Account of the Character and present Condition of the different Classes of Inhabitants in Mexico, or New Spain.

(From Humboldt’s Travels.)

THE Mexican population is composed of the same elements as the other Spanish colonies.

They reckon seven races: 1st, the individuals born in Europe, vulgarly called Gachupines; 2d, the Spanish Creoles, or whites of European extraction born in America; 3d, the Mestizos, descendants of whites and Indians; 4th, the Mulattos, descendants of whites and negroes; 5th, the Zambos, descendants of negroes and Indians; 6th, the Indians, or coppercoloured indigenous race; and, 7th, the African Negroes.

Abstracting the subdivisions, there are four casts: the whites, comprehended under the general name of Spaniards; the negroes; the Indians; and the men of mixed extraction, from Europeans, Africans, American Indians, and Malays—for, from the frequent communication between Acapulco and the Philippine Islands, many individuals of Asiatic origin, both Chinese and Malays, have settled in New Spain.

A very general prejudice exists in Europe, that an exceeding small number of the copper-coloured race, or descendants of the ancient Mexicans, remain at this day.

The cruelty of the Europeans has entirely extirpated the old inhabitants of the West Indies.

The continent of America, however, has witnessed no such horrible result.

The number of Indians in New Spain exceeds two millions and a half, including only those who have no mixture of European or African blood.

What is still more consolatory, and we repeat it, is, that the indigenous population, far from declining, has been considerably on the increase for the last fifty years, as is proved by the registers of capitation or tribute.

In general, the Indians appear to form two-fifths of the whole population of Mexico.

In the four intendancies of Guanaxuato, Valladolid, Oaxaca, and La Puebla, this proportion amounts even to three-fifths.

The enumeration of 1793 gave the following result.

Names of intendancies.

Total population.

No. of Indians . Guanaxuato...... 398,000...... 175,000 Valladolid........ 290,000...... 119,000 Puebla............. 633,000...... 416,000 Oaxaca............ 411,000...... 363,000

The Indians of New Spain bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil.

They have the same swarthy and copper-colour, flat and smooth hair, small beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner directed upwards towards the temples, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, and an expression of gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe look.

The American race, after the hyperborean, is the least numerous, but it occupies the greatest space on the globe.

Over a million and a half of square leagues, from the Terra del Fuego Islands to the river St Lawrence and Bering’s Straits, we are struck at the first glance with the general resemblance in the features of the inhabitants.

We think we perceive that they all descend from the same stock, notwithstanding the enormous diversity of language which separates them from one another.

However, when we reflect more seriously on this family likeness, after living longer among the indigenous Americans, we discover, that celebrated travellers, who could only observe a few individuals on the coasts, have singularly exaggerated the analogy of form among the Americans.

Intellectual cultivation is what contributes the most to diversify the features.

In barbarous nations, there is rather a physiognomy peculiar to the tribe or horde, than to any individual.

When we compare our domestic animals with those which inhabit our forests, we make the same observation.

But an European, when he decides on the great resemblance among the copper coloured races, is subject to a particular illusion.

He is struck with a complexion so different from our own, and the uniformity of this complexion conceals, for a long time, from him the diversity of individual features.

The new colonist can hardly, at first, distinguish the indigenous, because his eyes are less fixed on the gentle, melancholic, or ferocious expression of the countenance, than on the red coppery colour, and the dark, luminous, and coarse and glossy hair, so glossy, indeed, that we should believe it to be in a constant state of humectation.

In the portrait which we draw of the different races of men composing the population of New Spain, we shall merely consider the Mexican Indian in his actual state.

We perceive in him neither that mobility of sensation, gesture, and feature, nor that activity of mind, for which several nations of the equinoxial regions ofAfricaare so advantageously distinguished.

There cannot exist a more marked contrast than that between the impetuous vivacity of the Congo negro, and the apparent phlegm of the Indian.

From a feeling of this contrast, the Indian women not only prefer the negroes to the men of their own race, but also to the Europeans.

The Mexican Indian is grave, melancholic, and silent, so long as he is not under the influence of intoxicating liquors.

This gravity is particularly remarkable in Indian children, who, at the age of four or five, display much more intelligence and maturity than white children.

