THE AZTEC CHILDREN.
No. 1 Adam Street, Adelphi, 5th September 1853. fin—In examining these curious specimens of blighted humanity, I find them to resemble in their facial expression the general Jewish physiognomy of ithe Indian tribes in Canada, in the reserved lands of New York State, in
Pest, and in, Patagonia, and also in Chile, but the resemblance to the in- .
digenous Peruvian is the strongest. The artificial treatment they have tm- dergone seems to have lored th4 human type in them, and given them a strong resemblance to hie& with little brain. The mode in which they ap- pear to hop or skip about their stage is not the firm tread of humanity ; their occasional squeak is something like that of an angry canary; and the ex- pression of their eyes and drooping faces when deprived of their playthings is as that of a sullen parrot.
The story of their origin, minus the trunk-breeches combat of the valorous Velasquez, wears a face of probability. We read that the Dalai Lama or Man-god of Tibet is a youth, who when he begins to show age is put out of the way to make room for a younger successor ; and, if I recollect, speech is not one of his attributes, but is reserved for his priests. The Aztec children are young, and smoothfaced ; and the form of their mouths is as if they had never been fed by any other than the suckling process. I incline to think that, supposing we had experimenters above or below all moral law, it would be quite practicable to select dwarfed infants in Houndsditch and bring them up so as closely to resemble these Aztec children. The process would be to keep them solitary in a dim light, suckling them by artificial means, and resorting to a peculiar class of narcotics to keep them in a state of som- nolency. All the higher faculties might thus be kept dormant ; and the nerves, save those conducive to a slow nutrition, never awakened to action. Energy would not exist in such a state, and a mere slow vitality, like that of a tree, would be all the life developed. Speech denied, would leave as mere germs the nerves of the tongue and ear. Scent denied, would leave un- quickened the olfactories ; and if there were no objects for the eye, ear, or touch to dwell on, "sight, thought, and admiration," would lie almost wholly in abeyance. In the Aztec children the eyes are round and promi- nent, like those of mere animals, though gentle like those of the deer and gazelle tribes ; the black hair is curly, and thus varies from the Indian type, but the curl might be artificially produced, as the Tartars are said to insure a curl in their black lamb-skins by tightly swathing when young, and as curl is produced in the grain of young trees by the wind incessantly bend- ing their fibres in various directions while growing. The Peruvian Indians —even the pseudo-Christians—are strongly imbued with their old heathen superstitions; and so doubtless are the Mexicans; and though we need not take for gospel the story of a battlemented city of ancient Aztecs, in the mountain regions there are plenty of Indio., ciniarrones—wild Indians —who in mountain willies, where Spaniards are too lazy or too cowardly to follow them, pursue their ancient rites, and live under the dominion of their own interested priests. There may be Indian Francias with tabooed ra- vines, who hold it a wise thing to slay straggling White men ; but it is a little marvellous that the Yankee hunter should be slaughtered and the Spaniard come off with whole bones. In the case of these children the process appears to be that of non-developing the germs ; but we may imagine a case directly opposite—the full development of the whole nervous system, and then the withering it up piecemeal. If, for example, a soldier-officer—a Napier, as an' expression for a fine nervous organization highly developed—if such a human being were first to lose his legs by a cannon-ball, and after being heal- ed were then to lose his arms, and by care were kept in good health—if then he lost his eyesight, and subsequently his hearing, by the act of a barbarous foe, and lastly his power of speech,—it is.probable that, supposing the nerves of nutrition all remained intact, the brain would gradually be absorbed and would dry up, and nothing would be left but a mere idiotic trunk like sit old tree with all its branches withered.
In these Aztec children, perverse human will has kept the intelligent fa- culties dormant Their cultivation as a public show is gradually developing some of the commoner faculties, and the result will be very instructive to those who watch them. But if their teaching be of the kind practised on the lower animals—" making them good" by threats of chastisement—the experiment will be of a less perfect kind than the result of a patient kindly influence long kept up. May it not be long-continued slavery and repres- sion in various forms that has produced a family resemblance between Hebrews Assyrians, tribes of Eastern Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, and the Red tribes of America ; the furtive look-out at the corners of the eyes mark- ing strongly the slave, as opposed to the free open eyes of the hardy Nerge. races, Who began with violence and ended with civilization ?
The moral to be deduced is, that neglect of the cultivation of the moral and intellectual faculties in youth may produce effects as mischievous as their wilful repression. Children, beholding only 'squalor and deformity, will grow up squalid and deformed, just as rats in drams get accustomed to mephitic air for the purpose of breathing. To how low a condition the human race may be degraded, we have abundant samples. The possible height of its elevation is still an unsolved problem.
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