early over the territory which is now occupied by the states of San
Luis, Potosi, Guanajuato, and Querétaro, reaching Michoacan, and
spreading still farther. These were a rough people who lurked among the
mountains, avoiding the life of large communities. They have left no
record of progressive civilization. Their descendants are still traced
in the regions which they chiefly occupied, by peculiarities of dialect.
Mixtecas and Zapotecas are names of other peoples who came to occupy
Anahuac, but the Toltecs are the first of these ancient tribes
distinguished for the advancement of their arts and civilization, of
which their monuments and the results of excavation give abundant proof.
The legends of those tribes who came to Mexico over the broad path
leading down from the north refer to an ancient home, of which they
retained a sad, vague longing, as the Moor still dreams of the glories
of Granada. They preserved the tradition of their long migrations in
their hieroglyphics and pictured writings. These traditions bear a
strong resemblance to each other, and the dialects of the successive
races which appeared in Mexico are so similar that it is probable they
all belong to the same language, which is called Nahuatl. All these
races are generalized as the Nahuas.
One of the traditions relates that seven families alone were saved from
the Deluge. Their descendants, after long and weary wanderings, fixed
themselves at Huehue-Tlapallan (the Old, Old, Red Rock), a fertile
country and agreeable to live in, near a broad and endless river,
flowing from mountains far away to an ever distant sea. On the shore of
the river were broad plains where cattle grazed. The mountains, with
summits reaching to the heavens, were full of game. The winters were
long, but the summers mild and agreeable. There the parents of the
Nahuas dwelt long and happily, but at last enemies, whose attacks they
had been obliged from time to time to resist, overcame them, and drove
them from their homes. It was then they descended towards the south,
seeking a land which should remind them of their favored home. Only when
they reached the plateau of Anahuac, near the great lakes which reminded
them of their mighty river, could they rest.
Such legends as these, and the forms of the pyramids found in Mexico and
Yucatan, lead naturally to the guess that these races were the
descendants of the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley, Ohio, and
Missouri. The monuments of these prehistoric men are not unlike the
teocallis and pyramids of the Nahuas. The "mounds" are artificial hills
of earth, constructed with mathematical regularity, round, oval, or
square. They are finished at the top by platforms, destined, apparently,
to religious rites. Like those in Mexico, the Mounds, in their form and
the great number of them, bear evidence to the prolonged existence of
the race who built them, to long years of labor, and thousands of
workmen employed in their construction. Excavation has brought to light
implements of war and household use, which show both taste and skill,
and these objects are much alike in their general aspect, whether found
in the valley of the Mississippi or of Mexico. Such conjectures are
full of attraction; but they have, as yet, no solid foundation. As for
the Mound Builders, their name, by which we now designate them, is but a
modern label. Their own is effaced from the memory of men. Their origin
is equally lost, and the time of their existence, the date of their
monuments, are vanished in a vague past.
To associate, then, these Mound Builders with the early wandering tribes
who descended to the plateau of Anahuac, is no help, at present, to the
student of Mexican antiquity. Yet the idea is pleasing to the
imagination; and it is even reason to hope that future discoveries in
either region may throw light upon the early stay of the other.
Had we sure knowledge that the Mound Builders and the Nahuas were of the
same race, we should still have to inquire whence came they all before
they settled in the Mississippi valley, were driven out by their
enemies, and migrated to the Mexican plateau? Such speculations are the
pastime of the student of lost races. For him to dream of the possible
homes of a set of people where traces are but faintly to be discerned,
is as fascinating as building airy castles in Spain.
The theory of a submerged continent beneath the Azores, opposite the
mouth of the Mediterranean, which might be the island described by
Plato, Atlantis, the region where man first emerged from a condition
like that of beasts to a constantly advancing state of civilization,
plays a part in the fancies of those who are wondering about the origin
of the Nahuatl tribes of Anahuac.
