Tula

“ The river Tula is crossed, English in its quiet, shallowness, and munificence of trees; and we put our sick mules to the jump, and run through the plaza of Tula. This is a town not less than a thousand years old. It was settled by the Toltees in the eighth century. Stone pillars still attest their presence and power. It was too late to visit them; but one called Malinehe was pointed out to me in a hill-side overhanging the green hollow. I tried to get a boy to go with me, but failed; so I started alone.
The country always whips the town when brought into fair competition. ”

“ Journey to Tula—The Toltecs—Ancient Historians—Origins—Peregrinations— Foundation of Tula—Toltec Religion—Chief Divinities—Art—Industry—Measurement of Time—The Word Calli—Architecture.
The journey to Tula, capital of the Toltecs, our next destination, is performed partly by railway and partly by diligence over a distance of some sixteen leagues north of Mexico. The valley in this month (August) is at its best; immense plantations of Indian corn give it the aspect of a green sea, whilst a grand range of mountains and lofty summits bound it at the horizon. ”

“ YOUNG GIRLS OF TULA.
Every human type seems to have congregated here, from the Egyptian sharp outline of features to the flat-nosed, flat-faced Kalmuk. Most women are bare to the waist; but as this seems a matter of course, no one notices it.
The area of ancient Tula has now been under cultivation for three hundred years—hardly a desirable condition for the explorer. We know that the city stood here; but its only vestiges are to be found on the hill overlooking the town to the north. It was called Palpan in the time of the Toltecs ”

“ Much water is rushing, much go to hills, much penetrate, much destroying. Meanwhile at Tula (this is the same Tula referred to in the Central American legends) , at THAT ISLAND, Nana-Bush (the great hare Nana) becomes the ancestor of beings and men. Being born creeping, he is ready to move and dwell at Tula. ”

“ The great Tula. There is a hardworking, sober man, my little fathers, who never beats his wife, and never drinks, and never borrows money. A useful neighbor! What is the matter with you, Tula? You have been too sparing with the vodka, no doubt. I must order you a glass every hour.”
There was a little laugh. But Paul, who knew these people, was quite alive to the difference of feeling toward himself. They still accepted his care, his help, his medicine; but they were beginning to doubt him.
“There is your own prince,” he went on fearlessly to the man whose hand he was binding up. ”

“ All the names he quotes as of Nonoalca, that is, Maya origin, are distinctly not of the latter tongue, but are Nahuatl. And the introduction of the mystical city of Tula is of itself enough to invest the story with the garb of unreality.
It is, in fact, nowhere in terrestrial geography that we need look for the site of the Tula of Quetzalcoatl, nor at any time in human history did the Tolteca ply their skillful hands, nor Tezcatlipoca spread his snares to destroy them. ”

“ This is the simple narrative of Tulan, stripped of its contradictions, metaphors and confusion, as handed down by those highest authorities the Codex Ramirez, Tezozomoc and Father Duran. [102] It is a plain statement that Tula and its Snake-Hill were merely one of the stations of the Azteca in their migrations—an important station, indeed, with natural strength, and one that they fortified with care, where for some generations, probably, they maintained an independent 90existence, and which the story-tellers of the tribe recalled with pride and exaggeration. ”

“ It was simply the first town to which the Aztecs came, and around it and its past imagination ran riot. The tendency of semi-civilised peoples to exaggerate some fact of no importance into a great feat or epoch-making event is exemplified again and again in history. Thus it is natural enough that Tula should have attained a traditionary importance out of all proportion to its real place in Toltec-Mayan history. ”

“ Only people of importance should speak with a soldier who is a general.”
“No, por Dios, my boy, you speak well!” said Rotil, clapping his hand on her shoulder, “but your years are not many and it cannot be you know the thing you ask for.”
“I know it,” asserted Tula with finality.
An old woman got up stiffly, and came towards him. “We are very poor, yet even our children are robbed from us––that is why we pray. Don Ramon, your mother was simple as we, and had heart for the poor. Our lives are wasted for the masters, and our women children are stolen for the sons of masters. ”

