Payne has made it abundantly clear to our mind that the original
seat of the Nahuatlacâ (which included both Toltecs and Aztecs) was
in British Columbia (see his "History of America," vol. ii. p. 373
et seq.). He thinks they there occupied a position southerly to that
of the Athapascan stock, and were probably the first northern people
to come into contact with tribes possessed of the maize plant. The
knowledge of this staple, he infers, spread rapidly among the northern
peoples, and induced them to hasten their southern colonisation, but
it does not appear to us probable that this would be an inducement to a
savage flesh-eating people averse to a life of agricultural labour. The
whole question of pre-historic American migration, and of the gradual
civilisation by maize of the peoples who came within its zone, is most
admirably discussed in vol. xix. of "The History of North America," by
W. J. Magee and Cyrus Thomas (Philadelphia, George Barrie and Sons),
published March 1908. The knowledge contained in this work is the
outcome of a lifetime's labour in the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, and
its learned authors have undoubtedly produced a monumental treatise
which it will take many a generation of research to supersede, if,
indeed, that is possible.