but have no knowledge of an Aztec breakfast or supper. One prepared meal each day was as much as their mode of life permitted, or rendered necessary. Civilization, with its diversified industries, its multiplied products, and its monogamian family, affords a breakfast and supper in addition to a dinner, but these are no older than civilization itself. Clavigero attempts to invest the Aztecs with a breakfast, but he incontinently gives up the supper. "After a few hours of labor in the morning," he observes, "they took their breakfast, which was most commonly atolli, a gruel of maize, and their dinner after midday; but among all the historians we can find no mention of their supper."* The "gruel of maize " spoken of as the Aztec breakfast suggests the hominy of the Iroquois, which like it was probably kept prepared as a lunch for the hungry. There is no reason for supposing that there was a prepared breakfast among the Aztecs, or any gathering of the household for a morning repast.

7. The Custom under which the Men ate first and by themselves, and the Women and Children afterwards.

This usage has been noticed so generally among the Indian tribes that I believe it may be said to have been universal among them. It was a consequence of the rudeness of their mode of life and of that imperfect appreciation of the female sex which appertains to their stage of advancement. Yet, from what is known of their house-life, of the production of their food, and of the management of their affairs, they were indebted for their material progress to their women, patient, industrious, and hardy, whose virtues have never been celebrated.

Robertson states the usage as general: "They must approach their lords with reverence, they must regard them as more exalted beings, and are not permitted to eat in their presence."† The Spanish writers afford but little direct information upon this subject. Herrera remarks that "the women of Yucatan are rather larger than the Spanish, and generally have good faces,. . . . but they would formerly be drunk at their festivals, though they did eat apart." And Sahagun, speaking

* History of Mexico, II. 262.

Herrera, History of America, IV. 175.

† History of America, p. 78.

of the ceremony of baptism among the Aztecs, observes that "to the women, who ate apart, they did not give cacao to drink."* At the dinner of Montezuma a practical illustration is afforded of this usage, the men eating first and by themselves.

If the reader has had sufficient patience to follow the exposition, in outline, of the foregoing institutions, usages, and customs, it will enable him to understand, in a general sense, the houses of the Aztecs, and the dinner of an Aztec household, which remain to be considered.

Not a vestige of the ancient pueblo of Mexico (Tenochtitlan) remains to assist us to a knowledge of its architecture. Its structures, which were useless to a people of European habits, were speedily destroyed to make room for a city adapted to the wants of a civilized race. We must seek for its characteristics in contemporary Indian houses which still remain in ruins, and in such of the early descriptions as have come down to us, and then leave the subject with but little accurate knowledge. Its situation, partly on dry land and partly in the waters of a shallow artificial pond formed by causeways and dikes, led to the formation of streets and squares, which were unusual in Indian pueblos, and gave to it a remarkable appearance. "There were three sorts of broad and spacious streets," Herrera remarks; "one sort all water with bridges, another all earth, and a third of earth and water, there being a space to walk along on land and the rest for canoes to pass, so that most of the streets had walks on the sides and water in the middle." Many of the houses were large, far beyond the supposable wants of a single Indian family. They were constructed of adobe brick and of stone, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white; and some were constructed of a red porous stone. In cutting and dressing this stone flint implements were used. The fact that the ‡ houses were plastered externally leads us to infer that they had not learned to dress stone and lay them in courses. It is not certainly established that they had learned the use of a mortar of lime and sand. In the final attack and capture, it is said that

* Historia General, Lib. IV. c. 36. Clavigero, II. 238.

† History of Mexico, II. 361.

Cortes, in the course of seventeen days, destroyed and levelled three quarters of the pueblo, which demonstrates the flimsy character of the masonry. Some of the houses were con

structed on three sides of a court, like those on the Rio Chaco in New Mexico, others probably surrounded an open court or quadrangle, like the House of the Nuns at Uxmal; but this is not clearly shown. The best houses were usually two stories high, an upper and lower floor being mentioned. The second story receded from the first, probably in the terraced form. Clavigero remarks that "the houses of the lords and people of circumstance were built of stone and lime. They consisted of two floors, having halls, large court-yards, and the chambers fitly disposed; the roofs were flat and terraced; the walls were so well whitened, polished, and shining, that they appeared to the Spaniards when at a distance to have been silver. The pavement or floor was plaster, perfectly level, plain, and smooth. . . The large houses of the capitol had in general two entrances, the principal one to the street, the other to the canal. They had no wooden doors to their houses."* The house was entered through doorways from the street, or from the court, on the ground-floor. Not a house in Mexico is mentioned by any of the early writers as occupied by a single family. They were evidently joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American model, each occupied by a number of families ranging from five and ten to one hundred, and perhaps in some cases two hundred families in a house. The largest houses ever constructed in America by the Indians are still to be seen in New Mexico in ruins, one of which, the Pueblo Bonito, contained over six hundred apartments.† The village consisted of a single house constructed on three sides of a court.

