AZTEC TREASURE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 29, 3 August 1923, Page 3

AZTEC TREASURE

MONTEZUMA'S GOLD

ROUTE

JOURNEY THROUGH THE JUNGLE

PEOPLE WHO WERE CIVILISED

BEFORE COLUMBUS.

Archaeology has found the golden chain that links the foremost ancient civilisations of Mexico -and Central America.

Step by step it is now possible to retrace the path of the traders who carried gold, pearls, and precious stones from the Isthmus of Panama and South America to the capital of Anahuac, on the distant heights of the Mexican plateau, where the Aztec Emperors held sway. The old trade coute is the recent discovery of Dr. Herbert, J. Spinden, of Pcabody Museum, of Harvard University, states the " New York Times." While on its track for many years, it was only his unearthing of a hitherto unknown culture zone in the forests of Eastern Honduras and Northern Nicaragua some little while ago that definitely connected ihe southern goldfields with the lavish court of the Aztec rulers.

Since the days of the Conquest the source of Montezuma's vast wealth has .baffled treasure-iV3eker and historian alike, although tradition and rumour, as recorded by the early Spanish chroniclers, pointed towards the lands " beyond the Mayan region."

The chronicles and his own research among the ruins of that rich archaeological area on the American mainland between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator won Dr. Spinden to this theory and convinced him of the existence of a well-defined route by which the preHispaic peoples carried on a far-flung commerce.

Last February, following his exploration of tho famous Maya monuments o£ Yucatan in company with other eminent American scientists, Dr. Spinden gained new evidence in support of his theory. Eager for further proof, he journeyed through the tropical jungles along the so-called Mosquito Coast of the Caribbean Sea. Here, in Eastern Honduras and Northern Nicaragua, he found vestiges of an ancient culture of a high order.

His notable discovery 13 a triple triumph for American science. It not only fills in the gap in the line of old civilisations that extended down the Central American coast from the Yucatan peninsula to the border of Costa Rica, and verifies the vague reports of a traffic in gold and gems centuries before the Conquest, but it fixes the dawn of the metal ages in America.

" CORN' WORSHIP." In attempting to locato the source of the Aztec treasure in Costa Rica, Panama, and Columbia, archaeology has been confronted always with an impassable barrier. The barrier- was the savage tribes found on the coast from Trujillo eastward by Columbus on his fourth voyage in 1502. From the descriptions left by the great navigator, these tribes, the Jiquague, Poyas, and Mosquito Indians, would have been incapable of taking part- in any sustained trade relations. But the culture discovered by Dr. Spinden is of an ancient type. His theory is that the people who.built the! palisaded towns, produced the advanced art, and developed the "corn worship," of which he found ample evidence, were either destroyed or displaced by the barbarous immigrants from the South American forests shortly before the j coming of Columbus.

But whatever the fate of the original inhabitants, there is clear indication, according to Dr. Spinden, that they were involved in the gold trade first between the Toltecs and the Mayas, and later between the Aztecs and Zapotecans on the one hand, and the people of the Costa Rican region on the other. In the recently-discovered culture zone, referred to *as the "new Chontal area," have been found gold ornaments of unmistakable Costa Rican origin, which compare favourably with the finest specimens of the goldsmith's art of medieval Europe. Among the many other objects brought to the surfaco and accepted as archaeological proof of trade was several hundred pounds of tiny copper- bells of Mayan manufacture.

Dr. Spinden dates the beginning of the use of metal on the American continent between 700 and 800 A.D., after the abandonment of the old Maya Empire. During the closing years of this brilliant period of Mayian civilisation—flourishing for the first six centuries of the Uknstian era in what are now the States of Chiapas and Tabasco in Mexico, the districts of Peten and Izabel in Guatemala, and the adjoining western part of Honduras—there was a migration northward into the Yucatan peninsula. Here began the building of the New Empire with the cities of Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, and Mayapan as its crowning achievements of architecture. It was this Mayan civilisation that knew the use of metal. Copper, gold, and silver, while entirely absent from the remarkable rains of the Old Empire—Tikal, Copan, Palenque, and Quinrgua—are found in abundance in the ruins of Yucatan. Quantities of beautiful metal objects— gold jewellery of rare workmanship, copper bells, and silver discs, .and other ornaments—were reclaimed over twenty years ago from tho Sacred Cenote of Chichen-Itza, and are kept to-day in the Peabody Museum, awaiting classification for a photograph soon to be published by Dr. Spinden and Dr. A. M. lozzler, of the same institution.

