Aztecs.—When the Spaniards landed in Mexico, they found there a people whose customs were far removed from those of savage life. They were very expert in the practice of different useful and ornamental arts, and their knowledge was rather extensive, but thorough cruelty could always be laid to their charge.
The Aztecs were intelligent and hard-working cultivators. They knew how to work mines, prepare metals, and set precious stones as ornaments. Superb monuments had been erected by them, and they possessed a written language which preserved the memorials of their history. Those who dwelt in the region of the present Mexico were advanced in the sciences; they were profoundly imbued with the sentiment of religion; and their sacred ceremonies were full of pomp, but accompanied by expiatory sacrifices revolting in their barbarism. They carried their annals back to very remote antiquity. These annals were traced in historical paintings, the traditional explanation of which was imparted by the natives to some of their conquerors, as well as to a few Spanish and Italian ecclesiastics.
202.—INDIAN OF THE MEXICAN COAST.
The principal events recorded in these archives relate to the migrations of three different nations, who, leaving the distant regions of the north-west, arrived successively in Anahuac. They were the Toltecs, Chichimecas, and Nahuatlacas, divided into seven distinct tribes, one of which was that of the Aztecs, or Mexicans. The country whence the first of these people came was called Huehuetlapallan, and they commenced their exodus in the year 544 of our era. Pestilence decimated them in 1051, and they then wandered southwards, but a few remained at Tula. The Chichimecas, a barbarous race, arrived in Mexico in the year 1070, and the incursion of the Nahuatlacas, who spoke the same language as the Toltecs, took place very soon afterwards. The Aztecs, or Mexicans, separated themselves from the other nations, and in 1325 they founded Mexico. In a word, the former inhabitants of Mexico were immigrants from a country situated towards the north, on the central plateau of Anahuac, and their successive migrations had continued during several centuries long prior to the discovery of America by the Europeans.
203, 204.—INDIANS OF THE MEXICAN COAST.