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In the spring of 1857, after four years exploring California, Eugène Boban started a new life in Mexico City. His entry into the country is documented by his first visa, which is dated 1 April of that year (AGN, Movimiento Marítima, Vol. 201, Exp. 135, f. 24). The last of these archived letters is dated 22 February 1859. Perhaps regulations for foreign visitors changed in 1860, or the documents for subsequent years were lost as a result of the country’s political turmoil. Whatever the case, we know for certain that Boban lived in Mexico City for more than a decade—until 1869.

Now known simply as Eugenio Boban, he arrived in Mexico City at a time when the newly reformed republic provided boundless opportunity for a young French émigré. The country had struggled to achieve a relatively peaceful business and political climate at mid-century but would continue to cope with the effects of Spain’s long colonization and other nations’ encroachments for decades to come.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the capital was an urban center bustling with more than 200,000 inhabitants—about half the size of Paris at that time (Ciudad de México 1976: 778). The metropolis was surrounded by numerous small towns and villages, all nestled within the magnificent Valley of Mexico, encircled by high mountains and snow-peaked volcanoes.

When the Spanish conquistadors first saw the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, in 1519, the valley was covered by a series of fresh- and saltwater lakes. The streets and walkways were crisscrossed by canals and surrounded by floating gardens. The high plateau sheltered by the mountains provided a near-perfect climate, and the valley brimmed with flowers, wildlife, and possibility.

Much of Mexico City’s natural beauty remained in the 1850s. The Spanish colonial city built atop Tenochtitlan made use of the canals that the Aztecs had constructed for traversing their floating domain, and many of these ancient waterways could still be seen when Boban arrived. So, too, could the stone aqueducts that the conquerors had built to bring fresh water down from the hills of Chapultepec. And, of course, the valley’s majestic volcanoes—Popocatépetl (Smoking Mountain) and Iztaccihuatl (White Woman)—and their related peaks were a constant presence on the horizon.

Along the Calzada de la Viga, now a high-speed motorway, there were then four graceful stands of enormous trees bordering a broad canal, which meandered among the streets of the city. Accounts from the nineteenth century describe afternoon and early evening paseos (processions) of horse-drawn coaches and horseback riders parading along these avenues throughout the seasons, particularly Easter season, which was just about the time of year Boban first entered the city. The Viga Canal connected the center of the city with the outlying chinampas, or floating gardens. At dawn the canals were filled with barges and canoes overflowing with fruit, vegetables, and flowers, a floating Mexican market (Calderón 1970: 167).

Frances Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish wife of a Spanish diplomat who lived in Mexico in the 1840s, ten years before Boban’s arrival, described the principal features of the city and its splendors while looking down from Chapultepec castle.

The whole valley of Mexico lies stretched out as in a map; the city itself, with its innumerable churches and convents; the two great aqueducts which cross the plain; the avenues of elms and poplars which lead to the city; the villages, lakes, and plains, which surround it … the whole landscape, as viewed from this height, is one of nearly unparalleled beauty. (1970: 116)

Figure 4.1 The vegetable market on canoes along the Viga Canal, ca. 1860 (Smithsonian Institution Archives, Nelson-Goldman Collection, RU 7364).

Not only were the ancient waterways still evident at mid-century, so were some of the astounding archeological features of the Aztec past. The description of the capital in 1850 by Alexander Clark Forbes, writing under the name A. Barrister, captures the sense of multilayered history available to visitors.

In the heart of the city is the Grand Square (Plaza Mayor) [or Zócalo], perhaps as large as Lincoln’s Inn Fields. On one side of this stands the Cathedral, on another the Palace. … The Cathedral is a large handsome church, standing upon exactly the same spot as stood the chief temple (Teocalli) of the Astecs [sic] before the conquest. Into one side of it is built an enormous circular stone, about twelve feet in diameter, covered with hieroglyphics, and purported to be a perpetual calendar used by the original occupants of the city. Its ancient name is Kellenda [sic], and it is popularly called Montezuma’s watch. (Barrister 1851: 66)

He is actually describing the Aztec Calendar Stone, which had been mounted on the wall of the sixteenth-century cathedral in the center of the main square after its rediscovery in 1790.

Despite the natural beauty of the capital, the years preceding Boban’s arrival in Mexico in 1857 were anything but serene. The country had been in an almost continuous state of unrest or war since its independence. After finally securing its freedom from the Spanish crown in 1823, Mexico was ruled briefly by Agustín de Iturbide, a self-declared emperor. Iturbide was replaced after two years by President Guadalupe Victoria and executed a year later when he tried to return to power. Following President Victoria, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, a hero to the Mexican army, would be elevated to the presidency through various means, numerous times between 1833 and 1855 (Kandell 1988).

