Nahua institutions in different regions is too often attributed to the Toltec exiles, and too seldom to historical events preceding the sixth century. The Oajacan coast region or tierra caliente, if we may credit the result of researches by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, was sometimes known as Anáhuac Ayotlan, as the opposite coast of Tabasco was called Anáhuac Xicalanco. Both these Anáhuacs were inhabited by enterprising commercial peoples, whose flourishing centres of trade were located at short intervals along the coast. Material relics of past excellence in architecture and other arts of civilization abound in Oajaca, chief among which stand the remarkable structures at Mitla.
NATIONS OF TEHUANTEPEC.
Although Tehuantepec in the later aboriginal times was subject to the kings of Zapotecapan, yet within its limits, besides the Chontales,—a name resembling in its uncertainty of application that of Chichimecs farther north,—were the remnants of two old nations that still preserved their independence. These were the Mijes, living chiefly by the chase in the mountain fastnesses of the north, and the Huaves, who held a small territory on the coast and islands of the lagoons just east of the city of Tehuantepec. The Mijes, so far as the vague traditions of the country reveal anything of their past, were once the possessors of Zapotecapan and the isthmus of Tehuantepec, antedating the Zapotecs and perhaps the Nahua culture in this region, being affiliated, as some believe, in institutions and possibly in language, with the Maya element of Central America. While this connection must be regarded as somewhat conjectural, we may nevertheless accept as probably authentic the antiquity, civilization, and power of this brave people. The Huaves were traditionally of southern origin, having come to Tehuantepec by sea from Nicaragua or a point still farther south. In navigation and in commerce they were enterprising, as were indeed all the tribes of this southern-coast Anáhuac, and they took gradually from the Mijes,
