Toltecs

“ One must leave their amiable employers to get what comfort they can from them, with just this reservation: the Toltec tradition and its dates demand the acceptance of the postulate that the Toltecs arrived in Mexico in considerable numbers; for between 648 A.D., the generally accepted date of their traditionary landing, and the twelfth century, when they were expelled by the Aztecs, there is not time for a mere handful of immigrants to have metamorphosed themselves into a nation numbering many millions, as the Toltec story insists on our believing. ”

“ Unless some heretofore undiscovered treasure house of lost records delivers the key to the early history of the Toltecs, there seems little hope that our imperfect knowledge concerning him will receive any important additions. The systematic destruction of the picture writings of the ancient Mexicans, and particularly of everything connected with their religion, which was carried on for years with misguided zeal by the Spaniards, cut off the source from which fuller information might have been hoped. ”

“ Happily settled in their new country, and ruled over by a king whom they could regard with reverence, the Toltecs made rapid progress in the various arts, and their city began to be celebrated far and wide for the excellence of its craftsmen and the beauty of its architecture and pottery. ”

“ Our first certain knowledge is of the race known as the Toltecs,—Toltecas, artificers, or architects,—who were really quite civilized when they first appeared in the pages of history. They understood and practised agriculture and many arts. Being driven from a country in which they had been long settled, by invading savages, they commenced a journey southward, halting at intervals long enough to plant corn and cotton and gather the crops. ”

“ They had succeeded to the Toltecs, a prosperous, industrious, and probably a peaceful people—a people coming from the warmer South, and unable to cope with the more hardy Aztecs, who came down from the North. ”

“ The Toltecs believed, as we have shown, that they lived in the third age of the world, as Boturini and Veytia suppose, or at the beginning of the fourth, as is stated by Ixtlilxóchitl. Their traditions told them that each one of the anterior ages had lasted a definite number of fixed periods of 416 years: the first 1,664—or a bundle more, according to the data of the Texcoco chronicler, apparently in error by 52 years in this account ”

“ The Toltecs, as was stated before, were one of the Nahuan tribes, which from the seventh to the fourteenth century spread over Mexico and Central America. Their existence has been denied by various modern historians, although all American writers agree that the numerous bands which followed them in the country received their civilisation from them. It must be admitted, however, that our knowledge rests chiefly on traditionary legends full of anachronisms, transmitted to us by the nations that came after them ”

“ They had inherited from the Toltecs many useful arts, their code of morals, philosophy and religion, which in their turn they taught the Aztecs, so that the institutions and customs of these different tribes were common to all; and in default of documents which have been lost, we ascribe nearly all the historians of the Conquest relate of the Aztecs, whom they found the dominant race, as applicable to the Toltecs, the fountain of all progress both on the plateaux and in Central America, where we shall follow them. ”

“ This infant was in reality Huitzilopochtli, the Nahua god of war. At this sight the Toltecs crowded upon one another for the purpose of getting a better view, and their eagerness resulted in many being crushed to death. So enraged were the Toltecs at this that upon the advice of Tlacahuepan they slew both Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. When this had been done the bodies of the slain gods gave forth such a pernicious effluvia that thousands of the Toltecs died of the pestilence. ”

“ It does not appear that the Toltecs consummated the sacrifice by devouring the flesh of the victim. This seems to have been the only exception to the blameless character of the Toltec rites. Tlaloc was the oldest deity in the Aztec mythology, in which he found a suitable place. Yet, as the knowledge of him was originally derived from the Toltecs, it cannot be denied that this people, as Ramirez says, possessed in their peculiar civilization the germs of those sanguinary institutions which existed on so appalling a scale in Mexico. See Ramirez, Notas y Esclarecimientos, ubi supra. ”

“ They no longer saw the Toltecs on expeditions, nor met them in battles and skirmishes. Then they sent scouts into their territory, who returned with the astonishing tidings of the destruction of the nation and the abandonment of Tula. A little later they prepared to invade the land of their once powerful foes, who had ranked so high above them in the arts of civilization. They advanced cautiously, but wherever they settled they had come to stay, and so they progressed until they reached the great valley of Anahuac. ”

“ Not far off, in the course of time, they founded their great city of Tollan, now Tula, which became the centre of the Toltec nation.
These people built so well and so ruins found at tula.
much that the name became the word to mean builders. The few ruins left of their capital attest their skill. They felt themselves to be a superior race to that they found in their new home. The Toltecs were tall, robust, and well-formed, of light-sallow complexion, with but little hair on their face. They were wonderful for running, and could run at the greatest speed for hours. ”

“ Quetzalcoatl, the last ruler of Tula, himself went to the south-east, and reappears in Yucatan as the culture-hero Cukulkan, the traditional founder of the Maya civilization.
This, I say, is the current opinion about the Toltecs. It is found in the works of Ixtlilxochitl, Veitia, Clavigero, Prescott, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Orozco y Berra, and scores of other reputable writers. The dispersion of the Toltecs has been offered as the easy solution of the origin of the civilization not only of Central America, but of New Mexico and the Mississippi valley. ”

“ Exercising the high priesthood, he initiated the golden age of the Toltecs, during which the cotton grew in various colours, red, blue, orange, and purple, maize crops were over-abundant, the canes grew as large round as tree trunks, and pumpkins so big that a man's arms could not encircle one; nobody was ever hungry, animals were all tame, and the birds sang wonderfully. Sahagun catalogues him as the eighth king of the Toltecs. ”

