RELATIONS OF ARCHEOLOGY 515 



to-day, had more abundant sources for the formation of their his- 

 tory than did many of the nations of the Old World. Dating from 

 the very first years of colonial adminstration, we have several monks 

 who devoted themselves to writing it, such as Motolinia, Sahagun, 

 and Duran. Their method of work, as Acosta and Sahagun tell us, 

 was to gather around them all the Indians who had any particular 

 knowledge of the subject. Thes.e latter related to them the facts 

 as they had been verbally handed down from generation to gen- 

 eration; as the custom was in the sacred colleges called calmecac, 

 to form the history, making the pupils commit it to memory, so 

 that these should in their turn hand it on to the succeeding genera- 

 tion. 



Thus was it possible to write the history of the Aztecs in its exact- 

 ness of detail, beginning with their pilgrimage, until the arrival of 

 Cortes. Not only the first monks, but native writers as well, such as 

 Tezozomoc, Chimalpain, and Castillo (this latter wrote in Mexican 

 and must be regarded as an Indian), were the authors of important 

 chronicles. In some cases they were lineal descendants of the kings 

 themselves or of high personages, and so had at their disposal the 

 family traditions and what remained of the hieroglyphical archives. 

 The works, therefore, which they produced are of a most important 

 nature, such as those that Pomar and Ixtlilxochitl wrote on the 

 Kingdom of Texcoco, and Munoz Camargo on the Republic of 

 Tlaxcala. 



In local reports, such as those written by order of Philip II, and 

 which towards the end of the sixteenth century constitute a de- 

 tailed statistical work of New Spain, not possessed in those days 

 by the most enlightened nations of Europe, and in the chronicles of 

 the convents of different towns, historical facts of great importance, 

 gathered together by tradition, lay scattered. These facts, collected 

 by Burgoa for the Zapotecas, La Rea for the Michoacas, Pe"rez 

 Rivas for the Northern Provinces, Remesal for Chiapas, and others, 

 furnish us with valuable historical data. 



And yet, in spite of so many elements, our ancient history would 

 have been incomplete, had not archeology come to its aid. 



To begin with, the study of the hieroglyphical codices, as they 

 were deciphered step by step, has taught us much. The Band con- 

 taining the Aztec pilgrimage has now settled the number and 

 names of the wandering peoples, when and why they seceded, the 

 course of their journey, the settlement and defeat of the Mexicas at 

 Chapultepec and how they were later driven from Culhuacan : while 

 the map of this same pilgrimage, recently recovered by the Museum, 

 one of our oldest and most authenticated hieroglyphical paintings, 

 has fixed with great exactness the facts which preceded the founda- 

 tion of the City of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, even in its minutest detail. 



