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12 drove the Olmec further east in the path of the Toltec, with whom they claimed to be one and the same people. No doubt however the Tlaxcalans absorbed a large percentage of Toltec blood, a fact which intensified their friendship for the people of Uexotzinco and their ineradicable hostility to the Aztec. From a careful consideration of many points of evidence, I am inclined to think that the date given by the "Annals of Quauhtitlan "for the destruction of Tulan, viz. 1064, is not far wrong; how long the state had lasted is more difficult to say, but that it must have flourished for an extended period is obvious from the fact that the remains characteristic of the Toltec culture at Azcapotzalco form a stratum over three metres thick.

Certain of the manuscripts give the ancient home of the Aztec as Aztlan, and picture it as an island in the centre of a lake, with a city called Colhuacan on the opposite shore. From here the Aztec started in the year dated I. tecpatl ("one stone knife," i.e. 1168 A.D.), and at Colhuacan received their god, Uitzilopochtli, and joined themselves to eight other related tribes. Five of these ultimately formed the population of the following cities, chiefly in the Valley of Mexico, Uexotzinco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Cuitlauac, Malinalco (see the map of the Mexican Valley, Fig. i); the others being the Chichimec, Tepanec (founders of Azcapotzalco) and Matlatzinca. Later they arrived at Tamoanchan, the "House of descent," a word probably meaning little more than the "place where the tribes separated," for here the eight tribes left them to continue their journey alone. Hence they went to Chicomoztoc, and Cuextecatl Ichocayan, the "place where the Huaxtec weep," where they are represented as having made prisoners from among this nation. After wandering in the steppes they came to Tulan, and then to Chapultepec; and, after having been reduced for some time to slavery in Colhuacan, settled finally in Tenochtitlan.