[813] This wide difference covers intervening centuries, each of which has its advocates. Short carries their coming back to the fourth century (p. 245), but Clavigero’s date of a.d. 544 is more commonly followed. Veytia makes it the seventh century. Bancroft (v. 211, 214) notes the diversity of views.
[814] Bancroft (v. 322) in a long note collates the different statements of the routes and sojourns in this migration. Cf. Short, p. 259.
[815] Cf. Kirk in Prescott, i. 10. It must be confessed that it is rather in the domain of myth than of history that we must place all that has been written about the scattering of the Toltec people at Babel (Bancroft, v. 19), and their finally reaching Huehue-Tlapallan, wherever that may have been. The view long prevalent about this American starting-point of the Nahuas, Toltecs, or whatever designation may be given to the beginners of this myth and history, placed it in California, but some later writers think it worth while to give it a geographical existence in the Mississippi Valley, and to associate it in some vague way with the moundbuilders and their works (Short, No. Amer. of Antiq., 251, 253). There is some confusion between Huehue-Tlapallan of this story and the Tlapallan noticed in the Spanish conquest time, which was somewhere in the Usumacinta region, and if we accept Tollan, Tullan, or Tula as a form of the name, the confusion is much increased (Short, pp. 217-220). Bancroft (v. 214) says there is no sufficient data to determine the position of Huehue-Tlapallan, but he thinks “the evidence, while not conclusive, favors the south rather than the north” (p. 216). The truth is, about these conflicting views of a northern or southern origin, pretty much as Kirk puts it (Prescott, i. 18): “All that can be said with confidence is, that neither of the opposing theories rests on a secure and sufficient basis.” The situation of Huehue-Tlapallan and Aztlan is very likely one and the same question, as looking to what was the starting-point of all the Nahua migrations, extending over a thousand years.
[816] Bancroft, v. 217.
[817] Torquemada, Boturini, Humboldt, Brasseur, Charnay, Short, etc.
[818] Nat. Races (v. 222).
[819] In support of the California location, Buschmann, in his Ueber die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nördlichen Mexico und höheren Amerikanischen Norden (Berlin, 1854), finds traces of the Mexican tongue in those of the recent California Indians. Linguistic resemblances to the Aztec, even so far north as Nootka, have been traced, but later philologists deny the inferences of relationship drawn from such similarity (Bancroft, iii. p. 612). The linguistic confusion in aboriginal California is so great that there is a wide field for tracing likenesses (Ibid. iii. 635). In the California State Mining Bureau, Bulletin no. 1 (Sacramento, 1888), Winslow Anderson gives a description of some desiccated human remains found in a sealed cave, which are supposed to be Aztec. There are slight resemblances to the Aztec in the Shoshone group of languages (Bancroft, iii. 660), and the same author arranges all that has been said to connect the Mexican tongue with those of New Mexico and neighboring regions (iii. 664). Buschmann, who has given particular attention to tracing the Aztec connections at the north, finds nothing to warrant anything more than casual admixtures with other stocks (Die Lautveränderung Aztekischer Wörter, Berlin, 1855, and Die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprachen, Berlin, 1859). See Short (p. 487) for a summary.
[820] Bancroft (v. 305) cites the diverse views; so does Short to some extent (pp. 246, 258, etc.). Cf. Brinton’s Address on “Where was Aztlan?” p. 6; Short, 486, 490; Nadaillac, 284; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. 327.
Brinton (Myths of the New World, etc., 89; Amer. Hero. Myths, 92) holds that Aztlan is a name wholly of mythical purport, which it would be vain to seek on the terrestrial globe. This cradle region of the Nahuas sometimes appears as the Seven Caves (Chicomoztoc), and Duran places them “in Teoculuacan, otherwise called Aztlan, a country toward the north and connected with Florida.” The Seven Caves were explained by Sahagún as a valley, by Clavigero as a city, by Schoolcraft and others as simply seven boats in which the first comers came from Asia; Brasseur makes them and Aztlan the same; others find them to be the seven cities of Cibola,—so enumerates Brinton (Myths, 227), who thinks that the seven divisions of the Nahuas sprung from the belief in the Seven Caves, and had in reality no existence.
Gallatin has followed out the series of migrations in the Amer. Ethnol. Soc. Trans., i. 162. Dawson, Fossil Men (ch. 3), gives his comprehensive views of the main directions of these early migrations. Brasseur follows the Nahuas (Popul Vuh, introd., sect. ix.). Winchell (Pre-Adamites) thinks the general tendency was from north to south. Morgan finds the origin of the Mexican tribes in New Mexico and in the San Juan Valley (Peabody Mus. Rept., xii. 553. Cf. his article in the North Am. Rev., Oct., 1869). Humboldt (Views of Nature, 207) touches the Aztec wanderings.