The American Egypt Part 13

The Mayans also hunted the shark, manatee, and the turtle. The manatee they hunted with harpoons, wading out into the estuaries and following it when wounded in their canoes. It was valued for the sake of its fat as well as its flesh. Before starting out to fish they made supplication for good luck in one of the temples which it was the custom to build for this purpose on the beach. Those caciques who held territories on the coast obtained salt from the saline lagoons, which are found in many places on the coast of Yucatan. At the end of the dry season, when these marshes were nearly waterless and it was possible to cross them on foot, expeditions were made for the collection of the salt which formed a crystal crust on the mud.

Thus it is obvious the condition of the ancient Mayans was far from being an unhappy one. They had plenty to eat and they had not to labour much to obtain that plenty. The race was what it is to-day, healthy and strong and free of disease. The men were fine examples of muscular development, and the women were often quite beautiful, even according to a European standard, and were certainly in youth objects of grace and sweetness. But the Mayans did not leave well alone, and were in many ways the victims of cruel fas.h.i.+on or foolish superst.i.tion. Thus it was regarded as a mark of the highest rank for girls to be cross-eyed, and Mayan mothers cut their daughters' hair on their foreheads so as to hang down over the eyes and make them squint. The heads of children of high rank were often flattened, and huge earrings of stone were worn; while the septum of the nose was pierced and adorned with a spindle of stone or a feather. The habit, too, which the Mayan woman still has of carrying her youngster astride her hip tended to create bow-leggedness.

The Mayans wore no hair on the face at all. They daubed their cheeks with a red earth on occasions of ceremony and when going into battle; at which time their only ordinary garment the wide loin-cloth (Mayan _Uit_) was supplemented, at any rate in the case of caciques and n.o.bles, by long square-cut cotton mantles fastened on the shoulders. Mr. E.

Thompson has given a good picture of a chief dressed for festival or war. He writes: "A penanche or frontlet encircled his forehead, above it waved plumes, while from beneath it on each side the long black hair fell until nearly touching his shoulders. Perforating the lobes of his ears were huge round ear ornaments, generally of the precious green-jade stone. His arms were bare save for armlets and bracelets. A richly worked loin-cloth protected his loins, while his legs were covered with leggings of quilted cotton elaborately worked and coloured, fastened in front by a series of rosette-like ornaments. Two-thonged sandals protected his feet, while the mace of authority, the _acatl_ or dart sling, and the terrible two-handed serrated sword of obsidian or flint were his weapons. His large round s.h.i.+eld was painted with his heraldic devices." The dress of the priests was still more elaborate, and in their case at least was subst.i.tuted for the cotton robe a deer or jaguar skin. This is clearly seen in the plates reproduced from Stephens on pages 220 and 221.

The women wore the chemise-like garment which all Mayan women wear to-day, with the headcloth we have previously described. They smeared and scented their bodies with an unguent made of a favourite resin, and their long hair, parted in the middle, was worn either in a thick plait or loose over the shoulders. The Mayan woman was as much the head of the domestic household as members of her s.e.x are in civilised countries. The chief food of the Mayans was always maize, with which the housewife made _atole_, a thick porridge mixed with honey, still a favourite dish of the Indians to-day. This and the tortillas formed the morning meal.

Sometimes a mess of ground black beans was added. There were two meals a day, the chief one being the evening meal, when venison, birds, and fresh or salted fish figured in the menu of the richer people. The family did not eat together: the men having their meal separately from the women. The Mayan drinks consisted of a maize-water called _keyem_ and fermented liquors made of honey, fruits, and pepper.

Marriage was an important matter among the Mayans, and the arrangements were left in the hands of the parents; sometimes in the hands of a professional matchmaker. A union having been arranged, the day of the ceremony was made the occasion for a great feast. There seems to have been a great deal of poetry about the Mayan nature, for flowers figured largely in the decorations and the Mayan word for marriage is poetical and allegorical in the extreme: _Kamnicte_--literally, "the reception of the flower of May." The actual ceremony appears to have been nothing more than the formal handing over of the bride to the groom by the priest, after he had satisfied himself that they knew their own minds.

Thereafter there were feasting and dancing, lasting well into the evening, generally ending in the fermented drink being far too much for the men of the party, who had to be helped home to their huts by their wives and daughters.