The distant home of which they all preserved the legend under one name
or another, one of which was Aztlan, the musical title given it by the
Mexicans, was, perhaps, Atlantis, the broad and mighty realm where
mankind in its childhood lived for generations in tranquillity and
happiness. Huehue-Tlapallan, Aztlan, Atlantis, these names represent the
universal tradition of this early home. The world before the Deluge, the
Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields,
Olympus, Asgard,--all these are but different terms to express the vague
vision in men's minds of a happy past. If the theory of Atlantis could
be true, these were not mere visions but traditions preserving a
consistent recollection of real historical events, of a populous and
mighty cradle of nations which peopled the shores of the Gulf of Mexico,
the Mississippi, the Amazon, and the Pacific coasts of South America, as
well as the older world.
Atlantis, according to the story, perished in a terrible convulsion of
nature, in which the whole island sank into the ocean with nearly all
its inhabitants. Only a few persons escaped in ships and rafts to lands
east and west of the catastrophe. Each of these separate survivors
became, in the legend of his descendants, the solitary Noah or Coxcox of
a tradition representing the destruction of an entire world. The Nahuatl
legend helps out the theory of Atlantis to willing minds. The Noah of
the Mexican tribes was Coxcox, who, with his wife Xochiquetzal, alone
escaped the deluge. They took refuge in the hollow trunk of a cypress
(_ahuehuete_), which floated upon the water, and stopped at last on top
of a mountain of Culhuacan. They had many children, but all of them were
dumb. The great spirit took pity on them, and sent a dove, who hastened
to teach them to speak. Fifteen of the children succeeded in grasping
the power of speech, and from these the Toltecs and Aztecs are
descended.
Another account describes a deluge in which men perished and were
changed to fish; the earth disappeared, and the highest mountain tops
were covered with water. But before this happened, one of the Nahua
gods, called Tezcatlipoca, spoke to a man named Nata and his wife Nana,
saying: "Do not busy yourselves any longer making _pulque_, but hollow
out for yourselves a large boat of an _ahuehuete_ tree, and make your
home in it when you see the waters rising to the sky." The Mexican
historian, Ixtlilxochitl, has conceived that after the dispersion of the
human race, which succeeded the attempt to build the Tower of Babel,
seven Toltecs reached America, and became the parents of that race. Thus
having learned of the Tower of Babel from his Catholic instructors,
Ixtlilxochitl skilfully pieces the Hebrew legend upon the Toltec fabric.
The friends of the Atlantis theory in like manner seize upon the
universal fable of the deluge to weave into their tissue. It remains for
every reader to decide for himself whether to regard these theories as
the airy fabric of a vision, or made up out of the whole cloth.
III.
TOLTECS.
A somewhat connected chain of events begins with the traditions of the
Toltecs upon the plateau of Anahuac. Their farthest ancestors, they
supposed, founded the city of Huehue-Tlapallan far to the north, perhaps
on the shores of the Colorado River. There they lived from generation to
generation, nobody knows how long, until great civil wars broke out in
their nation, and a part, deserting their ancient homes, wandered down
towards the south. This was in the year 544 of our era.
[Illustration: COLUMN FROM TULA.]
Guided by their great chief Huematzin, the Toltecs wandered over the
sandy plains in the north of Mexico till they came to the land "near the
water," fertile and promising, and finally settled in a place they
called Tollanzinco. Not far off, in the course of time, they founded
their great city of Tollan, now Tula, which became the centre of the
Toltec nation.
[Illustration: RUINS FOUND AT TULA.]
These people built so well and so much that the name became the word to
mean builders. The few ruins left of their capital attest their skill.
They felt themselves to be a superior race to that they found in their
new home. The Toltecs were tall, robust, and well-formed, of
light-sallow complexion, with but little hair on their face. They were
wonderful for running, and could run at the greatest speed for hours.
Their manners were gentle and refined, as well as their tastes. Yet they
were cruel in war as well as brave.
Arrived in their new country, they set themselves to work to till the
ground and plant it with all the crops the favorite climate permits.
They had Indian corn, chile, _frijoles_, the beans so beloved to this
day by the Mexicans, and other vegetables; these they cultivated with
better processes than the former inhabitants had known. Nevertheless,
and although the proud Toltecas must have looked down on the native
tribes, they took a step dictated by a wise diplomacy, in order to
preserve harmony and good-fellowship with their neighbors. They invited
the ruler of the Chichemecs, a tribe to the north of them, to provide
them a chief from his family, and, much flattered, he sent them his
second son.
