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.

[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,