The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History. Hubert Howe Bancroft

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ many years of carrying out its threats, and in the meantime they and their descendants to the tenth generation might enjoy a golden and prosperous century. Again, the threatening planet did not rule their nation, but that of the giants, so that possibly it might do no great injury even to their descendants. He advised that some colonists be left here to people the country, become their vassals, and in time to turn upon their enemies and recover their native land and original power. These and other things did Hueman counsel, and they seemed good to the seven chiefs; so that after three years were passed, or eleven years from the time when they left Huehue Tlapallan, they started on their migration. The first stopping-place, about seventy leagues distant and reached in twelve days was Hueyxalan – 'great sandy' as Veytia interprets it – a place discovered by Cohuatzon where they remained four years. They next halted after a journey of twenty days at Xalisco, a country about a hundred leagues farther east – or as Veytia says west – near the seashore. They lived eight years in this land, which was discovered by Ziuhcohuatl. Other twenty days and hundred leagues took them to Chimalhuacan Atenco on the coast where there were certain islands, and here they dwelt five years. At the start they had taken a vow, under penalty of severe punishment, to have no intercourse with their wives for twenty-three years; but as the time was now expired they began here to increase and multiply. After the five years they resumed their journey eastward for eighteen days or eighty leagues to Toxpan, discovered by Mezotzin, where they lived for five years also. Quiyahuitztlan Anáhuac, discovered by Acapichtzin – was twenty days' journey or a hundred leagues east of Toxpan, also on the coast, with inlets so that they were obliged to pass in boats from one place to another. They remained here six years suffering great hardships. The next halting-place was Zacatlan, distant eighteen days or eighty leagues in a direction not stated. Chalcatzin was the discoverer, and during the first of their seven years' stay here – just fifty-two years, or a xiuhtlalpilli, after their wars began – a son was born to the chief, and named from the place Zacapantzin. At Totzapan, eighty leagues distance from Zacatlan, they lived six years, in the last of which a son named Totzapantzin was born to Cecatzin, who discovered this place. This was just fifty-two years after they left their native country. Twenty-eight days or one hundred and forty leagues brought them to Tepetla, Cohuatzon being the discoverer for the second time, where they remained seven years. At Mazatepec eighteen days or eighty leagues distant, discovered by Ziuhcohuatl, they tarried eight years; at Ziuhcohuatl, at the same distance, discovered by Tlapalmetzin, also eight years; at Yztachuexucha, twenty days or one hundred leagues northward, discovered by Metzotzin, twenty-six years. Finally a journey of eighteen days or eighty leagues brought them to Tulancingo – written also Tulantzinco and Tollantzinco – discovered by Acapichtzin. Here they built a house sufficiently large to contain all the people, and remained eighteen years before transferring their capital to Tollan farther east and establishing what was afterwards known as the Toltec empire. The third year of their stay in Tulancingo completed an age, or one hundred and four years since the departure from their country.351 According to Ixtlilxochitl, the Toltecs reached Anáhuac in the sixth century, or according to Veytia and others who have attempted to reconstruct his chronology, near the end of the seventh century.352

