Note 26 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

We must now glance briefly at such evidences as we possess of the distinct racial or cultural elements which assisted in the development of Mexican religion. Three such elements appear to be indicated. It would seem that from an early period a people of settled and agricultural habits occupied the Mexican Plateau. These were probably relatively aboriginal to the Toltecs and may have been of Otomi or Tarascan blood, and to them I would refer the original foundation of a rain-cult having Tlaloc as its principal deity. Tlaloc was unquestionably one of the most venerable gods of Mexico, indeed he is the only god who can be identified with certainty in the remains of pre-Nahuan date at Teotihuacan. Tradition spoke of the finding of an ancient idol representing him by the early Chichimec immigrants.26 At least five of the yearly festivals were celebrated in his honour, and ancient sculptured representations of him have been found in Tarascan territory, in Michoacan, Teotihuacan, Teotitlan, in the Zapotec country and in Guatemala, thus affording irrefragable testimony to his antiquity. Rather later than the culture which probably founded the rain-cult (a religion necessary and indeed inevitable in Mexico) was the Toltec civilization, which regarded Quetzalcoatl as its chiefest divinity, and which probably was brought from the Huaxtec country. But the Toltec are said to have been of Nahua blood, and may have been composed of a Nahua populace and a Huaxtec or proto-Maya aristocracy. The later hordes of Nahua (Chichimecs, Aztecâ, etc.) found these elements already settled upon the land, but brought with them a religion which, if it was destined to have a powerful effect upon the faith of the agricultural folk with whom they came into contact, was also to be quite as strongly influenced by it.