There were no gold mines in Yucatan, and, as a matter of history, only two regions in the whole territory Uiat fell :»der. the sway of the Aztec warriors are recorded as sources of gold supply in the tribute roll of Montczuma. The old trade route at the peak of the traffic between the Colombian gold fields and the capital of Anahuac touched at bhichen-Itza only by way of a wide detour. The road starting in the land of the Zemi on the cost of the Gulf of Danen branched out into the territory of the Quimbaya, the finest goldsmiths of ancient America. Skirting- the eastern edge of the Isthmus of Panama, it ran through the territory of the Talamanca, m Costa Rica and the heart of tho "new Chontral area," entering th e Mayan region at Quirrigua. It passed the City of Tayasal, which liad been, founded by the Itzacs when conditions in ChichcnItza under Toltec oppression became intolerable for "the holy and learned men."

WHAT CORTES POUND. At about this period the route also penetrated Mazateca. territory. At any rate, Cortes found the Mazatecas in the heart of the JTucatan Peninsula when in 1526 he followed the rcute into northern C-uate-nala. Dr. Spinden believes that this tribe was oi^of the several whose real home was the "new ChontaJ area " Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who accompanied the Conqueror on this historic expedition, describes the palisaded villages of the Mazateca, and j'so the houses built along the route from Mexico City to Yucatan for the accommodation of the traders. These towns, with their walls and moats, after the t\pe of European feudal construction, correspond to the ruins uneartJwd by Dr. Spindea. To-

day the Mazateca are located several hundred miles further north-west. It lias lately been proved that their language, and |it of the Otomis as well, is related to the language of the cul-itt-ed tribes living south of the Nicaraguan lakes and sometimes referred to collectively as Chorotegas. From Tayasal the route continued north-westerly through the Zapotecan and Mixtec country, having an important station at Teotitlan del Camino, in northern Oaxaca, near the boundary of the States of Vera Cruz and Puebla. The height of the gold trade was the height of culture for the Zapotecans and their neighbours, the Mixtecs. The former attained a high degree of civilisation, but borrowed many of their best ideas from the Mayas. They excelled in gold work, and no other race of Mexico has left so many and such artistic specimens of gold jewellery. Monte Alban, the White Mountain, overlooking the present City of Oaxaca, was their ancient capital. This important archaeological site, one of the eight or nine hundred in the Republic of Mexico, is now being explored by the Mexican Government under the direction of Manuel Gamio. Before the coming of the Spaniards Monte Alban was abandoned for Mitla, whose temples are famous to-day because of their splendid state of preservation and for their exquisite mosaic mural panels of geometric patterns. Before the Otomis overthrew the Toltecs in the Valley of Mexico, the trade j route is believed to have terminated at [ Tula. The last capital of the Toltecs, its power was completely broken in 1070 Near it, in the ancient route, was Teotihuacan—" the place where one worships the gods." Here stand the lofty Pyramid of the Sun, the Cheops of Mexico, and the temple of Quetzalcoatl. the beneficent deity worshipped as the Toltec culture hero. To Quetzalcoatl the Toltecs attributed the origin of trie goldsmith's art. _ There were many temples erected in his honour throughout Central Mexico, but his principal shrine'was the famous teocalli built on the great pyramid of Cholula, near the City of Puebla. This huge mound, in its present state, covers a larger base area than the largest Egyptian pyramid. Toltec craftsmanship flourished in the town of Atzcapotzalc, just outside of Mexico City, long after Aztec rule, and Bernal Diaz writes that the work of these Toltec goldsmiths compelled the admiration of the greatest in Spain.

MAKING OF GOLD LEAF. There is plenty of information in the Spanish chronicles, and in the Aztec codices themselves, of the mechanical processes used by the Aztecs as an inheritance from the Toltec artists for the manufacture of gold leaf and the modeling and casting of jewels and other objects of gold and silver. Sahagun, in '■■" The Things of New Spain," comments on the artisans of Atzcapotzalco who worked in gold. " They are of two kinds/ he writes. " Some of them are called beaters. These 'worked gold with the hammer, pounding with hammers to make it thin like paper. Others are called ' tlatlaliani," that is thoso who fuse the gold, or anything else in it, or silver. These are the true artisans, who are also called by another name, ' Tulteca,' but they are divided into two classes, because each one works the gold according to his own manner."