The Mexican loves to throw a mysterious air over the most indifferent actions.

The most violent passions are never painted in his features; and there is something frightful in seeing him pass all at once from absolute repose to a state of violent and unrestrained agitation.

The Peruvian Indian possesses more gentleness of manners; the energy of the Mexican degenerates into harshness.

These differences may have their origin in the different religions and different governments of the two countries in former times.

This energy is displayed particularly by the inhabitants of Tlascala.

In the midst of their present degradation, the descendants of these republicans are still to be distinguished by a certain haughtiness of character, inspired by the memory of their former grandeur.

The Americans, like the Hindoos, and other nations who have long groaned under a civil and military despotism, adhere to their customs, manners, and opinions, with extraordinary obstinacy.

I say opinions, for the introduction of Christianity has produced almost no other effect on the Indians of Mexico than to substitute new ceremonies, the symbols of a gentle and humane religion, to the ceremonies of a sanguinary worship.

This change from old to new rites was the effect of constraint, and not of persuasion, and was produced by political events alone.

In the new continent, as well as in the old, half civilized nations were accustomed to receive from the hands of the conqueror new laws and new divinities; and the vanquished Indian gods appeared to them to yield to the gods of the strangers.

In such a complicated mythology as that of the Mexicans, it was easy to find out an affinity between the divinities of Aztlan and the divinity of the east.

Cortez even very artfully took advantage of a popular tradition, according to which the Spaniards were merely the descendants of king Quitzalcoatl, who left Mexico for countries situated in the east, to carry among them civilization and laws.

The ritual books, composed by the Indians, in hieroglyphics, at the beginning of the conquest, of which I possess several fragments, evidently shew that, at that period, Christianity was confounded with the Mexican mythology:

— the Holy Ghost is identified with the sacred eagle of the Aztecs.

The missionaries not only tolerated, they even favoured to a certain extent, this amalgamation of ideas, by means of which the Christian worship was more easily introduced among the natives.

They persuaded them that the gospel had, in very remote times, been already preached in America; and they investigated its traces in the Aztec ritual with the same ardour which the learned, who, in our days, engage in the study of the Sanscrit, display in discussing the analogy between the Greek mythology and that of the Ganges and the Barampooter.

These circumstances, which will be detailed in another work, explain why the Mexican Indians, notwithstanding the obstinacy with which they adhere to whatever is derived from their fathers, have so easily forgotten their ancient rites.

Dogma has not succeeded to dogma, but ceremony to ceremony.

The natives know nothing of religion but the exterior forms of worship.

Fond of whatever is connected with a prescribed order of ceremonies, they find, in the Christian religion, particular enjoyments.

The festivals of the church—the fireworks with which they are accompaniedthe processions, mingled with dances and whimsical disguises, are a most fertile source of amusement for the lower Indians.

In these festivals, the national character is displayed in all its individuality.

Every where the Christians have assumed the shades of the country where they have been transplanted.

In the Philippine and Mariana islands the natives of the Malay race have incorporated them with the ceremonies which are peculiar to themselves; and, in the province of Pasto, on the ridge of the Cordillera of the Andes, I have seen Indians, masked and adorned with small tinkling bells, perform savage dances around the altar, while a Monk of St Francis elevated the host.

Accustomed to a long slavery, as well under the domination of their own sovereigns as under that of the first conquerors, the natives of Mexico patiently suffer the vexations to which they are frequently exposed from the whites.

They oppose to them only a cunning, veiled under the most deceitful appearances of apathy and stupidity.

As the Indian can very rarely revenge himself on the Spaniards, he delights in making a common cause with them for the oppression of his own fellow-citizens.

Harassed for ages, and compelled to a blind obedience, he wishes to tyrannize in his turn.

The Indian villagers are governed by magistrates of the copper coloured race; and an Indian alcalde exercises his power with so much the greater severity, because he is sure of being supported by the priest or the Spanish subdelegado.

Oppression produces, every where, the same effects; it every where corrupts the morals.

As the Indians, almost all of them, belong to the class of peasantry and low people, it is not so easy to judge of their aptitude for the arts which embellish life.

I know no race of men which appear more destitute of imagination.