Some Toltec Richelieu must have planned this scheme, with the intention
of keeping the real power in his own hands.
Precious-stone-who-shines (Chalchiuhtlatonac), well pleased to sparkle
in a new setting, came to them from the powerful neighboring tribe of
the Chichemecs, and governed peacefully for the space of fifty-two
years, while the Toltecs planted and reaped, and pursued their gentle
way.
They spoke the tongue Nahuatl, giving to it their own dialect. They
wrote, and studied the stars, by which they regulated their division of
time. It is said they were the first in all Anahuac who knew geography.
How much they knew we never shall know, still less how little those
before them knew. They knew the properties of plants, how to heal the
sick by using them, how to keep well. They were excellent carpenters;
they worked precious stones with skill; they wove their garments out of
strong or delicate fabrics in many colors and designs, demanding and
creating for themselves not only the necessities of life, but the
adornments of art and taste. In fact, the Toltecs were a worthy people,
averse to war, allied to virtue, to cleanliness, courtesy, and good
manners. They detested falsehood and treachery, and held their gods in
reverence.
The early faith of the Toltecs was the adoration of the sun, moon, and
stars. Especially the power (_tecuhtli_) which warmed the earth and made
it fruitful, giving them thus their chief blessings, they worshipped
under the name Tonacatecuhtli, to whom they offered flowers, fruits, and
sacrifices of small animals. Polytheism, and the sacrifice of human
beings, which was later engrafted on this simple belief by other tribes,
had no part in the early religion of the Toltecs.
At the end of the tenth century, when in England the Danes were
beginning to trouble the Anglo-Saxons, and Ethelreds and Edreds were
retreating before Canutes and Hardicanutes; when across the channel Hugh
Capet had put an end to the feeble dynasties of the Carlovingian kings,
and was taking for himself the crown of France, began to rule
Tecpancaltzin, the eighth of the Toltec chiefs. We cannot tell what
manner of court he held, whether rude or splendid. His territory
stretched over large distances, and counted many flourishing cities,
among them Teotihuacan, Cholollan, Cuernavaca, and Toluca.
Cuernavaca, "where the eagle stops," at an elevation of nearly five
thousand feet above the sea, is built upon a headland projecting into a
valley between two sharp barrancas. The region is richly watered, and
produces now, as in the time of the Toltecs, abundant crops. Fruits also
abound there. The winter climate is delightful. The place was captured
by Cortés before he laid siege to the city of Mexico. It became his
favorite resort, and the valley was included in the royal reward he
received for his Mexican conquests. It was here that he began in Mexico
the cultivation of the sugar-cane, and here the Conquistador passed the
last years of his life. Traces of the ancient civilization are still to
be seen. Behind a house in the town called the Casa de Cortés is a
solitary rock upon which are prehistoric carvings; on the crest of a
little hill near by is a lizard about eight feet long carved in stone.
Eighteen miles from Cuernavaca are the ruins of Xochicalco, before
mentioned.
Toluca is forty-five miles west of the city of Mexico, at an elevation
of 8,600 feet above the level of the sea. The scenery all the way from
Mexico is of the finest description. The two volcanoes which dominate
the valley, covered with snow, are behind, and before us is the equally
beautiful Nevada de Toluca, nearly as high as they. It is an extinct
volcano, the crater of which is now a lake with a whirlpool in the
middle of it. Here the Toltecs had a palace of stone decorated with
hieroglyphics. Such was the broad territory over which ruled
Tecpancaltzin. The lakes in the valley, much larger than they are now,
were his, and all the fertile valleys around them, which his people knew
well how to cultivate. His swift runners brought him from sunny
Cuernavaca fruits of the tropics. Snow from the Nevadas, even in the hot
days of summer, was at his disposition. His warriors kept his neighbors
in proper awe, and he lived at peace with all men.
It was then, according to some reckonings, that the mysterious
Quetzalcoatl appeared in Tollan. He must have been a real personage, for
the tale is deeply rooted in the traditions of the country, of the white
man with a long beard who came from the East, and disappeared as
mysteriously as he had come, over the Atlantic Ocean. The Toltecs were
dark, with scanty beards and short; this stranger was absolutely unlike
them. He remained with them twenty years, teaching them the arts of a
better civilization. Recent study has busied itself with extinguishing
the beams which surround the bright image of this wonderful being.