The battle of the Alamo and Mexico’s subsequent loss of Texas, which Santa Anna had signed away in 1836 in exchange for his own liberty, initiated a particularly intense period of conflict. Mexico declared war on the United States when it admitted Texas to the union in 1845. In retaliation, the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and invaded the country in 1847. Santa Anna, who had been living in Cuba after his loss of Texas, “tendered his services to the Mexican government for an end to his exile; at the same time, he offered the United States most of Mexico’s territories north of the Rio Grande in exchange for a payment of 30 million and Washington’s aid in recovering the presidency” (Kandell 1988: 322).

Santa Anna lost Mexico City to the invading American general, Zachary Taylor. Despite having the much larger army at his disposal, he surrendered to US troops, once again, in 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, forced Mexico to cede the territories of California and New Mexico and most of the American Southwest. The inept but politically savvy Santa Anna went into exile again, only to be called back to the Mexican presidency in 1853 for an eleventh term.

At this point, Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian lawyer who had been elected governor of Oaxaca, went into exile in the United States to protest the corruption of Santa Anna’s government. In 1855 Santa Anna resigned his office for the last time, and Juárez returned from New Orleans to become one of the leaders of the Liberal Party. The years that followed, known as the War of Reform, saw constant, bloody battles between liberals and conservatives, resulting in anarchy throughout the country. As the journalist and author Jonathan Kandell notes, “In the capital itself, during the early 1850s, troops were out of control and pillaged shops and houses at will” (1988: 323). Finally, in January 1861, more than fifty years after Mexico had begun to shake off the yoke of Spanish colonialism, Juárez, the country’s first native Mexican leader, took office as president.

Boban’s early years in Mexico must have been terrifying at times, since they spanned the War of Reform between 1858 and 1861. Pitched battles occurred regularly between armies supporting the Liberal cause, who sought to overthrow the economic and political power of the Catholic Church, and the conservative forces who supported the clergy. The situation bore similarities to what he had experienced in his youth in Paris—times of political upheaval, danger, and bloodshed.

In numerous drafts of his unpublished memoirs, Boban wrote that he lived and worked in Mexico City for two decades, sometimes saying that it was a quarter-century, which would mean he had arrived in the country sometime in the 1840s or early 1850s, since he returned to France in 1869. In addition to changing his age with some regularity, he seems to have exaggerated the amount of time he spent in Mexico. His own writings attest that he went to California in 1853, traveling throughout the region for four years. This itinerary fits perfectly with the visa issued in Mexico City in April 1857. This means that, in reality, he spent some sixteen years away from Paris, including four years in California and twelve years in Mexico. It could be said, however, that he lived in Mexico during two decades, i.e., in the 1850s and 1860s.

Boban’s later notes indicate that his father, René Victor, lived in Mexico with him, although it is not known when he arrived. He may have preceded his son or accompanied him from California; however, there is no visa in his name in the Archivo General de la Nación. What is known is that by 1862, René Victor was back in Paris, since he is listed as a witness on the birth certificate of his granddaughter, Jeanne Laurence, the child of his eldest daughter, Rose Louise, and her husband Andre Martial Backès.¹ One of Eugène’s younger sisters, Marie, had had a daughter out of wedlock two years earlier, and was living apart from her mother at the time. It may be that this event had some influence on the senior Boban’s decision to return to Paris, since it appears that by this time both Marie and her younger sister Julie were living by themselves, some distance from the family apartment.

In Mexico City, however, according to a directory of businesses in the capital in 1865, Eugène Boban owned a fábrica de cajas de cartón—a factory that manufactured cardboard boxes. René Victor’s profession as gainier, making sheaths and chests or boxes out of leather and other luxury materials, seems to have been translated in the New World into the newer medium of cardboard, which is listed as a commercial product in England in 1858 (Simmonds 1858). The factory was located on a block-long street named Callejón del Espíritu Santo (Alleyway of the Holy Spirit) in a fashionable Mexico City neighborhood that was an important shopping district. This was one of several public roads and passageways named after the church that had formerly occupied the site. This address was where Boban had established an antiquities shop as well.

A traveler’s guide to Mexico published in 1858 vividly described the many attractions of this section of the city, which seems to have been home to many French expatriates.

