A PAPER ON NEW MEXICO. 691 



classed together as the Pueblo Indians, or more properly the Indians of the 

 pueblos, that the history of New Mexico commences. 



Cabeza de Vaca, the first European who visited New Mexican territory, 

 found it in the possession of communities who were very different from the no- 

 madic tribes further east, who lived in substantial houses, cultivated the soil, raised 

 cattle, spun cotton, and were in many respects like the followers of Montezuma 

 at the south. They were comparatively an oasis amid the desert of ignorant 

 tribes that stretched about them either way. De Vaca had seen no grain through- 

 out all Texas, but so soon as he reached New Mexico he found fields of corn, 

 beans, pumpkins and calabasas ; speaks of annole root used for soap, of the in- 

 habitants wearing shoes of leather, etc.; certainly a creditable degree of .civiliza- 

 tion. 



To-day, archseologically considered, the ancient races are generally classed 

 together as Aztecs— so named from Aztlan, the country of the Gulf of California, 

 from which the Aztecs came. In reality there were several tribes, the most im- 

 portant of which were the Toultecs or Toltecs, the Acolhues, and the Aztecs, 

 who at different periods migrated from their old homes and settled in the fertile 

 portions of what is now Mexico. 



The Toltecs left their home in the northwest at Huehuetlapallan, in the year 

 I Tecpatl, which is held by some to be 596, by some 594 A. D. They traveled 

 southward for about a century, living a nomadic life, and remaining but a few 

 years in a place. According to Ysidro R. Gondra they after these wanderings 

 settled, and founded a city not far from the piesent site of Mexico named Tolam 

 or Tula, which became the capital of their country. 



Between these and the Acolhuans came the Chichimecas, who were more 

 barbarous, and by some are supposed to be the cliff-dwellers, as they built no 

 houses but lived in caves. 



Afterwards came the Acolhues from Tinoacolhuacan, which was near Ama- 

 quemecan, the home of the Chichimecas. Their princes married the daughters of 

 the king of the latter, Xolotl, and for a time ruled the Mexico country. 



The Aztecs left Aztlan, according to Gondra, in 1064; to Baron Von Hum- 

 boldt, 1038; to Clavigero, 1170. The latter omits in his accounts two Mexican . 

 centuries, or 104 years— a Mexican century consisting of fifty-two years — which 

 probably accounts for the wide difference in the statements of the historians. 

 Their journeyings were most interesting. They at length reached the Casas 

 Grandesin Chihuahua, where is a large communistic building still remaining, three 

 stories in height, with the entrance as in the New Mexico pueblos, on the second 

 floor, which is reached as is theirs, by ladders, 



, The quite celebrated sheet of hieroglyphics mentioned by Careri represents 

 the travels of the Aztecs from Aztlan to Chapultepec. It was a piece of maguey 

 paper thirty-three inches by twenty-one. In hieroglyphics were depicted a flood, 

 in which a dove was seen, but only one man and one woman were saved. Their 

 march is described "from the place of flamingoes," " through the place of grot- 

 toes," elc; till at length they arrived at Chapultepec in 1245, where the legend 



