Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America: Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya, in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of two Remarkable Aztec Children, Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country, Described by John L. Stevens, Esq., and Other Travellers.Velasquez, Pedro
History
Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America: Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya, in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of two Remarkable Aztec Children, Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country, Described by John L. Stevens, Esq., and Other Travellers.
Velasquez, Pedro
Aztecs; Central America -- Antiquities; Central America -- Description and travel; Indians of Central America
In passing the spot of the recent skirmish, they found that nine horses
and two men had been killed, the latter unintentionally, besides the
rifleman of their own party. Many other horses were lying wounded, in
the struggles of death, and several of their riders were seated on the
ground, disabled by bruises or dislocations. Huertis' men buried their
comrades in a grave hastily dug with the spears which lay around him,
while the Iximayans laid their dead and wounded upon horses, to be
conveyed to a village on the plain. The former, it was found, were
consumed there the next day, in funereal fires, with idolatrous rites;
and it was observed by the travellers that the native soldiers regarded
their dead with emotions of extreme sensibility, and almost feminine
grief, like men wholly unaccustomed to scenes of violent death. But
Velasquez remarks, that the strongest emotion evinced by the young
chief, throughout their intercourse, was when he heard the word
"Iximaya," in interpreting for Huertis. He then seemed to be smitten and
subdued, by blank despair, as if he felt that the city and its location
were already familiarly known to the foreign world.
As already intimated, the distance to the city was about six miles. The
expedition found the road to it bordered, on either side, as far as the
eye could reach, with a profuse and valuable vegetation, the result of
evidently assiduous and skilful culture. Indigo, corn, oats, a curious
five-eared wheat, gourds, pine-apples, esculent roots, pulse, flax, and
hemp, the white as well as the crimson cotton, vineyards, and fruit
orchards, grew luxuriantly in large, regularly divided fields, which
were now ripe for the harvest. The villages, large and populous, were
mostly composed of flat-roofed dwellings with broad overhanging eaves or
architraves, supported by heavy columns, often filletted over spiral
flutings, in the Egyptian style, and generally terminating in foliaged
capitals, of the same character. None of the houses were mean, while
many were superb; and of the mosque-like larger buildings, which
occasionally appeared, and which were supposed to be rural temples, some
were grand and imposing. A profusion of bold sculpture, was the
prevailing characteristic, and perhaps defect, of all. The inhabitants,
who thronged the wayside in great numbers, appeared excited with
surprise and exultation, on beholding the large company of strangers
apparently in the custody of their military, while the disarmed
condition of the latter, and the bodies of the slain, were a mystery
they could not explain. Many of the husbandmen were observed to be in
possession of bows and arrows, and some of the women held rusty spears.
The predominant costume of both sexes was a pale blue tunic, gathered in
at the breast and descending to the knee, with reticulated buskins, of
red cord, covering the calf of the leg. The women, with few exceptions,
were of fine form, and the highest order of Indian beauty, with an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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