The First People of Mexico and Central America

Tribes: The three major tribes in Mexico and Central America include the Olmec Empire, the Mayan Empire, and the Aztecatl ("Aztec") Empire, which was the last great Mexican civilization before the Spanish arrived and ruined everything. The Aztecatl Empire was actually a triple alliance between the Acolhuas tribes of Lake Texcoco, the Tepanecs of Tlacopan, and the Mexihcah (the Aztecatl), who had immigrated from the north. There were and are still probably more than one hundred tribes in Mexico, of varying sizes, but these three were the biggest, the longest-lasting and the most famous. But, for the sake of balance, I am going to include a fourth, the Tarahumara, as representative perhaps of the rest of the tribes of Mexico.

Meaning of Names: Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua, was the lingua franca of Mexico. Even in Central American, the name "Olmec" is Nahuatl for "Rubber People." I don't know what "Maya" means, or what they called themselves, but nobody else does, either.  "Aztec" is a shortened Nahuatl term for the word "Aztecatl" meaning "People from Aztlan," the mythic land from whence their ancestors had come. The Aztecatl called themselves "Mexihcah," which is why Mexico is called "Mexico." And the "Tarahumara" call themselves the 'Raramuri," meaning, "male runner on foot."

Locations:  The (somewhat) original people of the Gulf Coast of Central America were the Chantuto people, who had been there since at least 5500 BC. They were supplanted by the Mokaya tribe in 2000 BC, who, themselves, were supplanted by the Olmec Empire, which dominated Central America from 1600 BC to 400 BC. Their civilization overlaps with that of the Mayans, who dominated most of Central America from 750 BC until 1697 AD, when they were conquered by the Spanish.  Nonetheless, there are still many Mayans in the whole of Central America.

Meanwhile, up in Mexico, particularly on the Pacific Coast and also around Lake Texcoco, human habitation goes back as far as 20,000 BC, when there were still horses, camels, bison and mastodons in Mexico.  Tribal powers and great cities rose and fell, including the Zapotec, the Tlatilcans and the Toltecs, from about 1000 BC until 1325 AD. Then the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecatl tribe from the north came to power, and they ruled the bulk of Mexico for a mere 196 years, until 1521, when they were conquered by the Spanish. Nonetheless, they are still in extant.

And finally, the Tarahumara, who were never an empire, and whose ancestors had lived in the mountainous State of Chihuahua for about 10,700 years, moved to the remote areas of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico when the Spanish invaded Mexico. They are endangered, but they still tenaciously exist.

Languages:  Almost everyone in Mexico and Central America speaks Spanish, thanks to the Catholic Church and the Spanish conquistadores. However, the Olmec (who died out before the Spanish arrived in Mexico) are believed to have spoken an ancient form for Mixe-Zoquean, upon which Mayan was based.  The Aztecs still speak Nahuatl which is a Uto-Aztecan language, and the Tarahumara speak Tarahumaran, another dialect of Uto-Aztecan, and of course, Spanish.

Tribal Affiliations: The Olmec, who were in power for at least 1200 years, established trade routes before 1200 BC and traded or bartered with the neighboring Mokaya and Tlatilco tribes as well as the smaller tribes in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador on both sides of Central America.

The Mayans, who were in power for 2447 years, appear to have done most of their trading and bartering by boats, for they went along the Gulf Coast from the Olmec cities, around the Yucatan Peninsula, and then down to Belize and Honduras. They also traveled by land from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean and took the Olmec trade route west to trade with tribes in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Since they didn't use travois, or wheels large enough to attach to pull-carts, or have large burden-carrying dogs, horses, donkeys or llamas, most of the carrying had to be done by slaves.

The Aztecs did the Mayans one better, because they didn't barter; they had currency in the from of cacao beans, copper hoes (which looked like a fat letter "T" with the top edges bend down), lengths of cotton and sometimes their own children. Because they had currency, the Aztecs didn't have to keep the peace by trade, but could conquer another tribe and then demand tribute money, goods, services, and sacrificial victims. Their trade routes/military transport routes reached from Guatemala and Belize all of the way up to the Native North American tribes in New Mexico and Texas.

And the tenacious and reclusive Tarahumara traded with their neighbors the Tepehuan, the Concho, the Akimel O'odham of Arizona, the Tubar, the Guerijia, the Aztecs and initially, the Spanish.

Traditional Enemies:  We don't know who the enemies of the Olmecs were. There isn't enough that is known about them. They did, however, invent chocolate, so they probably didn't have many enemies to start with.

The Mayans were their own worst enemy, at least aside from the Aztecs, because they overexploited and overpopulated their land, and their city-states started fighting among themselves.  Therefore, the civil unrest, wars, depleted farmland, drought and famine pretty much did them in.

The Aztecs, who had the shortest run in the history of empires in Mexico, warred with the Mayans, the Texlacans, the Huaxtec, the Purempecha, the Comanche, and just every other tribe between Honduras and the American Southwest. And of course, when the Spanish conquistadores arrived, everybody hated them, but they had horses, guns and luck on their side thanks to Aztec superstitions, and so they were able to conquer large parts of Mexico.

