Note 815 — Chapter III

Cf. Kirk in Prescott, i. 10. It must be confessed that it is rather in the domain of myth than of history that we must place all that has been written about the scattering of the Toltec people at Babel (Bancroft, v. 19), and their finally reaching Huehue-Tlapallan, wherever that may have been. The view long prevalent about this American starting-point of the Nahuas, Toltecs, or whatever designation may be given to the beginners of this myth and history, placed it in California, but some later writers think it worth while to give it a geographical existence in the Mississippi Valley, and to associate it in some vague way with the moundbuilders and their works (Short, No. Amer. of Antiq., 251, 253). There is some confusion between Huehue-Tlapallan of this story and the Tlapallan noticed in the Spanish conquest time, which was somewhere in the Usumacinta region, and if we accept Tollan, Tullan, or Tula as a form of the name, the confusion is much increased (Short, pp. 217-220). Bancroft (v. 214) says there is no sufficient data to determine the position of Huehue-Tlapallan, but he thinks “the evidence, while not conclusive, favors the south rather than the north” (p. 216). The truth is, about these conflicting views of a northern or southern origin, pretty much as Kirk puts it (Prescott, i. 18): “All that can be said with confidence is, that neither of the opposing theories rests on a secure and sufficient basis.” The situation of Huehue-Tlapallan and Aztlan is very likely one and the same question, as looking to what was the starting-point of all the Nahua migrations, extending over a thousand years.