Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/16

2 people in the land, who lived in houses of stone or marble, clothing themselves in fine cotton dyed in many colours or in wonderful feather cloaks made from the plumage of brilliant-hued birds. This people possessed a religion as picturesque as it was terrible in rite and sacrifice, and legal and political systems which in most of their provisions were, perhaps, equal in enlightenment to those of seventeenth-century Europe.

The Aztecs or Nahua had records of their national history painted in symbols upon deer-skins which told of successive migrationsof their stock from the north to Mexican plateau. Thus the Toltecs, Chichimecs, Tecpanecs, Acolhuans, and Tlascaltecs had successively poured their myriads upon the tableland of Anahuac, the latest immigration being that of the Aztecs themselves. Many of these tribes were of one and the same race—the Nahua—and used in common the Nahuatlatolli, or "speech of those who live by rule," the word "Nahua" meaning "the settled folk," the "law-abiding."

The Toltecs, the first of these successive swarms, were credited by native traditions with a higher culture than was possessed by those tribes who succeeded them in Anahuac. According to native lore, they were mighty builders, and so skilled in artistry and handicrafts that the name Toltecatl became a synonym for "artist" or "craftsman" among the less gifted peoples who inherited their culture. Their downfall was due to plague, famine, and drought no less than to the inroads of the savage if related Chichimec, who entered upon the heir-ship of their civilisation. Excavations at Tula, the modern name of the ancient Tollan, the Toltec capital, substantiate what legend has to say of the Toltec culture, the architectural and artistic remains unearthed there exhibiting a standard of excellence considerably higher than any arrived at by their successors.