W. H. Bullock, the son of the British impresario who created shows of exotic artifacts and unusual people to enthrall the London public, toured Mexico in 1864 overseeing some of his father’s land investments and looking for new opportunities to make money. He corroborated how little financial gain Juárez achieved from the confiscation of Mexican Catholic church properties. “So hard-pressed for ready money was the Government of Juárez at this period—the beginning of the year 1861—that the sites of the ruined churches—sometimes including the sacred edifice itself—were sold for the most trifling sums” (Bullock 1866: 82).
Not everyone was able or willing to benefit from the government’s fire sale of religious objects, however. The supporters of the conservative party feared that they would be excommunicated if they tried to purchase any of the religious art. That meant that there was a trove of art available at unbelievably low prices to those who were not bothered by their consciences or beliefs. As Bullock notes, foreigners “were willing to pocket their scruples and invest in it. In this way, many Frenchmen and Belgians, and some English, realized considerable fortunes” (Bullock 1866: 82–83). Boban appears to have taken full advantage of this volatile and uncertain situation, and, in so doing, amassed a rather large collection of religious objects and colonial artifacts.
The destruction of colonial religious structures and the sale of their contents would have a long-term impact on the composition of Boban’s collections and the number of religious objects he would eventually offer for sale—perhaps even including some of the crystal skulls. However, when he first arrived in the country his focus was ancient Mexican cultures and people. He became a devoted archeologist and began cataloguing the artifacts and human remains he recovered from his early digs in 1857, his first year in Mexico. His notes provide details about his excavations of burials and temple mounds in a variety of neighborhoods in and around the capital and in the smaller surrounding towns.
His collecting activities were informed by those of the early archeologists and adventurers who had explored the ancient sites for the previous half century and were facilitated by Mexico’s dawning “neo-technological era,” characterized by new modes of transportation. Mexico City was one of the first urban centers in Latin America to inaugurate a steam railroad line, which began transporting travelers throughout the city and its adjoining suburbs as early as 1852. Diligencias, or stagecoaches, provided a relatively secure, though somewhat less comfortable, method of travel. One might also traverse the city by horse-drawn tram pulled along iron rails (Podgorny 2008: 579). When all else failed, there was always a horse, a mule, or one’s own feet. Even Paris was not as well equipped with public transportation as Mexico City in the mid-nineteenth-century (Morrison 2003).
The sites Boban excavated were scattered far and wide in the Valley of Mexico, but their locations in some cases can be linked to the expanding tramlines and steam railways. His excavation catalog, now in the Hispanic Society of America in New York, includes notes written on slips of paper on digs he conducted in Chalco, about fifteen miles to the east of Mexico City, in 1857; San Angel to the south, near the railroad station, in 1860; and to the west of Lake Texcoco, in Azcapotzalco, in 1858 and 1860. In Azcapotzalco he uncovered many funerary ollas (large ceramic vessels) buried in the grounds or patios of the ancient ruins, along with stone amulets, which he called yollotli (HSA: B2245, Box VI). According to a modern Nahuatl dictionary, this word means heart or seed, but it may be what native workmen told him such pieces were called.
His excavation catalog also has information about locating human remains. “During the year 1858, we began to explore the ancient capital of the Acolhua or Chichimec, in the remains of the great site [Texcutzingo], which is now the village of Texcoco. … We found a series of mounds, one of which contained a mummy” (HSA: B2245, Box VI).3 Finding skeletal material and associated grave goods would be a constant interest for Boban throughout his archeological career. The Aztec emperor Netzahualcoyotl originally created Texcutzingo, located some twenty miles northeast of the center of Mexico City, during the fifteenth century. He envisioned it as an imperial garden filled with plants gathered from throughout Mexico, with baths and pools carved into the mountain on which it was located. Today it is an impressive archeological site frequented by tourists.
Boban’s description of a bit of fun he had with some Texcoco natives captures something of his youthful bravado, along with the social formalities of the period. Some local people had told him about a deep cave where an Englishman had disappeared. They cautioned him, however, that he was much too young to face the dangers of el abismo (the abyss). Nonetheless, he was determined to see what was down below and could not be dissuaded by the possible dangers. “After much procrastination and especially with the aid of that universal lever, a few pesetas, we descended into the cave,” he later wrote.
Once Boban had been lowered down to the entrance, his courage and impishness led him on.
I entered the famous Cueva by myself, where the entrance was hidden by vegetation, and discovered inside a small opening about a dozen meters long, leading to a precipitous vertical drop … but nothing unusual, some animal bones, foxes, and birds of prey, and every so often I would hear my guides shouting to me ‘Señor, it’s been a long time, and you haven’t answered our calls. Are you dead?’ and a host of questions like that. I took some malicious pleasure in my silence. After carefully examining the place, I left my card there. (HSA: B2246, Box VII)4
It is revealing (and endearing) that Boban left only his calling card to document his visit, perhaps to let future explorers know that he had been there first, when many of his contemporaries carved their names on archeological monuments after removing portions for their own collections.
Boban made the rounds of Mexico City’s neighborhoods and suburbs throughout the late 1850s and early 1860s. In 1859 he dug to the southwest of Coyoacán near Popotla. He excavated small mounds and burials in the areas to the north of the city center around Tlatelolco, Zahuatlán, and Tlalnepantla. To the south he explored Tlahuac, Iztapalapa, Tlalpan, and Xochimilco near the floating gardens. Journeying to the west, he worked around Tacuba, Azcapotzalco, and the hills of Chapultepec. All these places are now part of metropolitan Mexico City, but at the time they were still separate towns and villages whose inhabitants spoke Nahuatl. Even given the greater ease of travel in Mexico in the mid-nineteenth-century, the number and extent of field trips he took in pursuit of artifacts is remarkable. One can imagine many days spent journeying to the far reaches of the Valley of Mexico and many nights spent sleeping under the stars or in the houses of his Indian friends and helpers.
Of his excavations in Tepito, which like the suburb of Tlatelolco is now part of the metropolis, he wrote that some of the artifacts he found there came from the burials of warriors, because they included tentetl, the Nahuatl word for “military insignia [lip plugs] of obsidian.” To explain this reasoning further, he added, “The ornaments of the lower ranks, [are] made of terra cotta.” Boban’s awareness of the hierarchy of materials allowed for personal adornment by the Aztecs comes from Bernardino de Sahagún, the sixteenth-century Franciscan ethnographer, to whom he often makes reference. Controlling who was allowed to use which adornments enabled the Aztecs to maintain rigid class distinctions. Boban’s understanding of this indicates a close reading of early Spanish chronicles to inform his archeological investigations. He also recorded finding at Tepito many bronze and copper objects, such as needles, little axes, and bells (HSA: B2245, Box VI).
Presumably, Boban learned Nahuatl from his encounters with local people and his excavation work in outlying villages. His dig catalog almost always includes a translation of the Nahuatl or Otomí place name of the site or region where he excavated and gives a short description of the culture he presumes crafted the artifacts discovered. He also includes the original native terms for what he had found.
For instance, in 1857