NOTES. 247 



mars, has left a very curious account of the cosmogony 

 of Anahuac. (Marieta, Tercera Parte de la Historia 

 Eclesiastica, 1596, pag. 48.) The god Citlalatonac 

 was united to the goddess Citlalicue : the fruit of this 

 union was a stone, a flint, tecpatl, which fell on the 

 Earth, near a place called the Seven Caverns, Chico- 

 moztotl. This betylium is found among the hierogly" 

 phics of the years and the days. It was an aerolite, a 

 divine stone, a teotetl, which, in breaking, produced 

 1600 subaltern divinities, inhabitants of the Earth, 

 who, finding themselves without slaves to serve them, 

 obtained from their mother the permission of creating 

 men. Citlalicue ordered Xolotl, one of the gods of the 

 Earth, to go down to hell in search of a bone ; and 

 this bone, broken like the aerolite, or tecpatl, gave birth 

 to mankind. (Torquemada, T. ii, p. 82.) According 

 to this same tradition, the first man, Iztacmircuatl, or 

 Iztacmixcohuatl, dwelt at Chicomoztotl, where he at- 

 tained a very advanced age. His wife, llancueitl, bore 

 him six sons, from whom descended all the nations of 

 Anahuac. Xelhua, the oldest of his sons, peopled 

 Quauhyuechola, Tzoca, Epatlan, Teopantla, Tehua- 

 can, Cozcatla, and Totetlan. Tenuch, the second, was 

 the father of the Tenuches, or Mexicans properly so 

 called. Ulmecatl and Xicalancatl, from whom de- 

 scended the Olmecks and the Xicalancks, peopled the 

 environs of Tlascala, Cuatzacualco, and Totomihua- 

 can. Mixtecat I and Otomitl became the chiefs of the 

 Mixtecks and the Otomites. (Torquemada, T. i, p. 34 

 and 35.) This genealogy of the nations reminds us of 

 the ethnographical table of Moses ; and it is so much 

 the more remarkable, as the Toltecks and the Aztecks, 

 among whom this tradition is found, considered them- 

 selves as belonging to a privileged race, very different 



