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Updated: June 23, 2025
"These people," he declared, "are dogs in the manger, and Ward is the worst of the lot. He knows no more of archaeology than a congressman. The man's a faker! He showed me a spear-head of obsidian and called it flint; and he said the Aztecs borrowed from the Mayas, and that the Toltecs were a myth. And he got the Aztec solar calendar mixed with the Ahau. He's as ignorant as that."
Therefore the Choluans were replaced by the more warlike Toltecs, the Toltecs by the ruder Aztecs, and those who look at the miserable towns and villages of the present inhabitants alongside of the ruins of the grand edifices, the roads and aqueducts of ancient Mexico and Peru, may say, the Aztecs by the less civilised Spaniards.
It may represent a race who existed even prior to the Toltecs, to whom the Aztecs were indebted for all their arts and refinements, and upon which it is doubted if they much improved. No one can possibly say how many centuries are looking down upon us from this colossal ruin.
"We were over yonder, close to the mountains, which are straight up and down, and half way to the top, we saw three or four queerly-shaped rocks that looked like houses or huts. Did you ever see them, Mr. Kringle?" "No; but I think I know what you mean. They must be some of the cave dwellings of the ancient Pueblos, or perhaps as far back as the Toltecs.
The particular Toltec king to whom the Mexican historians ascribe the building of Xochicalco was called Nauhyotl, that is to say, "Four Bells," and died A.D. 945. We are further told that just about the time of our Norman Conquest, the Toltecs were driven out from the Mexican plateau by famine and pestilence, and migrated again southward.
Humboldt says that in 648 A. D. the Toltecs had a solar year more perfect than that of the Greeks and Romans. Other-writers tell us that they were a worthy people, averse to war, allied to virtue, to cleanliness, and good manners, detesting falsehood and treachery.
As he heard the history of its people how the Apaches had wiped out the Toltecs, and the white men had killed off the Apaches, and then, after pushing aside the Pimas and the Mexicans, closed in a death struggle for the mastery of the range Hardy began to perceive the grim humor of the land.
In their architecture the Aztecs did little more than copy the works left by their predecessors; and, to this day, the Mexican Indians call a builder a toltecatl or Toltec. If we consider this circumstantial account to be anything but a mere tissue of fables, the question naturally arises what became of the remains of the Toltecs when they left the high plains of Mexico?
But the outline is not wholly dark; it does not exclude the possibility of a reasonable attempt at hypothesis. When Cortez entered Mexico, the Aztecs, Montezuma’s people, had been in power more than two centuries. Most of the ancient history, of which something is said in these books, relates to ages previous to their time, and chiefly to their predecessors, the Toltecs.
It is supposed that this dual religion was the result of the mixture of two peoples, the mild and gentle tenets of the Toltecs being adopted by the fierce Aztec invaders, who added to them their own superstitious and bloody rites. All this, however, was unknown to Roger at the time.
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