THE PROBLEMS OF ARCHEOLOGY 531 



to fill the large gaps which tradition, defective and dependent on 

 chance as it is, has left. 



About the middle of the sixteenth century appeared the great 

 work of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, an encyclopedia of the 

 traditional knowledge possessed by the old inhabitants o'f the 

 capital of Mexico, written down from the lips of the natives and 

 in their own language. To about the same time belong the notes 

 of Fray Toribio de Benavente, who called himself by a Mexican 

 name, Motolinia, "the poor man." These, while not nearly so ex- 

 tensive or so thorough as Sahagun's, and written in Spanish by 

 a Spanish monk, have an importance of their own; living far from 

 the capital, Padre Motolinia knew and described conditions pre- 

 vailing in a much wider region. The original work of Sahagun 

 disappeared in the archives of the Consejo de Indias, but copies 

 of the Spanish translation existed in the libraries of the Francis- 

 can houses. These, as well as the book of Motolinia and other 

 sources, were recast by Torquemada and others according to the 

 taste and the interests of their own times, until Clavigero brought 

 together all the antiquities of Mexico in a cleverly written book 

 which formed the main authority of Humboldt and his successors. 

 That we have now got far beyond the diluted, frequently inexact 

 or actually distorted idea given by this author is due not only to 

 our having gone back to the real old sources, which have come 

 to light since his time, but also to the elucidations which arche- 

 ology furnishes. The meritorious publications of Lord Kings- 

 borough made possible the real study of the Mexican hieroglyphs, 

 as it was first attempted by Dr. Antonio Penafiel. The descrip- 

 tions and drawings of the Sahagun manuscript taught us to know 

 the figures of the gods; and by their aid we are able also to iden- 

 tify the stone images and the small clay figures which the old 

 Mexican collections contain in such numbers. Finally, both through 

 them and through the interpretations appended to the Codex Tel- 

 leriano-Remensis and the Vatican Codex 3738, we are able to de- 

 cipher the pictorial representations of the manuscripts of the Codex 

 Borgia group and the Mexican picture-writing in the narrower 

 sense, and so to secure a safe basis for studying the religious and 

 festival tradition of the Mexicans. 



Just as here archeology and history supplement each other, 

 so recent observations have shown that the descriptive ethnology 

 which appeals to surviving representatives of old tribes has need 

 to keep archeological facts before its eyes during the progress 

 of its researches. A few years ago expeditions were sent out by 

 one of the great American museums into the Sierra Madre of north- 

 western Mexico, under the leadership of the explorer Karl Lum- 

 holtz. The undertaking was successful in more than one respect. 



