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Page 5
What country and what sun nourished this worship and gave origin to this
great people is as uncertain as all other facts of the early American
history. They came from the East, the tradition says; they landed, it
seems certain, at Panuco, near the present port of Tampico, from seven
barks or ships. Other traditions represent them as accompanied by sages
with venerable beards and flowing robes. They finally settled somewhere
on the coast between Campeachy and the river Tabasco, and founded the
ancient city of Xicalanco. Their chief, who in the reverent affection of
the nation became afterwards their Deity, was Quetzalcohuatl. The
myths which surround his name reveal to us a wise legislator and noble
benefactor. He is seen instructing them in the arts, in religion, and
finally in agriculture, by introducing the cultivation of maize and
other cereals.
Whether he had become the object of envy among the people, or whether he
felt that his work was done, it appears, so far as the vague traditions
can be understood, that he at length determined to return to the unknown
country whence he had come. He gathered his brethren around him and thus
addressed them:--"Know," said he, "that the Lord your God commands you
to dwell in these lands which he hath subjected to you this day. For
him, he returns whence he has come. But he goes only to return later;
for he will visit you again, when the time shall have arrived in which
the world shall have come to an end.[C] In the mean while wait, ye
others, in these countries, with the hope of seeing him again!...Thus
farewell, while we depart with our God!"
[Footnote C: This is the expression of the legend, and certainly points
to the ideas of the Eastern hemisphere. The coincidence with the legends
of Hiawatha and the Finnish Wainamoinen will be remarked.--EDD.]
We will not follow the interesting narrative of the destruction of
the ancient empire of the Votanides by the Nahoas or Toltecs; nor the
account of the dispersion of these latter over Guatemala, Yucatan, and
even among the mountains of California. This last revolution presents
the first precise date which scholars have yet been able to assign to
early American history; it probably occurred A.D. 174.
With the account of the invasion of the Aztec plateau by the Chichemees,
a barbarian tribe of the Toltec family, in the middle of the seventh
century, or of the establishment of the Toltec monarchy in Anahuac, we
will not delay our readers, as these events bring us down to the period
of authentic history, on which we have information from other sources.
"From the moment," says M. de Bourbourg, "in which we see the supremacy
of the cities of Culhuacan and Tollan rise over the cities of the Aztec
plateau dates the true history of this country; but this history is, to
speak the truth, only a grand episode in the annals of this powerful
race [the Toltec]. In the course of a wandering of seven or eight
centuries, it overturns and destroys everything in order to build on the
ruins of ancient kingdoms its own civilization, science, and arts; it
traverses all the provinces of Mexico and Central America, leaving
everywhere traces of its superstitions, its culture, and its laws,
sowing on its passage kingdoms and cities, whose names are forgotten
to-day, but whose mysterious memorials are found again in the monuments
scattered under the forest vegetation of ages and in the different
languages of all the peoples of these countries."--Vol. I. p. 209.
M. de Bourbourg fitly closes his interesting volumes--from which we have
here given a r�sum� of only the opening chapters--with a remarkable
prophecy, made in the court of Yucatan by the high-priest of Mani.
According to the tradition, this pontiff, inspired by a supernatural
vision, betook himself to Mayapan and thus addressed the king:--"At the
end of the Third Period, [A.D. 1518-1542,] a nation, white and bearded,
shall come from the side where the sun rises, bearing with it a sign,
[the cross,] which shall make all the Gods to flee and fall. This nation
shall rule all the earth, giving peace to those who shall receive it in
peace and who will abandon vain images to adore an only God, whom these
bearded men adore." (Vol. II. p. 594.) M. de Bourbourg does not vouch
for the pure origin of the tradition, but suggests that the wise men of
the Quiche empire already saw that it contained in itself the elements
of destruction, and had already heard rumors of the wonderful white race
which was soon to sweep away the last vestiges of the Central American
governments.
[NOTE.--We cannot but think that our correspondent receives the
traditions reported by M. de Bourbourg with too undoubting faith. Some
of them seem to us to bear plain marks of an origin subsequent to the
Spanish Conquest, and we suspect that others have been considerably
modified in passing through the lively fancy of the Abb�. Even
Ixtlilxochitl, who, as a native and of royal race, must have had access
to all sources of information, and who had the advantage of writing more
than three centuries ago, seems to have looked on the native traditions
as extremely untrustworthy. See Prescott's _History of the Conquest of
Mexico_, Vol. I. p. 12, note.--EDD.]
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