Brinton.] ^dU [Sept. 2, 



escaping in sepai'ate colonies, carried the civilization of Tula to 

 the south, to Tabasco (Palenque), Yucatan, Guatemala and 

 Nicaragua. Quetzalcoatl, the last ruler of Tula, himself went 

 to the south-east, and reappears in Yucatan as the culture-hero 

 Cukulkan, the traditional founder of the Maya civilization. 



This, I say, is the current opinion about the Toltecs. It is 

 found in the works of Ixtlilxochitl, Veitia, Clavigero, Prescott, 

 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Orozco y Berra, and scores of other 

 reputable writers. The dispersion of the Toltecs has been 

 oflFered as the easy solution of the origin of the civilization not 

 only of Central America, but of New Mexico and the Missis- 

 sippi valley. * 



The opinion that I oppose to this, and which I hope to estab- 

 lish in this article, is as follows : 



Tula was merely one of the towns built and occupied by that 

 tribe of the Nahuas known as Azfeca or 3Iexica, 'whose tribal god 

 was Huitzilopochtli, and who finally settled at Mexico-Tenochti- 

 tlan (the present city of Mexico) ; its inhabitants were called 

 Toltecs, but there was never any such distinct tribe or nation- 

 ality ; they were merely the ancestors of this branch of the 

 Azteca, and when Tula was destroyed by civil and foreign wars, 

 these survivors removed to the valley of Mexico and became 

 merged with their kindred; they enjoyed no supremacy, either 

 in power or in the arts*; and the Toltec " empire " is a baseless 

 fable. What gave them their singular fame in later legend was 

 partly the tendency of the human mind to glorify the " good 

 old times " and to merge ancestors into divinities, and especially 

 the significance of the name Tula, " the Place of the Sun," lead- 

 ing to the confoimding and identification of a half-forgotten 

 legend with the ever-living light-and-darkness myth of the gods 

 Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. 



To support this view, let us inquire what we know about Tula 

 as an historic site. 



Its location is on one of the great ancient trails leading from 



*Since writing the above I have received from the Comte de Chareneey a reprint of his 

 article on Xibalba, in which he sets forth the theory of the late M. L. Angrand, that all 

 ancient American civilization was due to two "currents" of Toltecs, the western, 

 straight-headetl Toltecs, who entered Anahuac by land from the north-west, and the 

 eastern, flat-headed Toltecs, who came 1)y sea from Florida. It is to criticise such vague 

 theorizing that I have written this paper. 



