But at this moment the archers, taking their hatchets, swords or other weapons, penetrated the gaps in the now disordered French, who could not move to cope with their unarmoured assailants, and were slaughtered or taken prisoners to a man.
From the palaces and retinues of thousands of servants attached to the royal service may be inferred at once the despotic power of the Mexican rulers and the heavy taxation of the people; in fact some of the most remarkable of the picture-writings are tribute-rolls enumerating by hundreds and thousands the mantles, ocelot-skins, bags of gold-dust, bronze hatchets, loads of chocolate, &c., furnished periodically by the towns.
Even at the time when they were first known to Europeans, they had stone and lava hatchets, shark's-tooth knives, hardwood spades, kapa cloth or paper, mats, fans, fish-hooks and nets, woven baskets, &c., and they had introduced a rough sort of irrigation of the inland country with long canals from highlands to plains.
The land was purchased from the Indians for 6 coats, 10 blankets, r kettle, 12 hatchets, 12 hoes, 24 knives and 12 small mirrors.
Flint implements, exactly like those of Siberia and Russia, have been found at Dui and Kusunai in great numbers, as well as polished stone hatchets, like the European ones, primitive pottery with decorations like those of Olonets and stone weights for nets.
The Stone Age represents the early condition of mankind in general, and has remained in savage districts up to modern times, while the introduction of metals need not at once supersede the use of the old stone hatchets and arrows, which have often long continued in dwindling survival by the side of the new bronze and even iron ones.
The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, scrapers, spear and arrow heads are of high finish.
But the absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knife their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with.
While the use of the bow and arrow does not seem to have occurred to them, the spear and axe are in general use, commonly made of hard-wood; the hatchets of stone, and the javelins pointed' with stone or bone.