The streets are so straight that many of them frame vistas to far away trees in the countryside and the mountains of the broad valley … along the streets are beautiful houses brightly-painted … elegant Mexican ladies depart in the morning to the churches to fulfill their devotions. … The Indian sellers in their blue wool garments, the water carriers with their own original outfits, the ranchers with their harnessed and saddled horses … all contribute to a pleasant aspect of novelty. In the shops on Plateros street [a few blocks from Boban’s shop] stores of luxury goods and the latest French fashions are displayed in beautiful glass cases to tempt the appetite of the elegant ladies. They also admire the French dressmaker shops for their remarkable good taste. Hairdressers are found on the same street … which also are French owned. (Arróniz 1991: 40–41)

Within blocks of the cardboard factory were French doctors, pharmacists, educators, photographers, booksellers, and other French-owned businesses catering to the expatriate community. At Callejón del Espíritu Santo no. 2 there was a hardware store owned by F. A. Lohse and sons, who sold sewing machines; Henri Escabasse sold French clothing at the corner of Espíritu Santo and Tercera Calle de Plateros; a Mr. Linet sold tin and iron beds at Callejón del Espírito Santo no. 14; and the Delanoes’ shop (also known as Maison Delanoe Frères) sold paper, writing material, and blank books at the corner of Refugio and Calle del Espíritu Santo (Maillefert 1992: 225–29). The French enclave was not far from the fashionable Alameda Park and just three blocks from the Zócalo.

Almost as soon as he arrived in Mexico City, Boban began to study Mexican history and archeology and to acquire artifacts through surface collecting, as indicated in his unpublished memoirs and the record he jotted down in his field notes. These endeavors were facilitated by his ability to speak Spanish, which he learned in California and on his travels south. Early on he seems to have visited the Museo Nacional, which was then housed in the Real y Pontificia Universidad. There he admired the exhibits and examined the artifact types, comparing them with the objects he himself was collecting.

Figure 4.2 Aztec Calendar or Sun Stone on the western wall of Mexico City’s cathedral, ca. 1860 (courtesy of Hispanic Society of America, New York).

Many fanciful ideas about pre-Columbian Mexico were passed around for the consumption of tourists in the nineteenth century. Some of them seem to have originated with the staff of the museum itself. Frances Calderón de la Barca provides a dramatic description of what she learned during her first visit to the Museo Nacional.

We are told that five thousand priests chanted night and day in the Great Temple, to the honour and in the service of the monstrous idols who were anointed thrice a day with the most precious perfumes. … We afterwards saw the Stone of Sacrifices [the Tizoc stone], now in the courtyard of the university, with a hollow in the middle, in which the victim was laid, while six priests, dressed in red, their heads adorned with plumes of green feathers (they must have looked like macaws) held him down while the chief priest cut open his breast, threw his heart at the feet of the idol, and afterwards put it into his mouth with a golden spoon. (1970: 102, 105)

The circular Tizoc stone, which is almost a yard thick and three yards wide, was another of the Aztec monuments discovered beneath the Zócalo in 1790, and it was prominently displayed at the museum. Some scholars called it the gladiator stone because they believed warriors battled each other on top of it, with the loser becoming a sacrificial victim. The stone actually commemorates and glorifies battles waged under the rule of Tizoc, the seventh emperor of the Aztecs, who ruled from 1481 to 1486.

Boban wanted to make a serious study of Mexico’s prehistory and began educating himself in all aspects of the country’s ancient past. He assiduously read most of the Spanish authors who chronicled the discovery and conquest, including the historian Francisco de Gómara and the Franciscan ethnographers Bernardino de Sahagún and Juan de Torquemada. He also consulted later writers like the Jesuit scholar Francisco Javier Clavigero, the Mexican astronomer Antonio León y Gama, and the historian and collector José Ramírez (HSA B2044, Box V). He refers to all of them in his writings and in the catalogs he prepared for his own collections and those of others. He began to learn Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which was still spoken by most of the native people of Mexico City and its environs. Boban’s fascination with the history and artifacts of ancient Mexican civilizations melded seamlessly with burgeoning interest in the native cultural history expressed by increasing numbers of Europeans, North Americans, and Mexicans by mid-century.

In the nineteenth century, Paris was known not only for the luxurious lifestyle of many of its richer inhabitants, but also for its sophisticated intellectual climate that had grown out of the Enlightenment. The city’s inhabitants were aflame with interest in the world and its myriad cultures. Boban would refer to his own “natural Parisian curiosity” when describing his enthusiasm for the history and archeology of Mexico. His travels through California, where he first studied the ways of native peoples and learned Spanish, facilitated his investigations, as did his later study of Nahuatl. His early efforts to educate himself about Mexico’s past sparked, in turn, a desire to learn even more.

