a. The Sonoran-Aztecs are allied by language to the Shoshones, and by manners and customs to the true Pueblo Indians of the United States, while they exhibit some divergences as regards physical type. Physically the Sonorans are allied to the North Americans of the Atlantic slope, while the peoples of the Aztec group show a great infusion of Central American blood.
The Pimas and their congeners the Papajos constitute one of the principal tribes of the Sonorans. They dwell in pueblos or “casas grandes,” and expend a prodigious amount of labour in drawing their subsistence from the infertile soil of the Gila valley. However, they are fine tall men (mean height 1 m. 71, according to Ten Kate), slim and nimble, having the head a trifle elongated (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub., 78.6), the nose prominent, etc. Their neighbours the Yakis and the Mayas, included in the Cahita linguistic group, 20,000 strong, have the same type as the Pimas. They inhabit the sterile regions through which flow the rivers Yaki and Mayo, and have preserved their racial purity almost intact,[621] unlike their kinsmen the Opatas and the Tarahumaras of Chihuahua and Sonora, in whom there is a powerful strain of Spanish blood.[622]
Under the collective name of Aztecs or Nahua are comprised several peoples and tribes who formerly occupied the Pacific slope from Rio de Fuerte (26th degree of N. lat.) to the frontiers of Guatemala, with the exception of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; their colonies even extended farther into Guatemala and Salvador (example, the Pipils). On the other side, on the Atlantic slope the Nahua tribes inhabited the regions around Mexico. There they had formed, probably two or three centuries before the arrival of the Europeans, three confederate states: Tezcuco, Tlacopan and Tenochtitlan, under whose dominion were ranged tribes of the same origin scattered along the coast, among the Totonac people in the existing province of Vera Cruz; one of these tribes, the Nicaraos or Niquirans, migrated into Nicaragua.[623]
At the present day the Aztecs, about 150,000 in number, are dispersed over the whole Mexican coast from Sinaloa in the south to Tepic, Jalisco, Michoacan on the west. Very peaceful, sedentary, with a veneer of civilisation, they are nominally Catholics, though at bottom they are animists, and full of superstition. In many of the Aztec villages the ancient Nahua language is still spoken.[624]
Side by side with the Aztecs there exist in Mexico three other ethnic groups which may be designated by the name of Mexicans properly so called. These are:—
1st. The Otomis, presumably the aboriginal inhabitants of the Mexican table-lands, now settled in the state of Guanajuato, and the basin of the upper Moctezuma between Mexico and San Luis de Potosi. They afford a unique example of an American people speaking an almost monosyllabic language. They are below the average height, brachycephalic as a general rule, with a tendency towards mesocephaly.[625]
2nd. The Tarascos, formerly spread over the whole of the state of Michoacan, in Guanajuato and Queretaro,[626] have been absorbed by the half-breed population. Lumholtz, however, states that nearly 200,000 uncrossed Tarascos are still living (1896) in the mountains of Michoacan. They had a form of pictography peculiar to themselves, and must have come, according to their traditions, from the northern regions, like the Nahuatlans.
3rd. The Totonacs of the province of Vera Cruz, formerly very civilised, resemble physically their neighbours on the north-east, the Huaxtecs; the latter, however, belong to the Maya linguistic group (see below).
b. The Central Americans.—They may be divided into three geographical groups, the Indians of Southern Mexico, the Mayas, and the Isthmians.