The Mexican Atlatl or Spear-Thrower

Abstract

THE note in NATURE of November 19 (p. 66) recording the important discovery at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, of “a modern atlatl (not altatl, as misprinted) well worn and old-looking, accompanied with a gig for killing ducks,” is very interesting. It may not be out of place to call attention to an exhaustive little memoir by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall on “The Atlatl or Spear-Thrower of the Ancient Mexicans,” published this summer in the third number of the first volume of the “Ethnographical and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum”(Cambridge, Mass., 1891). In this paper, which is illustrated with eighty figures of different kinds of atlatl, the author completely establishes the existence and practical use in warfare of the wooden spear-thrower or atlatl by the Mexicans at the time of the Spanish conquest, although some doubt had been expressed in the matter by such well-known authorities as Prof. E. B. Tylor and Mr. A. Bandelier, while Mr. H. H. Bancroft even stated that “he had not found any description of its form or the manner of using it.” Mrs. Nuttall, however, reproduces numerous illustrations of the many varied forms of the atlatl from different codices, accompanied by several descriptions of the manner of hurling the weapon, cited from old Spanish writers. Perhaps at this moment the most a propos is that from the ancient chronicles of Tezozomoc, who, in describing the drill of the soldiers, relates “how their chiefs ordered them out in canoes to practise throwing spears at flying ducks before engaging the enemy in warfare.” Mrs. Nuttall was enabled to trace, by means of a careful study of a MS. edition of “Sahagun's Historia,” preserved in the National Library at Florence, the complete evolution of the atlatl from the simple form used by the native hunter to launch the harpoon with two or three barbs at the fish or water-fowl of the lagoons. This had a cord attached to retrieve the game. “Minus the cord, the spear-thrower became part of the necessary equipment of every soldier of a certain grade,” and was used with fatal effect, as Bernal Diaz most distinctly states, in opposing the advance of the Spanish adventurers. Elaborately decorated forms first became the emblem of chieftainship, and ultimately symbolic of the Aztec deities, and were borne aloft by the chief-priestly warrior and representative of the gods in ceremonial processions. The maximum of development was attained in the symbolic “blue atlatl” or “blue serpents,” inlaid with gold and richly decorated with feather-work, described as “bishops' crosiers” by Cortes, who sent specimens presented to him by Montezuma II. to the Court of Spain. Some examples are still preserved in the Ethnographical Museums of Berlin and Vienna, and in the British Museum.