It is likely that his father, René Victor, oversaw the management of the cardboard factory for the first few years—the time during which he remained in Mexico City. This allowed Eugène the freedom to travel the country collecting pre-Columbian artifacts from surface finds and later carrying out excavations with the help of native laborers. In the 1850s and 1860s there still was evidence of many centuries of the pre-Columbian and colonial past all around Mexico City. To this day it is difficult to dig anywhere in Mexico without finding remnants of its ancient inhabitants. A profusion of obsidian blades, spindle whorls, and potsherds can still be gathered from the surface or just below.

While Boban was educating himself about Mexico’s past and gathering a collection of archeological materials, the War of Reform raged throughout the country. The Catholic Church was the principal financial backer of the conservatives battling Benito Juárez’s liberals. To defray some of the costs of the civil war, the clergy sold off gold and silver ornaments, candelabra, and gems, hoping that their side would win and the Church would be able to retain its extensive holdings of land, buildings, and treasure. Many years later Boban recounted a story told to him by “an old Israelite jeweler from Bordeaux” who had lived in Mexico for thirty years.² The jeweler said that he had participated in the removal of precious stones and pearls from numerous churches at the request of the clergy and had replaced them with imitation jewels that he had brought from Europe. He added that this was done without the government’s knowledge (HSA: B2253, Box XIV). Boban would not have been involved in activities to support the Church’s political ambitions. He became a Mason while in Mexico, a decidedly anti-Catholic fraternity, which actively supported the Liberal Party. It is possible however, that he may have profited from the sales in light of later events.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the Church and its supporters, however, the liberals won the day in 1861. Eugène Boban only rarely mentions events and activities occurring during the War of Reform years. In his later recollections of life in the capital, all was idyllic in his rose-colored memory, as he hunted and excavated, befriending native peoples and learning their language to record their history.

In 1856 Ignacio Comonfort, then president of Mexico, instituted the Lerdo Law, which restricted the privileges of the Church, declared all citizens equal, and brought about the confiscation of the Mexican Catholic Church properties. Benito Juárez, who had resisted American incursions into Mexico and was dedicated to reforming the country’s treatment of its indigenous population, was finally elected president in 1861. He proved to be extremely fair-minded with his military opponents but was rather less charitable with the clergy. The Church represented the most powerful opponent to the liberal cause. After the protracted wars to gain independence from Spain, it was the Church that retained much of the property, money, and power that had once belonged to the Spanish crown. Juárez was intent on stripping it of its riches and, even more important, its power once and for all.

One of Juárez’s first acts as president was to demolish many of the earliest colonial structures in Mexico City, principally convents and monasteries, particularly those in the neighborhood where Boban lived. As one author noted, the reformists appeared to confuse ideology with architecture. Perhaps the destruction of monuments to colonial power represented a form of retribution. The Spanish conquerors had destroyed the temples and idols of the indigenous people, and now in the mid-nineteenth century, the president of Mexico, a Zapotec Indian, laid siege to the Christian temples that had been built atop the Aztec structures.

In addition to exiling five bishops who had sided with the conservatives, Juárez forbade priests and nuns from wearing vestments outside their churches. He sought to limit the Church’s power by restricting clerical privileges, in particular the authority of the Church courts. This move was exceedingly unpopular with the clergy.

The Lerdo Law called for the expropriation of numerous Church properties, but little had taken place during the War of Reform. Eventually, under Juárez, countless churches, monasteries, and convents were torn down, and their contents sold to the highest bidders. These actions put Juárez’s government on a collision path with the traditional ruling classes of Mexico—the Spanish monarchists and the Catholic clergy—both intent on protecting their wealth and power.

Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, the Mexican historian, published in 1992 a two-volume chronicle of the destruction of Mexico’s religious and colonial properties that began in 1861 and went on for several years. It is a grim record of the country’s lost patrimony, including countless sixteenth- and seventeenth-century edifices. One of the incidents Tovar describes is the dismantling of the main altar in the church of Tlatelolco. The Spaniards began construction in 1536. The sacred edifice was filled with superb paintings, most of which were taken down and used as firewood. A few of the paintings were saved and taken for protection to the Academia San Carlos, the first art academy and museum in the Americas, for protection.

The great church and monastery of San Francisco, just around the corner from Boban’s factory and antiquities shop, was entirely dismantled, its art and gilded choir removed to make room for the stabling of cavalry horses. The monastery was eventually torn down (Tovar 1992: vol. II, 27).

The convent and monastery of the church of Santo Domingo, some three blocks from the cathedral in the Zócalo, were also demolished, revealing numerous burials of priests and nuns in the process. Their corpses appeared to be mummified because of the conditions in which they had been interred.

