CENTRAL AMERICA 



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respectively known as the Nahuatlan and the Hnaxtecan; the former comprising the Aztecs 

 and the Pipils, and the latter the Mayas, Quiches, and Pocomans. The Nahuatlan group may 

 be regarded as characteristic of the Plateau of Mexico, or Anahuac, as it used to be called, 

 whereas the Hnaxtecan stock attains its main development in Yucatan and Guatemala. Curiously 

 enough, however, the typical Iluaxtecs are a Mexican people dwelling in the states of Vera 

 Cruz and Tamanlipas, while the Nalinatlan Pipils occur as far south as Nicaragua. 



Since it is the object of the present work to describe existing rather than exterminated 

 peoples, our mention of the Nahuatlan Aztecs musb be very brief. As the result of modern 

 researches, it appears that the Nahuatlan stock was an offshoot of the southern Shoshoneans 

 of North America, and that the Aztecs established their famous empire, whose capital was 

 Tenochtitlan (the modern city of Mexico), about the fifteenth century by the overthrow of the 

 earlier Chichimeca, who also belonged to the same stock. The fall of the Aztec Empire before 

 the Spanish conquerors in 1520 is a well-known historical fact; and it only remains to mention 

 that during its brief existence this empire was infamous for the hideous cruelty of its so-called 

 religious rites, in the celebration of which thousands of victims are said to have been 

 immolated at a time. Their religion, such as it was, appears to have been borrowed from the 

 Mayas; but, in accordance with the fierce Aztec nature, the gentle Maya deities became 

 transformed into the incarnation of demons. 



Passing bv still earlier tribes with the bare mention that the splendid ruins of Mitla attest 

 the high degree of civilisation of the pre-Aztec Zapotecs, another Mexican tribe, reference must 

 be made to the Seri Indians of the Sonora district of North-western Mexico, on account of their 

 being more savage than other tribes to the northward of the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. McGee, 

 who visited them in 1895, states that "most of their food is eaten raw, they have no domestic 

 animals save dogs, they are totally without agriculture, and their industrial arts are few and 

 rude." A greater contrast to the Aztec and Maya civilisations could scarcely be imagined! 



Although the Aztecs and their language have largely disappeared from the modern 

 representative of their ancient capital, the city of Merida, in Northern Yucatan, which stands 



Photo bij lltri' C. KodiUr. 



NATIVES OF PERU. 



