Note 623 — Chapter XIII

It is impossible to enter here into details on the ancient Aztec society. Let us simply bear in mind that from the economic point of view it was based on “hoe-culture” (see p. 192) of maize, tobacco, and cocoa, as well as on a well-developed industry: the weaving of stuffs, pottery, manufacture of paper, malleation and melting (a somewhat rare case in pre-Columbian America) of gold, silver, copper, and bronze. Architecture and sculpture had attained there a great perfection, as well as ideographic and iconomatic writing (see p. 140). It was politically a confederacy of democratic states, often under the dominion of a dictator on whom the Spaniards bestowed the title of king. It was thought until recent times that there had been several invasions of different peoples into Mexico, the Toltecs in the first instance, then the Chichimecs, lastly the Nahuatlans; but from the recent works by Morgan, loc. cit. (The House-life, etc.), Bandelier (Report Peabody Mus., vol. ii., Cambridge, Mass., 1888), Brinton (Essays of an Americanist, Philadelphia, 1890, and Am. Race), and Bruhl (Die Culturvolker Alt-Amerikas, Cincinnati, 1875–87), we may conclude that the name Toltec has only relation to a small clan or even perhaps to an imaginary mythical people. As to that of Chichimec, it was employed by the Nahuas to denote all those peoples outside of their own civilisation; they used this term as the Romans did that of “barbarian.”