All told, more than forty religious structures in Mexico City—nearly half of the eighty-four the Spanish had built to promote Catholic worship in the city—were razed. As a result, some of the most important colonial buildings in the capital simply disappeared. The demolition experts worked overtime, employing axes, picks, and ropes to pull down altars and walls, while gathering up relics, paintings, crucifixes, and statues of saints. The objects retrieved amidst the destruction were sold, purportedly to help finance the government and further reforms, but the financial aspects of the project were largely a hoax. As Tovar notes, “The sale of Church property was a comedy played out between shrewd dealers and money launderers, a dramatic case of fraud, the state giving huge advantages to the purchasers. Most of the little cash that was obtained was spent on the salaries of workers, who carried out the task of reducing eloquent examples of our colonial art to dust and debris” (Tovar 1992: vol. I, 14).

W. H. Bullock, the son of the British impresario who created shows of exotic artifacts and unusual people to enthrall the London public, toured Mexico in 1864 overseeing some of his father’s land investments and looking for new opportunities to make money. He corroborated how little financial gain Juárez achieved from the confiscation of Mexican Catholic church properties. “So hard-pressed for ready money was the Government of Juárez at this period—the beginning of the year 1861—that the sites of the ruined churches—sometimes including the sacred edifice itself—were sold for the most trifling sums” (Bullock 1866: 82).

Not everyone was able or willing to benefit from the government’s fire sale of religious objects, however. The supporters of the conservative party feared that they would be excommunicated if they tried to purchase any of the religious art. That meant that there was a trove of art available at unbelievably low prices to those who were not bothered by their consciences or beliefs. As Bullock notes, foreigners “were willing to pocket their scruples and invest in it. In this way, many Frenchmen and Belgians, and some English, realized considerable fortunes” (Bullock 1866: 82–83). Boban appears to have taken full advantage of this volatile and uncertain situation, and, in so doing, amassed a rather large collection of religious objects and colonial artifacts.

The destruction of colonial religious structures and the sale of their contents would have a long-term impact on the composition of Boban’s collections and the number of religious objects he would eventually offer for sale—perhaps even including some of the crystal skulls. However, when he first arrived in the country his focus was ancient Mexican cultures and people. He became a devoted archeologist and began cataloguing the artifacts and human remains he recovered from his early digs in 1857, his first year in Mexico. His notes provide details about his excavations of burials and temple mounds in a variety of neighborhoods in and around the capital and in the smaller surrounding towns.

His collecting activities were informed by those of the early archeologists and adventurers who had explored the ancient sites for the previous half century and were facilitated by Mexico’s dawning “neo-technological era,” characterized by new modes of transportation. Mexico City was one of the first urban centers in Latin America to inaugurate a steam railroad line, which began transporting travelers throughout the city and its adjoining suburbs as early as 1852. Diligencias, or stagecoaches, provided a relatively secure, though somewhat less comfortable, method of travel. One might also traverse the city by horse-drawn tram pulled along iron rails (Podgorny 2008: 579). When all else failed, there was always a horse, a mule, or one’s own feet. Even Paris was not as well equipped with public transportation as Mexico City in the mid-nineteenth-century (Morrison 2003).

The sites Boban excavated were scattered far and wide in the Valley of Mexico, but their locations in some cases can be linked to the expanding tramlines and steam railways. His excavation catalog, now in the Hispanic Society of America in New York, includes notes written on slips of paper on digs he conducted in Chalco, about fifteen miles to the east of Mexico City, in 1857; San Angel to the south, near the railroad station, in 1860; and to the west of Lake Texcoco, in Azcapotzalco, in 1858 and 1860. In Azcapotzalco he uncovered many funerary ollas (large ceramic vessels) buried in the grounds or patios of the ancient ruins, along with stone amulets, which he called yollotli (HSA: B2245, Box VI). According to a modern Nahuatl dictionary, this word means heart or seed, but it may be what native workmen told him such pieces were called.

His excavation catalog also has information about locating human remains. “During the year 1858, we began to explore the ancient capital of the Acolhua or Chichimec, in the remains of the great site [Texcutzingo], which is now the village of Texcoco. … We found a series of mounds, one of which contained a mummy” (HSA: B2245, Box VI).³ Finding skeletal material and associated grave goods would be a constant interest for Boban throughout his archeological career. The Aztec emperor Netzahualcoyotl originally created Texcutzingo, located some twenty miles northeast of the center of Mexico City, during the fifteenth century. He envisioned it as an imperial garden filled with plants gathered from throughout Mexico, with baths and pools carved into the mountain on which it was located. Today it is an impressive archeological site frequented by tourists.

