[803] Short (p. 248) points out that the linguistic researches of Orozco y Berra (Geografía de las Lenguas de México, 1-76) seem to confirm this.
[804] See p. 158.
[805] Kirk says (Prescott’s Mexico): “Confusion arises from the name of Chichimec, originally that of a single tribe, and subsequently of its many offshoots, being also used to designate successive hordes of whatever race.” Some have seen in the Waiknas of the Mosquito Coast, and in the Caribs generally, descendants of these Chichimecs who have kept to their old social level. The Caribs, on other authority, came originally from the stock of the Tupis and Guaranis, who occupied the region south of the Amazon, and in Columbus’s time they were scattered in Darien and Honduras, along the northern regions of South America, and in some of the Antilles (Von Martius, Beiträge sur Ethnographie and Sprachenkunde Amerika’s zumal Brasilìens, Leipzig, 1867). Bancroft (ii. 126) gives the etymology of Chichimec and of other tribal designations. Cf. Buschmann’s Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen (Berlin, 1853). Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, 200; Peabody Mus. Repts., ii. 393) says he fails to discover in the word anything more than a general term, signifying a savage, a hunter, or a warrior, Chichimecos, applied to roving tribes. Brasseur says that Mexican tradition applies the term Chichimecs generically to the first occupants of the New World.
[806] These names wander and exchange consonants provokingly, and it may be enough to give alphabetically a list comprised of those in Prichard (Nat. Hist. Man) and Orozco y Berra (Geografía), with some help from Gallatin in the American Ethno. Soc. Trans., i., and other groupers of the ethnological traces: Chinantecs, Chatinos, Cohuixcas, Chontales, Colhuas, Coras, Cuitatecs, Chichimecs, Cuextecas (Guaxtecas, Huastecs), Mazetecs, Mazahuas, Michinacas, Miztecs, Nonohualcas, Olmecs, Otomís, Papabucos, Quinames, Soltecos, Totonacs, Triquis, Tepanecs, Tarascos, Xicalancas, Zapotecs. It is not unlikely the same people may be here mentioned under different names. The diversity of opinions respecting the future of these vapory existences is seen in Bancroft’s collation (v. 202). Torquemada tells us about all that we know of the Totonacs, who claim to have been the builders of Teotihuacan. Bancroft gives references (v. 204) for the Totonacs, (p. 206) for the Otomís, (p. 207) for the Mistecs and Zapotecs, and (p. 208) for the Huastecs.
[807] Bancroft, ii. 97. Brasseur, Nat. Civ., i. ch. 4, and his Palenqué ch. 3.
[808] Called Huehue-Tlapallan, as Brasseur would have it.
[809] Following Motolinía and other early writers.
[810] Native Races, v. 219, 616.
[811] Bandelier, Archæol. Tour, 253.
[812] Kingsborough, ix. 206, 460; Veytia, i. 155, 163. Of the Quetzalcoatl myth there are references elsewhere. P. J. J. Valentini has made a study of the early Mexican ethnology and history in his “Olmecas and Tultecas,” translated by S. Salisbury, Jr., and printed in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Oct. 21, 1882. On Quetzalcoatl in Cholula, see Torquemada, translated in Bancroft, iii. 258.