When an Indian attains a certain degree of civilization, he displays a great facility of apprehension—a judicious mind—a natural logic—and a particular disposition to subtilize or seize the finest differences in the comparison of objects.

He reasons coolly and orderly; but he never manifests that versatility of imagination—that glow of sentiment—and that creative and animating art, which characterize the nations of the south of Europe, and several tribes of African negroes.

I deliver this opinion, however, with great reserve.

We ought to be infinitely circumspect in pronouncing, on the moral or intellectual dispositions of nations, from which we are separated by the multiplied obstacles which result from a difference in language, and a difference of manners and customs.

A philosophical observer finds what has been printed in the centre of Europe, on the national character of the French, Italians, and Germans, inaccurate.

How, then, should a traveller, after merely landing in an island, or remaining only a short time in a distant country, arrogate to himself the right of deciding on the different faculties of the soul, on the preponderance of reason, wit, or imagination, among nations.

The music and dancing of the natives partake of this want of gaiety which characterizes them. M.

Bonpland and myself observed the same thing in all South America.

Their songs are terrific and melancholic.

The Indian women shew more vivacity than the men; but they share the usual misfortunes of tbe servitude to which the sex is condemned among nations, where civilization is in its infancy.

The women take no share in the dancing; but they remain present to offer fermented draughts to the dancers, prepared by their own hands.

The Mexicans have preserved a particular relish for painting, and for the art of carving on wood or stone.

We are astonished at what they are able to execute with a bad knife on the hardest wood.

They are particularly fond of painting images, and carving statues of saints.

They have been servilely imitating, for these three hundred years, the models which the Europeans imported with them at the conquest.

This imitation is derived from a religious principle of a very remote origin.

In Mexico, as in Hindostan, it was not allowable in the faithful to change the figure of their idols in the smallest degree.

Whatever made a part of the Asiatic or Hindoo ritual, was subjected to immutable laws.

For this reason, we shall form a very imperfect judgment of the state of the arts, and the natural state of these nations, if we merely consider the monstrous figures under which they represent their divinities.

The Christian images have preserved in Mexico a part of that stiffness and that hardness of feature, which characterize the hieroglyphical pictures of the age of Montezuma.

Many Indian children, educated in the college of the capital, or instructed at the academy of painting founded by the king, have no doubt distinguished themselves; but it is much less by their genius than their application.

Without ever leaving the beaten track, they display great aptitude in the exercise of the arts of imitation, and they display a much greater still for the purely mechanical arts.

This aptitude cannot fail of becoming some day very valuable, when the manufactures shall take their flight to a country where a regenerating government yet remains to be created.

The Mexican Indians have preserved the same taste for flowers which Cortez found in his time.

A nosegay was the most valuable treat which could be made to the ambassadors who visited the court of Montezuma.

This monarch and his predecessors had a great number of rare plants in the gardens of Istapalapan.

The famous hand-tree, the cheirostemen deseribed by M. Cervantes, of which, for a long time, only a single individual was known of very high antiquity, appears to indicate, that the kings of Toluca cultivated also trees, strangers to that part of Mexico.

Cortez, in his letters to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, frequently boasts of the industry which the Mexicans displayed in gardening; and he complains, that they did not send him the seeds of ornamental flowers and useful plants, which he demanded for his friends of Seville and Madrid.

The taste for flowers, undoubtedly, indicates a relish for the beautiful; and we are astonished at finding it in a nation in which a sanguinary worship, and the frequency of sacrifices appeared to have extinguished whatever related to the sensibility of the soul, and kindness of affection.

In the great market-place of Mexico, the native sells no peaches, nor onions, nor roots, nor pulque, (the fermented juice of the agave), without having his shop ornamented with flowers, which are every day renewed.

The Indian merchant appears seated in an entrenchment of verdure.

A hedge, of a metre in height, with delicate leaves, surrounds, like a semicircular wall, its fruits offered to public sale.

The bottom, of a smooth green, is divided by garlands of flowers, which run parallel to one another.

Small nosegays, placed symmetrically between the festoons, give this inclosure the appearance of a carpet strewn with flowers.

The European, who delights in studying the customs of the lower people, cannot help being struck with the care and elegance the natives display in distributing the fruits which they sell in small cages of very light wood.

