Sketches of Aboriginal Life

Tell me, ascribest thou influence to the stars?

"Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan! Never saw I the heavens in so inauspicious an aspect. Dark portentous influences appear on every side. May the horoscope of the infant daughter of Montezuma never be fulfilled."

These were the awful words of the priestly astrologer of Tenochtitlan, uttered with solemn and oracular emphasis from the lofty Teocalli, where he had been long and studiously watching the heavens, and calculating the relative positions and combinations of the stars. A deep unutterable gloom seemed to pervade his soul. Several times he traversed the broad terrace, in a terrible agitation; his splendid pontifical robes flowing loosely in the breeze, and his tall majestic figure relieved against the clear sky, like some colossal moving statue,-and then, in tones of deeper grief than before, finding no error in his calculations, reiterated his oracular curse-"Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan!" Casting down his instruments to the earth, and tearing his hair in the violence of his emotions, he prostrated himself on the altar, and poured forth a loud and earnest prayer to all his gods.

"Is there no favoring omen in any quarter, venerable father?" inquired the agitated messenger from the palace, when the prayer was ended-"is there no one of those bright spheres above us, that will deign to smile on the destiny of the young princess?"

"It is full of mysterious, portentous contradictions," replied the astrologer. "Good and evil influences contend for the mastery. The evil prevail, but the good are not wholly extinguished. The life of the princess will be a life of sorrow, but there will be a peculiar brightness in its end. Yet the aspect of every sign in the heavens is wo, and only wo, to the imperial House of Montezuma."

Faith in the revelations of astrology was a deeply rooted superstition with the Aztecs. It pervaded the whole structure of society, affecting the most intelligent and well-informed, as well as the humblest and most ignorant individual. In this case, the prophetic wailings of the priestly oracle rolled, like a long funereal knell, through the magnificent halls of the imperial palace, and fell upon the ear of the monarch, as if it had been a voice from the unseen world. Montezuma was reclining on a splendidly embroidered couch, in his private apartment, anxiously awaiting the response of the celestial oracle. He was magnificently arrayed in his royal robes of green, richly ornamented with variegated feather-work, and elaborately inwrought with gold and silver. His sandals were of pure gold, with ties and anklets of gold and silver thread, curiously interwoven with a variegated cotton cord. On his head was a rich fillet of gold, with a beautiful plume bending gracefully over one side, casting a melancholy shade over his handsome but naturally pensive features. A few of the royal princes sat, in respectful silence, at the farther end of the chamber, waiting, with an anxiety almost equal to that of the monarch, the return of the royal messenger.

The apartments of the emperor were richly hung with tapestry of ornamental feather-work, rivalling, in the brilliancy of its dyes, and the beautiful harmony of its arrangement, the celebrated Gobelin tapestry. The floor was a tesselated pavement of porphyry and other beautiful stones. Numerous torches, supported in massive silver stands, delicately carved with fanciful figures of various kinds, blazed through the apartment, lighting up, with an almost noonday brilliancy, the gorgeous folds of the plumed hangings, and filling the whole palace with the sweet breath of the odoriferous gums of which they were composed.

The emperor leaned pensively on his hand, seemingly oppressed with some superstitious melancholy forebodings. Perhaps the shadow of that mysterious prophecy, which betokened the extinction of the Aztec dynasty, and the consequent ruin of his house, was passing athwart the troubled sky of his mind, veiling the always doubtful future in mists of tenfold dimness. Whatever it was that disturbed his royal serenity, his reverie was soon broken by the sound of an approaching footstep. For a moment, nothing was heard but the measured tread of the trembling messenger, pacing with unwilling step the long corridor, that led to the royal presence. With his head bowed upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon the pavement, his person veiled in the coarse nequen,[A] and his feet bare, he stood before the monarch, dumb as a statue.

"What response bring you," eagerly enquired the emperor, "from the burning oracles of heaven? How reads the destiny of my new-born infant?"

"The response be to the enemies of the great Montezuma," replied the messenger, without lifting his eyes from the floor, "and the destiny it foreshadows to the children of them that hate him."

"Speak," exclaimed the monarch, "What message do you bring from the priest of the stars?"

"Alas! my royal master, my message is full of wo-my heart faints, and my tongue refuses its office to give it utterance. The old prophet bade me say, that the celestial influences are all unpropitious; that the destiny of the infant princess is a life of sorrow, with a gleam of more than earthly brightness in its evening horizon. And then, prostrating himself upon the great altar, he groaned out one long, deep, heart-rending wail for the imperial House of Tenochtitlan, and the golden realm of Anahuac."

A deeper shade came over the brow of Montezuma, and heaving a sigh from the very depths of a soul that had long been agitated by melancholy forebodings of coming evil, he raised his eyes to heaven, and said, "the will of the gods be done." Then, waving his hand to his attendants, they bowed their heads, and retired in silence from the apartment.

