Note 882 — Chapter III

Cf. Vol. II. 417; Prescott, i. 13, 163, 193, 196; Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 147; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. 325. It must be confessed that with no more authority than the old Mexican paintings, interpreted through the understanding of old men and their traditions, Ixtlilxochitl has not the firmest ground to walk on. Aubin thinks that Ixtlilxochitl’s confusion and contradictions arise from his want of patience in studying his documents; and some part of it may doubtless have arisen from his habit, as Brasseur says (Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, May, 1855, p. 329), of altering his authorities to magnify the glories of his genealogic line. Max Müller (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 322) says of his works: “Though we must not expect to find in them what we are accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled with migrations, wars, dynasties and revolutions, such as were cherished in the memory of the Greeks in the time of Solon.” In addition to his Historia Chichimeca and his Relaciones, (both of which are given by Kingsborough, while Ternaux has translated portions,)—the MS. of the Relaciones being in the Mexican archives,—Ixtlilxochitl left a large mass of his manuscript studies of the antiquities, often repetitionary in substance. Some are found in the compilation made in Mexico by Figueroa in 1792, by order of the Spanish government (Prescott, i. 193). Some were in the Ramirez collection. Quaritch (MS. Collections, Jan., 1888, no. 136) held one from that collection, dated about 1680, at £16, called Sumaria Relacion, which concerned the ancient Chichimecs. Those which are best known are a Historia de la Nueva España, or Historia del Reyno de Tezcuco, and a Historia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, if this last is by him.