Boban’s description of a bit of fun he had with some Texcoco natives captures something of his youthful bravado, along with the social formalities of the period. Some local people had told him about a deep cave where an Englishman had disappeared. They cautioned him, however, that he was much too young to face the dangers of el abismo (the abyss). Nonetheless, he was determined to see what was down below and could not be dissuaded by the possible dangers. “After much procrastination and especially with the aid of that universal lever, a few pesetas, we descended into the cave,” he later wrote.

Once Boban had been lowered down to the entrance, his courage and impishness led him on.

I entered the famous Cueva by myself, where the entrance was hidden by vegetation, and discovered inside a small opening about a dozen meters long, leading to a precipitous vertical drop … but nothing unusual, some animal bones, foxes, and birds of prey, and every so often I would hear my guides shouting to me ‘Señor, it’s been a long time, and you haven’t answered our calls. Are you dead?’ and a host of questions like that. I took some malicious pleasure in my silence. After carefully examining the place, I left my card there. (HSA: B2246, Box VII)⁴

It is revealing (and endearing) that Boban left only his calling card to document his visit, perhaps to let future explorers know that he had been there first, when many of his contemporaries carved their names on archeological monuments after removing portions for their own collections.

Boban made the rounds of Mexico City’s neighborhoods and suburbs throughout the late 1850s and early 1860s. In 1859 he dug to the southwest of Coyoacán near Popotla. He excavated small mounds and burials in the areas to the north of the city center around Tlatelolco, Zahuatlán, and Tlalnepantla. To the south he explored Tlahuac, Iztapalapa, Tlalpan, and Xochimilco near the floating gardens. Journeying to the west, he worked around Tacuba, Azcapotzalco, and the hills of Chapultepec. All these places are now part of metropolitan Mexico City, but at the time they were still separate towns and villages whose inhabitants spoke Nahuatl. Even given the greater ease of travel in Mexico in the mid-nineteenth-century, the number and extent of field trips he took in pursuit of artifacts is remarkable. One can imagine many days spent journeying to the far reaches of the Valley of Mexico and many nights spent sleeping under the stars or in the houses of his Indian friends and helpers.

Of his excavations in Tepito, which like the suburb of Tlatelolco is now part of the metropolis, he wrote that some of the artifacts he found there came from the burials of warriors, because they included tentetl, the Nahuatl word for “military insignia [lip plugs] of obsidian.” To explain this reasoning further, he added, “The ornaments of the lower ranks, [are] made of terra cotta.” Boban’s awareness of the hierarchy of materials allowed for personal adornment by the Aztecs comes from Bernardino de Sahagún, the sixteenth-century Franciscan ethnographer, to whom he often makes reference. Controlling who was allowed to use which adornments enabled the Aztecs to maintain rigid class distinctions. Boban’s understanding of this indicates a close reading of early Spanish chronicles to inform his archeological investigations. He also recorded finding at Tepito many bronze and copper objects, such as needles, little axes, and bells (HSA: B2245, Box VI).

Presumably, Boban learned Nahuatl from his encounters with local people and his excavation work in outlying villages. His dig catalog almost always includes a translation of the Nahuatl or Otomí place name of the site or region where he excavated and gives a short description of the culture he presumes crafted the artifacts discovered. He also includes the original native terms for what he had found.

For instance, in 1857 he was working near Chalco at the southeastern edge of the capital, where he unearthed a human cranium that, he noted, was accompanied by a beautiful piece of obsidian, along with a sacrificial knife. Writing at a much later date, he explained that the sacrificial knives were made from flint and that, “These fine flint and obsidian blades in the shape of a bay leaf are very similar to those known to Professor Gabriel de Mortillet as Solutrean. In Mexico we call them tecpatl, or sacrificial knife blades used to open the chest and tear out the heart of victims.” Tecpatl means flint knife in Nahuatl (HSA: B2243, Box IV).⁵

In his memoirs he recalled that he and a crew of Indian adobe makers from Chalco found several of the tecpatl that would later become part of the Trocadéro collections. The day after his first finds of a piece of obsidian and a flint double-edged blade with two pointed ends, he returned to the area. “I found two other large tecpatls. My joy was so great, but only those who excavate will understand the pleasure that I felt.”⁶ He thought he could not leave the four beautiful artifacts because they might be stolen, so his solution to the problem was to sleep in the field clutching his finds to his chest—further evidence of the passion he brought to his archeological endeavors (HSA: B2243, Box IV).

