INTRODUCTION 



The geographical position of the Gulf states of Mexico gives them 

 a special significance in comparative studies of the prehistoric culture 

 of the mound builders of the lower Mississippi valley and that of the 

 Maya and other tribes of the far south. Notwithstanding- this fact 

 very little has been contributed in recent years " to our knowledge of 

 the archeology of this interesting region, and comparatively little is 

 known of the culture of the prehistoric races that inhabited it. With 

 hopes of increasing this knowledge the author was directed in the 

 winter of 1905 to visit portions of these states for field work under the 

 auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Some of the general residts 

 of this visit are published in the following pages. 



When Hernando Cortes diseml)arked his little army of iiiNasioTi in 

 what is now the state of Vera Cruz he found it inhabited by aborigines 

 of comparative!}' high culture. The inhabitants called themselves 

 Totonac, and their territorj' was known as Totonacapan. The con- 

 queror was not long in discovering that the Totonac were subjects 

 of Moctezuma, a great ruler in the mountains to whom thej' unwill- 

 ingly paid tribute, and that they chafed under his yoke. Shortly 

 after landing Cortes visited their settlements at Quiauistlan and Cem- 

 poalan, near the former of which he laid the foundation of a city that 

 he called Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, the Rich Town of the True Cross. 

 He was well received by the inhabitants of these cities, making friends 

 with those above mentioned and thirty other dependent pueblos whose 

 aid greatl}' facilitated his march to the interior of Mexico. But this 

 friendship of the natives of Cempoalan and their settlements for Cortes 

 was not shared by all the Indians of the Mexican Gulf coast. In the 

 valleys of the Panuco and Tamesi rivers, that is, in what is now northern 

 Vera Cruz and southern Tamaulipas, dwelt the so-called Huaxtec, a 

 people linguistically allied to the Maya and culturally similar to the 

 Totonac. They had populous towns, having reached a high degree 

 of culture, and they had never been concjuered b}' the Aztec. At 

 first they I'esisted the Spaniards, but subsequently were subdued by 

 Cortes and their main city, called Chila, situated on the Panuco ri\er 

 about 15 miles from its mouth, and certain other settlements on 



" A valuable summary of what is known of the ruins in these states may be found in Bancroft. 

 The Native Race-*, iv (Antiquities), San rrancis<'o, 1882. Mr Hugo Fink, in Smithwviaii lieport for 

 1S70, p. 373-37.5. refers to the abtindancu of antiquities in Vera Cruz. 



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