“ TULA, a government of central Russia, bounded by Moscow on the N., Ryazañ on the E., Tamboff and Orel on the S., and Kaluga on the W., has an area of 11,950 square miles. It is intersected from south-west to north east by a gently undulating plateau, from 950 to 1020 feet in height, which separates the drainage area of the Oka from that of the Don. The average elevation of Tula is about 800 feet, and its surface is an undulating plain; but the rivers flow in valleys so deeply cut and so scored with ravines that in their neighbourhood the country assumes the aspect of a hilly region. ”

“ Director Hilton, I am it who was once named Tula, the—not wife, not girl-friend, perhaps mind-mate?—of the Larry, formerly named Laro, it which was formerly your slave-Oman. I am replacing the Sora because I can do anything it can do and do anything more pleasingly; and can also do many things it can not do. The Larry instructed me to tell Doctor Cummings and you too if possible that I, formerly Tula, have changed my name to Tuly because I am no longer a slave or a copycat or a semaphore or a relay. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was Tula, the younger daughter of Miguel,––one who had carried them water from the well on her steady head, and played with the babies on the earthen floors at the pueblo of Palomitas.
But the childish humors were gone, and her face wore the Indian mask of any age.
“Tell me,” said Kit.
“It is at Palomitas. I was in the willows by the well when they came, Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman, and strange soldiers. All the women scream and make battle, also the men, and that is when my father is hurt in the head, that is when they are taking my mother, and Anita, my sister. Some are hiding. ”

“ The form Tula has given rise to the strangest theorizing about this line, as, of course, the antiquaries could not resist the temptation to see in it a reference to the Tula or Tollan of Aztec mythology, the capital city of the Toltecs and the home of Quetzalcoatl.
The similarity of the words is purely fortuitous. The Lenape word tulpe means turtle or tortoise, especially, says Zeisberger, a water or sea turtle. In their mythology, as I have already shown (ante, p. 134) the earth was supposed to be floating on a boundless ocean, as a turtle floats on the surface of a pond. ”

“ Tula turned to lay it carefully on the pillow beside the señora, and then stared at the vacant bed.
Only an instant she halted and thrust her hand under the cover.
“Cold,––long time cold!” she muttered, and with towel and crucifix she sped back to the sala where Rotil was joking concerning the compliment she paid him.
“Don’t make dandies of yourselves if you would make good with a woman,” he said. “Even that little crane of a muchacha has brain,––and maybe heart for a man! She has boy sense.”
Kit, seeing her dart into the guest room, stood in his tracks watching for her to emerge. ”

“ And that child, Tula––” began Kit in consternation, and old Isidro nodded his head.
“It is Tula who asked. She is proving she is a woman; Clodomiro goes for her because that is his work. Your white way would be a different way,––of an alcalde and the word of many witness. Our women have their own way, and no mistake is made.”
“But Rotil, the general,––he will not permit–––”
“Señor, for either mother or grandmother the general had an Indian woman. He has the knowing of these things. I think Tula gets the man they ask for. She is wise, that child! ”

“ Without, as a rule, going into details, I shall present a brief résumé of what has been written about Californian relics of aboriginal times, giving in full only a few reports of undoubted authenticity. [XII-1] 690
Brasseur de Bourbourg tells us that in the distant north "was found anciently a city named Tula, the ruins of which are thought to have been found in the valley, still so little explored, of Tulares. The Americans have announced in their newspapers the discovery of these Californian ruins, but can one credit the reports?" ”

“ It certainly could not in Maya; and in Nahuatl, tototl in composition would drop both its terminal consonants.
The remaining names, Nonoual, Zuiua, Tula-pan, clearly indicate their Nahuatl origin. Zuiua, which was erroneously printed in Pio Perez’s version as Zuina is Zuiva; Nonoual is Nonohual; Tulapan, literally “the standard of Tula,” refers to the famous city of the Toltecs, presided over by Quetzalcoatl. All these names are borrowed directly from the myth of this hero-god. ”