Before the traditions of his greatness are thus swept away, we will
preserve them for a little longer.
Quetzalcoatl (The Shining Snake) is sometimes described as one of the
four principal gods who shared with the terrible Huitzilopochtli the
work of the first creation. Elsewhere he is represented as a man who
came to live among the Toltecs, and who disappeared as mysteriously as
he came. Between the two accounts of him, then, is every shade of
matter-of-fact and miraculous in the tales that are preserved of him.
One, shown in an ancient painted writing, now lost, depicted him a
youth, fasting seven years alone among the hills, and drawing his blood,
because the gods made of him a great warrior, showed how he became chief
of Tula, selected by the inhabitants on account of his bravery, and how
he built them a great temple. "While he was doing this, Tezcatlipoca
came to him, and said that towards Honduras, in a place called Tlapalla,
he was to establish his home, and that he must leave Tula and go thither
to live and die, and there he should be held to be a god. To this he
replied that the heavens and the stars had told him to go within four
years. So, after four years were past, he left, taking along with him
all the able-bodied men of Tula. Some of these he left in the City of
Cholula, and from those the inhabitants are descended. Reaching
Tlapalla, he fell sick the same day, and died the following one. Tula
remained waste and without a chief nine years."
A legend adds that "his ashes were carried to heaven by handsome birds;
the heart followed, and became the morning star."
[Illustration: QUETZALCOATL.]
Baudelier concludes him to have been a prominent gifted Indian leader,
perhaps of Toltec origin, perhaps Olmec. He suggests that his career
began in the present state of Hidalgo, in which are the ruins of ancient
Tula, and that his first stay was there, after which he left that people
and moved farther south, and settled at Cholula; perhaps founding there
the first settlement, perhaps elevating the tone of the village Indians
already settled there. The beneficial effects of the coming of
Quetzalcoatl were the introduction, or improvement, of the arts of
pottery, weaving, stonework, and feather-work; the organization of
government of a higher type, and the introduction of a mode of worship
free from human sacrifice. Perhaps his aversion to this bloody custom
made him withdraw to the mythical Tlapalla, a place on no map and only
known to tradition, which puts it on the sea-coast, and generally on the
Gulf of Mexico.
The mystery of his departure and death led to his deification, and the
worship of his person became the leading feature of the religion at
Cholula.
It is likely that The Shining Serpent developed, if he did not
originate, many of the gentle and graceful forms of worship, which still
have a great part of the religion of the simple Indians of Mexico, of
sacrificing the fruits and flowers of each season to its appropriate
divinity and festival.
In Holy Week, now, in the city of Mexico, the shores of the canal
leading to the town are decorated with flowers. Native boats float over
the water heaped with bright blossoms, and the dark heads of the Indian
girls are crowned with wreaths of poppies. They bring these blossoms in
masses to decorate the altars of Nuestra Señora in the churches. Her
image is the symbol of their divinity transferred from the earlier idols
their remote ancestors worshipped.
In the National Museum in Mexico is an image in the form of a coiled
serpent in pyramidal form--its body covered with feathers--carved of
basaltic porphyry. This model, which appears in many of the old
monuments, is regarded as the symbol of the mysterious Shining Serpent.
Whatever were his serious claims to distinction, his worshippers
invested him with wonderful attributes. His sojourn in their land marked
its most prosperous period. In his time the seasons were the fairest,
the earth the most productive. Flowers blossomed, fruits ripened without
the toil of the gardener. The cotton in its pod turned blue, red, or
yellow without the trouble of the dyer, so that the fabrics lightly
woven and without fatigue took on rich and harmonious tints. The air was
continually filled with perfumes and the songs of sweet birds. Every man
loved his neighbor, and all dwelt in peace and harmony together. These
were the halcyon days of Anahuac. For twenty years the Toltecs knew no
disaster, but flourished and spread under the influence of their strange
protector. And then, one day the strange god disappeared from among
them, descending to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where he bade
farewell to the crowd that had followed him, promising, as he did so,
that in the fulness of time his descendants, white men like himself,
with full beards, should return and instruct them. Then he stepped into
a magic bark made of the skins of serpents, and sailed away over an
ocean unknown to these simple men towards the fabled land of Tlapalla.
