X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 369 



the Rio Negro on the Atlantic side. The flat-head form, so 

 common from the Columbia estuary to Peru, is found amongst 

 the broad-faced Huaxtecs, their near relations the Maya-Quiches, 

 and the Nahuatlans. It was also in use amongst the extinct 

 Cebunys of Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica, and the 



T*t- _ 



so-called "Toltecs," that is, the people of Tollan "Toitecs" 

 (Tula), who first founded a civilised state on the 

 Mexican table-land (6th and yth centuries A.D.), and whose name 

 afterwards became associated with every ancient monument 

 throughout Central America. On this "Toltec question" the 

 most contradictory theories are current, and while some hold 

 that the Toltecs were a great and powerful nation, who after 

 the overthrow of their empire migrated southwards, everywhere 

 spreading their culture throughout Central America, others regard 

 their empire as ' { fabulous," and the Toltecs themselves as a 

 myth, or at all events " nothing more than a sept of the 

 Nahuas themselves, the ancestors of those Mexicans who built 

 Tenochtitlan," i.e. the present city of Mexico. A third view, 

 that of Dr Valentini, that the Toltecs were not Nahuas but 

 Mayas, is now supported both by E. P. Dieseldorf 1 and by 

 Dr Forstermann 2 . It is argued that the Mayas formerly ranged 

 north to lat. 23 N., but that all were driven south by Aztec 

 tribes from the north and west, the Huaxtecs of Vera Cruz alone 

 excepted. Tula and Cholula were Maya settlements, and their 

 culture generally was adopted by the Aztecs, whence the similarity 

 between the two in many points. 



On the North-west Pacific Coast the same ethnical inter- 

 minglings recur, and Dr Franz Boas 3 here distin- 

 guishes as many as four types, the Northern (Tsim- North-wes 



-west 



shian and others), the Kwakiutl, the Harrison Lake, Coast In <*ians 



' . Variable. 



and the inland Salishan (Flat-heads, Shuswaps, c.). 

 All are round-headed, but while the Tsimshians are of medium 

 height, with low, concave nose, very large head, and enormously 

 broad face, exceeding the average for North America by 6 mm., 



1 Bastian- Festschrift, 1896 (Who were the Toltecs?}. 

 ! Globus, LXX. No. 3. 



The Social Organization etc. of the Kwakiutl Indians, Washington, 1897, 

 p. 321 sq. 



K. 24 