"It has come at last," inwardly groaned the monarch, as soon as he found himself alone-"it has come at last-that fearful prophecy, that has so long hung, like the shadow of a great cloud, over my devoted house, is now to be fulfilled. The fates have willed it, and there is no escape from their dread decrees. I must make ready for the sacrifice."

Nerved by the stern influence of this dark fatalism, Montezuma brushed a tear from his eye, and putting a royal restraint upon the turbulent sorrows and fears of his paternal heart, hastened to the apartments of the queen, to break to her, with all the gentleness and caution which her delicate and precarious circumstances required, the mournful issue of their inquiries at the court of heaven, into the future destiny and prospects of their new-born babe.

A deep gloom hung over the palace and the city. Every heart, even the most humble and unobserved, sympathized in the disappointment, and shared the distress, of their sovereign. And the day, which should have been consecrated to loyal congratulations, and general festivities, became, as by common consent, a sort of national fast, a season of universal lamentation.

The little stranger was welcomed into life with that peculiar chastened tenderness, which is the natural offspring of love and pity-love, such as infant innocence wins spontaneously from every heart-pity, such as melancholy forebodings of coming years of sorrow to one beloved, cannot fail to awaken. She was regarded as the most beautiful and the most interesting of all her race. Every look and motion seemed to have its peculiar significance in indicating the victim of a remarkable destiny. And it is not to be wondered at, that a superstition so sad, and an affection so tender and solicitous, discovered an almost miraculous precocity in the first developments of the intellectual and moral qualities of its subject. She was the attractive centre of all the admiration and love of the royal household. Imagination fancied a peculiar sadness in her eye, and her merry laugh was supposed to mingle an element of sadness in its tones. Her mild and winning manners, and her affectionate disposition made her the idol of all whom she loved; and each one strove to do her service, as if hoping to avert, in some measure, the coming doom of their darling; while she clung to the fond and devoted hearts around her, as the ivy clings to the oak, which receives its embraces, and is necessary to its support.

When the young princess, who received the name of Tecuichpo, had arrived at the age of one year, she was given in charge to a young and beautiful slave, whom the Emperor had recently obtained from Azcapozalco. Karee was gifted with rare powers of minstrelsy. Her voice had the sweetness, power and compass of a mocking bird, and all day long she warbled her ever-changing lays, as if her natural breathing were music, and song the natural flow of her thoughts. She soon became passionately devoted to the little pet, and exerted all her uncommon gifts to amuse and instruct her. She taught her all the native songs of Azcapozalco and Mexitli, instructed her in dancing, embroidery and feather-work, and initiated her into the science of picture-writing and the fanciful language of flowers. Karee and her royal charge were never apart. Gentle and timid as the dove, Tecuichpo clung to her new nurse, as to the bosom of a mother. Even in her early infancy, she would so sweetly respond, like an echo, to the gentle lullaby, and mingle her little notes so symphoniously with those of Karee, that it excited the wonder and admiration of all. Karee was passionately fond of flowers. It was indeed an element in the national taste of this remarkable people. But Karee was unusually gifted in her preceptions of natural beauty, and seemed to have a soul most delicately attuned to the spirit and language of flowers, the painted hieroglyphics of nature. She loved to exercise her exuberant fancy in decorating her little mistress, and often contrived so to arrange them upon the various parts of her person and dress, as to make her at different times, the emblematic representation of every bright and beautiful spirit, that was supposed to people their celestial paradise, or to hover, on wings of love and gentle care, about the path of those whom the gods delighted to favor.

It was the daily custom for Karee to carry the young princess into the apartment of the Emperor, as soon as he rose from his siesta, to receive the affectionate caresses which her royal father was so fond of lavishing upon her. At such times, Tecuichpo would often take with her some rich chaplets of flowers which Karee had woven for her, and amuse herself and her father, by arranging them in a coronet on his brow, or twining them, in every fantastic form, about his person, to make, as she said, a flower-god of him, who was a sun to all the flowers of her earthly paradise.

One day, when the young princess was sleeping in her little arbor, the ever watchful nurse observed a viper among the flowers, which she had strown about her pillow, just ready to dart its venomous fang into the bosom of her darling. Quick as lightning she seized the reptile in her hand, and, before he had time to turn upon her, flung him upon the floor, and crushed him under her sandalled heel. Passionately embracing her dear charge, she hastened with her to the apartments of the queen, and related the story of her narrow escape, with so much of the eloquence of gratitude for being the favored instrument of her deliverance from so cruel a death, that it deeply affected the heart of the queen. She embraced her child and Karee, as if both were, for the moment, equally dear to her; and then, in return for the faithful service, rendered at the hazard of her own life, she promised to bestow upon the slave whatever she chose to ask. "Give me, O give me freedom, and a chinampa, and I ask no more," was the eager reply of Karee to this unexpected offer of the queen. The request was immediately granted; and the first sorrow that ever clouded the heart of the lovely Tecuichpo, was that of parting with her faithful and loving Karee.

