american-holocaust

BEFORE COLUMBUS39Their cosmology lacks the kind of fatalism present in our existential way ofknowing the universe, one in which the purposeful role of human beingsseems diminished. These people did not react to the flow of natural eventsby struggling to harness and control them. Nor did they conceive of themselvesas totally passive observers in the essentially neutral world of nature.Instead, they believed they were active participants and intermediaries in agreat cosmic drama. The people had a stake in all temporal enactments. Byparticipating in the rituals, they helped the gods of nature to carry theirburdens along their arduous course, for they believed firmly that the ritualsserved formally to close time's cycles. Without their life's work the universecould not function properly. Here was an enviable balance, a harmony inthe partnership between humanity and nature, each with a purposeful roleto play. 60If we were fully to follow the course of Mesoamerican culture andcivilization after the Maya, we next would have to discuss the great Toltecstate, and then the Mixtecs (some of whose history is recorded in those oftheir bark-paper and deerskin-covered books and codices that survived thefires of the Spanish conquest), and finally the Aztecs-builders of the greatcities like Tenochtithin, with which the previous chapter began. Of course,the empire of the Aztecs was much more extensive than that describedearlier, centered on the Lake of the Moon. At its peak the empire reachedwell over 700 miles to the south of Tenochtitlan, across the Valley ofOaxaca, past the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and into the piedmont and richcoastal plain of the province of Xoconocho on the border of modern-dayGuatemala. Some provinces were completely subservient to the empire'smight, while others, such as large and powerful Tlaxcallan to the eastretained its nation-within-an-empire independence. Still others warded offAztec control entirely, such as the immense Tarascan Kingdom to the north,about which little yet is known, but which once stretched out over 1000miles across all of Mexico from the Gulf on one side to the Pacific Oceanon the other.And then in Central America-beyond the reach of Maya or later Aztecinfluence-there were the culturally and linguistically independent Lencapeoples, the Jicaque, the Paya, the Sumu, and the Chorotega of presentdayHonduras. In pre-Columbian times Honduras may easily have had apopulation in excess of 1,400,000 people-almost a third of what it containseven today. 61 Further to the south, Nicaragua's indigenous populationprobably reached at least 1,600,000 before the arrival of the Spanish-alittle less than half of what the country's population is at present. 62In all, current estimates of the size of pre-Columbian Central America'spopulation (Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, CostaRica, and Panama) range from a low of about 5,650,000 to a high of morethan 13,500,000. 63 The latter figure represents nearly half the 1990 pop-