“ An express stipulation must, however, be required on the part of the Chichimec king that the Toltecs should ever be a perfectly free and independent people, owing no allegiance whatever to the Chichimecs, although the two powers would enter into an alliance for mutual defense and assistance. The advice of the aged and venerated counsellor was of course accepted without objection; in fact, as pictured by the Spanish writers, Toltec history is for the most part but a record of sage counsels of wise rulers cheerfully acquiesced in by an appreciative and obliging people. ”

“ A Nameless People
If this be true it would go to show that a people of comparatively high culture existed at a not very remote period on the Mexican tableland. But what their name was or their racial affinity the writer does not profess to know. Many modern American scholars of note have conferred upon them the name of "Toltecs," and speak freely of the "Toltec period" and of "Toltec art." It may appear pedantic to refuse to recognise that the cultured people who dwelt in Mexico in pre-Nahua times were "the Toltecs." ”

“ The plain truth is, as we wrote earlier, that this Toltec theory represents a myth bred of a confusion of historical facts which, if critically examined, flatly contradict it. In his Myths of the New World (1868) , the late D. G. Brinton, than whom no one has given a more wholehearted and enlightened attention to the problem, writes: "The story of Tula and its inhabitants the Toltecs, so currently related in ancient Mexican history, is a myth and not history." ”

“ They locate the arrival of the mysterious nation of the Ulmecas, in the beginnings of the third age, very nearly a thousand years before, Christ, and categorically fix the beginning of the second Toltec monarchy—because in remote times they had constituted another—in the year 674 of our era. Twenty-six years later, the year 700 was Ce técpatl; and all the traditions affirm that the Toltecs initiated a new epoch in Ce técpatl. ”

“ The Aztecs, who originally believed in one supreme invisible creator, Taotl, adopted the gods of conquered races, like the Romans of old, and became polytheists. The Toltecs, one of the vanquished people, were nature worshippers, and made offerings of fruits and flowers to their deities. After their defeat, the peaceful gods of the Toltecs, who took pleasure in the offerings of the fruits of the soil, soon took a place by the side of the terrible god of war of the Aztecs, Huitzilopoxtli, and shared with him the offerings of human sacrifices. ”

“ The uniform expression of the faces in these bas-reliefs is generally calm and pleasant, as at Palenque, where we pointed out that after the almost total extermination of their race, the Toltecs ceased to be a warlike nation and became missionaries of civilisation, bringing the population around them into submission by their persuasive preaching, like the priests of Buddha in India and Java, adopting the language of their disciples, and building marvellous temples in honour of the gods they preached. The bas-reliefs at Palenque, Lorillard, and Tikal tell this story very plainly. ”

“ According to Brasseur the Otomí city that stood here before the coming of the Toltecs was called Mamhéni. It cannot be supposed that the Otomís yielded up their fertile valley to the strangers without a struggle; but the relation of this struggle like that of many a subsequent one in which the Toltecs must have engaged in order to establish and maintain their power, seems to have been intentionally omitted in the native annals as recorded by the Spanish writers. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Tradition imputes to the Toltecs a higher civilization than that found among the Aztecs, who had degenerated with the growth of the warlike spirit, and especially by the introduction of more cruel and sanguinary religious rites. But this superiority, in some respects not improbable, rests on no very strong evidence, since this people left no relics of that artistic skill which gave them so great traditional fame; there is, however, much reason to ascribe the construction of the pyramids at Teotihuacan and Cholula to the Toltec or a still earlier period. ”

“ Prescott states that the Toltecs are the first people of which we have traditions, coming from a northerly direction. They entered Anahuac (Mexican valley) probably before the close of the seventh century. They were well instructed in agriculture and mechanic arts, and invented the complex arrangement of time adopted by the Aztecs. "They fixed their capital at Tula, north of the Mexican valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be discerned there at the time of the conquest. The noble ruins of religious and other edifices are referred to this people. ”

“ It is high time for this talk about the Toltecs as a mighty people, precursors of the Azteca, and their instructors in the arts of civilization, to disappear from the pages of history. The residents of ancient Tula, the Tolteca, were nothing more than a sept of the Nahuas themselves, the ancestors of those Mexica who built Tenochtitlan in 1325. This is stated as plainly as can be in the Aztec records, and should now be conceded by all. The mythical Tula, and all its rulers and inhabitants, are the baseless dreams of poetic fancy, which we principally owe to the Tezcucan poets. ”

“ The genius of the Toltecs which we have studied, the quotations of various authors relating to their southward migration, point to them as the sole and true creators of these buildings which we have even now visited, as also those we shall subsequently explore. They found—facts attest it—a numerous population, which they civilised, and which under their peaceful organisation rapidly increased. ”

“ Some authorities have questioned the existence of the Toltecs, and have professed to see in them a race which had merely a mythical significance. They base this theory upon the circumstance that the duration of the reigns of the several Toltec monarchs is very frequently stated to have lasted for exactly fifty-two years, the duration of the great Mexican cycle of years which had been adopted so that the ritual calendar might coincide with the solar year. ”

“ Toltecs, 'people of Tollan'. Tollan, 'place of willows or reeds', from tolin, 'willow, reed.' Buschmann, Ortsnamen, p. 76. 'Toltecatl était le titre qu'on donnait à un artiste habile.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. i., p. 194. Tollan: 'Elle est frappante ... par l'identité qu'elle présente avec le nom de Metztli ou le Croissant. En effet, ce qu'elle exprime, d'ordinaire, c'est l'idée d'un "pays recourbé" ou incliné. ”