[830] Archæol. Tour, 253.
[831] Archæol. Tour, 7. Sahagún identifies the Toltecs with the “giants,” and if these were the degraded descendants of the followers of Votan, Sahagún thus earlier established the same identity.
[832] Archæol. Tour, 191. The fact that the names which we associate with the Toltecs are Nahua, only means that Nahua writers have transmitted them, as Bandelier thinks. Cf. also Bandelier’s citation in the Peabody Mus. Reports, vol. ii. 388, where he speaks of our information regarding the Toltecs as “limited and obscure.” He thinks it beyond question that they were Nahuas; and the fact that their division of time corresponds with the system found in Yucatan, Guatemala, etc., with other evidences of myths and legends, leads him to believe that the aborigines of more southern regions were, if not descendants, at least of the same stock with the Toltecs, and that we are justified in studying them to learn what the Toltecs were. He finds that Veytia, in his account of the Toltecs, beside depending on Sahagún and Torquemada, finds a chief source in Ixtlilxochitl, and locates Huehue-Tlapallan in the north; and Veytia’s statements reappear in Clavigero.
The best narratives of the Toltec history are those in Veytia, Historia Antigua de Méjico (Mexico, 1806); Brasseur’s Hist. Nations Civilisées (vol. i.), and his introduction to his Popul Vuh; and Bancroft (v. ch. 3 and 4): but we must look to Ixtlilxochitl, Torquemada, Sahagún, and the others, if we wish to study the sources. In such a study we shall encounter vexatious problems enough. It is practically impossible to arrange chronologically what Ixtlilxochitl says that he got from the picture-writings which he interpreted. Bancroft (v. 209) does the best he can to give it a forced perspicuity. Wilson (Prehisoric Man, i. 245) not inaptly says: “The history of the Toltecs and their ruined edifices stands on the border line of romance and fable, like that of the ruined builders of Carnac and Avebury.”
[833] Short (page 255) points out that Bancroft unadvisedly looks upon these Chichimecs as of Nahua stock, according to the common belief. Short thinks that Pimentel (Lenguas indigenas de México, published in 1862) has conclusively shown that the Chichimecs did not originally speak the Nahua tongue, but subsequently adopted it. Short (page 256) thinks, after collating the evidence, that it is impossible to determine whence or how they came to Anáhuac.
[834] Bancroft, v. 292, gives the different views. Cf. Kirk in Prescott, i. 16.
[835] These events are usually one thing or another, according to the original source which you accept, as Bancroft shows (v. 303). The story of the text is as good as any, and is in the main borne out by the other narratives.
[836] Bancroft, v. 308. Cf., on the arrival of the Mexicans in the valley, Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Reports, ii. 398) and his references.
[837] Prescott, i., introduction ch. 6, tells the story of their golden age.
[838] Cf. the map in Lucien Biart’s Les Aztèques (Paris, 1885). Prescott says the maps in Clavigero, Lopez, and Robertson defy “equally topography and history.” Cf. note on plans of the city and valley in Vol. II. pp. 364, 369, 374, to which may be added, as showing diversified views, those in Stevens’s Herrera (London, 1740), vol. ii.; Bordone’s Libro (1528); Icazbalceta’s Coll. de docs., i. 390; and the Eng. translation of Cortes’ despatches, 333.