Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/42



AMONG those who became masters of the great tableland of Anahuac after the disappearance of the Toltecs were several kindred tribes called Nahuas, or "skilled ones," who claimed to have entered Mexico at different times from some place at the North. Their civilization, which made them differ from those tribes that lived by the chase, was shown by their giving up their wandering life and settling down, one after another, as neighbors around Tezcuco, the largest lake on the tableland of Mexico. Thus they became what is known as sedentary, or pueblo ("village"), Indians. These people, like other North American tribes, have straight black hair, with a fondness for paint, feathers and gewgaws. Their nahuatl—the word for language—meant "pleasant sound." This varied as much then among different tribes as is now the case in Mexico, where the people of one Indian village (especially the women) speak a language which those in another—not ten miles distant, perhaps—cannot understand, although they have been neighbors for a century.

Like all Indian languages, Aztec proper names had a meaning and were easily written in rude signs or pictures. Thus the name of the great chief Nezacoyatl, or "Hungry Fox," was expressed by a picture of a fox,