Had we sure knowledge that the Mound Builders and the Nahuas were of the same race, we should still have to inquire whence came they all before they settled in the Mississippi valley, were driven out by their enemies, and migrated to the Mexican plateau? Such speculations are the pastime of the student of lost races. For him to dream of the possible homes of a set of people where traces are but faintly to be discerned, is as fascinating as building airy castles in Spain.
The theory of a submerged continent beneath the Azores, opposite the mouth of the Mediterranean, which might be the island described by Plato, Atlantis, the region where man first emerged from a condition like that of beasts to a constantly advancing state of civilization, plays a part in the fancies of those who are wondering about the origin of the Nahuatl tribes of Anahuac.
The distant home of which they all preserved the legend under one name or another, one of which was Aztlan, the musical title given it by the Mexicans, was, perhaps, Atlantis, the broad and mighty realm where mankind in its childhood lived for generations in tranquillity and happiness. Huehue-Tlapallan, Aztlan, Atlantis, these names represent the universal tradition of this early home. The world before the Deluge, the Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, Olympus, Asgard,—all these are but different terms to express the vague vision in men's minds of a happy past. If the theory of Atlantis could be true, these were not mere visions but traditions preserving a consistent recollection of real historical events, of a populous and mighty cradle of nations which peopled the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, the Amazon, and the Pacific coasts of South America, as well as the older world.
Atlantis, according to the story, perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which the whole island sank into the ocean with nearly all its inhabitants. Only a few persons escaped in ships and rafts to lands east and west of the catastrophe. Each of these separate survivors became, in the legend of his descendants, the solitary Noah or Coxcox of a tradition representing the destruction of an entire world. The Nahuatl legend helps out the theory of Atlantis to willing minds. The Noah of the Mexican tribes was Coxcox, who, with his wife Xochiquetzal, alone escaped the deluge. They took refuge in the hollow trunk of a cypress (ahuehuete), which floated upon the water, and stopped at last on top of a mountain of Culhuacan. They had many children, but all of them were dumb. The great spirit took pity on them, and sent a dove, who hastened to teach them to speak. Fifteen of the children succeeded in grasping the power of speech, and from these the Toltecs and Aztecs are descended.
Another account describes a deluge in which men perished and were changed to fish; the earth disappeared, and the highest mountain tops were covered with water. But before this happened, one of the Nahua gods, called Tezcatlipoca, spoke to a man named Nata and his wife Nana, saying: "Do not busy yourselves any longer making pulque, but hollow out for yourselves a large boat of an ahuehuete tree, and make your home in it when you see the waters rising to the sky." The Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, has conceived that after the dispersion of the human race, which succeeded the attempt to build the Tower of Babel, seven Toltecs reached America, and became the parents of that race. Thus having learned of the Tower of Babel from his Catholic instructors, Ixtlilxochitl skilfully pieces the Hebrew legend upon the Toltec fabric.
The friends of the Atlantis theory in like manner seize upon the universal fable of the deluge to weave into their tissue. It remains for every reader to decide for himself whether to regard these theories as the airy fabric of a vision, or made up out of the whole cloth.