After the wedding the bridegroom lived with his father-in-law for five or six years, working for him. This appears to have been a custom very strictly enforced, the son-in-law thus repaying with his personal service the honour granted him by being admitted to the family. If the young husband refused this personal service, he was ignominiously expelled from the house and the marriage was dissolved. The marriages of widows and widowers were very simple affairs. There was no feast, comparatively no religious ceremony, and no gathering of relatives. A widow had merely to receive a widower in her house and give him food, for a legal marriage to be const.i.tuted. The visiting lists of old and undesirable widows must have been very limited indeed. One wonders whether the elder Mr. Weller could have found language to express his views at this terrible facility. No doubt the Mayan "mere man" learnt, as did the old coach-driver, to "beware of widows." But every cloud has its silver lining, and if the Mayan became the property of a neighbouring widow by simply taking a cup of afternoon tea with her, he had really only himself to blame if he found his fetters irksome. For it appears that he had only got to walk off in order to dissolve a union of which he had wearied.

Little or no trouble was taken over the education of children, who, girls and boys, ran wild and naked till about their fifth year. At p.u.b.erty the s.e.xes were strictly separated; the girls being confined to their parents' huts, and the boys going to live in a large house where all the unmarried youths dwelt in common like soldiers in a barracks.

Here they lived a life of their own, having little or nothing to do with the older men. As soon as a youth married, he took equal rank with the fathers of families; but it was only nominally equal, for a characteristic of the Mayans was the great respect shown to age, and the younger men were expected to defer to their elders in all matters. The youths living in the communal house were distinguished by their face-paintings of black, in contrast with the red used by the grown men.

Men bore their parents' name; but the maids appear to have been, until married, practically nameless. For they were not ent.i.tled to bear their fathers' names. In the matter of inheritance, too, they were pa.s.sed over, the property of their father, in default of his leaving sons, pa.s.sing to their uncles or nearest male relatives.

Indeed no relations.h.i.+p was traced through the female line; and while marriage was prohibited with any relative who bore the paternal name, there were no restrictions as to unions with those on the mother's side.

Marriage was forbidden between a man and his sister-in-law, the widow of his brother, his step-mother, and the sisters-in-law, aunts, and sisters of his mother. Though polygamy was apparently never approved by the Mayans, they repudiated their wives on the most frivolous pretexts, forming a series of new unions. This fickleness seems to have developed a shrewishness among Mayan women, who, usually docile and obedient, avenged themselves upon their husbands for the least infidelity by personal violence, scratching their faces and tearing out their hair.

After all, women are much of a muchness all over the world; but, apart from these very natural outbursts of pa.s.sion, the Mayan women really appear to have been model wives and mothers and to have devoted considerably more attention to the education of the girls than the fathers did to that of the boys.

Mayan women do not appear to have taken part in the sacrifices at the temples, whether of human victims or otherwise. The ceremonial dances, too, which appear to have often been of an indecent character, were never attended by them. Indeed it appears that the s.e.xes rarely if ever danced together. The Mayans were pa.s.sionately fond of dancing, which was of two kinds: the sacred dances at the temples and the public dances on occasions of festival or ceremony. One dance only, called _Naual_, there was which was danced by men and women together. Otherwise the women danced separately from the men, as they ate separately from them. The Mayan women indeed seem to have borne themselves modestly in every way, and drunkenness, the greatest vice of the men, was almost unknown among them.

The Mayans appear to have been, at any rate in later times, great traders. Cortes encountered them trading round the coasts of the West Indian Islands, and they certainly trafficked with the tribes of Mexico and Honduras. Trade was carried on princ.i.p.ally by means of barter. Their exports were salt, cotton cloth, dried fish, and resins; their imports, the cocoa bean, stone beads, nephrite stone from the highlands of Mexico, mineral paints and obsidian, of which they made knives or lance-heads. From Guatemala, too, they got jade. There may have been also a traffic in slaves. There was no standard coinage, for metals were almost unknown; but more as counters than as money were used the cocoa bean, tiny bells, and rattles of copper and stone beads. Sales do not appear to have been evidenced by writings. One chronicler states that a bargain, especially in the sale of slaves, was clinched by the two contracting parties drinking together before two witnesses. The Mayans had many industries, chief among them being those of the potters and the carpenters. The men who carved the wooden, or moulded the pottery idols, lived under severe rules, pa.s.sing a hermit's life in a hut on the outskirts of the city, dividing their time between work and fasting. To them once a day food was taken by a member of their family, but it was a strictly vegetable diet, as all flesh was forbidden them. A continuous vigil was enjoined upon them until each special task was complete.

