Note 183 — Chapter II

Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 1.—Father Sahagun, who has done better service in this way than any other of his order, describes with simple brevity the rapid process of demolition. “We took the children of the caciques,” he says, “into our schools, where we taught them to read and write, and to chant. The children of the poorer natives were brought together in the court-yard, and instructed there in the Christian faith. After our teaching, one or two brethren took the pupils to some neighboring teocalli, and, by working at it for a few days, they levelled it to the ground. In this way they demolished, in a short time, all the Aztec temples, great and small, so that not a vestige of them remained.” (Hist. de Nueva-España, tom. iii. p. 77.) This passage helps to explain why so few architectural relics of the Indian era still survive in Mexico.