32 Singing Valleys 



Doubtless it was these Nahua tribesmen, joined with some 

 of the Maya, who became the Toltecs of Tollan, that half- 

 mythical capital close to the present City of Mexico. The 

 Toltecs were already on the decline when another wave of 

 northern invaders, this time the "Crane People," entered the 

 Valley of Anahuac. These were the Aztecs. 



The legendary home of the Aztecs was Aztlan, "the Place 

 of Cranes," which their own historians, Tezogomac and Duran, 

 describe as "a country which we all know to be found to the 

 north and connected with Florida." They were fierce and 

 untiring. They poured down through Mexico absorbing what 

 they found of the older Mayan and Toltec cultures, and mak- 

 ing of these a civilization which became distinctly their own. 



And in Mexico they found corn. They took to it with the 

 hunger of men who have braved deserts and crossed seas. Ac- 

 cording to Prescott: 



The great staple of the continent was maize. It grew along the 

 valleys and up the steep sides of the Cordilleras to the high level 

 of the tablelands. The Aztecs were as curious in its preparation 

 and as well instructed in its manifold uses as the most experienced 

 New England housewife. From the stalks they derived a sweet 

 juice and a sugar little inferior to that from cane. 



The Aztecs paid faithful court to the maize-god, whom 

 they named Cinteotl, and whom in time they grew to think 

 of as a goddess. Statues of Cinteotl, with a towering square 

 headdress, and holding ears of corn in her hands, have been 

 found in many places throughout Mexico. The face is rather 

 reminiscent of Tenniel's illustrations of Alice's Duchess. 



But the greatest of all the gods of the Aztecs was Coatlicue, 

 the Earth Mother. Her they worshipped with a devotion ap- 

 proached only by that they paid to her son the god of war. 

 Of the twenty thousand human sacrifices that are computed 

 to have been offered annually in the temples of Mexico, it is 

 impossible to say how many were laid at the dragon feet of 

 Coatlicue in hopes that the stream of blood would increase 



