Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/783

1858 vived its own existence,—the Nahoa, or.

Of all the American languages, the Nahuatl holds the highest place, for its richness of expression and its sonorous tone,—adapting itself with equal flexibility to the most sublime and analytic terms of metaphysics, and to the uses of ordinary life, so that even at this day the Englishman and the Spaniard employ its vocabulary for natural objects.

The traditions of the Nahoas describe their life in the distant Oriental country from which they came:—“There they multiplied to a considerable degree, and lived without civilization. They had not then acquired the habit of separating themselves from the places which had seen them born; they paid no tributes; and all spoke a single language. They worshipped neither wood nor stone; they contented themselves with raising them eyes to heaven and observing the law of the Creator. They waited with respect for the rising of the sun, saluting with their invocations the morning star.”

This is their prayer, handed down in Indian tradition,—the oldest piece extant of American liturgy:—“Hail, Creator and Former! Regard us! Listen to us! Heart of Heaven! Heart of the Earth! do not leave us! Do not abandon us, God of Heaven and Earth! Grant us repose, a glorious repose, peace and prosperity! the perfection of life and of our being grant to us, O Hurakan!”

What country and what sun nourished this worship and gave origin to this great people is as uncertain as all other facts of the early American history. They came from the East, the tradition says; they landed, it seems certain, at Panuco, near the present port of Tampico, from seven barks or ships. Other traditions represent them as accompanied by sages with venerable beards and flowing robes. They finally settled somewhere on the coast between Campeacliy and the river Tabasco, and founded the ancient city of Xicalanco. Their chief, who in the reverent affection of the nation became afterwards their Deity, was Quetzalcohuatl. The myths which surround his name reveal to us a wise legislator and noble benefactor. He is seen instructing them in the arts, in religion, and finally in agriculture, by introducing the cultivation of maize and other cereals.

Whether he had become the object of envy among the people, or whether he felt that his work was done, it appears, so far as the vague traditions can he understood, that he at length determined to return to the unknown country whence he had come. He gathered his brethren around him and thus addressed them:—“Know,” said he, “ that the Lord your God commands you to dwell in these lands which he hath subjected to you this day. For him, he returns whence he has come. But he goes only to return later; for he will visit you again, when the time shall have arrived in which the world shall have come to an end. In the mean while wait, ye others, in these countries, with the hope of seeing him again ! Thus farewell, while we depart with our God! ”

We will not follow the interesting narrative of the destruction of the ancient empire of the Votanides by the Nahoas or Toltecs; nor the account of the dispersion of these latter over Guatemala, Yucatan, and even among the mountains of California. This last revolution presents the first precise date which scholars have yet been able to assign to early American history; it probably occurred A. D. 174.

With the account of the invasion of the Aztec plateau by the Chichemecs, a barbarian tribe of the Toltec family, in the middle of the seventh century, or of the establishment of the Toltec monarchy in Anahuac, we will not delay our readers, as these events bring us down to the period of authentic history, on which we have information from other sources.

“From the moment,” says M. de Bour