The sapatolles (achras), the mammea pears, and raisins, occupy the bottom, while the top is ornamented with odoriferous flowers.

This art of entwining fruits and flowers, had its origin, perhaps, in that happy period, when, long before the introduction of inhuman rites, the first inhabitants of Anachuac, like the Peruvians, offered up to the great spirit Teoil the first fruits of their harvest.

(To be continued.)

Account of the Character and present Condition of the different Classes of Inhabitants in Mexico, or New Spain.

(From Humboldt’s Travels.)

(Continued from p. 920.)

AMONG the inhabitants of pure origin, the whites would occupy the second place, considering them only in the relation of number.

They are divided into whites born in Europe, and descendants of Europeans born in the Spanish colonies of America, or in the Asiatic islands.

The former bear the name of Chapetones or Gachupines, and the second that of Creoles.

The natives of the Canary islands, who go under the denomination of Islenos, (islanders) and who are the gerans of the plantations, are considered as Europeans.

The Spanish laws allow the same rights to all whites; but those who have the execution of the laws, endeavour to destroy an equality which shocks the European pride.

The government, suspicious of the Creoles, bestows the great places exclusively on the natives of Old Spain.

For some years back, they have disposed, at Madrid, even of the most trifling employments in the administration of the customs and the tobacco revenue.

At an epoch, when every thing tended to an uniform relaxation in the springs of the state, the system of venality made an alarming progress.

For the most part, it was by no means a suspicious and distrustful policy, it was pecuniary interest alone which bestowed all employments on Europeans.

The result has been a jealousy and perpetual hatred between the Chapetons and the Creoles.

The most miserable European, without education, and without intellectual cultivation, thinks himself superior to the whites born in the new continent.

He knows that, protected by his countrymen, and favoured by chances common enough in a country where fortunes are as rapidly acquired as they are lost, he may one day reach places to which the access is almost interdicted to the natives, even to those of them distinguished for their talents, knowledge, and moral qualities.

The natives prefer the denomination of Americans to that of Creoles.

Since the peace of Versailles, and, in particular, since the year 1789, we frequently hear proudly declared:

‘I am not a Spaniard, I am an American’, words which betray the workings of a long resentment.

In the eye of law, every white Creole is a Spaniard; but the abuse of the laws, the false measures of the colonial government, the example of the United States of America, and the influence of the opinions of the age, have relaxed the ties which formerly united more closely the Spanish Creoles to the European Spaniards.

A wise administration may re-establish harmony, calm their passions and resentments, and yet preserve for a long time the union among the members of one and the same great family, scattered over Europe and America, from the Patagonian coast to the north of California.

The Spanish laws prohibit all entry into the American possessions, to every European not born in the peninsula.

The words European and Spaniard are become synonimous in Mexico and Peru.

The inhabitants of the remote provinces have, therefore, a difficulty in conceiving that there can be Europeans that do not speak their language; and they consider this ignorance as a mark of low extraction; because, every where around them, all except the very lowest class of people; speak Spanish.

Better acquainted with the history of the 16th century than with that of our own times; they imagine that Spain continues to possess a decided preponderance over the rest of Europe.

To them the peninsula appears the very centre of European civilization.

It is otherwise with the Americans of the capital.

There of them who are acquainted with the French or English literature, fall easily into a contrary extreme, and have still a more unfavouarble opinion of the mother country, than the French had at a time when communication was less frequent between Spain and the rest of Europe.

They prefer strangers from other countries, to the Spaniards; and they flatter themselves with the idea that intellectual cultivation has make more rapid progress in the colonies than in the peninsula.

This progress is indeed very remarkable at the Havanah, Lima, Santa Fe, Quito, Popayan, and Caraccas.

Of all these great cities, the Havanna bears the greatest resemblance to those of Europe in customs, refinements of luxury, and the tone of society.

At Havanna, the state of politics and their influence on commerce, is best understood.

However, notwithstanding the efforts ot the patriotic society of the island of Cuba, which encourages the sciences with the most generous zeal; they prosper very slowly in a country where cultivation and colonial produce engross the whole attention of the inhabitants.