      This tradition of the Toltecs affords in itself no sufficient data from which to locate accurately Huehue Tlapallan, their most ancient home in America. The name is interpreted as 'ancient red land, or land of color,' and might perhaps apply as well to the north as to the south. Pedro de Alvarado writing from Santiago, or Old Guatemala, to Cortés in 1524, announces his intention to set out in a few months to explore the country of Tapalan "which is in the interior fifteen days' march from here. It is pretended that the capital is as large as Mexico."353 This indicates that at the time of the Conquest the name was still applied to a region which may correspond very well to Honduras, Peten, or Tabasco. Ixtlilxochitl himself, in relating the expeditions on which his ancestor of the same name accompanied Cortés, mentions one to "Tlapalan, a province which lies toward Ihueras," or Ibueras, being the former name of Honduras.354 Brasseur says that "Mexican geography at the time of the discovery applied this name only to the provinces north of Guatemala, between the tributaries of the Rio Usumacinta and Honduras;" and also that the country was spoken of by authors at the time of the Conquest as Tlapallan de Cortés, on account of Cortés' expedition to Honduras, but he mentions no authors except those I have referred to.355 The same author believes that the name Tlapallanconco given by Ixtlilxochitl to the first station, sixty leagues from Huehue Tlapallan, should be Tlapallantzinco. He tells us that the Guatemalan histories mentions such a city conquered by the Quichés in Soconusco on the coast, at a point not far from sixty leagues distant from the Ococingo region.356 Again, according to Sahagun and Torquemada, when Quetzalcoatl, the second of the name, who flourished while the Toltecs were at Tollan, left the country, he embarked or disappeared on the gulf coast near the Goazacoalco River, announcing his intention to go to Tlapallan. This would certainly favor the idea that Tlapallan was a southern country.

THE COUNTRY OF HUEHUE TLAPALLAN

      On the other hand, the eastward direction attributed to the migration from Tlapallanconco to Anáhuac is not consistent with any Central American location of the starting-place; but, in connection with the fact that Xalisco is given as the second station about a hundred and seventy leagues distant from Tlapallanconco, would agree somewhat better with the theory generally adopted by the Spanish writers that the original home of the Toltecs was in the north-west, probably on the Gulf of California; yet the name Tlapallan has never been found in the north-west.357 Material relics of any great empire are wanting in that region, at least beyond Quemada in Zacatecas, and the itinerary is full of inconsistencies which prove it to be unreliable as a historic record. For instance, an eastern course of a hundred leagues to any point on the coast of Jalisco would be an impossibility; the next two moves led a hundred leagues down the Pacific Coast, and then across the continent to Toxpan, or Tuxpan, on the gulf coast in Vera Cruz; then, although Tuxpan is on the eastern coast, the migration continued still a hundred leagues eastward, another impossibility of course. How they returned to the states of Vera Cruz and Mexico, where the other stations would seem to be located, does not appear. In fact the tradition of this migration as it reads, so far as directions, distances, and names are concerned, is meaningless, a fact due either to the carelessness of the compiler or the scantiness of his materials. Intrinsically then the evidence, while not conclusive, favors the idea that Huehue Tlapallan was in the south.

      Comparing the Toltec tradition with those that have been already given, we find, except in names, a strong resemblance in general features. In the successive creations and destructions of men; the apes that peopled the land after one of the destructions; the ancient settlement and growth to power of the Toltecs in a fertile country named Huehue Tlapallan; the destruction of a rival power, that of the Quinames; the regulation or invention of the calendar by an assemblage of wise men in Huehue Tlapallan; and a final forced migration to new homes – in all these features the tradition seems to represent a vague memory of events already familiar to us as having occurred in the central region; in the Votanic empire of the Tzendal traditions; in the Xibalba, Paxil, and Tulan Zuiva, or Seven Caves, of the Quiché record; and especially in the Tamoanchan and Tonacatepetl of the annals gathered by Sahagun.

SOUTHERN ORIGIN OF THE TOLTECS

      In opposition to those analogies we have the fact that the Spanish writers locate Huehue Tlapallan in the north, as they do also the original homes of all the nations that are reported by native tradition to have migrated successively into Anáhuac. It is not probable that this idea of a northern origin was a pure invention of the Spaniards; they doubtless found among the Aztecs with whom they came in contact what seemed to them a prevalent popular notion that the ancestors of the race came from the north. Yet the tradition given by Sahagun – and referring to a time long prior to the Toltec migration of the fifth or sixth century – relating to the first appearance of the Nahua civilizers on the gulf coast, whither they had come by sea from the north-east, probably from Florida, would have been perhaps a sufficient foundation for such a popular idea; and the not improbable СКАЧАТЬ