A Short History of Mexico

Conditions and Terms of Use TABLE OF CONTENTS Copyright © Heritage History 2010 Some rights reserved This text was produced and distributed by Heritage History, an Aboriginal Mexico .............................................................. 4 organization dedicated to the preservation of classical juvenile history books, and to the promotion of the works of traditional history authors. The Conquest of Mexico .................................................. 13 The books which Heritage History republishes are in the public Military Governors and Ecclesiastics ............................... 21 domain and are no longer protected by the original copyright. They may therefore be reproduced within the United States without paying a royalty The Viceroys of the 16th and 17th Centuries ................... 27 to the author. 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We require all electronic and More Revolutions and War with the United States .......... 62 printed versions of this text include these markings and that users adhere to the following restrictions. More Presidents and the War of "The Reform" ............... 67 The French Invasion and the Second Empire ................... 72 1. You may reproduce this text for personal or educational purposes as long as the copyright and Heritage History version are included. The Fall of the Second Empire ......................................... 76 2. You may not alter this text or try to pass off all or any part of it as your Benito Juarez and Constitutional Government ................. 81 own work. Porfirio Diaz and Mexico of To-Day ............................... 83 3. You may not distribute copies of this text for commercial purposes. 4. This text is intended to be a faithful and complete copy of the original document. However, typos, omissions, and other errors may have occurred during preparation, and Heritage History does not guarantee a perfectly reliable reproduction. Permission to use Heritage History documents or images for commercial purposes, or more information about our collection of traditional history resources can be obtained by contacting us at [email protected] Original Copyright 1903 by Arthur Howard Noll 2 Distributed by Heritage History 2011 PREFACE the ancient Mexicans are destined to modify all our notions about the Aztec civilization; and Mr. Thomas A. Janvier, The history of Mexico, subsequent to the conquest by whose admirable Guide Book (edition of 1889) contains much the Spaniards early in the sixteenth century, is scarcely known local historical information by which many of the facts in this outside of that country. General histories pass over the three book have been verified. centuries of Spanish rule, the long struggle for independence, A. H. N. the establishment of a short-lived empire followed by a Port Gibson, Mississippi, March, 1890. nominal republic, and the rise and fall of a second empire, as subjects of but little interest, and without giving very accurate information regarding them. If any comprehensive history of PREFACE TO NEW EDITION Mexico exists in the English language, its name fails to appear in any of the long lists of books on Mexico which the present In preparing a new edition of this little book, the author writer has diligently searched. has felt strongly inclined to rewrite some of the chapters, — more particularly the last five,— in order to show, as in his This brief history was prepared with the writer's own more recent work, "From Empire to Republic," a deeper needs in view. Having accomplished what he had vainly hoped sympathy with the efforts made throughout the nineteenth to find accomplished for him, he at first thought of offering his century toward the establishment of Constitutional work to the tourists in Mexico to aid them in enjoying the government in Mexico. He has contented himself, however, sights of that country. This idea was abandoned after the with making a few corrections in the earlier portion of the manuscript was in the hands of the publishers, in deference to work, re-writing all of it after page 284, and extending the the opinions of others that the book would be beneficial to the history to include the more recent years in which President public generally,—no less in need of such a history than the Diaz has succeeded in making of Mexico a real self-governing tourist. nation, as could hardly be said of it when this book was first The sources whence the information contained in the written. book is derived are so many and various that it would be a The author takes this opportunity to express his waste of space to enumerate them. The collation of material appreciation of the kind manner in which the book in its earlier was made principally during a residence of eighteen months in editions has been received by the reading public. the Mexican capital. It consists of Mexican books, large and A. H. N. small, new and old, as well as pamphlets and other documents in Spanish, relating to the different events hereafter related. University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, The writer would acknowledge his especial indebtedness to September, 1903. two American authors: Mr. A. F. Bandelier, whose works on Original Copyright 1903 by Arthur Howard Noll 3 Distributed by Heritage History 2011 in a country unknown save by the name Aztlan (and that CHAPTER I merely means "the place of the Aztecs"), and indefinitely located "somewhere north of the Gulf of California," perhaps in the locality where are found the remarkable cliff houses of ABORIGINAL MEXICO Colorado and New Mexico. They began their southerly march about the middle of The earliest authentic date in the history of Mexico is the twelfth century, and stopped for a time in what is now 1325,—generally accepted as the year in which the Mexicans, Arizona of the United States, leaving there certain monuments. or Aztecs, ended their wanderings about the shores of Lake The ruins of Casas Grandes attest that they made that a Texcoco, and settled upon the site of what was afterwards stopping-place also. Again they settled in a country known as Tenochtitlan, and is now the City of Mexico. Traditions and Culhuacan, and it is there that they appear to have formulated myths are sadly mixed up with the realities of these events, as their religion, adopting as their god of war Huitzilopochtli. we shall hereafter see; but the best authorities agree in That being the name of one of the Chichimecan rulers of that accepting that year as the beginning of Mexican history, and century, it suggests the possibility of their having made a tribal relegating all accounts of the previous occupants of the hero do duty as a tribal deity. Huitzilopochtli furnished the Mexican Valley to the realm of archaeology. Such accounts nucleus for the subsequent development of the Aztec can therefore claim no serious attention from the present mythology. writer, whose purpose it is to relate only what is actually known of the history of Mexico. Archaeology is no proper It was under the leadership of their war god that the pursuit for the hurrying traveller in Mexico. Reserving that for Aztecs proceeded on their way from Culhuacan, leaving signs leisure hours at home, he will find plenty of books from which of another resting-place in what is known as the "Quemada," to gather the conflicting theories held by different men as to about twenty miles south of Zacatecas. At the end of nine who were and whence came the Mayas, the Qquiches, the years they left the Quemada, and by a very circuitous journey Toltecs, and the Chichimecas; who built the cities whose ruins reached the mountain regions of Toluca, and finally arrived in are the occasion of so much wonder to the travellers in Tula in 1196. Twenty years later they arrived at Zumpango, Yucatan,—cities said to have been overgrown with dense thirty miles north of the site of their future capital. They were forests before the Spanish conquest,—or who built Mitla, the well received by the chief of Zumpango (called by Spanish ruined city in the State of Oaxaca; and by whom and for what writers, in their fondness for conferring high-sounding titles purpose the so-called "pyramids "of San Juan Teotihuacan upon the chiefs of these early tribes, "the Lord of Zumpango"), were erected, or the similar mound in Cholula. and a marriage was arranged between his son and a daughter of one of the Mexican families to whom the Spanish writers The seven families of Nahuatlacas who arrived in the (conceiving that the Mexicans had already attained to the lake region of the Mexican Valley in the beginning of the dignity of an hereditary government, instead of being a mere fourteenth century, whom we call Aztecs, or Mexicans, and of roving band) give the dignified title of "Aztec princess." It was whose subsequent movements we have to some extent from this marriage that the military chiefs of the Mexicans in authentic records, brought with them certain traditions which the succeeding century were descended. are partially corroborated by the researches of archeologists. From these traditions it would appear that they had originated Original Copyright 1903 by Arthur Howard Noll 4 Distributed by Heritage History 2011 The wanderings of the Mexicans were renewed, and for the selection by the Mexicans of such an unpromising site seven years later they passed by way of Tezoyocan and for their local habitation as the marshy islands of the lake Tolpetas to Tepeyacac (Guadalupe-Hidalgo), then on the borders.

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