[120]. Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde, p. 84 (Paris, 1885).
[121]. Historia de Nueva España, Lib. viii, cap. 5.
[122]. Father Duran relates, “Even to this day, when I ask the Indians, ‘Who created this pass in the mountains? Who opened this spring? Who discovered this cave? or, Who built this edifice?’ they reply, ‘The Toltecs, the disciples of Papa.’” Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, cap. 79. Papa, from papachtic, the bushy-haired was one of the names of Quetzalcoatl. But the earlier missionary, Father Motilinia, distinctly states that the Mexica invented their own arts, and owed nothing to any imaginary teachers, Toltecs or others. “Hay entre todos los Indios muchos oficios, y de todos dicen que fueron inventores los Mexicanos.” Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, Tratado iii, cap. viii.
[123]. Quetzalcoatl announced that his return should take place 5012 years after his final departure, as is mentioned by Ixtlilxochitl (in Kingsborough, Mexico, Vol. ix, p. 332). This number has probably some mystic relation to the calendar.
[124]. American Hero Myths, p. 35. The only writer on ancient American history before me who has wholly rejected the Toltecs is, I believe, Albert Gallatin. In his able and critical study of the origin of American civilization (Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. i, p. 203) he dismissed them entirely from historical consideration with the words: “The tradition respecting the Toltecs ascends to so remote a date, and is so obscure and intermixed with mythological fables, that it is impossible to designate either the locality of their primitive abodes, the time when they first appeared in the vicinity of the Valley of Mexico, or whether they were preceded by nations speaking the same or different languages.” Had this well-grounded skepticism gained the ears of writers since 1845, when it was published, we should have been saved a vast amount of rubbish which has been heaped up under the name of history.
Dr. Otto Stoll (Guatemala; Reisen und Schilderungen, ss, 408, 409, Leipzig, 1886) has joined in rejecting the ethnic existence of the Toltecs. As in later Nahuatl the word toltecatl meant not only “resident of Tollan,” but also “artificer” and “trader,” Dr. Stoll thinks that the Central American legends which speak of “Toltecs” should be interpreted merely as referring to foreign mechanics or pedlers, and not to any particular nationality. I quite agree with this view.
[125]. Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 28.
[126]. Revised extracts from an article read before the American Philosophical Society in 1881.
[127]. Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala. Por el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenez.
[128]. See Dr. Otto Stoll, Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala, p. 118. I regret to differ from this able writer, whose studies of the Quiche und Cakchiquel are the most thorough yet made, and from whose version the above translation of the opening lines of the Popol Vuh is taken.