Montezuma: An Epic on the Origin and Fate of the Aztec Nation

AN EPIC ON THE ORIGIN AND FATE OF THE AZTEC NATION.
SAN FRANCISCO: GOLDEN ERA CO 1885.

Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1883, by H. H. Richmond, at the office of the Librarian of Congress. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

DEDICATED TO HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, The pains-taking historian and the one of all others who induced to a final effort THIS BOOK, By his grateful friend and ardent partisan, THE AUTHOR.


From the moment of my earliest acquaintance with Colonial History, I have felt all the pressure of a task laid upon me, tightening its grasp as I reached maturer years; that of an attempt to rescue the Aztecs from their letterless and mythical position in history, to the position which their possibilities at least argue for them; and this feeling has been far less the outgrowth of the enthusiasm awakened for the Aztecs, as the indignation felt at the whole conduct of the Spanish Conquest.
Realizing the gravity of the task, I have been led to carefully weigh and investigate the different theories advanced as to the origin of the Aztecs, and to adopt the argument of the poem as the best ground on which to unite the Sun Worship of the East with the Mythology of of the West.
Reverently, and with a full realization of how great must ever be the distance between the actual work and the ideal of my early inspiration, I lay the gathered chaplet at the shrine of old Chapultepec, and only regret that the fruiting should have fallen so far short of the promise of its blooming.