In other notes he proposed that this particular burial dated to the tenth century, and that “Chalco, according to Clavigero, means the place of fine stones.” Continuing with his description of the objects he found there, he writes, “The skull, #2010, was found in a burial, with a very beautiful stone chest covered with hieroglyphs. Assuredly it belonged to a great dignitary of the country” (HSA: B2245, Box VI). The discovery of this carved stone box and burial, during his first year in Mexico City, must have greatly inspired his later collecting since they were such significant finds. The box figures prominently in later photographs of his collection.

At first Boban carried out considerable digging and surface collecting throughout the Central Valley, an area now containing the enormous metropolis of Mexico City. He also worked in parts of the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and Puebla. Then in the early 1860s he began visiting San Juan Teotihuacan in the state of Mexico. The impressive archeological site of the ruined metropolis is located at the northeastern end of the Central Valley, some twenty-five miles from Mexico City. He described the ruins as “very rich in fragments of the ancient inhabitants, especially in their tombs, and there are a great number of them. But, unfortunately, after the arrival of the conquerors, all of this ruin has been plundered for its treasures” (HSA: B2245, Box VI).

Despite the quantity of artifacts that had already been removed throughout the previous centuries, he made a significant collection of his own from the ruined city. He may have purchased these artifacts from campesinos or farmers in the surrounding area, although it is possible that some of the obsidian and figurine fragments came from his own surface collecting. The large Teotihuacan-style stone faces in his collection seem to have come from excavations he undertook in Azcapotzalco, however (Hamy 1884: 143). There are no extant field notes regarding Boban’s work at Teotihuacan during this time to give proper provenience to these objects. The references in the catalogs of his collection say only that they come from San Juan Teotihuacan, a designation that includes the site and the nearby town.

Figure 4.3 View of Teotihuacan archeological site showing the Pyramid of the Sun. Photo by William Henry Jackson (Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives).

Boban is meticulous about including as much information as possible about each of his finds, often referencing supporting data provided by early Spanish chroniclers. Including such extensive explanatory notes about individual artifacts was unusual for a collector at that time, or really almost any time. Frequently, collectors make little effort to record the source of an object, let alone details about its name within the culture of origin, its use, significance, and so forth. Clearly, from the beginning, the young amateur archeologist was intent on becoming a scholar of pre-Columbian Mexico.

Boban owned more than one copy of Clavigero’s Historia antigua de México, published in 1780 (Leavitt 1886b: 120). The Jesuit historian was the first to outline a chronology of pre-Columbian Mexican cultures, which Boban adopted and followed assiduously. Judging from the number he assigned to the skull from Chalco, he had already amassed some two thousand artifacts during his first year of residence, although, presumably, a large proportion of these numbered items would have been fragments of figurines and pottery.

Just as he had in California, Boban writes with great fondness and empathy for the native people, with whom he worked regularly and came to know intimately. He sympathized with them for the hard lives they led, despite all the changes that had taken place in Mexico over three hundred years. As he reported in one of his biographical notes, “An old Indian, who lived in the village of Culhuacan, for whose son I was the godfather, told me with a resigned air mixed with some sadness, ‘No, my little compadre [a term of endearment used by parents to address the godfather of one of their children], apart from the [end to human] sacrifices, we aren’t much better off since the arrival of the Spaniards’” (HSA: B2243, Box IV).⁷ It is easy to see why Mexican Indians might have felt that little about their lives had improved since the Conquest. They had paid tribute to the Aztecs and other conquering tribes over the centuries and would continue to do so with the Spaniards. Their only protection came from the friars, to whom they also paid a tithe in work and agricultural products. Overall, they labored ceaselessly but continued to inhabit the lowest rung of Mexico’s cultural and economic ladder.

Clearly Boban had a special relationship with his Indian compadre, since the role of godfather would only be given to a close and trusted friend. Boban thought highly of the native Mexicans with whom he worked and associated. “The Indian race,” Boban wrote, “is by far the better part of the population of Mexico, by a good measure” (HSA: B2240, Box I). Being as private and discreet as he was, he does not clarify his reasons for saying this, and he seldom indicates that his interactions with Mexican creoles and mestizos were unpleasant or unproductive; however, he always describes the Indians in the most respectful and admiring terms.

Boban also became interested in Mexico’s natural history. He kept a handwritten notebook detailing the flora and fauna of the country containing approximately 150 pages replete with information on amphibians, birds, butterflies, and reptiles in addition to trees, agave, corn, chilies, tomatoes, and other plants. Every entry begins with French, Spanish, and Nahuatl words for the subject, which is then discussed at length (HSA: B2247, Box VIII; Natural History).