The Mayan doctors and medicine men treated their patients with herbs and enchantments. They were in much request at confinements and in cases of snake-bite. They were also employed to divine the future and to p.r.o.nounce a benediction on new houses.

As we have said, land was held to be common property. There was no strictly proprietary right. Its products belonged in each case to the first occupier; but occupation itself gave but a precarious right which lasted only for the full term of one agricultural season. After harvest the land reverted to public use. This community of land was traditional among the Mayans, and was doubtless largely due to the character of the soil, which did not permit of its being cultivated more than two years running. After two harvests it was exhausted, and had to be allowed to lie fallow. The lands of the caciques and n.o.bles were cultivated by slaves; but the common people helped each other in their sowings and harvestings.

The Mayans were always--they are to-day--a laughter-loving race. It is the easiest thing in the world to make one of them laugh, and their merriment is from the heart, an ingenuous joy in life, a child's glee.

And thus every important event in their lives, public or private, was taken advantage of as a fitting occasion for a dance or a feast. Public feasts were given by the caciques or in their honour. At these banquets much ceremony was observed, and, when departing, each guest was presented with a beautifully woven cotton mantle, a carved wooden stool, and a painted drinking-gourd. These guest-gifts were as much an essential part of the entertainment as they are in j.a.pan, where indeed they take an even more practical and rather embarra.s.sing form: for the happy diner on getting into his rickshaw may as likely as not find a raw fish wrapped in tissue paper or a dainty Satsuma bowl filled with lily bulbs packed away there for his delectation during his journey homeward.

At the Mayan feasts rude mummeries were often presented to amuse the banqueters. These as often as not took the form of crude mystery plays, and were of course supplemented by the music of the _tunkul_ and reed flutes. Dancing was what the Mayans liked best; even to-day they will dance from sunrise to sundown if they get the chance. There were set dances a.s.signed for every ceremony, public or private, in the Mayan city. The two chief dances were the dance of _canes_ (Mayan _lomche_) and the dance of flags. The first was a dance by four youths painted black from head to foot, and adorned with feathers and garlands. It lasted all day, with short intervals for drinking and eating. In the dance of banners several hundreds took part.

The Mayans had no cemeteries. They buried their dead or burned them; but they had no common burial grounds. Corpses were usually buried inside the huts, which were thereafter taboo and abandoned. This was the custom for the ordinary citizen; the chiefs and the priests were buried in sepulchral mounds such as we have before described. In cases of cremation the ashes were collected, placed in urns of clay or wood, buried, and small mounds erected over them. Sometimes, in the case of the very great, the urn formed the nucleus for a temple which was built over it. Sometimes, instead of urns pottery figures were made and the ashes deposited in these, which were then placed in the temples.

Sometimes, before burning, the scalp of the defunct was stripped off; part of the body was burnt and part buried, the ashes being put in an image of wood through the top of the head, which had been left open for the purpose, the image being then completed by the placing of the scalp on it as a cover.

The Mayans appear to have believed death to be caused by evil spirits, and if the medicine men with their herbs and their charms could do nothing, the afflicted relatives showed their grief by sitting round in silence awaiting the fatal moment, convinced that the sick man was about to be taken possession of by a devil. Mourning lasted for many days and nights and took the form of wailings and groanings. The hut was usually abandoned, the ground around being left uncultivated for many years as a sign of mourning. In cases of burial the corpse was shrouded and the mouth was filled with ground maize, and with it in a vessel were placed, as a provision for the needs of the dead in the next life, a supply of the small stones or beans which served as money. There were usually added some objects indicative of the rank or occupation of the deceased: with the priests sacred books, with the medicine man his stone charms, and so on.

