Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/17

 Rh There were other and relatively more aboriginal peoples in Mexico besides those of Nahua race—the Otomi, who still occupy Guanajuato and Queretaro; the Huastecâ, a people speaking the same language as the Maya of Central America; the Totonacs and Chontals, dwelling on the Mexican Gulf; and, to the south, the Mixtecâ and Zapotecâ, highly civilised folk, who nowadays furnish modern Mexico with most of her schoolmasters and lesser officials. To the west lay the Tarascans, famous craftsmen and jewellers.

A general impression seems to prevail that the Aztecs as a race are extinct. In what circumstances the belief arose it would be difficult to say; but it would seem to have emanated from the pages of writers of romance, who love to dwell upon the legends connected with the mysterious ruined cities of Yucatan, and who too often confound the Aztecs with the Maya of that country, who are also far from being exterminated. The Nahua race, of which the Aztecs were a division, is very much alive, and forms the basis of the greater part of the Indian populations of present-day Mexico. After the conquest of Mexico by Cortés, intermarriage between the Spanish hidalgos and Mexican women of rank was common, as bestowing on the Castilian a claim to his wife's estates. But, in subsequent generations, few alliances between Spaniards of the aristocracy and native women were entered into. The lower ranks of the Spanish soldiery, however, espoused many Mexican wives, and it is chiefly from these unions that the half-breeds of the present day have sprung. The Nahuatlatolli, or native Mexican tongue—the speech of the Aztecs—is still widely spoken in Mexico, and this alone should be sufficient to refute the statement that the race has become extinct.

The present-day population of Mexico may then be divided into (1) persons of pure European descent, the descendants of Spanish and other colonists, who form the bulk of the official and administrative classes, and whose numbers are