NO. 1 CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA 
9 
that the Toltec-Tarascan Cultures from the Michoacan- Jalisco area 
made an impression on the culture of northern Durango at this time. 
Lister (1955, p. 2) concluded that this was a Toltec horizon in west- 
ern Mexico, marked by the appearance of such items as the bow and 
arrow, new calendar systems, metal, and new gods. 
A recent seminar study of the prehistory of the North American 
southwest (Jennings et al., 1956, pp. 91-98) noted strong Tula- 
Mazapan ties in the material culture residue found at the Hohokam 
center of Snaketown, as well as in Anasazi Chaco Canyon ruins 
such as Pueblo Bonito. Several scholars have commented on possible 
connections between the northern Mexican Rio Tunal Phase of the 
Chalchihuites Culture of Durango and the Colonial and Sedentary 
Periods of the Hohokam Culture at Snaketown, Ariz. (Johnson, A. S., 
1958, pp. 126-130). Recently, the Late Amapa Culture materials 
from Nayarit, located south of the southwest corner of northern 
Mexico, have been compared with certain Hohokam material traits 
believed to have been traded northward some 1,200 airline kilometers 
in the Tula-Mazapan Period (Meighan, 1959, pp. 1-7 ; 1960) . 
It would appear that at this time some of the inhabitants of 
northern Mexico were introduced to the Quetzalcoatl cult and such 
items as copper bells, shell trumpets, ball courts, and certain types 
of cloisonne decoration. Centers of population such as Zape, Casas 
Grandes, Boquillas, and other sites located in the southwest corner of 
the area began to grow. 
Archeological information from these centers suggests that north- 
ern Mexico, as well as southwestern and southeastern portions of 
the United States, formed a northern frontier to which trading 
groups were sent by the Tula-Mazapan Culture center in an economic 
conquest effort. This would not necessitate large armies or migrating 
colonists, but rather contact could have been made by small groups 
of merchants in areas where there were comparatively large rural 
populations. In addition, such areas could have provided an abundance 
of salt, alum, incense, raw copper, and other materials that the home 
culture desired. Sahagun's description of merchant traders or "pochte- 
cas" of Aztec times suggests that this economic mechanism was 
deeply rooted in Mesoamerican culture. 
Such exploitation may have been expedited by the introduction of 
a new religious cult which, if accepted by a recipient culture, would 
give a small group of strangers a priestly position and consequent 
control over an exploitable population in order to form city-states to 
be used as collecting centers. The amount of acceptance and change of 
local cultures in contact would depend on timing as well as on the 
