[101]. It is quite likely that the stone image figured by Charnay, Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde, p. 72, and the stone ring used in the tlachtli, ball play, which he figures, p. 73, are those referred to in the historic legend.
[102]. The Codex Ramirez, p. 24, a most excellent authority, is quite clear. The picture-writing—which is really phonetic, or, as I have termed it, ikonomatic—represents the Coatepetl by the sign of a hill (tepetl) inclosing a serpent (coatl). Tezozomoc, in his Cronica Mexicana, cap. 2, presents a more detailed but more confused account. Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, cap. 3, is worthy of comparison. The artificial inundation of the plain to which the accounts refer probably means that a ditch or moat was constructed to protect the foot of the hill. Herrera says: “Cercaron de agua el cerro llamado Coatepec.” Decadas de Indias, Dec. iii, Lib. ii, cap. 11.
[103]. The Annals of Cuauhtitlan, a chronicle written in the Nahuatl language, gives 309 years from the founding to the destruction of Tula, but names a dynasty of only four rulers. Veitia puts the founding of Tula in the year 713 A. D. (Historia de Nueva España, cap. 23.) Let us suppose, with the laborious and critical Orozco y Berra (notes to the Codex Ramirez, p. 210) that the Mexi left Aztlan A. D. 648. These three dates would fit into a rational chronology, remembering that there is an acknowledged hiatus of a number of years about the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the Aztec records (Orozco y Berra, notes to Codex Ramirez, p. 213). The Anales de Cuauhtitlan dates the founding of Tula after that of Tlaxcallan, Huexotzinco and Cuauhtitlan (p. 29).
[104]. As usual, Ixtlilxochitl contradicts himself in his lists of rulers. Those given in his Historia Chichimeca are by no means the same as those enumerated in his Relaciones Historicas (Kingsborough, Mexico, Vol. ix, contains all of Ixtlilxochitl’s writings). Entirely different from both is the list in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan. How completely euhemeristic Ixtlilxochitl is in his interpretations of Mexican mythology is shown by his speaking of the two leading Nahuatl divinities Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli as “certain bold warriors” (“ciertos caballeros muy valerosos.” Relaciones Historicas, in Kingsborough, Vol. ix, p. 326).
[105]. See the note to page [84]. But it is not at all likely that Tula was absolutely deserted. On the contrary, Herrera asserts that after the foundation of Mexico and the adjacent cities (despues de la fundacion de Mexico i de toda la tierra) it reached its greatest celebrity for skilled workmen. Decadas de Indias, Dec. iii, Lib. ii, cap. 11. The general statement is that the sites on the Coatepetl and the adjacent meadows were unoccupied for a few years—the Anales de Cuauhtitlan says nine years—after the civil strife and massacre, and then were settled again. The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, cap. 11, says, “y ansi fueron muertos todos los de Tula, que no quedó ninguno.”
[106]. See Buschmann, Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, ss. 682, 788. Orozco y Berra, Geografia de las Lenguas de Mejico, pp. 248, 255.
[107]. Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. iii, Lib. ii, cap. II.
[108]. Relaciones Historicas, in Kingsborough’s Mexico, Vol. ix, p. 392. Compare his Historia Chichimeca.
[109]. Buschmann, Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, ss. 682, 797.
[110]. Cronica Mexicana, cap. 1, “Partieron de alli y vinieron á la parte que llaman Coatepec, términos de Tonalan, lugar del sol.” In Nahuatl tonallan usually means summer, sun-time. It is syncopated from tonalli and tlan; the latter is the locative termination; tonalli means warmth, sunniness, akin to tonatiuh, sun; but it also means soul, spirit, especially when combined with the possessive pronouns, as totonal, our soul, our immaterial essence. By a further syncope tonallan was reduced to Tollan or Tullan, and by the elision of the terminal semi-vowel, this again became Tula. This name may therefore mean “the place of souls,” an accessory signification which doubtless had its influence on the growth of the myths concerning the locality.