The study of the mathematics, chemistry, minerallogy, and botany, is more general at Mexico, Santa Fe, and Lima.

We every where observe a great intellectual activity, and among the youth a wonderful facility of seizing the principles of science.

It is said, that this facility is still more remarkable among the inhabitants of Quito and Lima, than at Mexico and Santa Fe. The former appear to possess more versatility of mind, and a more lively imagination, while the Mexicans, and the natives of Santa Fe, have the reputation of greater perseverance in the studies to which they have once addicted themselves.

No city of the new continent, without even excepting those of the United States, can display such great and solid scientific establishments as the capital of Mexico. I shall content myself here with the school of Mines, directed by the learned Elhuyar, to which we shall return when we come to speak of the Mines, the Botanic Garden, and the Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

This Academy bears the title of Academia de los Nobles Artes de Mexico.

It owes its existence to the patriotism of several Mexican individuals, and to the protection of the minister of Galvez.

The government assigned it a spacious building, in which there is a much finer and more complete collection of casts than is to be found in any part of Germany.

We are astonished on seeing that the Apollo of Belvedere, the group of Laocoon, and still more colossal statues, have been conveyed through mountains, at least, as narrow as those of St. Gothard; and we are surprised at finding these masterpieces of antiquity collected together, under the torrid zone, in a table-land higher than the convent of the great St. Bernard.

The collection of casts brought to Mexico, cost the king 200,000 francs.

The remains of the Mexican sculpture, those colossal statues of basaltes and porphyry, which are covered with antique hieroglyphics, and bear some relation to the Egyptian and Hindoo style, ought to be collected together in the edifice of the Academy, or rather in one of the courts which belong to it.

It would be curious to see these monuments of the first cultivation of our species, the works of a semi-barbarous people, inhabiting the Mexican Andes, placed beside the beautiful forms produced under the sky of Greece and Italy.

The revenues of the academy of fine arts at Mexico amount to 125,000 francs, of which the government gives 60,000, the body of Mexican miners nearly 25,000, the consulado, or association of merchants of the capital, more than 1,500. It is impossible not to perceive the influence of this establishment on the taste of the nation.

This influence is particularly visible in the symmetry of the buildings, in the perfection with which the hewing of stone is conducted, and in the ornaments of the capitals and stucco relievos.

What a number of beautiful edifices are to be seen at Mexico, nay, even in provincial towns like Guanaxato and Queretaro.

These monuments, which frequently cost a million and a half of francs, would appear to advantage in the finest streets of Paris, Berlin, and Petersburg. M. Tolsa, Professor of Sculpture at Mexico, was even able to cast an equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth; a work which, with the exception of the Marcus Aurelius, at Rome, surpasses in beauty, in purity of stile, every thing which remains in this way in Europe.

Instruction is communicated gratis at the Academy of Fine Arts. It is not confined alone to the drawing of landscapes and figures; they have had the good sense to employ other means for exciting the national industry.

The academy labours successfully to introduce among the artisans a taste for elegance and beautiful forms.

Large rooms, well lighted by Argand’s lamps, contain, every evening some hundreds of young people, of whom some draw from relievos or living models, while others copy drawings of furniture, chandeliers, or other ornaments in bronze.

In this assemblage, (and this is very remarkable in the midst of a country where the prejudices against the casts are so inveterate), rank, colour, and race is confounded; we see the Indian and the Mexican sitting beside the white, and the son of a poor artisan in emulation with the children of the great lords of the country.

It is a consolation to observe, that, under every zone, the cultivation of science and art, establishes a certain equality among men, and obliterate, for a time at least, all these petty passions, of which the effects are so prejudicial to social happiness.

If, in the present state of things, the cast of whites is the only one in which we find almost exclusively any thing like intellectual cultivation, it is also the only one which possesses great wealth.

This wealth is, unfortunately, still more unequally distributed in Mexico than in the capitania general of Caraccas.

There the heads of the richest families possess a revenue of 200,000 livres.

In the island of Cuba, we find revenues of more than 6 or 700,000 francs.

In these two industrious colonies, agriculture has founded more considerable fortunes than has been accumulated by the working of the mines in Peru.

At Lima, an annual revenue of 80,000 francs is very uncommon.

