therefore that the development of Toltec culture is in part due to Mayan inspiration filtered, I believe, through the early inhabitants of the Zapotec country.
The consideration of what may be called the mythical period of Mexican history is rendered all the more difficult by the fact that all the legends have been collected among later immigrants who wished as far as possible to trace some connection between themselves and the earlier settlers. Toltec descent, if it could be established, raised a family at once to a patrician status, and most of the immigrant tribes sought their rulers among the descendants of a Toltec house. There is therefore the danger of fictitious genealogies, such as exist among so many Sudanese tribes desirous of proving "Arab" descent; but apart from this we are confronted at the outset with a difficulty which is not easy of solution. Sahagun states that the first inhabitants, the Toltec, the other Nahua, the Olmec and the Michoacans, arrived at the Panuco valley and worked down the east coast before turning inland. Ixtlilxochitl represents the Toltec as coasting down lower California and Jalisco. Of the two writers Sahagun is by far the more trustworthy, but at the same time it is difficult to see what Ixtlilxochitl had to gain by deliberately transferring the scene of the migration from one coast to the other. The story of Sahagun is, in brief, as follows. The migrants penetrated as far as Guatemala, and then settled for a time at a place called Tamoanchan, mention of which occurs in nearly all migration legends. Here the wise men who led them departed, taking the god under whose guidance they travelled and the picture-writings which contained their lore, and sailing eastward over the sea. The rest remained behind, under the governance of certain lesser sages, of whom the chief were Oxomoco and Cipactonal, "awaiting the dawn for the administration of society." The Olmec also split from the main stem at this point. From here the others went to
