1877.] 5G7 fKane. 



tending whicli should form the future France ; when, — less effectually as it 

 has proved, because the ethnological differences involved were greater, — the 

 different populations of Spain and Aragon, Murcia and Granada Avere fight- 

 ing out whether they should absorb or be absorbed in the kingdoms of 

 Castile and Leou, the different native tribes of Mexico were at tlie same 

 work in their own way. 



They were very numerous. Geiger says, "There were at the time of 

 the conquest and there are now, more than thirty different races, speaking 

 as many different languages and marked by distinctive peculiarities." (p, 

 317.) 



Our standard authority Humboldt's remarks are, "The great variety of 

 languages still spoken in the Kingdom of Mexico proves a great variety of 

 races and origin. The number of these languages exceeds twenty, of 

 which fourteen have grammars and dictionaries tolerably complete. * * * 

 It appears that the most part of these languages, far from being dialects of 

 the same (as some authors have falsely advanced), are at least as different 

 from one another as the Greek and the German, or the French and the 

 Polish." 



Humboldt mentions the Mexican, Otomite, Tarasco, Zapoteco, Mis'eco, 

 Maya, Totonac, Popolouc, Matlazing, Huastec, Mixed, Caquiquel, Tarau- 

 mar, Tepehuan and Cora. To tliese, the Mazahua, Huavc, Serrano, — and, 

 well, say a dozen others may safely be added. How many of these are 

 derived from the primitive Nahuatl, neither this, nor in fact any other 

 abstruse philological question, am I qualified to discuss. Enough here that 

 my own observations lead me to place the number of separate tribal 

 societies very high. But at the date of the Spanish conquest they were in 

 a fair way of coalescing. With various ins and outs, and ups and 

 downs, there can be no doubt that a process of consolidation was going on 

 in Mexico through the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, corres- 

 ponding to that observable in Europe during the same period. 



The Toltecans evidently had absorbed manj- tribes before they were suc- 

 ceeded by the Chichimecas, whose own absorptions constituted the mon- 

 archy of Tezcuco. Tacuba or Tlacopan had a similar history. So had the 

 Aztec Kingdom or Empire, with whose history we are perhaps most 

 familiar, the one ruled by the Montezuraas. The original Aztecan divisions 

 of Tlaltelolcos and Tenuchcas are mentioned to the ti'aveler at this day, 

 when his guide points out the ground they severally occupied upon the site 

 of the present city of Mexico. These only united to form the Mexican 

 monarch jMu 1438. But by the beginning of the sixteenth century, Tlacopan, 

 Tezcoco and Aztecan Mexico were practically united in one Confederacy. 

 I cannot see how there is any room for question that the League had 

 become a single nation, powerful enough to absorb all minor ones — outside 

 of the Tarascos, and those Guastecos, who in Tamaulipas, under Cortina, 

 are giving Texas so much trouble at this time. There survived, it is true, 

 a few small independent nationalities. There was the priestly government 

 of Cholula, and the moderately warlike kingdom of Aculhuacan, and the 



