Humboldt says, that “it is difficult to appreciate, justly, the moral character of the native Mexicans, if we consider this caste, which has so long suffered under a barbarous tyranny, only in its present state of degradation. At the commencement of the Spanish conquest, the wealthy Indians, for the most part, perished, victims of the ferocity of the Europeans. Christian fanaticism persecuted the Aztec priests; they exterminated the Teopixqui, or ministers of the Divinity, all who inhabited the teocalli, or temples, and who could be regarded as depositaries of historical, mythological, and astronomical knowledge. The monks burnt the hieroglyphic paintings, by which knowledge of every sort was transmitted from generation to generation. Deprived of these means of instruction, the people relapsed into a state of ignorance so much the more profound, that the missionaries, little skilled in the Mexican languages, substituted few new ideas for the ancient. The Indian women, who preserved some fortune, preferred allying themselves with the conquerors, to partaking the contempt entertained for the Indians. There remained, therefore, of the natives, none but the most indigent, the poor cultivators, mechanics, porters, who were used as beasts of burden—and, above all, the dregs of the people, that crowd of beggars, which marked the imperfection of the social institutions and the feudal yoke, and who, even in the time of Cortez, filled the streets of the great cities of Mexico. How, then, shall we judge from these miserable remains of a powerful people, either of the degree of civilization to which it had reached, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, or of the intellectual development of which it is susceptible?”