The Mayans believed in the immortality of the soul, and in future punishment and reward. Their heaven was a happy hunting ground where life was a continual round of pleasure. The chief characteristics of their h.e.l.l were perpetual hunger and cold. Over this lower world they imagined a sovereign-devil ruled, whom they called _Hun Ahau_. The Mayans were essentially polytheistic, and they wors.h.i.+pped many G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, each with different attributes, the idols of which, made of stone, wood or pottery, were adored in the temples. There were also family G.o.ds which had their place in the houses, and which were bequeathed as heirlooms by the fathers to their sons.

Despite these many deities, the Mayans seem to have retained a belief in an abstract Supreme Being whom they called _Hunab Ku_, "The One Divine." He was regarded as omnipotent and was represented by no idol.

To him was attributed the creation of the world and of all living things; and he had a son, _Hun Itzamna_, "Dew of the morning," a Solar deity, dwelling in the Eastern sky. He was alleged to be the inventor of the Mayan alphabet. A lesser G.o.d, _c.u.m Ahau_, thought by some writers to have been the tapir deity, appears to have been much confused, if not actually identified, with Itzamna. Waldeck, in his _Voyage pittoresque dans l'Yucatan_ (1838), says he recognised the tapir snout on various masks and statues at Palenque, and adds that he found the animal still venerated by the Indians. Landa says the tapir was only found on the western sh.o.r.e of Yucatan near the Bay of Campeachy. The myth of the tapir would thus seem to have been imported from Tzental territory, Chiapas and Tabasco. D. G. Brinton believes the tapir came to be a symbol of the Solar deity Itzamna, despite its dull swamp-loving ways, through an ikonomatic method of writing. The Maya for tapir is _tzimin_, and thus, due to a similarity of sound with i-tzamna, the animal was selected as the G.o.d's symbol. It looks as if Dr. Brinton were confusing cause and effect here.

The princ.i.p.al minor deities were the G.o.ds of War, Poetry, Music, and Trade; the G.o.ddesses of Painting, Medicine, Virginity, and Weaving. The Mayans believed that the earth was held in position by four great forces whose homes were situated in the four points of the compa.s.s. These forces were wors.h.i.+pped as controllers of the winds and as storm G.o.ds.

There was also a G.o.d of Agriculture, _Chac_. He was believed to have lived on the earth as a giant. Mayan mythology was much affected, too, by ancestor wors.h.i.+p, the chief legendary hero being _Cuculcan_ (Cocol Chan), "feathered serpent," who, it is possible, may be identified with the Mexican _Quetzalcoatl_. In addition to these many G.o.ds in common, the tribes had G.o.ds peculiar to themselves. Thus at Campeachy a G.o.d of Vengeance, _Kinch Ahau Haban_, was wors.h.i.+pped with human sacrifice; and at Cozumel _Tel Cuzaan_, whose idol had the figure of a man, the legs representing the wings of a swallow, and _Hulneb_, who was represented with an arrow in his hand, were deities peculiar to that island.

The Mayan priests were greatly feared. Their influence was profound, as is not surprising when one recollects that they monopolised all learning in a race which was practically illiterate. The most popular and the most venerated of these priests were the _Chilans_, exorcisers of spirits and diviners of the future. With them were a.s.sociated lower orders known as _Chaques_ and _Nacomes_. The former were four old men annually elected to an office which was equivalent to the Christian sacristan. The latter acted as the a.s.sistants at the sacrifice. The G.o.ds were wors.h.i.+pped by fastings, by vigils, by continence, by the burning of copal and the offerings of flowers and scented herbs, and, of course, by sacrifice. Sacrifices were generally of animals. Self-mutilation, the piercing of ears and lips, the lacerating of tongues and other self-inflicted tortures, formed part of the ritual. During sacrifices women and girls were excluded from the temples. In each temple were two stones of sacrifice, one in the holy of holies and one in the vestibule.

The solemnities surrounding human sacrifice were extraordinarily elaborate.

The year of the Mayans began on the 16th of July, when the princ.i.p.al feast, that of the New Year, was celebrated, preceded by a period of fasting which varied in length in different localities. The whole population took part in this festival, which was in the nature of a public holiday. On the 22nd of August were celebrated the feasts of the priests. In every Mayan festival a functionary was elected who presided over the ceremonies other than those of the temples, and who provided the banquets. This official was elected annually. Following immediately after the feasts of the priests was kept the feast of the medicine men.

