The Americas and a World on the Verge of Change

WHAP/Napp

Cues: / Notes:
I.Aztec Civilization
  1. Largely the work of the Mexica people, a seminomadic group from northern Mexico who had migrated southward
  1. By 1325 established themselves on a small island in Lake Texcoco
  1. Built up their own capital city of Tenochtitlán
  2. In 1428, a Triple Alliance between the Mexica and two other nearby city-states launched a highly aggressive program of military conquest
  3. Aztec authorities now claimed descent from earlier Mesoamerican peoples such as the Toltecs and Teotihuacán
  4. Conquered peoples and cities were required to regularly deliver impressive quantities of textiles, military supplies, jewelry, and other goods
  5. Tenochtitlán was a metropolis of 150,000 to 200,000 people
  1. City featured numerous canals, dikes, causeways, and bridges
  2. A central walled area of palaces and temples included a pyramid almost 200 feet high
  3. Surrounding the city were “floating gardens,” artificial islands created from swamplands that supported a highly productive agriculture
  4. Vast marketplaces reflected the commercialization of the economy
a)Largest marketplaceTlatelolco, near capital city stunned Spanish with huge size, good order, and immense range of goods available
b)Professional merchants, known as pochteca, were legally commoners, but wealth, often exceeded nobility, allowed them to rise in society and become “magnates of the land”
c)Among the “goods” slaves, many of whom were destined for sacrifice in the bloody rituals so central to Aztec religious life
  1. Long a part of Mesoamerican and many other world cultures, human sacrifice assumed an unusually prominent role in Aztec public life
a)Tlacaelel (1398-1480), who was a prominent official of the Aztec Empire, is often credited with crystallizing the ideology of state
b)Cyclical understanding of world: suncentral to all of life/identified with patron deity Huitzilopochtli, tended to lose energy in battle against encroaching darknessAztec world hovered on edge of catastrophe
c) To replenish its energy and thus postpone the descent into endless darkness, the sun required the life-giving force found in human blood
d)Growth of Aztec Empire became means for maintaining the cosmic order
e) Ideology also shaped techniques of Aztec warfare, which put a premium on capturing prisoners rather than on killing the enemy
  1. Aztec women could serve as officials in palaces, priestesses in temples, traders in markets, teachers in schools, and members of craft workers’ organizations

Summaries:
Cues: / II.Inca Civilization
  1. Small community of Quechua-speaking people, known to us as the Inca, was building Western Hemisphere’s largest imperial state along spine of Andes
  2. Incorporated lands and cultures of earlier Andean civilizations; Chavín, Moche, Nazca, and Chimu
  3. Much larger than the Aztec state; it stretched some 2,500 miles along the Andes and contained perhaps 10 million subjects
  4. Incas erected a more bureaucratic empireemperor, an absolute ruler regarded as divineregarded as a descendant of the creator god Viracocha and the son of the sun god, Inti
  5. In theory, state owned all land and resources, and each of the some eighty provinces in the empire had an Inca governor
  6. Births, deaths, marriages, and other population data were carefully recorded on quipus, the knotted cords that served as an accounting device
  7. Where Aztecs left conquered people alone, if tribute was forthcoming, the Inca rulers were directly involved in the lives of their subjects
1.Efforts at cultural integration required the leaders of conquered peoples to learn QuechuaSons were removed to capital of Cuzco for instruction
  1. Inca demands on their conquered people were expressed as labor service rather than tributeThis labor service, known as mita, was required periodically of every householdAlmost everyone had to work for the state
  2. State played major role in distribution of goods as well as production Storehouses opened to provide food to poor and widows or in need
  3. But Incas and Aztecs both practiced “gender parallelism”“women and men operate in two separate but equivalent spheres, each enjoying autonomy
  4. Social roles were defined and different but women’s roles were not regarded as inferiorYet men occupied the top positions
  5. But the sapay Inca (the Inca ruler) and the coya (his female consort) governed jointly, claiming descent respectively from the sun and the moon
III.The Fifteenth Century
  1. Large-scale political systems brought together a variety of culturally different people
  1. Christians and Muslims encountered each other directly in the Ottoman Empire and Hindus and Muslims in the Mughal Empire
  2. Buddhism, although largely vanished from its South Asian homeland, remained a link in China, Korea, Tibet, Japan, parts of Southeast Asia
  3. Islam actively brought people together, especially through the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca yet divisions between Sunni and Shia
  4. But Silk Road overland network contracted in the fifteenth century as the Mongol Empire broke up and the plague devastated populations
  5. Rise of the Ottoman Empire blocked direct commercial contact between Europe and China but still Indian Ocean Trade
  6. But in the world of the fifteenth century, no empire operated on a genuinely global scalebut that was about to change
  7. And with that changethe modern era

Summaries:

Questions:

  • What distinguished the Aztec and Inca empires from each other?
  • How did Aztec religious thinking support the empire?
  • In what ways did Inca authorities seek to integrate their vast domains?
  • In what different ways did the peoples of the fifteenth century interact with one another?

