Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
3 - Victims
from Part II - Roles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
Summary
Let no soldier fly.
He that is truly dedicate to war
Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself
Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,
The name of valour.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, v: 2A Jesuit observer has left a painfully detailed description of the doing to death by the Huron of a captured Seneca warrior in 1637. The Seneca, a man of about fifty, still suffering the wounds of his capture, had been briefly adopted into a chief's family, but then rejected because of those wounds and consigned to die by fire. Soon after dark on the appointed night, after the prescribed sequence of feastings, eleven fires were lit down the length of the council house. The people came crowding tightly in, the young men, yelling and joyful, armed with firebrands. (They were warned to temper their enthusiasm so that the victim would last through the night.) The prisoner, singing his warrior's song, was brought in as the chief made the announcement as to how the body would be divided when death finally came. The description continues:
Now he began to run a circuit around the fires, again and again, while everyone tried to burn him as he passed; he shrieked like a lost soul; the whole cabin resounded with cries and yells. Some burned him, some seized his hands and snapped bones, others thrust sticks through his ears, still others bound his wrists with cords, pulling at each end with all their might, so as to cut flesh and crush bone.
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- AztecsAn Interpretation, pp. 121 - 155Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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