On the 1st of September the feast of hunters occurred, and on the 12th that of fishers. On the 4th of October was the feast of bees, with which was a.s.sociated no kind of sacrifice; the occasion being evidently one of Mayan "sweetness and light." The 1st of November and the following five days were dedicated to the festival of Cuculcan and the memorialising of the legendary origin of the Mayan race. This festival appears to have been only local.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARVING OF JAGUAR, CHICHEN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEAD OF COLOSSAL FIGURE, CANCUN.]

In December there were three feasts--one in honour of all the G.o.ddesses, a sort of All Saints' Day; one a flower festival; and one a dedication of idols. At the first the custom was for everything to be painted green, from the service-book of the priest to the housewife's distaff and the agricultural implements of the men. The lads and la.s.ses took a special part in the ceremonies of the day, being collected in the temple, when the priest gave each child nine playful blows on each joint, praying that the G.o.ddesses might grant them dexterity and success in all they undertook in after-life. During January the _Chaques_ or priests' a.s.sistants had their special day, which was also the occasion for the medicine men to give their chief prognostications, for the repair of the temples, and for the writing of the mural inscriptions recounting the chief events of the past year. In February the hunters had another celebration, but this time a fast, not a feast, when offerings were made by them of the beasts and birds that they had hunted. Festivals of agriculture were celebrated in April and May, the chief features of these harvest thanksgivings being the offerings of the first-fruits of the crops. The last feast of the Mayan year was that of the War-G.o.d, _Pac.u.mchac_, which was kept in the month of May or June.

This was celebrated always in the capital city of a caciques.h.i.+p. There were five days and five nights of preparation; and then sacrifices to the G.o.d, followed by orgies of eating and drinking which were continued without much cessation until the New Year, a period of nearly two months. Thus it is not surprising to learn that none but the richest men in a province could afford to be elected to the very onerous post of "patron of the ceremonies," who had to foot the bills for these gargantuan feeds.

CHAPTER XV

WHO WERE THE MAYANS?

At the beginning of the last chapter we stated it as our conviction that the marvellous buildings which we have described are not monuments of a vanished race. The Mayans who to-day inhabit Yucatan, Chiapas, Tabasco, Guatemala, the Hondurases, and sporadically Southern Mexico, are undoubtedly the lineal descendants of the building Mayans.

Who, then, were these Mayans?

Either they were totally unrelated to the peoples on each side of them inhabiting North and South America (from whom they were so strangely differentiated by their astonis.h.i.+ng skill as architects) and invaded Central America, bringing with them from their cradle-land a knowledge of building; or they were akin to all the other tribes of American aborigines, and derived their building capacities from outside sources.

We believe that the latter is the truth; and in this chapter we shall endeavour to show what their affinities with the other peoples of America were, following this up by an inquiry into the question of the origin of their architecture.

In the comparison we drew in the last chapter between Egypt and Yucatan, we dwelt on the fact that, while in the former the students of history and archaeology found a land which for centuries had been overwhelmed with an intellectual darkness so complete that the people had forgotten they had ever had a civilisation, in Yucatan an actual living civilisation was found by the Spaniards. But the impenetrable darkness which shrouded Egypt's past proved really a blessing to those who set to work to piece together the ancient national life. Once the key to the mystery was discovered in the Rosetta Stone, students could go steadily ahead, undistracted by the will-o'-the-wisps of legend and tradition.

Not so in Central America, where every earnest inquirer, whether he would or not, has found himself befogged by a myriad historical fairy tales.

The majority of those who have striven to throw light on the Mayan problem have been about as successful as the boy who tried to find the end of the rainbow by walking towards where it seemed to rest on the hillside. It was a long journey they had before them, and they did not bother to think, but rushed into Dame History's stable and vaulted on to the back of the horse Tradition. He is certainly a most attractive mount: a superb animal, yet quiet to ride and drive. Just, in fact, the easy-going, well-fed, showy park hack, from the well-worn saddle of which the most inexpert rider need fear no falls. There is a raw, nasty-tempered creature in the next stall, but nearly every one has fought shy of him. This is the horse Facts, as hard as his name, with a mouth like iron, and the very devil in his rolling eye.

Just like the park hack he is, Tradition has ambled with its riders up the row and down the row, and carried them nowhere. We will try to saddle Facts and see where he will take us.