  1. The Aztecs offered human sacrifices in order to
(A)Honor the gods and forestall the destruction of the world.
(B)Terrorize conquered people into submission.
(C)Provide nourishment to the moon and the stars.
(D)Mark off the days of their ritual calendar.
(E)All of the above.
  1. Most of the individuals sacrificed by the Aztecs were
(A) Criminals.
(B) War Captives.
(C) Tribute from conquered people.
(D) All of the above.
(E) None of the above.
  1. The chinampa system of agriculture
(A)Introduced new Mexica crops into the central valley.
(B)Required the Mexica to move on to new lands after the soil had been exhausted.
(C)Was based on the rotation of crops to replenish the soil.
(D)Was similar to the slash-and-burn agriculture practiced by the Maya.
(E)Created fertile plots of land from the mud dredged off the bottom of Lake Texcoco. /
  1. Which of the following was not a method by which the Inca were able to effectively administer their empire?
(A)A complex system of record keeping with knotted cord.
(B)Taking hostages from the ruling families of conquered peoples.
(C)A vast network of paved roads to unite their empire.
(D)Relocating loyal colonists in troublesome territories.
(E)Granting autonomy to local chieftains.
  1. The Inca government maintained storehouses of agricultural surplus for
(A)The private reserve of the royal family.
(B)Payment to the military.
(C)Public relief and social welfare.
(D)Payments to governmental officials.
(E)All of the above.
  1. Commoners in the Inca kingdom were required to
(A)Work assigned lands on behalf of the state.
(B)Pay a portion of their earnings to the state.
(C)Work on the public roads and irrigation systems.
(D)Deliver pottery, textiles, and other handmade goods.
(E)All of the above.

Excerpt fromFordham.edu

In 1519 Hernan Cortés sailed from Cuba, landed in Mexico and made his way to the Aztec capital. Miguel Leon-Portilla, a Mexican anthropologist, gathered accounts by the Aztecs, some of which were written shortly after the conquest.

Speeches of Motecuhzoma and Cortés:

When Motecuhzoma [Montezuma] had given necklaces to each one, Cortés asked him: "Are you Motecuhzoma? Are you the king? Is it true that you are the kingMotecuhzoma?"

And the king said: "Yes, I am Motecuhzoma." Then he stood up to welcome Cortés; he came forward, bowed his head low and addressed him in these words: "Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy.

"The kings, who have gone before, your representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your coming. The kings Itzcoatl, Motecuhzoma the Elder, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzol ruled for you in the City of Mexico. The people were protected by their swords and sheltered by their shields…

When Motecuhzoma had finished, La Malinche translated his address into Spanish so that the Captain could understand it. Cortés replied in his strange and savage tongue, speaking first to La Malinche: "Tell Motecuhzoma that we are his friends. There is nothing to fear. We have wanted to see him for a long time, and now we have seen his face and heard his words. Tell him that we love him well and that our hearts are contented."
Then he said to Motecuhzoma: "We have come to your house in Mexico as friends. There is nothing to fear." La Malinche translated this speech and the Spaniards grasped Motecuhzoma's hands and patted his back to show their affection for him....
Massacre in the Main Temple
During this time, the people asked Motecuhzoma how they should celebrate their god's fiesta. He said: "Dress him in all his finery, in all his sacred ornaments." During this same time, The Sun commanded that Motecuhzoma and Itzcohuatzin, the military chief of Tlatelolco, be made prisoners. The Spaniards hanged a chief from Acolhuacan named Nezahualquentzin. They also murdered the king of Nauhtla, Cohualpopocatzin, by wounding him with arrows and then burning him alive…
The Spaniards attacked the musicians first, slashing at their hands and faces until they had killed all of them. The singers-and even the spectators- were also killed. This slaughter in the Sacred Patio went on for three hours. Then the Spaniards burst into the rooms of the temple to kill the others: those who were carrying water, or bringing fodder for the horses, or grinding meal, or sweeping, or standing watch over this work.

Thesis Statement: Comparative: Political and Social Effects of Aztec and Inca Rule

______