In his observations, Boban strove to make clarifying links and connections. In another unpublished manuscript in the Hispanic Society of America’s Boban Collection, he wrote that hummingbirds were called huitzitzilin in Nahuatl, and that despite their diminutive size, they could be quite aggressive and warlike when threatened. Demonstrating his keen interest in understanding precontact Mexican cultures, he goes on to say, “Probably ancient Mexicans noticed this [defensive aggression against much larger birds], and it is why the name of the god of war is Huitzilopochtli, the left-handed hummingbird warrior” (HSA: B2247, Box VIII, Natural History).

He wrote at considerable length about the habits and behaviors of the hummingbirds that he had personally observed.

After residing in Mexico close to a quarter of a century we lived with those little winged phoenixes and raised them, … They disappear, that is certain, but like our European swallows, they migrate to warmer regions, probably not for fear of cold, but because the small insects, the mosquitos that are their food, disappear, forcing them to migrate. Hummingbirds behave in the same way when certain flowers or types of flowers disappear, and for that, a few hours will suffice for them to cross the chain of high mountains surrounding the Mexican plateau. Immediately south they are in warm lands with new flowers full of small insects. … Then they are like swallows returning with the season, … Suddenly they appear in the city gardens and in the houses and around flowerpots in patios and on windowsills. … They are preserved best in spacious sunlit rooms with flowers, especially cooked honey, since sugar water gives them diarrhea very quickly. We have kept them alive for many months. We were quite fond of them, and my father often brought them wildflowers. Those charming little creatures would surround him and perch on his spectacles. (HSA: B2247, Box VIII, Natural History)⁸

Ornithology was an important ancillary interest. Boban hunted and trapped birds and had them mounted, or may have learned to mount them himself through the many collecting manuals available at the time. Birds were incredibly plentiful in the central valley in the nineteenth century, even as late as 1892, when the American naturalist Edward Nelson described what he saw in the principal market of Mexico City. “At the market of the Merced southeast of the main plaza, by the border of the canal and in the midst of the poorer quarter of the town, surrounded by hundreds of pulque shops with gaudily ornamented fronts and interiors, there is a great gathering place of Indians of Aztec descent from the valley, who bring in here wild ducks by the thousands from the marshy lakes of the valley” (Nelson: SI Archives RU 7634).

In yet another memoir, Boban boasted of having kept numerous rattlesnakes in his collection, which were caught and sold to him by Indians. He kept some alive and preserved others in alcohol. His notes refer to the cult of the snake, perhaps referencing Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, saying that it had deep roots in Mexico. He also believed the Indians had great sympathy for snakes. One of his pet snakes, Lili, enjoyed entertaining, and sometimes frightening, visiting friends with her noisy rattling.

The country was a paradise for him, a veritable Garden of Eden, and the younger Boban created his own commercial enterprise by selling and trading objects and specimens that were simply free for the taking. The 1865 business directory for Mexico City contains an advertisement for his shop, which offers for sale: “Collections of birds from Mexico, typical crafts of the country, ceramic vessels and objects, paintings, weapons, Chinese porcelains, and Aztec antiquities” (Maillefert 1992: 231). This establishment ultimately would propel him into prominence and renown among both foreign and Mexican clientele, generating considerable financial success. In the early days, however, he was simply enjoying life. “My twenty-year residence in this country was for me all digging and fiestas, all of which gives me great pleasure to remember. My good Indians, so peaceful, and with our work, I believe that a kind of kinship brought us together” (HSA: B2244, Box V).

Other memories glowed even brighter. “We were very happy in Mexico during that time, and not much inclined to return to Europe. We were in a very good position, dividing our leisure time between the hunt and the digs, and every day we brought back something new, something never seen before” (HSA: B2244, Box V).⁹

In reminiscences of his life in Mexico, Boban presents himself as a fearless, knowledgeable explorer who is discerning in his research. In his telling of his exploration of the abyss he seems ready and able to increase the drama of his exploits for the benefit of his audience and enjoys himself while doing so. These characteristics remain constant throughout his career. He continues to be an active investigator in a broad range of fields. He pursues knowledge tirelessly, becoming an expert on pre-Columbian antiquities and other subjects. A battery of international scholars comes to respect his erudition. Yet throughout his career, he expands time and distance, exaggerates his discoveries, and enhances and even misrepresents the importance and quality of his collections. He does this, possibly to increase the perceived value of the objects he sells, possibly to promote his own sense of self-worth, but most likely for both reasons.