Indication that most of Montezuma's treasure _ was obtained from Tolteo sources is to be found in many records of the conquest, written by eye-wit-nesses, notably in the writings of Father Francisco de Aguilar. In describing the entrance of Cortes and somes of his followers into the secret treasure vault of the imprisoned Montezuma, Father :Aguilar relates: -

" A very small, low door that, was stopped up in a secret treasure chamber, and recently covered with plaster, should not be so without mystery, and it was ordered to be opened, and, entering by that narrow and low door, they found a largo and spacious room in the middle of which was a heap of gold, jewels, and precious stones as high as a man; so high was it that one was not seen on the other side, which pile, if we wish to know about it according ta history, was not a thing acquired by Montezuma, nor a thing that he might be able to profit by, because it was the treasure that all the kings, his forefathers, went on leaving, and which the king who came in was not able to profit by; and so on the death of the king, the same day that he died, all the treasure that he left of gold, stones, feathers, and arms, and finally all his wardrobe, was put into that room, with much care, as a sacred thing , . . as a treasure of the city and for the grandeur of it."

Although Bernal Diaz records that Montezuma cheerfully informed Cortes how his gold had been obtained' from "three places" in Mexico, and how these places actually were investigated by the Conqueror with some results, the sources evidently did not satisfy the Spanish rulers. "Under date of 6th September, 1536, a royal cedula was sent to the Governor of Nicaragua by the Queen of Spain commandin- him to undertake the discovery of the great stream draining the Nicaraguan Lake. The Queen directed her "present or future Governor of the Province of Nicaragua" to explore the river flowing into the North Sea, for she had been informed that "this is a very large river, like that of the Guadalquiver which flows by Seville, and that from the outlet to the North Sea it is reported there are many people, and that it is very rich in gold, and that from thence was carried to Yucatan the gold possessed l>y Montezuma."

THE COAST OF PEARLS. Dr. Spinden places the ancient pearl supply, where it is to-day, alon°- the northern coast -of Columbia and Venezuela, known as the Coast of Pearls. In pre-Hispanic times this region was peopled by the Tairona, toward whom Columbus in the record of liis third voyage is sympathetic because "these poor natives have nothing but pearls." He believes that the enormous pearls sent to Spam by Cortes on the ill-fated treasure ■ snip—each one said to have been worth a royal ransom—reached Mexico over the old trade route. At any rate, the rumour current during the conquest gave the "far south", as the source of Montezuma's pearls, as it did his emeralds, known to the Aztecs as "precoius <reenness." ° ,

If the "new Chontal area/ with its savage tribes, had not blocked the road into the Colombian goldfields, in the days of the conquerors, it is likely that Mexican history would have furnished a story _ less tragic. The failure of the Spaniards to satisfy their lust for the precious- metal in Mexico, and the constant suspicion that the Indians were keeping secret the location of rich deposits, gave rise to 'barbarous methods and consequent reciprocal hatreds. Commenting on these ocnditions, Peter Martyr, the first chronicles of events in A rew Spain, writes: "Our men's insatiable desire for gold so oppressed these poor wretches with extreme labour and toil, whereas before they lived pleasantly and at liberty, given only to plays and pastimes as dancing, fishing, fowling, and hunting of little conies, that many of them perished even for very anguish of mind, the which (their unaccustomed labour) are tilings of themselves sufficient to engender new disease. . . . But it shall suffice to have said thus much of the pestiferous hunger of gold. . . The ravenous, hunger of gold hath greatly hindered our men from tillage of the soil."

In late years, since science has begun lU systematic delving into. $lie .secrets p{

ancient American civilaations, the trade route ' and the culture of the new Cnontal area has been hidden by impenetrable forests. Dr. Spinden's recent exploration of the region has been made possible only by the cutting down of the dense growth and the clearing of the land by the United Fruit Company for the laying out of vast banana plantations, a, process which he describes as archaeology, a by-product of the banana industry.