This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/28/2023
[AZTECS] [ANDERSON, John Henry] AZTEC LILLIPUTIANS. A NEW RACE OF PEOPLE. [Scotland], 1853. Pictorial letterpress broadside bearing a wood-engraved image of the Great Wizard of the North at the top, with Maximo and Bartola, the supposed “Aztecs,” standing beside him, one atop a table, and the other standing on a cushion at his right. Below the image is reproduced a lengthy story from the Freeman’s Journal of October 3, 1853, chronicling the untruths that made their exhibition so fascinating to audiences of the era. Framed to 30¼ × 9½". Not examined out of frame.
Among the statements made in the descriptive text is the following assertion: “The Aztec Lilliputians are not introduced to the public as dwarfs, or freaks of nature in human organization – though in this light they may and will be regarded as the greatest natural and living curiosities extant – but they are exhibited as types and specimens of a race of people long since supposed to be extinct….” The “Aztecs” were, in fact, microcephalics, or in more common and pejorative terms, “pinheads.”