No More Learning

[25] The author of that voluminous work, _Histoire Philosophique et
Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Europeens dans les deux
Indes_, is one of the many who assert that savage life is happier than
civil. His reasons are thus abridged: The savage has no care or fear for
the future; his hunting and fishing give him a certain subsistence. He
sleeps sound, and knows not the diseases of cities. He cannot want what
he does not desire, nor desire that which he does not know, and vexation
or grief do not enter his soul. He is not under the control of a
superior in his actions; in a word, says our author, the savage only
suffers the evils of nature.

If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better
food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons,
it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by
the painful labours of the multitude who are the basis of society. To
what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property,
it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our
author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North
America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better
clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and
barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they
must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot
of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the
disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality
of fortunes and conditions.

[26] The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with
the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert
our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in
their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with
their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic
peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went
from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them
what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were
murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the
victors.
Their religious rites were, if possible, still more horrid. The
abominations of ancient Moloch were here outnumbered; children, virgins,
slaves, and captives bled on different altars, to appease their various
gods. If there was a scarcity of human victims, the priests announced
that the gods were dying of thirst for human blood. And, to prevent a
threatened famine, the kings of Mexico were obliged to make war on the
neighbouring states. The prisoners of either side died by the hand of
the priest. But the number of the Mexican sacrifices so greatly exceeded
those of other nations, that the Tlascalans, who were hunted down for
this purpose, readily joined Cortez with about 200,000 men, and enabled
him to make one great sacrifice of the Mexican nation. Who that views
Mexico, steeped in her own blood, can restrain the emotion which
whispers to him, This is the hand of Heaven! --By the number of these
sacred butcheries, one would think that cruelty was the greatest
amusement of Mexico. At the dedication of the temple of Vitzliputzli,
A. D. 1486, no less than 64,080 human victims were sacrificed in four
days. And, according to the best accounts, the annual sacrifices of
Mexico required several thousands. The skulls of the victims sometimes
were hung on strings which reached from tree to tree around their
temples, and sometimes were built up in towers and cemented with lime.
In some of these towers Andrew de Tapia one day counted 136,000 skulls.
During the war with Cortez they increased their usual sacrifices, till
priest and people were tired of their bloody religion. --See, for ample
justification of these statements, the _Histories of the Conquest of
Mexico and Peru_, by Prescott.