Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1875 — The Aztec Region. [ARTICLE]

The Aztec Region.

Every child at school has heard of the Aztecs —the ancient and castle-build* ing Aztecs—the most civilized of savages, whose empire fell with Montezuma, their prince; while but few of our wise men and scholars know aught of the Pueblo Indians, relics and fragments of the same, whose towns, a score in number, and older than they know, are scattered here and there through New Mexico. Every inch of their domain is rich with history and folk-lore, printed on the potsherds of their streets and suggested by. the eagle cages on their and it is time that this should be recorded while their patriarchs are this side of the grave, and can tell the ungarbled story of the ruined cities of this Territory and Arizona, who lived in them, how strong these feeble communities were once, how disaster fell upon them, how of yore the Spaniards oonquered them, and how the Mexicans defraud and persecute them. A penchant for the artistic has been theirs since antiquity, and many a basalt bluff is covered with the tracery of the stylus. Near Santa Fe is found one of these picture galleries, long drawn out for miles, teeming with hieroglyphic mysticism. Confusion and medley and multitude of ornament fresco this cliff. There are symbollic circles, squares and fret-work, and symbols spiral and intertwined, entangled and interwoven like monograms. Turtles, lizards, and all manner of creeping things, real and imaginary, are sketched with the rude hand and crude knowledge of -form which characterize the tyro in drawing. Snakes with sunflower heads and voluminous tails wriggle and squirm through this animated nightmare. There are birds like pterodactyls, and beasts with jaws of ichthyosaurus; roosters, couchant, rampant and volant; frogs dancing jigs;" and other frogs with the fore-paws uplifted so beseechingly that you can almost see the tears in their eyes. Cold-blooded and repulsive animals are predominant, although on one slab an elk, with antlers proud and erect, rules the scene. None of the figures are handsome; soma of them look as if , the devil had sat for a portrait, and the artist was no flatterer, or else had a spite at his majesty. Upon the summit of Mount Taylor, or, in Mexican Mount San Mateo, has been found the Indians’ house of convention, a stone inclosure with trails climbing to it from all directions, by which converging paths the assembling throngs file up. In a place of deposit are miniature bows and arrows, fragments of wood and bits of cloth and stone, probably certificates with which the different peoples tallied “present.” Mount Taylor is known to be a temple and tabernacle of the Pueblo Indians, where they go to worship the great Montezuma, the prophet of the sun. Tc him they are still loyal in their hearts, and testify their devotion by the occasional slaughter of a priest. All of these Indian towns are architecturally similar and of the same pattern as the Mexican plazas. The peoples who live there differ only in cleanliness of habit and costume of body. Laguna bears the palm in civilization and friendliness to the Americans. This gwd-will may, perhaps, be traced to the benevoJent influence of the American teacher there, whose home is constantly thronged with his pupils of all ages, with

whom he is on the most pleasant and affectionate terms. If all Indian agents watched over their charges with a care as paternal and thoughtful we would be shocked less often by news of Indian outrages. The Governors and other officials of the tribes are elected at stated periods by the people from among the people. They wear no badge of office, nor do they encompass themselves with the pomp and circumstance of glory. When Cincinnatua was called to honor he left the plow in the furrow; when these are summoned to be rulers they stick to the farm and the loom and continue their vocations. ' Millinery is at a discount in this re gion. Women wear nothing of headdress except their wealth of hair, and a rustic costume which is very picturesque. Occasionally you see one at a distance who appears to be covered with an uncouth yellow plug hat, but it is a water-jar which she is carrying from the well. In this habit of bare heads they differ from their neighbors, the Mexican dames, who, as if it were not somberness enough to attire themselves perpetually in black, muffle the head in a shawl of the same color, and appear to be the most circumspect and pious females, retiring-penitential nuns, while in fact they are quite the reverse. The light and airy summer style for gentlemen in the Pueblos consists of a straw hat, long shirt and thin moccasins. Do the people of New York and Chicago realize that the shattered marble of their palaces will one day be raked over by the curious hand of some explorer from a far and living country? This is, indeed, an old, old land. In one place the entire valley of a river has become deserted and depopulated because the stream, by successive floods, has washed ithe farms of fertile soil away. There is a fallen castle of stone whose grated windows hint of dungeons and inquisitorial torments. Of the massive masonry of that old fortress, Pueblo Pintado, the Painted Palace, or Pueblo Bonito, the Beautiful Palace, rising story over story, and spreading through room and corridor and hall, in all the amplitude of a palace; of the silent city high up on the mesa, between the canons of San Diego and Guadaloupe, whose former dwellings were defended against the Spaniards by natural walls 1,000 feet high; of the picture of St. Guadaloupe, painted by some unknown artist m some unknown time, high up on the vertical ledge of the mesa of the same name, a portrait on "whose holy lineaments no other Caucasian has ever been privileged to gaze, and of the dim and dusky sanctuary, without window, door or other aperture save a narrow hatchway in the roof, which is sacred to the rites of Montezuma worship, on whose altar the holy fire is perpetual—who now lives to tell the story of all these mysterious antiquities?— N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.