available. As time went on, however, rulers tended, increasingly, to be brothers, cousins, or nephews from the same family.

The tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was the de facto commander in chief of the Triple Alliance. The Mexica ruler built his palace in downtown Tenochtitlan, where he maintained guest quarters for allied rulers. The tlatoani appeared in public only on special occasions and traveled in a litter carried by other nobles.

Below the tlatoani was a prime minister who, like the vizier of ancient Egypt, attended to the everyday running of the state. This minister was deputy ruler in the king’s absence, chief justice of the supreme court, and chair of the council of noble electors.

The Aztec ruler was not considered a god. He was simply the most powerful and respected of all the tecuhtin, sometimes described as a “great tree” whose branches sheltered all the Aztec people. Nor did the tlatoani have to be descended from his father’s most highly ranked wife; oral history suggests that Itzcoatl, who won independence for the Mexica, was the politically savvy offspring of a nobleman and a woman of lowly rank.

The
macehualtin
were commoners who belonged to corporate groups called
calpultin
(the plural of calpulli). Each of the calpultin claimed descent from a remote ancestor; some of these ancestors were alleged to have lived during the time of the Toltec empire.

Calpultin might consist of 150 to 200 families. Each calpulli held corporate rights to specific resources, which could include agricultural land in rural settings or the raw material for crafts in urban settings. Some calpultin were more prestigious than others, as were some families within each calpulli. People maintained their rights to resources by marrying within their calpulli, and many positions of authority descended through family lines.

FIGURE 70.
   The Codex Mendoza is a sixteenth-century picture book, painted by Aztec artists at the request of their Spanish conquerors. Its images include people from all levels of Aztec society. On the left we see a
pilli,
or hereditary noble. In the center is a commoner at work. On the right we see two slaves with their necks in stocks; the hairdo of the slave at upper right identifies her as a woman.

The head of a calpulli was elected for life. He took several wives, enjoyed numerous privileges, and represented his calpulli to the outside world. It was his duty to collect taxes from the families in his calpulli and pass it on to the ruler of his altepetl. He himself paid no taxes, because he was expected to entertain visitors and provide food and
pulque
(agave cider) at ceremonies. Early in Aztec history, the tlatoani was advised by councils of calpulli heads; as time went on, however, such power-sharing institutions were bypassed.

Not all commoners belonged to calpultin. An estimated 30 percent were
mayeque,
or landless serfs. Mayeque could be foreign immigrants, freed slaves, or commoners who had lost their land as a result of crime or debt. Some documents suggest that just as the Sumerians created debtors by charging high interest rates, Aztec rulers sometimes created debtors by overtaxing their subjects. Mayeque worked the lands of others and could easily be distinguished from nobles because they were permitted only knee-length mantles of agave fiber. It was not only the difference between cotton and agave garments, of course, that separated nobles from commoners. When the Aztec organized hunting parties, the venison went to the nobles; the commoners, who usually beat the brush to drive out the game, contented themselves with rabbits, pack rats, and lizards.