arts of life, as well as their simple worship of the sun, they seem to be assimilated to the Natchez of Louisiana.
Other tribes, the principal of which was the Acolhuans, followed. Under all their distinct appellations, yet speaking at most dialects of the same language, it seems probable that all these tribes were offsets from that teeming hive of human beings of which the unknown seat lay somewhere to the northward, in the unexplored country to the north and east of California, between the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the great Pacific Ocean.[1]
The Alcolhuan monarchy lasted for several centuries, till the rise of the Mexicans or Aztecs, the last of seven tribes of the Nahuatlacs, the people who had emigrated to Anahuac before the Acolhuans, put an end to it.
It appears that these seven tribes had departed from their northern home in company; but that after three considerable halts, disagreement produced a separation of the Aztec tribe from their brethren. The six proceeded to the south, and formed their settlements; while many years elapsed before the seventh, oracle led, came to a final pause in the valley of Mexico, where they founded their principal city on the site of the present capital, amid the waters of the lake Tezcuco. Like most of the nations whose entry into the country I have thus briefly noticed, the Mexicans adopted as much of the agriculture, arts, and demi-civilization of the Toltecs as was extant, and conformed to their astronomical division of time, mythology, and probably to many of their religious observances and customs.
During their period of a hundred years' wandering in Anahuac, before making their final settlement, the Mexicans are stated to have succumbed to the power of the
- ↑
A.D. Emigration of the Toltecs into Anahuac 607 Termination of the Toltec monarchy 1051 Emigration of the Chechimecas 1170 Emigration of the six tribes of the Nahuatlacs 1178 Then followed the Alcalhuans, with whom the Chechimecas coalesce. The Mexicans, the seventh tribe of the Nahuatlacs, build Tenochtitlan in 1325 See Humboldt's Researches.