So Lohengrin vanished to the upper air, and as with those he left
behind, all their good luck was over for the Toltecs.
They did their best to preserve the memory of Quetzalcoatl. On the top
of the pyramid of Cholula, which perhaps their fathers found standing
when they reached the haven of their pilgrimage, the Toltecs raised an
image of their deity, with features of ebony, although he was white;
with a mitre on its head waving with plumes of fire; with a resplendent
collar of gold around its neck, turquoise ear-rings, a sceptre all
jewelled in one hand, and in the other a strange shield. Such is the
description of the Conquistadores, who saw it; and as they destroyed it,
and tumbled it down from its lofty site, they should know.
Evil days were coming to the Toltecs.
The traveller in Mexico to-day sees growing all along the sides of the
railway huge stiff bunches of the _Agave Americana_. The leaves are long
and pointed with prickles along the edge, growing in a tuft like huge
artichokes. Their blue, rather than green, surface has a whitish bloom
over it, which makes the plants look as if they had been made of tin and
painted some time ago. Sometimes the leaves are very large, and the
bunches enormous. When the time comes a stem shoots up from the heart of
the tuft to a great height, putting out branches at the top, which
blossom in a cluster of yellowish flowers. These branches are
symmetrical, and the effect is like a lofty branched candlestick,
sometimes forty feet high. The blossoms fade; the dying stalk, like the
framework of last year's fireworks, remains a long time; and when these
plants, as they often are, are set along the railways, the line of tall
bare stems looks not unlike a row of telegraph poles. The blue tin
leaves are ever green, and last through many a year.
This agave, or American aloe, is the century-plant, so called from the
popular error that it blossoms only once in a hundred years. It is only
true so far that each plant blossoms only once and then dies. In
tropical regions this process proceeds rapidly; in colder countries,
where it is raised artificially, it takes a long time to complete its
perfect growth.
The agave is native in the whole region between the tropics of America,
where it flourishes from the sandy soil by the sea to table-lands and
mountain altitudes. From its natural region it has been transplanted
everywhere, and even in cold climates it is cultivated as a green-house
plant. In Spain, where it was early transplanted, among the other
novelties which the Conquistadores introduced from their new land, it is
absolutely at home. Its lofty candelabra are an ornament to Andalusian
roadsides, and a barrier for wandering cattle. In Spain it is called
_pita_, which must be a different variety, if not a totally distinct
genus from the common plant of Mexico, for the use of its juices for a
beverage is totally unknown in the old country, and this certainly would
have been discovered there if such properties had not been wanting in
the Spanish plant.
For the agave of the Mexicans is their _maguey_, from which they extract
pulque, the national beverage. The agave has served them for many other
purposes, from the earliest times. Its bruised leaves, properly dressed
and polished, make a sort of paper; its leaves furnish a strong
protecting thatch for the roofs of houses; thread can be drawn from its
long fibrous texture; the thorns furnish a fair substitute for the pin
and needle; and the root, well prepared, is nutritious and palatable as
food.
Of all these properties of the agave the Toltecs were cognizant. If
their wise friend, The Shining Serpent, knew of other attributes it had,
he kept silent. It was reserved for a woman to reveal to her race the
fatal gift which lay hidden in the blue-green stubborn leaves of the
prickly plant.
Xochitl was the name of the woman who showed to the king, Tecpancaltzin,
how to extract from the heart of the maguey a sweet honey to drink,
which, from that time to this, has been the delight and the curse of
Mexicans. The plains of Apan are celebrated for the production of the
finest pulque, in itself a thoroughly wholesome drink, suited to the
climate of high regions, and beneficial when taken in moderation. From
the root of the maguey, however, strong distilled liquors can be made,
called _mezcal_ and _tequila_, and of these it is best not to drink too
much.
The new beverage found favor with the chief of the Toltec tribe, and
spread its cheerful influence over his people. He married Xochitl, the
woman who had offered him honey extracted from maguey.