It was the posterity of this man whom the unhappy Montezuma thought he recognised in the soldiers of Cortez, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. “We know,” said the unhappy monarch, in his first interview with the Spanish general, “by our books, that myself, and those who inhabit this country, are not natives, but strangers, who came from a great distance. We know, also, that the chief who led our ancestors hither returned, for a certain time, to his primitive country, and thence came back to seek those who were here established, who after a while returned again, alone. We always believed that his descendants would one day come to take possession of this country. Since you arrive from that region where the sun rises, I cannot doubt but that the king who sends you is our natural master.”
Humboldt says that the Azteca tribes left their country, Aztalan, in the year of our Lord 544; and wandered to the south or southwest, coming at last to the vale of Mexico. It would appear from this view, that as the nations of Aztalan, with their fellow nations, left vast works, and a vast extent of country, apparently in a state of cultivation, with cities and villages, more in number than three thousand, as Breckenridge supposed, they must, therefore, have settled here long before the Christian era.
And this Quetzalcoatl, a celebrated minister of these opinions, appears to have been the first who announced the religion of the east among the people of the west. There was also one other minister, or Brahmin, who appeared among the Mozca tribes in South America, whom they named Bochica. This personage taught the worship of the sun; and, if we were to judge, we should pronounce him a missionary of the Confucian system, a worshipper of fire, which was the religion of the ancient Persians, of whose country Confucius was a native. This also is evidence that the first inhabitants of America came here at a period near the flood, long before that worship was known, or they would have had a knowledge of this Persian worship, which was introduced by Bochica among the American nations, which, it seems, they had not, until taught by this man.
Bochica, it appears, became a legislator among those nations, and changed the form of their government to a form, the construction of which, says Baron Humboldt, bears a strong analogy to the governments of Japan and Thibet, on account of the pontiffs holding in their hands both the secular and the spiritual reins. In Japan, an island on the east of Asia, or rather many islands, which compose the Japanese empire, is found a religious sect, styled Sinto, who do not believe in the sanguinary rites of shedding either human blood, or that of animals, to propitiate their gods; they even abstain from animal food, and detest bloodshed, and will not touch any dead body.—(Morse’s Geography, p. 523.)
There is in South America a whole nation who eat nothing but vegetables, and who hold in abhorrence those who feed on flesh.—(Humboldt, p. 200.)
Such a coincidence in the religion of nations can scarcely be supposed to exist, unless they are of one origin. Therefore, from what we have related above, and a few pages back, it is clear, both from the tradition of the Aztecas, who lived in the western regions before they went to the south, and from the fact that nations on the Asiatic side of Bhering’s Strait have come annually over the strait to fight the nations of the northwest, that we, in this way, have given conclusive and satisfactory reasons why, in the western mounds and tumuli, are found evident tokens of the presence of a Hindoo population; or, at least, of nations influenced by the superstitions of that people, through the means of missionaries of those castes, and that they did not bring those opinions and ceremonies with them when they first left Asia, after the confusion of the antediluvian language, as led on by their fifteen chiefs; till, by some means, and at some period, they finally found this country—not by the way of Bhering’s Strait, but by some nearer course.
Perhaps a few words on the supposed native country of Quetzalcoatl may be allowed; who, as we have stated, is reported to have been a white and bearded man, by the Mexican Aztecas. There is a vast range of islands on the northeast of Asia, in the Pacific, situated not very far from Bhering’s Strait, in latitude between forty and fifty degrees north. The inhabitants of these islands, when first discovered, were found to be far in advance in the arts and civilization, and a knowledge of government, of their continental neighbors, the Chinese and Tartars. The island of Jesso, in particular, is of itself an empire, comparatively, being very populous, and its people are also highly polished in their manners. The inhabitants may be denominated white—their women especially, whom Morse, in his geography of the Japan, Jesso, and other islands in that range, says expressly are white, fair, and ruddy. Humboldt says they are a bearded race of men, like Europeans.
It appears that the ancient government of these islands, especially that of Japan, which is neighbor to that of Jesso, was in the hands of spiritual monarchs and pontiffs till the seventeenth century. As this was the form of government introduced by Quetzalcoatl, when he first appeared among the Azteca tribes, which we suppose was in the country of Aztalan, or Western States, may it not be conjectured that he was a native of some of those islands, who in his wanderings had found his way hither, on errands of benevolence; as it is said in the tradition respecting him, that he preached peace among men, and would not allow any other offering to the divinity than the first fruits of the harvest, which doctrine was in character with the mild and amiable manners of the inhabitants of those islands. And that peculiar and striking record, found painted on the Mexican skin-books, which describes him to have been a white and bearded man, is our other reason for supposing him to have been a native of some of these islands, and most probably Jesso, rather than any other country.
The inhabitants of these islands originated from China, and with them undoubtedly carried the Persian doctrines of the worship of the sun and fire; consequently, we find it taught to the people of Aztalan and Mexico, by such as visited them from China or the islands above named; as it is clear the sun was not the original object of adoration in Mexico, but rather the power which made the sun. So Noah worshipped.
Their traditions also recognise another important chief, who led the Azteca tribes first to the country of Aztalan, long before the appearance of Quetzalcoatl or Bochica among them. This great leader they name Tecpaltzin, and doubtless allude to the time when they first found their way to America, and settled in the western region.—[Priest.]