The Tarahumara who lived in the flatlands of Chihuahua, on the other hand, fled the remote parts of the Sierra Madre Mountains and so were able to evade or limit their contact with the Aztecs, the Spanish, the French, and the Americans.

Styles of Housing: Most of the pictures of buildings made by the Olmec, the Mayans and the Aztecs are of their grand pyramids, palaces, workshops and government buildings. The common people in Pre-Columbian Mexico, on the other hand, probably lived in different styles of houses depending on their location. These cultures were very stratified, and not as community-welfare-oriented as the tribes in the north, and their homes probably reflected their societal position.

The poorer Mayans and Aztecs built houses with  whatever was available. Many of these homes had no walls, and had more in common with the open-air homes of Polynesia, the pitched thatched-roof homes of the Seminole in the Everglades of Florida or with the wickiups of the Mojave tribes in the desert of Arizona. More expensive homes owned by those who were a bit more affluent had tall pitched thatched-roofs and walls made of actual stone and wood, which was then covered in woven reeds, and then covered again with mud or adobe or stucco. Depending on the income of the occupants, the walls were either whitewashed with lime or painted in bright colors.

The Tarahumara of the Sierra Madres, on the other hand, often lived in caves or cliff overhangs, or in one-room stone or plank-wood cabins. They tend to move up the mountain-slopes during the summer, when it is cooler, and down to the valley during the summer, when it is hot.

Traditional Attire: The Olmec, as near as I can figure, wore woven caps and headbands, breechcloths or skirts and probably something that looked like a toga. 

The Mayan men also wore cotton or deerskin breechcloths and the women wore cotton or deerskin wrap-around skirts.

Among the Aztecs, the aristocracy was allowed to wear cotton, but the commoners weren't, and wore woven fibers from the Maguey cactus plant (an aloe plant), instead. The Aztec men wore breechcloths, sashes, vests, and a toga-like mantle, sometimes made of jaguar-skin, and the women wore wrap-around skirts or trousers, sleeveless blouses and sashes, and only the aristocracy wore sandals.  But the main thing about the Mayans and the Aztecs that the high-status men wore fancy headdresses and tons of jewelry made of gold, June beetles, obsidian, leather, brilliant quetzal-bird feathers, reeds, ceramics, mirrors, copper, crystals, wood, amber, jade, topaz, and jaguar and crocodile (they have crocodiles and caimans, not alligators, in Mexico and Central America) teeth and claws.

The adult male Tarahumara wore and still wear breechcloths and brightly-colored shirts, and the women wear brightly-colored blouses and layers of skirts. Both wear highly individualized woven sashes to keep the breechcloths and skirts up. They wear light sandals, although some of the women go barefoot. A ribbon, worn by both genders, keeps back their hair.

Traditional Foods: The First People of Mexico and Central America domesticated corn in about 8,000 BC.  By 7,000 BC and for the next 8,300 years, depending on where they lived, they also gathered or planted and harvested agave hearts and nectar, several different kinds of beans, tomatoes, tomatillos, chili peppers, guava, sapote (which tastes like caramel,) prickly pear, cherimoya, chayotes (a kind of squash), cassavas (a starchy root vegetable), pineapple, guanabana (like a pawpaw), honey, cacao, tobacco (which they smoked as cigars), jicama, mangos, loquats, bananas, plums, oranges, limes, yucca, amaranth, wild greens, onions, melons, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, avocados, papayas, cacti, vanilla, herbs (like cilantro, and hibiscus for tea) and spices (like cinnamon). They raised and/or hunted turkeys, ducks, quail, deer, rabbits, squirrels, iguanas, fish, crawfish, grasshoppers, ant larva, turtle eggs, armadillos, lobster and Chihuahua-like dogs. (Yes, they ate dogs.)  Once the Spanish arrived in Mexico, their diet expanded to include pork, goats, sheep, cattle, chicken, apples, apricots, figs and oranges. The Aztecs, by the way, grew their gardens on anchored rafts on the lakes near their city of Tenochtitlan.

Position of Women: Pre-Columbian Mexico was a male-dominant society, over-all, and not much is known about the position of women in Olmec society, but we do know something about Mayan, the  Aztec and the Tarahumara women. So, while Mayan women were not expected to serve in the military, they were held in high esteem, not only as mothers, agriculturalists, food preparation, and textile-manufacturing, but in politics, religion and government. Their work was considered separate but equal, and complimentary to that of men.

Aztec women were also not allowed to serve in the military, which did much to prevent them from acquiring riches and prestige, but they were still the primary movers and shakers in the home, and were the healers, small business owners, embroiderers, weavers, basket and pottery-makers, priests, doctors and sorcerers. Their roles, too, were seen as almost equal in importance to the roles played by men.

Of these four tribes, the Tarahumara women were still the most liberated when it came to male and female gender roles, with both men and women stepping up to the plate when help was needed. At the same time, gender roles are complimentary- she may own the land, but he is the one to plant the crops, and he may own the sheep, but she is the one to take care of them, and neither are seen as more important than the other. Both men and women are valued as runners, and the person who runs the fastest and the longest has the highest value in their society.

