Note 25 — Chapter I · ANCIENT MEXICO—CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS—PRIMITIVE RACES—AZTEC EMPIRE

[This supposition, neither adopted nor rejected in the text, was, as Mr. Tylor remarks, “quite tenable at the time that Prescott wrote,” being founded on the statements of early writers and partially supported by the conclusions of Mr. Stephens, who believed that the ruined cities of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala dated from a comparatively recent period, and were still flourishing at the time of the Spanish Conquest; and that their inhabitants, the ancestors, as he contends, of the degenerate race that now occupies the soil, were of the same stock and spoke the same language as the Mexicans. (Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan.) But these opinions have been refuted by later investigators. Orozco y Berra, in an elaborate and satisfactory examination of the question, discusses all the evidence relating to it, compares the remains in the southern provinces with those of the Valley of Mexico, points out the essential differences in the architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions, and arrives at the conclusion that there was “no point of contact or resemblance” between the two civilizations. He considers that of the southern provinces, though of a far higher grade, as long anterior in time to the Toltec domination,—the work of a people which had passed away, under the assaults of barbarism, at a period prior to all traditions, leaving no name and no trace of their existence save those monuments which, neglected and forgotten by their successors, have become the riddle of later generations.{*} Geografía de las Lenguas de México, pp. 122-131. See also Tylor, Anahuac, p. 189, et seq.—K.

{*} [Charnay (Ancient Cities of the New World) holds that both Mitla and Palenque are of Toltec origin. He has no doubt whatsoever concerning Palenque. This he thinks was a Holy City whose inhabitants dispersed at the first alarm of the Conquest (p. 245). (See, further, p. 246.) Dr. Brinton holds that Father Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, Tezozomoc, Croníca Mexicana, and the Codex Ramirez identify the Toltecs with the Aztecs. As John Fiske puts it, “it is well to beware, however, about meddling much with these Toltecs.” Mr. Fiske urges like caution concerning the Chichimecs. Bandelier (Archæological Tour, p. 192) points out that Ixtlilxochitl, the historian of the Chichimecs, “wrote for an interested object, and with a view of sustaining tribal claims in the eyes of the Spanish government.”—M.]