I know in reality, of no Peruvian family in the possession of a fixed and sure revenue of 100,000 francs.

But, in New Spain, there are individu- als who possess no mines, whose revenue amounts to a million of francs.

The family of the Count de la Valenciana, for example, possesses alone, on the ridge of the Cordillera, a property worth more than 25 millions of francs, without including the mine of Valenciana, near Guanaxuato, which, communibus annis, yields a net revenue of a million and a half of livres.

This family, of which the present head, the young Count de Valenciana, is distinguished for a generous character, and a noble desire of instruction, is only divided into three branches; and they possess altogether, even in years when the mine is not very lucrative, more than 20,000,000 francs of revenue.

The Count de Oregla, whose youngest son, the Marquis de San Christobal, distinguished himself at Paris for his physical and physiological knowledge, constructed at the Havanah, at his own expence, in acajou and cedar (cedrella) wood, two vessels of the line of the largest size, which he made a present of to his sovereign.

It was the seam of la Bescaina, near Pachuca, which laid the foundation of the fortune of the house of Aregla.

The family of Fagoaga, well known for its beneficence, intelligence, and zeal for the public good, exhibits the example of the greatest wealth which was ever derived from a mine.

A single seam, which the family of the Marquis of Fagoaga possesses in the district of Sombrerete, left, in five or six months, all charges deducted, a net profit of 20 millions of francs.

From these data, one would suppose capitals in the Mexican families infinitely greater than what are really observed.

The deceased Count de la Valenciana, the first of the title, sometimes drew from his mine alone, in one year, a net revenue of no less than six millions of livres.

This annual revenue, during the last twenty-five years of his life, was never below from two to three millions of livres; and yet this extraordinary man, who came without any fortune to America, and who continued to live with great simplicity, left only behind him at his death, besides his mine, which is the richest in the world, ten millions in property and capital.

This fact, which may be relied on, will not surprise those who are acquainted with the interior management of the great Mexican houses.

Money rapidly gained is as rapidly spent.

The working of mines becomes a game in which they embark with unbounded passion.

The rich proprietors of mines lavish immense sums on quacks, who engage them in new undertakings in the most remote provinces.

In a country where the works are conducted on such an extravagant scale, that the pit of a mine frequently requires two millions of francs to pierce,—the bad success of a rash project may absorb, in a few years, all that was gained in working the richest seams.

We must add, that from the internal disorder which prevails in the greatest part of the great houses of both Old and New Spain, the head of a family is not unfrequently straitened with a revenue of half a million, though he display no other luxury than that of numerous yokes of mules.

In a country governed by whites, the families reputed to have the least mixture of negro or mulatto blood, are also naturally the most honoured.

In Spain, it is almost a title of nobility to descend neither from Jews nor Moors.

In America, the greater or less degree of whiteness of skin decides the rank which man occupies in society.

A white, who rides barefooted on horseback, thinks he belongs to the nobility of the country.

Colour establishes even a certain equality among men, who, as is universally the case where civilization ist either little advanced, or in a retrograde state, take a particular pleasure dwelling on the prerogatives of race and origin.

When a common man disputes with one of the titled lords of the country, he is frequently heard to say, Do you think me not so white as yourself?

This may serve to characterize the state and source of the actual aristocracy.

It becomes consequently a very interesting business for the public vanity to estimate accurately the fractions of European blood which belong to the different casts.

According to the principle sanctioned by usage, we have adopted the following proportions:—

Casts.

Mixture of blood.

Quarterons.........

[Formel] negro [Formel] white.

Quinterons.........

[Formel] negro [Formel] white.

Zambo...............

[Formel] negro [Formel] white.

Zambo prieto.....

[Formel] negro [Formel] white.

It often happens, that families suspected of being of mixed blood, demand from the high court of justice (audiencia), to have it declared that they belong to the whites.

These declarations are not always corroborated by the judgment of the senses.

We see very swarthy mulattoes who have had the address to get themselves whitened, (this is the vulgar expression.)

When the colour of the skin is too repugnant to the judgment demanded, the petitioner is contented with an expression somewhat problematical.

The sentence then simply bears, that such or such individuals may consider themselves as whites; (que a tengan por blancos.)