Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/218

Rh 208 MEXICO them, are still open to the study of scholars, while after the conquest interpretations of these were drawn up in writing by Spanish-educated Mexicans, and histories founded on them with the aid of traditional memory were written by Ixtlilxochitl and Tezozomoc; the most important of these picture-writings, interpretations, and histories may be found in Kingsborough s Antiquities of Mexico, In Central America the rows of complex hieroglyphs to be seen sculptured on the ruined temples probably served a similar purpose up to the time of the Spanish invasion. The documents purporting to be histories, written down by natives in later times, thus more or less represent real records of the past, but the task of separating the preponder ant mythical part from what is real history is of the utmost difficulty. Among the most curious documents of early America is the Popol- Vuh or national book of the Quiche&quot; kingdom of Guatemala, a compilation of traditions Avritten down by native scribes, found and translated by Father Ximenez about 1700, and published by Scherzer (Vienna, 1857) and Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1861). This book, composed in a picturesque barbaric style, begins with the time when there was only the heaven with its boundaries towards the four winds, but as yet there was no body, nothing that clung to anything else, nothing that balanced itself or rubbed together or made a sound ; there was nought below but the calm sea alone in the silent darkness. Alone were the Creator, the Former, the Ruler, the Feathered Serpent, they who give being and whose name is Gucumatz. Then follows the creation, when the creators said &quot;Earth,&quot; and the earth was formed like a cloud or a fog, and the mountains appeared like lobsters from the water, cypress and pine covered the hills and valleys, and their forests were peopled with beasts and birds, but these could not speak the name of their creators, but could only chatter and croak. So man was made first of clay, but he was strengthless and senseless and melted in the water ; then they made a race of wooden mannikins, but these were useless creatures without heart or mind, and they were destroyed by a great flood, and pitch poured down on them from heaven, those who were left of them being turned into the apes still to be seen in the woods. After this comes the creation of the four men and their wives who are the ancestors of the Quiche s, and the tradition records the migrations of the nation to Tulan, otherwise called the Seven Caves, and thence across the sea, whose waters were divided for their passage. It is worth while to mention these few early incidents of the national legend of Guatemala, because their Biblical incidents show how native tradition incorporated matter learnt from the white men. Moreover, this Central- American document, mythical as it is, has an historical importance from its bringing in names belonging also to the traditions of Mexico proper. Thus Gucumatz, &quot; Feathered Serpent,&quot; corresponds in name to the Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl ; Tulan and the Seven Caves are familiar words in the Aztec migration-traditions, and there is even mention of a chief of Toltecat, a name plainly referring to the famed Toltecs, of whom further account will be given in their place in Mexican history. Thus the legends of the Popol- Vuh confirm what is learnt from comparing the culture of Central America and Mexico proper, that, though the nations of these districts were not connected by language, the intercourse and mixture between them had been sufficient to implant in them much common civilization, and to justify the anthropologist in including both districts in one region. Historical value of the ordinary kind may be found in the latter part of the Topol- Vuh, which gives names of chiefs down to the time when they began to bear Spanish names, and the great city of Quich6 became the deserted ruin of Santa Cruz. The Maya district of Yucatan has also some vestiges of native traditions in the manuscript translated by D. Pio Perez (in Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan) and in the remarkable 16th century Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan by Diego de Landa, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1864). As in the Guatemala traditions, we hear of ancient migration from the Mexican legendary region of Tula ; and here the leaders are four famous chiefs or ancestors who bear the Aztec name of the Tutul-Xiu, which interpreted means &quot;Bird-Tree.&quot; Unfortunately for the historical standing of these four ancestors, there are in the Aztec picture-writings representations of four trees each with a bird perched on it, and placed facing the four quarters, which make it probable that the four Tutul-Xiu of tradition, in spite of the circumstantial detail of their wars and migrations, may be only mythic personifications of the four cardinal points (see Schultz-Sellack in Zeitsch.f. Ethn., 1879, p. 209). Nevertheless, part of the later Maya records may be genuine, for instance, when they relate the war about three centuries before the Spanish conquest, when the king of Chichen-Itza destroyed the great city of Mayapan. Though the names and dates of Central-American native kings have too little interest to general readers for traditions of them to be dwelt on here, they bring into view one im portant historical point, that the wondrous ruined cities of this region are not to be thought monuments of a perished race in a forgotten past, but that at least some of them belong to history, having been inhabited up to the conquest, apparently by the very nations who built them. Turning now to the native chronicles of the Mexican nations, these are found to be substantial dated records going back to the 12th or 13th century, with some vague but not worthless recollections of national events from times some centuries earlier. These last-mentioned traditions, in some measure borne out by linguistic evidence of na-mes of places, tribes, and persons, point to the immigration of detachments or branches of a widespread race speaking a common language, which is represented to us by the Aztec, still a spoken language in Mexico. This language was called nahuatl, and one who spoke it as his native tongue was called nahuatlacatl, so that modern anthro pologists are following native precedent when they use the term Nahua for the whole series of peoples now under consideration. 1 Earliest of the Nahua nations, the Toltecs are traditionally related to have left their northern home of Huehuetlapallan in the 6th century ; and, though this remote date cannot be treated as belonging to genuine history, there is other evidence of the real existence of the nation. Their name Toltecatl signifies an inhabitant of Tollan, &quot;land of reeds,&quot; a place which, as has been already pointed out, appears elsewhere in the national traditions of this region, and has a definite geographical site in the present Tulan or Tula, north of the valley of Anahuac, where a Toltec kingdom of some extent seems to have had its centre. To this nation is ascribed not only the oldest but the highest culture of the Nahua nations; to them was due the introduction of maize and cotton into Mexico, the skilful workmanship in gold and silver, the art of build ing on a scale of vastness still witnessed to by the mound of Cholula, said to be Toltec work ; the Mexican hieroglyphic writing and calendar are also declared to have been of Toltec origin. With the Toltecs is associated the mysterious tradition of Quetzalcoatl, a name which presents itself in Mexican religion as that of a great deity, god of the air, and in legend as that of a saintly ruler and civilizer. His brown and beardless worshippers describe him as of another race, a white man with noble features, long black hair and full beard, dressed in flowing robes. He came from Tullan 1 It should be noticed that this word is not etymologically con nected with the some.what similar word Anahuac, of which the mean ing is given at page 206.