Sketches of Aboriginal Life American Tableaux, No. 1

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF TECUICHPO.

“Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan! Never saw I the heavens in so inauspicious an aspect. Dark portentous influences appear on every side. May the horoscope of the infant daughter of Montezuma never be fulfilled.”

These were the awful words of the priestly astrologer of Tenochtitlan, uttered with solemn and oracular emphasis from the lofty Teocalli, where he had been long and studiously watching the heavens, and calculating the relative positions and combinations of the stars. A deep unutterable gloom seemed to pervade his soul. Several times he traversed the broad terrace, in a terrible agitation; his splendid pontifical robes flowing loosely in the breeze, and his tall majestic figure relieved against the clear sky, like some colossal moving statue,—and then, in tones of deeper grief than before, finding no error in his calculations, reiterated his oracular curse—“Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan!” Casting down his instruments to the earth, and tearing his hair in the violence of his emotions, he prostrated himself on the altar, and poured forth a loud and earnest prayer to all his gods.

“Is there no favoring omen in any quarter, venerable father?” inquired the agitated messenger from the palace, when the prayer was ended—“is there no one of those bright spheres above us, that will deign to smile on the destiny of the young princess?”

“It is full of mysterious, portentous contradictions,” replied the astrologer. “Good and evil influences contend for the mastery. The evil prevail, but the good are not wholly extinguished. The life of the princess will be a life of sorrow, but there will be a peculiar brightness in its end. Yet the aspect of every sign in the heavens is wo, and only wo, to the imperial House of Montezuma.”

Faith in the revelations of astrology was a deeply rooted superstition with the Aztecs. It pervaded the whole structure of society, affecting the most intelligent and well-informed, as well as the humblest and most ignorant individual. In this case, the prophetic wailings of the priestly oracle rolled, like a long funereal knell, through the magnificent halls of the imperial palace, and fell upon the ear of the monarch, as if it had been a voice from the unseen world. Montezuma was reclining on a splendidly embroidered couch, in his private apartment, anxiously awaiting the response of the celestial oracle. He was magnificently arrayed in his royal robes of green, richly ornamented with variegated feather-work, and elaborately inwrought with gold and silver. His sandals were of pure gold, with ties and anklets of gold and silver thread, curiously interwoven with a variegated cotton cord. On his head was a rich fillet of gold, with a beautiful plume bending gracefully over one side, casting a melancholy shade over his handsome but naturally pensive features. A few of the royal princes sat, in respectful silence, at the farther end of the chamber, waiting, with an anxiety almost equal to that of the monarch, the return of the royal messenger....