The horse Tradition has been taught one trick. He takes the low Toltec fence like a practised hunter; and his delighted riders put him at it again and again, never tiring of taking their turn at clearing it on the back of their n.o.ble mount.

"Toltec" has become the pa.s.sword, the s.h.i.+bboleth which admits one to the freemasonry of Mayan archaeology. Without it you are a lost soul, a heretic fit only for the rack and stake of the archaeological Inquisitors. Among the good people who worry round the Mayan problem, this Toltec rubbish has become a veritable bogy. We are now going to do our best to "lay" this spook once and for all.

But first, what is the Toltec theory, to which whosoever will attain archaeological Nirvana must subscribe his "Credo"?

The Toltecs are a people who dropped from the clouds into Mexico at or about the seventh century of our era, bringing with them building specifications, and, being mysteriously possessed of a high civilisation, dotted Mexico and the nearer parts of Central America with marvellous palaces and temples. Tradition has it that they came to Mexico (no one bothers to say whence) in 648 and founded the city of Tula, supposed to be identical (in site at least) with the present town of that name, about forty miles to the north of Mexico City. They flourished for many centuries, increasing and spreading over the whole of Mexico, numbering at the height of their prosperity some four or five millions. Through famine, pestilences, and wars waged on them by other nations of the north they gradually diminished and were finally driven down into Chiapas, Guatemala, and Yucatan. During this enforced emigration they are supposed to have built the city of Palenque and those on the Usumacinta in Tabasco; the many buildings found in Western Guatemala and Southern Yucatan. Finally they reached Chichen Itza, whence they later migrated down the eastern coast of Yucatan to Copan and Quirigua in Eastern Guatemala.

A minor controversy has raged around the question of the site of their cradle city, Tula. Some theorists have held that it was somewhere on the coast: they generously give you the whole eastern seaboard of Mexico from which to choose. One of the enthusiastic Tulaites, deeming it well to hedge, suggests three possible sites, one on the Pacific coast, another on the Gulf of Mexico, and a third on the Atlantic coast of Guatemala, south of Honduras. Toltec bogy or not, this egregious theoriser has at least the satisfaction of knowing that with three sites so far apart he cannot very well help being on the right coast.

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." In a paper ent.i.tled "_Were the Toltecs an Historical Nationality?_" read before the Philosophical Society of America on the 2nd of September, 1887, provoked by a monograph written by M. Deesire Charnay to defend the theory, he wrote: "As a translation of this work has been recently published in this country, it appears to me the more needful that the baseless character of the Toltec legend be distinctly stated.... What Troy was to the Grecian poets the fall of Tula (the Toltec capital) was to the singers and story-tellers of the Anahuac, an inexhaustible field of imagination for glorification and lamentation.... Let it be understood hereafter that whoever uses these names in an historic sense betrays an ignorance of the subject he handles, which, were it in the better-known field of Aryan or Egyptian lore, would convict him of not meriting the name of a scholar."[8]

The shortest way of dealing with this farrago of myth is to take the war at once into the enemy's camp. Let us take the point upon which all the Toltec enthusiasts agree, namely that the Toltecs came "from the north."

Now let us look at this vague north, and see whether there exist in that direction any such traces as we should expect these highly civilised Toltecs to have left behind them. No; there are none. Scour that north as vigorously as you will, you find nothing save the ruins in Arizona and Colorado, which are mere heaps of unmortared stones and of such crude workmans.h.i.+p as to date themselves (even to the satisfaction of the most shortsighted inquirer) well into historic and post-Spanish times.

There are no actual building evidences, then. Let us next see whether a study of the tribes ma.s.sed from earliest times in that vague north will help us at all. Let us review the groupings of the barbaric tribes which inhabited America north of Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and see whether we can find the smallest ethnic loophole for these Toltecs and their civilisation, almost rivalling that of Egypt, to have wriggled through. Taking the north-west first, the particular quarter towards which all good Toltecites gaze with awe as being the direction from which the Toltecs came, what do we find? From time immemorial this north-west had been inhabited by the vast Athapascan stock, stretching from the Canadian Rockies down to Mexico. One of their largest tribes, the Shoshonees, occupied North-West Mexico. Of these Athapascan peoples it has been written, "They are nearer the brutes than probably any other portion of the human race." It is obvious that there is no comfort for the Toltecites in this direction.