Two of the houses in Mexico were more particularly noticed by the soldiers of Cortes than others,- that in which they were quartered, and that in which Montezuma lived. Neither can be said to have been described. I shall confine myself to these two structures.

Cortes made his first entry into Mexico in November, 1519, * History of Mexico, II. 232.

† Report of Lieutenant, now General J. H. Simpson, U. S. Senate Ex, Doc. No. 54, 31st Congress, 1st Session, 1850.

with four hundred and fifty Spaniards, according to Bernal Diaz* accompanied by a thousand Tlascalan allies. They were lodged in a vacant palace of Montezuma's late father, Diaz naïvely remarks, observing that "the whole of this palace was very light, airy, clean, and pleasant, the entry being through a great court." Cortes, after describing his reception, informs us that Montezuma "returned along the street in the order already described, until he reached a very large and splendid palace in which we were to be quartered. He then took me by the hand and led me into a spacious saloon, in front of which was a court through which we had entered." So much for the statements of two eyewitnesses. Herrera gathered some additional particulars. He states that "they came to a very large court, which was the wardrobe of the idols, and had been the house of Axayacatzin, Montezuma's father. Being lodged in so large a house, that, though it seems incredible, contained so many capacious rooms, with bedchambers, that one hundred and fifty Spaniards could all lie single. It was also worth observing that though the house was so big, every part of it to the last corner was very clean, neat, matted, and hung with hangings of cotton and feather work of several colors, and had beds and mats with pavilions over them. No man of whatsoever quality having any other sort of bed, no other being used." In the tidiness of these rooms we gain some evidence of the character of Aztec women.

Joint-tenement houses, and the mode of life they indicate, were at this time unknown in Europe. They belonged to a more ancient condition of society. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Spaniards, astonished at their magnitude, should have styled them palaces, and having been received with a military array by Montezuma, as the general commander of the Aztec forces, shou'd have regarded him as a king, since monarchical government was the form with which they were chiefly acquainted. Suffice it then to say that one of the great houses of the Aztecs was large enough to accommodate Cortes and his fourteen hundred and fifty men, as they had previously been

* Conquest of Mex, Ed, 1803, Keatinge's Trans., I, 181, 189, Herrera says, 300, II. 327.

† Diaz, I, 191,

Despatches of Cortes, Folsom's Trans. p. 86,

accommodated in one Cholulan house, and elsewhere on the way to Mexico. From New Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama there was scarcely a principal village in which an equal number could not have found accommodations in a single house. When it is found to be unnecessary to call it a palace in order to account for its size, we are led to the conclusion that an ordinary Aztec house was emptied of its inhabitants to make room for their unwelcome visitors. After their reception, Aztec hospitality supplied them with provisions.

We are next to consider the second so-called palace, that in which Montezuma lived, and the dinner of Montezuma which these soldiers witnessed, and which has gone into history as a part of the evidence that a monarchy of the feudal type existed in Mexico. They had but little time to make their observations, for this imaginary kingdom perished almost immediately, and the people in the main dispersed.

On the seventh day after the entry into Mexico, Montezuma was induced by intimidation to leave the house in which he lived and take up his quarters with Cortes, where he was held a prisoner until his death, which occurred a few weeks later.* Whatever was seen of his mode of life in his usual place of residence was practically limited to the five days between the coming of the Spaniards and his capture. Our knowledge of the facts is in the main derived from what these soldiers reported upon slight and imperfect means of observation. Bernal Diaz and Cortes have left us an extraordinary description, not of his residence, but of his daily life, and more particularly of the dinner which has been made the subject of this article. It is worth the attempt to take up the pictures of these and succeeding authors, and see whether the real truth of the matter cannot be elicited from their own statements. There was undoubtedly a basis of facts underneath them, because without such a basis the superstructure could not have been created.

It may with reason be supposed that the Spaniards found Montezuma, with his gentile kindred, in a large joint-tenement house, containing a hundred or more families united in a communal household. The dinner they witnessed was the single daily meal of this household, prepared in a common cook

* Clavigero's History of Mexico, II, 364,