Aztec Indians
The Aztec Indians, who are known for their
domination of southern and central
Mexico, ruled between the 14th and 16th
centuries. They built a great empire and
developed very modernized ways of
doing things. They had phenomenal
architectural skills and waterway systems.
The Aztec Indians also had very
developed social class and government systems
and practiced a form of religion.
To begin with, the Aztecs were very
skilled in the art of Architecture and
waterway systems. "An example of the
monumental architecture within the Aztec
society is the great pyramid of
Tenochtitlan. Montezuma I, who was the ruler of
the Aztecs in 1466, created
it. The pyramid was not finished until the rule of
Montezuma II, around
1508"(Carrasco, Montezuma Mexico, Pg. 49). "Aztec
cities and towns also had
working drinking water and waste treatment systems. An
intricate plumbing
system using clay pipes ran down from the mountains around
Mexico valley
to all of the towns and cities in the valley. As the water ran
into each town
or city it was the dispersed to 10 or 12 places around town were
it flowed
into a pool for drinking water or was piped into public baths and
toilets.
Only nobles had working drinking and bathing systems with running water
in
their homes. The sewage system worked much like today, having human
wastes
carried to a collection pool where solids were collected, and then
having
liquids run off into a series of terraces which filtered the water.
Solid wastes
were allowed to sit in a collection pool for about six months
and then were
brought to the lake gardens to be used as fertilizer"(Jennings,
Aztec, Pg.
220). "The Aztec social structure contained four well defined
classes. At the
bottom of the heap were slaves and serfs, or the Tlacotli,
who worked the
private lands of the nobility. Next came the Macehualtin, ‘the
fortunate,’
as they were called because they were equally free of the heavy
responsibility
of the nobility and of the slave’s liability to being basely
used. They were
the merchants, shopkeepers and artisans that made up the bulk
of the population.
The Macehualtin belonged to localized kin groups known
as calpulli or ‘big
houses,’ each of which had it’s own lands, clan leaders,
and
temple"(Jennings, Aztec, Pg. 354). "After that came the hereditary
nobility
or Pipiltin, who supplied the top bureaucrats in the Aztec imperial
system, and
from whose ranks was a formed a council which advised the emperor
and elected
his successor from the ruling lineage. Also all of the nobility
had the sound
"ztin" added to the end of their name. At the very top of the
ladder
was the Uey-Tlatoani, or revered speaker. He had absolute control over
civil
affairs and it was his job to increase the size of the Aztec Empire
every year
and if he didn't wage enough wars within a period of time he would
be impeached
and replaced by the Pipiltin"(Oliphant, Atlas of the Ancient
World. Pg. 268).
"The Aztec government consisted of principally of the
leadership of the royal
house and the vast bureaucracy backed by it. The
Uey-Tlatoani dealed mainly with
external affairs of the Aztec empire, such as
starting wars and making peace
treaties. Also there was a parallel ruler,
another member of the royal lineage,
known as the Cihuacoatl. He dealt mainly
with the internal affairs of
Tenochtitlan such as the water system and
the justice system. The bureaucracy
was set into place by the nobles and
performed the same function that civil
servants perform today"(Oliphant,
Atlas of the Ancient World, 195). To
maintain the empire the Aztec government
made the territories it conquered
contributes twice yearly. Taxes were
collected from the territories also and
careful accounts were kept of what
territories had to pay. The heavy taxation
and forced tribute disgruntled
many territories. When Hernando Cortez arrived in
the early 1500's they were
happy to help him as spies and informants"(Blacker,
Cortez and The Aztec
Conquest, 143). "Aztec religion was based on the worship
of many gods, but
the most important was the sun god. Aztec priests were not
allowed to bathe
or wash ever during their time as a priest. This resulted in
the priests
becoming encrusted with blood and guts over time. The Great Pyramid
was built
as a sacrificing platform to the gods. At the very top were an altar
and a
statue of the sun god, which had a hollow body in which the priests
placed
their victim’s heart" (Oliphant, Atlas of the Ancient World, Pg. 197).
Every
year Tenochtitlan launched a ‘Flowery War,’ in which mock battles would
take
place for the sole purpose of taking prisoners. Usually the wars were
small
between provinces in the empire but one year a large war with an
overwhelming
defeat by the province of Tenochtitlan took place and it is
estimated that
between 10 and 80 thousand prisoners were taken" (Jennings,
Aztec, Pg. 436).
"After a ‘Flowery War,’ prisoners were marched back to a
provinces capital
and put to a ‘Flowery Death.’ That is, being sacrificed to
the gods. In the
year that Tenochtitlan took all those prisoners, it took the
priests one full
week to put all the prisoners to death. It is said that the
area around The
great pyramid turned into a lake of blood and the piles of
bodies were taller
then the buildings." (Jennings, Aztec, Pg. 328.) These
different elements show
how the Aztec culture flourished for so long, but
also they also show how it
brought about the Aztecs end. Without these
characteristics, the Aztecs would
have never developed into the huge empire
and culture that they became. The
Aztec empire is now gone, along with
almost all of the excellent works that the
culture created, the great lake,
the center of the one world, and most of the
Aztec monuments have been
buried under the slums of what is now known as Mexico
city. The few artifacts
that did survive only did so because they were placed in
a museum or buried
and dug up recently. What a sad ends for what was once the
most prosperous
nation in Latin America. One thing has survived though, the
Aztec
language Nahuatl, may it last forever in defiance of the ones who tried
to
wipe it from the face of the earth.
Bibliography
Blacker,
Irwan R, Cortez and the Aztec conquest, New York: American
Heritage,
1978. Carrasco, David, Scott Sessions. Niwot Colorado:
University press of
Colorado, 1992. Pg. 49. Coe, Michael, Elizabeth
Benson. Atlas of Ancient
America. New York: Equinox, 1986. Pg. 125, 128,
130, 146. Jennings, Gary. Aztec.
Avon, 1980. Pg. 92, 220, 329, 354, 436.
Oliphant, Margaret. Atlas of the Ancient
World. Simon & Shuster,
1992. Pg. 195, 197, 268.