The women of Pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America also made herbal medicines and mild alcoholic beverages from the fermented fruits or mashed corn (for Tepache, Atole, Tesquino and Chiche), maguey plants (for Pulque), agave plants (for Pre-Columbian Tequila), to which they added brown sugar, cinnamon, peppers, and sometimes ground cacao beans, provided that they could afford them. 

Courtship Patterns: Again, not much is known about the Olmecs, but Mayan marriages were arranged in childhood, and among the nobility, polygyny was fairly common.... On the other hand, when an Aztec man decided that he wanted to get married to a particular girl, he would discuss the matter with his extended family first, and then would employ the services of a professional matchmaker to act as a go-between. The groom and the bride were both expected to be virgins before marriage.... As for the Tarahumara, they are such a shy and private people, that apparently they have been unwilling to describe their dating practices to anthropologists.

Interesting Customs and Factoids: The Olmec, who seemed to have been a bit on the chubby side, were considered the Mother of Mezo-American civilization. They built huge cities, had a system of drainage, invented a system of writing, invented a kind of roller-printing press, traded extensively, knew how to process the sap from rubber tree plants into rubber, played racquetball with rubber balls in a large court, and carved huge heads that looked like their ancestors and tribal leaders had come from Polynesia and Africa, long before Thor Heyerdahl was born or the blueprints for Kon-Tiki were drawn up. Their most important contribution to the world was the invention of chocolate in 1500 BC.

The Mayans, who took Olmec culture and advances and ran with them, also seemed to have invented graffiti of the kind that one might find on an overpass in the barrio. The Mayans were also excellent astronomers and perfected the calendar which had much more accuracy than the Julian one used by the Romans. They also extracted oil from cottonseeds, and may have used it in frying foods or as an insecticide.

The Aztecs and probably the Mayans used and use dye extracted from the cochineal red insects that feed on the prickly pear cactus, and on ground cinnabar to get the colors red and pink; from the Xochipalli flower to get the color yellow; from the Zacatlaxcalli creeper to get the color orange; from various blue flowers to get the color blue; from the Nacazcolotl fruit to get the color black, and from the murex mollusk to get the color purple. They also traded in these items as well as in cacao, salt herbs and spices.

The Tarahumara, both male and female, are extremely good and fast long-distance runners, and it is a point of pride with them that they would rather run than fight. Since they have survived for over 11,000 years, they might be onto something.

Traditional Religions: The Olmec, who had died out before Columbus stumbled across the Americas, had many gods and goddesses.  So did the Pre-Columbian Mayans and Aztecs, and these many deities had to be appeased in order for the rain to fall, the crops to grow, the number of children to increase, and for wars to be won. The Spanish conquistadores and the Roman Catholic Church tried to change all that, but traditional tribal religions are still practiced in the remote areas.... The Tarahumara still practice their traditional tribal religion, in spite of the efforts of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries to change that, and they participate in the peyote culture.

For or Against Slavery: With all probability, the Olmec, the Mayans and the Aztecs took prisoners in wars and raids, and either sacrificed them to the gods or enslaved them as "beasts of burden," for menial tasks (farming, irrigation and making cornmeal ["Maseca"] which is very labor-and-time intensive when done the old-fashioned way) and probably to make their pyramidal buildings and raised roads.... The Spanish enslaved the Tarahumara to work the rich copper, gold, and silver mines of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

Current Populations: The Olmec probably don't still exist, but there are literally millions of descendants of the Mayans and the Aztecs alive today in the more remote parts of Mexico and Central America and also in the United States. There are currently between 35,000 and 70,000 Tarahumara in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Northern Mexico.

Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Unlike white reaction to tribes in North America, Mexico and Central America have not relegated their native populations to reservations, probably because there are far more people who are full or part native Mexicans than there are people who are full-blooded Europeans. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population in Mexico has some native Mexican blood in them. Many of them, like the Tarahumara, still live in remote rural villages, but most have been integrated into the whole of Mexico. Nonetheless, like most of the Native Americans north of the border, the full-blooded native population in Mexico are not doing well economically or educationally. Most are in low-paying service industries, others work in the lumber industry or are migratory field workers and others, mostly women, are small business owners who make crafts (pottery, baskets, jewelry or clothing) or sell produce at the marketplaces. And the Tarahumara, particularly, are not doing well due to deforestation, pollution, and the corrosive effects of marijuana and opium drug lords, the underfunded and corrupt Mexican government, and greedy mining and logging industries.

Famous First People of Mexico: Moctezuma ("Montezuma"), the Aztec emperor who ruled when the Spanish conquistadores, led by Hernan Cortez, conquered his city of Tenochtitlan and probably died at the hands of his own people. Jessica Alba is a Mestizo, half-non-Hispanic, and half Aztec. There are probably many more Hispanic actors and actresses who can claim Mayan or Aztecan ancestry.