[1004] Bancroft, iv. 453, and references.
[1005] Bandelier (p. 235) is confident that it was built by an earlier people than the Nahuas.
[1006] Cf. Bandelier, p. 247. Short, p. 236.
[1007] Bancroft (v. 200) gives references on these points, and particular note may be taken of Veytia, i. 18, 155, 199; and Brasseur, Hist. Nations Civ. iv. 182. Cf. also Nadaillac, p. 351. Bandelier (Archæolog. Tour, 248, 249) favors the gradual growth theory, and collates early sources (p. 250). Bancroft (iv. 474) holds that we may feel very sure its erection dates back of the tenth, and perhaps of the seventh, century.
[1008] Bandelier’s idea (p. 254) is that as the Indians never repair a ruin, they abandoned this remaining mound after its disaster, and transplanted the worship of Quetzalcoatl to the new mound, since destroyed, while the old shrine was in time given to the new cult of the Rain-god.
[1009] As Bancroft thinks; but Bandelier says that it was not of this mound, but of the temple which stood where the modern convent stands, that this count was made. Arch. Tour, 242.
[1010] Storia Ant. del Messico, ii. 33.
[1011] Vues, i. 96 pl. iii., or pl. vii., viii. in folio ed.; Essai polit., 239. The later observers are: Dupaix (Antiq. Mex., and in Kingsborough, v. 218; with iv. pl. viii.). Bancroft remarks on the totally different aspects of Castañeda’s two drawings. Nebel, in his Viaje pintoresco y Arqueolójico sobre la república Mejicana, 1829-34 (Paris, 1839, folio), gave a description and a large colored drawing. Of the other visitors whose accounts add something to our knowledge, Bancroft (iv. 471) notes the following: J. R. Poinsett, Notes on Mexico (London, 1825). W. H. Bullock, Six Months in Mexico (Lond., 1825). H. G. Ward, Mexico in 1827 (Lond., 1828). Mark Beaufoy, Mex. Illustrations (Lond., 1828), with cuts. Charles Jos. Latrobe, Rambles in Mexico (Lond., 1836). Brantz Mayer, Mexico as it was (N. Y., 1854); Mexico, Aztec, etc. (Hartford, 1853); and in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, vi. 582. Waddy Thompson, Recoll. of Mexico (N. Y., 1847). E. B. Tylor, Anahuac (Lond., 1861), p. 274. A. S. Evans, Our Sister Republic (Hartford, 1870). Summaries later than Bancroft’s will be found in Short, p. 369, and Nadaillac, p. 350. Bancroft adds (iv. 471-2) a long list of second-hand describers.
[1012] It is illustrated with a map of the district of Cholula (p. 158), a detailed plan of the pyramid or mound (Humboldt is responsible for the former term) as it stands amid roads and fields (p. 230), and a fac-simile of an old map of the pueblo of Cholula (1581).
Bandelier speaks of the conservative tendencies of the native population of this region, giving a report that old native idols are still preserved and worshipped in caves, to which he could not induce the Indians to conduct him (p. 156); and that when he went to see the Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco, or some native pictures of the 16th century, representing the Conquest, and of the highest importance for its history, he was jealously allowed but one glance at them, and could not get another (Archæol. Tour, p. 123). He adds: “The difficulty attending the consultation of any documents in the hands of Indians is universal, and results from their superstitious regard for writings on paper. The bulk of the people watch with the utmost jealousy over their old papers.... They have a fear lest the power vested in an original may be transferred to a copy” (pp. 155-6).