sufficiently powerful to exercise a great if not a controlling influence in building up the new empire, did at this time enter Anáhuac from the immediately bordering regions, and play a prominent part, in conjunction with the rising nations within the valley, in the overthrow of the kings of Tollan. These in-coming nations, by alliance with the original inhabitants, infused fresh life and vigor into the worn-out monarchies, furnishing the strength by which new powers were built up on the ruins of the old, and receiving on the other hand the advantages of the more perfect Nahua culture.
If one, and the most powerful, of these new nations was, as the annals state, called the Chichimec, nothing whatever is known of its race or language. The Chichimecs, their identity, their idiom, and their institutions, if any such there were, their name even, as a national appellation, were merged into those of the Nahua nations that accompanied or followed them, and were there lost. The ease and rapidity with which this tribal fusion of tongue and culture is represented to have been accomplished would indicate at least that the Chichimecs, if a separate tribe, were of the same race and language as the Toltecs; but however this may be, it must be conceded that, while they can not have been the wild cave-dwelling barbarians painted by some of the historians, they did not introduce into Anáhuac any new element of civilization.
The name Chichimec at the time of the Spanish conquest, and subsequently, was used with two significations, first, as applied to the line of kings that reigned at Tezcuco, and second, to all the wild hunting tribes, particularly in the broad and little-known regions of the north. Traditionally or historically the name has been applied to nearly every people mentioned in the ancient history of America. This has caused the greatest confusion among writers on the subject, a confusion which I believe can only be cleared up by the supposition that the name Chichimec, like
