{p. 215}
was restored, as at the first, and the Miztec kingdom populated, and the heavens and the earth established."[1]
Father Duran, in his MS. "History Antique of New Spain," written in A. D. 1585, gives the Cholula legend, which commences:
"In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this land was in obscurity and darkness and void of any created thing."
In the Toltec legends we read of a time when--
"There was a tremendous hurricane that carried away trees, mounds, houses, and the largest edifices, notwithstanding which many men and women escaped, principally in caves, and places where the great hurricane could not reach them. A few days having passed, they set out to see what had become of the earth, when they found it all populated with monkeys. All this time they were in darkness, without seeing the light of the sun, nor the moon, that the wind had brought them."[2]
In the Aztec creation-myths, according to the accounts furnished by Mendieta, and derived from Fray Andres de Olmos, one of the earliest of the Christian missionaries among the Mexicans, we have the following legend of the "Return of the Sun":
"Now, there had been no sun in existence for many years; so the gods being assembled in a place called Teotihuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time around a great fire, told their devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that, fire should have the honor of being transformed into a sun. So, one of them, called Nanahuatzin . . . flung himself into the fire. Then the gods" (the chiefs?) "began to peer through the gloom in all directions for the expected light, and to make bets as to what part of heaven. he should
[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, pp. 71-73.
2. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 239.]