A chinampa was a floating island in the lake of Tezcuco, upon whose very bosom the imperial city was built. They were very numerous, and some of them were large, and extremely beautiful. They were formed by the alluvial deposit in the waters of the lake, and by occasional masses of earth detached from the shores, held together by the fibrous roots, with which they were penetrated, and which in that luxurious clime, put out their feelers in every direction, and gathered to their embrace whatever of nutriment and support the richly impregnated waters afforded. In the process of a few years accumulation, the floating mass increased in length, breadth and thickness, till it became an island, capable of sustaining not only shrubs and trees, but sometimes a human habitation. Some of these were from two to three hundred feet square, and could be moved about at pleasure, like a raft, from city to city, along the borders of the lake. The natives, who were skilful gardeners, and passionately devoted to the cultivation of flowers, improved upon this beautiful hint of nature, to enlarge their means of supplying the capital with fruits, vegetables and flowers. Constructing small rafts of reeds, anchoring them out in the lake, and then covering them with the sediment drawn up from the bottom, they soon found them covered with a thrifty vegetation, and a vigorous soil, from which they were able to produce a large supply of the various luxuries of their highly favored clime.

It was to one of these fairy gardens that the beautiful Karee retired, rich in the priceless jewel of freedom, and feeling that a chinampa all her own, and flowers to train and commune with, was the summit of human desire. Karee was no common character. Gifted by nature with unusual talents, she had, though in adverse circumstances, cultivated them by all the means in her power. Remarkably quick of perception, and shrewd and accurate of observation, with a memory that retained every thing that was committed to it, in its exact outlines and proportions, she was enabled to gather materials for improvement from every scene through which she passed. Her imagination was exceedingly powerful and active, sometimes wild and terrific, but kept in balance by a sound judgment and a discriminating taste. Her love of flowers was a passion, a part of her nature. For her they had a language, if not a soul. And there was not one of all the endless varieties of that luxuriant clime, that had not a definite and emphatic place in the vocabulary of her fancy. The history of her life she could have written in her floral dialect, and to her, though its lines might have faded rapidly, its pages would have been always legible and eloquent. Her attachments were strong and enduring, and there was that element of heroism in her soul, that she would unhesitatingly have sacrificed life for the object of her love.

It is not to be wondered at, that, with such qualities of mind and heart, Karee was deeply impressed with the solemn and imposing superstitions of the Aztec religion. The rites and ceremonies by which they were illustrated and sustained, were well calculated to stir to its very depths, a soul like hers, and give the fullest exercise to her wild imagination. That pompous ritual, those terrible orgies, repeated before her eyes almost daily from her infancy, had become blended with the thoughts and associations of her mind, and intimately related to every scene that interested her heart, or engaged her fancy. Yet her soul was not enslaved to that dark and dismal superstition. Though accustomed to an awful veneration of the priesthood, she did not regard them as a superior race of beings, or listen to their words, as if they had been audible voices from heaven. Her spirit shrunk from many of the darker revelations of the established mythology, and openly revolted from some of its inhuman exactions. Its chains hung loosely upon her; and she seemed fully prepared for the freedom of a purer and loftier faith. Her extreme beauty, her bewitching gaiety, and her varied talents, attracted many admirers, and some noble and worthy suitors. But Karee had another destiny to fulfil. She felt herself to be the guardian angel of the ill-fated Tecuichpo, and her love for the princess left no room for any other passion in her heart. She therefore refused all solicitations, and remained the solitary mistress of her floating island.

Karee's departure from the palace, did not in any degree lessen her interest in the welfare of the young princess. She was assiduous in her attention to every thing that could promote her happiness; and seemed to value the flowers she cultivated on her chinampa chiefly as they afforded her the means of daily correspondence with Tecuichpo. She managed her island like a canoe, and moved about from one part of the beautiful lake to another, visiting by turns the cities that glittered on its margin, and sometimes traversing the valleys in search of new flowers, or exploring the ravines and caverns of the mountains for whatever of rare and precious she might chance to find. The chivalry of the Aztecs rendered such adventures perfectly safe, their women being always regarded with the greatest tenderness and respect, and treated with a delicacy seldom surpassed in the most civilized countries of Christendom.

This chivalric sentiment was, not improbably heightened, in the case of Karee, in part by her extreme beauty, and in part by the power of her genius and the brilliancy of her wit. She commanded respect by the force of her intellect, and the purity of her heart; while the uncommon depth and splendor of her imagination, when excited by any favorite theme, and the seemingly inexhaustible fruitfulness of her mental resources, invested her, in the view of the multitude, with something of the dignity, and much of the superstitious charm of a prophetess.

[A] A mantle of coarse cotton fabric, which all who approached the emperor were compelled to put on, in token of humility and reverence.

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