Читать книгу The Historical Child - Oscar Chrisman - Страница 15

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Agriculture was in quite an advanced stage in ancient Mexico. Unlike in other parts of North America, the men engaged in the work, performed such labor as preparing the fields, planting, and reaping, while the women helped in scattering the grain, weeding, and winnowing. They had no useful domesticated animals, so that the people carried on all the kinds of farm work and the implements were simple, as, the hoe, spade, and basket. They fertilized the soil, let it recover from exhaustion by lying fallow, irrigated by means of canals, surrounded the fields by adobe walls and aloe hedges, and built granaries in which to store the harvests.

They mined silver, lead, tin, and copper. Gold was obtained in the form of nuggets on the surface of the ground or from the sand in the beds of rivers. They also got quicksilver, sulphur, alum, ocher, and other minerals which were used in making colors and for other purposes. Although there was an abundance of iron, it was not mined or used. They made tools of copper, hardened with tin. Most of the instruments, however, were of stone, such as axes and hammers. From obsidian, a kind of volcanic glass, by means of pressure they detached long flakes having a razor-like edge, which they used for making knives, razors, lancets, swords, arrow-heads, and spear-heads. They quarried stone from the hills and mountains and often transported large blocks for long distances and erected great buildings.

The caste-system did not exist in Mexico but it was a custom, usually observed, for the son to learn the trade of his father. Trades were highly esteemed among them, being learned even by the nobles. A particular part of the city was given over to a particular trade, which had its own distinctive mark, something like a guild, having its own god, festivals, and the like. The high standing of the trades is shown by this advice given by an aged chief to his son: "Apply thyself, my son, to agriculture, or to feather-work, or some other honorable calling. Thus did your ancestors before you. Else how would they have provided for themselves and their families? Never was it heard that nobility alone was able to maintain its possessor."11

Among the manufactures were cloths made of cotton, maguey fiber, rabbit hair, fiber of palm-leaves, and also the cotton was mixed with the rabbit hair and with feathers in making a very fine kind of cloth. The cloths were dyed in different colors as they obtained a number of dyes from both vegetable and mineral substances, probably even excelling the Europeans in the art of dyeing. They tanned the skins of animals both with and without the hair. The making of mats and baskets was an important industry. Paper was made from maguey fiber, sometimes this was mixed with fiber from some other plants. Wood was used in making household furniture and farming implements and they also made cups and vases of lacquered wood. In the working of gold and silver they had reached a high degree of perfection, making most beautiful ornaments, which, in many instances, were superior to the work done in Europe. They were quite skillful in the use of feathers. Feathers were mixed with cotton and with other fiber for the making of clothing, tapestry, carpets, and bed-coverings. Feathers were used as ornaments and decorations, sometimes having been tipped with gold and set in precious stones, most beautiful fans were made in this way. The work with feathers they most excelled in was what has been called feather-mosaic, in which beautiful designs were worked out and colors harmoniously blended by the skillfully pasting of feathers on to cloth. For temporary use, as for decorations on the occasions of special festivals, they made designs with leaves and flowers similar to the feather-work. They were quite skillful in working precious stones, making most beautiful ornaments from the stones found in the country, emeralds, amethysts, and turquoises being the most abundant. Pearls and bright colored shells were used with the stones in the formation of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and other ornaments. "Mirrors of rock crystal, obsidian, and other stones, brightly polished and encased in rich frames, were said to reflect the human face as clearly as the best of European manufacture."12

The making of pottery was one of the leading industries, which products ran from coarse undecorated vessels to quite fine ware of various colors and highly ornamented. "The quality of the potting varies considerably according to locality, but the finer examples, such as the ware from Cholula and the Totonac district exhibit a very high standard of paste, form and technique, though the potters of this region of America cannot boast such consummate mastery over their material as the early inhabitants of the Peruvian coast."13

The agricultural and industrial products were not only used where produced but also carried to the different provinces and even to other countries by traders, which occupation was highly respected in Mexico. They took with them the products of their own country and brought back the products of other countries. These traders not only engaged in trade but also acted as spies for the king and brought to him much information concerning the places visited by them. The products of the country and those brought in from outside by the traders were displayed for sale in the great market-places of the principal cities. "The great market in Tlaltelolco moved the wonder of the conquerors; it is described as being three times as large as that of Salamanca, and one estimate places the daily attendance at twenty or twenty-five thousand persons. One of the conquerors gives the following picture of it. 'On one side are the people who sell gold; near them are they who trade in jewels mounted in gold in the forms of birds and animals. On another side beads and mirrors are sold, on another, feathers and plumes of all colors for working designs on garments, and to wear in war or at festivals. Further on stone is worked to make razors and swords, a remarkable thing which passes our understanding; of it they manufacture swords and roundels. In other places they sell cloth and men's dresses of different designs; beyond, dresses for women, and in another part footgear. A section is reserved for the sale of prepared hides of deer and other animals; elsewhere are baskets made of hair, such as all Indian women use. Cotton, grain which forms their food, bread of all kinds, pastry, fowls, and eggs are sold in different sections; and hard by they sell hares, rabbits, deer, quails, geese and ducks. Elsewhere wines of all sorts are for sale, vegetables, pepper, roots, medicinal plants, which are very numerous in this country, fruits of all kinds, wood for building, lime and stone. In fact, each object has its appointed place. Beside this great market-place there are in other quarters other markets also where provisions may be bought.' Special magistrates held courts in the market-places to settle disputes on the spot, and there were market officials similar to our inspectors of weights and measures. Falsification of the latter was visited with severe punishment."14