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366 early Maya culture had slowly crept up into the Mexican valley, through western Chiapas, Oaxaca and Teotitlan, becoming somewhat attenuated in the process. There it persisted for some centuries without striking development, and perhaps gradually deteriorating. Then began the southerly drift of the Nahua tribes, of whom the first to arrive, the Toltec, imposed themselves as a ruling caste upon the agricultural population, adopting their mode of life and culture, and developing the latter in accordance with their own particular genius, but imposing their own language upon the tribes whom they welded into an empire. But the pressure from the north continued, wave after wave of "Chichimec" migration broke upon the valley. The Toltec power fell, and the incursion of the wilder tribes gave rise to migrations, such as those of the Olmec, Quiché and Kakchiquel, which followed for the most part an easterly route, at any rate in their initial stages. In the valley, the history of the Toltec was reflected in the short-lived attempts of the Chichimec and Tepanec to establish empires, but was practically repeated by the Aztec, who also developed, and to some extent travestied, the remnants of the earlier culture of their predecessors. The fall of Tulan had an important effect upon Yucatan. At this period the League of Mayapan was in full flower, but within a century we hear of the introduction of "Mexican" mercenaries, and of political troubles at Chichen Itza, and at this very site we find a group of buildings in unmistakable Toltec style, with decoration in which a personified Kukulkan appears. This Toltec influence spread further still, to British Honduras, where it is exemplified in the frescoes of Santa Rita, and in certain pottery vases (Pl. IX, 10; p. 82) with relief ornament in the shape of a descending Quetzalcoatl-Kukulkan figure, similar to the Chichen Itza relief shown in Fig. 87. In the Mixtec country, too, traces of immigration occur in