Note 542:4 — APPENDIX A.
Reading edition
The Aztecs were preceded by the Toltecs, Chichimecks, and the Nahualtecs. (Humboldt's New Spain, p. 133, vol. i.)
"The races of barbarians which successively followed each other from the north to the south always murdered, hunted down, and subdued the previous inhabitants, and formed in course of time a new social and political life upon the ruins of the old system, to be again destroyed and renewed in a few centuries, by a new invasion of barbarians. The later native conquerors in the New World can, of course, no more be considered in the light of original inhabitants than the present races of men in the Old World."