The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 07, May, 1858. Various
of Southern Siberia, and the dates of the immigration to the Aztec plateau, with those of the first movements of the Huns and the great revolutions in Asia, an indication is given, worthy of being followed up by the ethnologist, of the Asiatic origin of the Central American tribes. The traditions, monuments, customs, mythology, and astronomic systems all point to a similar source.
The thorough study of the aboriginal races reveals the fact, that the whole continent, from the Arctic regions to the Southern Pole, was divided irregularly between two distinct families;—one nomadic and savage, the other agricultural and semi-civilized; one with no institutions or polity or organized religion, the other with regular forms of government and hierarchical and religious systems. Though differing so widely, and little associated with each other, they possessed an analogous physical constitution, analogous customs, idioms, and grammatical forms, many of which were entirely different from those of the Old World.
At the period of the discovery of America, not a single tribe west of the Rocky Mountains possessed the least agricultural skill. Whether the superiority of the Central American and Mexican tribes was due to more favorable circumstances and a more genial climate, or to the instructions of foreign legislators, as their traditions relate, our author does not decide. In his view, American agriculture originated in Central America, and was not one of the sciences brought over by the tribes who first emigrated from Asia.
Of the architectural ruins found in Central America M. de Bourbourg says: "Among the edifices forgotten by Time in the forests of Mexico and Central America are found architectural characteristics so different from one another, that it is as impossible to attribute their construction to one and the same people, as it is to suppose that they were built at the same epoch…. The ruins that are the most ancient and that have the most resemblance to one another are those which have been discovered in the country of the Lacandous, the foundations of the city of Mayapan, some buildings of Tulha, and the greater part of those of Palenque; it is probable that they belong to the first period of American civilization."—Vol. I. p. 85.
The truly historical records of Central America go back to a period but little before the Christian era. Beyond that epoch, we behold through the mists of legends, and in the defaced pictures and sculptures, a hierarchical despotism sustained by the successors of the mysterious Votan. The empire of the Votanides is at length ruined by its own vices and by the attacks of a vigorous race, whose records and language have come down even to our day,—the only race on the American continent whose name has been preserved in the memory of the peoples after the ruin of its power, the only one whose institutions have survived its own existence,—the Xahoa, or Toltec.
Of all the American languages, the Nahuatl holds the highest place, for its richness of expression and its sonorous tone,—adapting itself with equal flexibility to the most sublime and analytic terms of metaphysics, and to the uses of ordinary life, so that even at this day the Englishman and the Spaniard employ its vocabulary for natural objects.
The traditions of the Nahoas describe their life in the distant Oriental country from which they came:—"There they multiplied to a considerable degree, and lived without civilization. They had not then acquired the habit of separating themselves from the places which had seen them born; they paid no tributes; and all spoke a single language. They worshipped neither wood nor stone; they contented themselves with raising their eyes to heaven and observing the law of the Creator. They waited with respect for the rising of the sun, saluting with their invocations the morning star."
This is their prayer, handed down in Indian tradition,—the oldest piece extant of American liturgy:—"Hail, Creator and Former! Regard us! Listen to us! Heart of Heaven! Heart of the Earth! do not leave us! Do not abandon us, God of Heaven and Earth!… Grant us repose, a glorious repose, peace and prosperity! the perfection of life and of our being grant to us, O Hurakan!"
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.3 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!"
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 résumé 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 Abbé. 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.]
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.