“ Considering that the identity of Tullan has not yet been satisfactorily established, that several Tullans are said to have existed and that a small town, about a dozen leagues to the northeast of Mexico, is named Tullan-tzinco=little Tullan, I should like to direct the attention of Americanists to the following Maya words: Tul-um=fortification, edifice, wall and enclosure. Tula-cal, Tuliz, adjectives=whole, entire, undivided, integral. Tul-ul, adjective=general, universal. Tul-tic, verb=to belong, to correspond to something. Tul=all [pg 089] around or full. ”

“ It is a beautiful town, celebrated for its soap and candle factories; and the epicures of hams and sausages, procure their choicest dainties from its neighborhood. Lerma, lies on the banks of the pond from which the river Lerma springs; and Istlahuaca, twelve leagues from Toluca, is found in a spur of the same valley.
THE CASCADE OF REGLA.
The elevations, north of the valley of Toluca, which separate it from the valley of the river Tula, vary from 10,000 to 7,500 feet, and, in the bosom of the latter vale, is found the town of Tula, twenty-two leagues north-west of the capital. ”

“ Some historians consider that the Toltecs were not a great race, but simply a tribe of sedentary Indians, more advanced than their neighbors, whose traditions have become with time exaggerated into the tale of a great and powerful nation. How this may be, the tourist at Tula may judge, according to his disposition, romantic or prosaic, by the importance of the ruins left by the vanished race. ”

“ He planned to manage that the mare be there without asking help of any Indian, and he thought he could do it while the guard was having breakfast. It would be easy for them to suppose that the black was his own. Thus scheming for beauty astray in the desert, he chatted with Fidelio concerning the pilgrimage of the Palomitas women, and the possibility of Rotil’s patience with them, when Tula crossed the patio hurriedly and entered the door of the sala. ”

“ Herrera says: “Cercaron de agua el cerro llamado Coatepec.” Decadas de Indias, Dec. iii, Lib. ii, cap. 11.
103. The Annals of Cuauhtitlan, a chronicle written in the Nahuatl language, gives 309 years from the founding to the destruction of Tula, but names a dynasty of only four rulers. Veitia puts the founding of Tula in the year 713 A. D. (Historia de Nueva España, cap. 23.) Let us suppose, with the laborious and critical Orozco y Berra (notes to the Codex Ramirez, p. 210) that the Mexi left Aztlan A. D. 648. ”

“ The one who had good sight sent the one-eyed one to fetch a Tula (stone-knife) so that he could flay off the skin. While he was seeking for a Tula the other began to remove the pelt. When the one-eyed man returned with the Tula the other replaced the skin over the carcase and pretended to try the Tula on it; then, saying that it was too blunt, he sent him to Antiritcha [19] to bring back a new one. During his absence he hastily skinned the kangaroo down to the hind legs, and when the other returned from Antiritcha and offered him the new Tula, he said, "Skin the kangaroo with it yourself." ”

“ Thus we have Tollan and Tollantzinco ("behind Tollan") in the Valley of Mexico, and the pyramid Cholula was called "Tollan-Cholollan," as well as many other Tollans and Tulas among the Nahuatl colonies.
The natives of the city of Tula were called, from its name, the Tolteca, which simply means "those who dwell in Tollan." And who, let us ask, were these Toltecs?
They have hovered about the dawn of American history long enough. To them have been attributed not only the primitive culture of Central America and Mexico, but of lands far to the north, and even the earthworks of the Ohio Valley. ”

“ Also I have heard of the ‘Judas’ death on Holy Friday, but never before this has so young a woman creature picked a man for it,––a man alive! Courage of the devil!”
Tula arose, and went before them across the plaza to the door of the chapel. Kit knew this was the right moment for him to disappear and get the black mare back of the wall, but Rotil kept chuckling to him over the ungirlish request, and so pointedly included him in the party that there seemed no excuse available for absenting himself. ”