I 



*l 



i. 



228 NEW TEACKS IN NORTH AMEEIOA 



V 



Rio CoiTalitos and its lake, tlie Laguna de Guzman^ tliat I feel 

 convinced the Casas Grandes on this stream were built by a 

 colony from thence, and that the people now occupying it 



were quite right when they told Mr. Bartlett that the big 

 houses were built by Montezuma's people^ who came there 

 from the north. . 



Thus it is that the town-building Indians of New Mexico, 

 not haying any record of their former emigration from Old 

 Mexico, have introduced the worship of Montezuma and a 

 state of civilisation quite unknown in I^orth America, and 

 yet affirm in many oft-repeated traditions that they came 

 from the north — the head-waters of the Rio Grande, 



They are right as far as they go, but they seem to me to 

 have misled every authority I have met with on the subject, 

 some of whom have expended much ingenious argument in 

 trying to prove that they came from the north-western part 

 of the continent (perhaps originally from Kamtschatka), that 

 they crossed a region occupying the upper basin of the 

 Colorado, inhospitable enough to repel any colonists under 

 the sun, and that their town building and IVIontezuma 

 ■worship were of indigenous growth, founded by that great 



emperor himself. 



This is certain, viz., that as one community claims the 

 . head of the Eio Grande as the birthplace of the great king, 

 another, some district in its own part of the country, and 

 so on, there is no reliance whatever to be placed on any such 

 attempts at local exaltation ; but that these people are an off- 

 shoot of the race which, under the name of Aatec, overspread 

 Mexico previously to the invasion of the Spaniards, there is, 

 I think, very little doubt. 



As late as the end of the sixteenth century all or nearly 

 all the ruins scattered throughout the country, besides many 



