MEXICAN MYTHS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3438, 3 February 1920, Page 54

MEXICAN MYTHS.

Bv Jessie Mackay.

It is strange how little the culture o'j. the Old World has concerned itself with the myths and race-legends of that New World which, amid its higher peoples, had achieved a certain distinctive eminence in art, in architecture, and v in social evolution generally; however dashed with a gloom and a cruelty recalling the fears and the ferocities of old Chaldea and Assyria in the times of their early kings. Thanks to Prescott, most of us know that American civilisation prior to 149 k! was practically the growth of comparatively few centuries before that date, and confined to Mexico, Central America, ana Peru. From Prescott's books on Mexico and Peru we gather little of old American religion outside that fierce cult of the wargods which first struck the European invaders, with all the ghastly accessories of human sacrifice brought to the highest degree of sacerdotal predominance. _ This grisly shadow deepened upon the life ol the people of Mexico with the triumph of Aztec arms and empire in that very fifteenth century the dying years of which saw Columbus achieve his great adventure. It is not surprising to hear that American savants, at least, have been busy on Indian monuments and manuscripts, and that much water has flowed under the bridge since Prescott wrote of the wars with Montezuma and the Tucas. What still lies locked away from human ken in the Mayan writings is likely to remain secret for ever; no friendly Rosetta stone can give that key which Spanish intolerance threw away four centuries ago. But of that which is known or reasonably surmised regarding the peoples of the Indian plateaux and forests a fascinating volume has been compiled lay the eminent Mexican scholar, Lewis Spence—a welcome addition to the delightful "Myth" series which of late years has shed light on so many ancient faiths and pantheons, owing not a little of their value to the pictures, old and new, which portray divinity and chivalry as these longperished peoples saw them. Naturally, the student asks first who were the tribes who peopled the mountains and table-lands of Anahuac, as Mexico was called when Europeans found it in the early sixteenth century. It was only 1519 when Hernau Cortes and his handful of Castilian adventurers set out to overthrow the might of Mexico's last Indian emperor, Montezuma. This is the question which Lewis Spence answers in the first chapter of his book, quoting often from earlier works of his dealing with the whence of Mexico's many races/ The larger part of these researches into a legendary past deals with that strange lost people, the Toltecs, roun-a whom so much romance has gathered in connection with- their culture-hero ana priestly king, Quetzalcoatl. Here we meet with disillusion : the savant does not see in these people of Anahuac's not very distant Golden A.ge the supermen of later legend, although as a race of artistcraftsmen their remains proclaim them unrivalled amid the races of America. Rather does he see them as a clever and adaptive people, who, invading Mexico about the time the Saxons conquered South Britain, adopted the civilisation of the dispossessed race they had found there, a race probably as high above them as the Romanized Britons were above the hordes of Hengist. Through this veneer of a gentle culture of which no definite record has yet been found their native savagery conclusively appears. Even the worship of Quetzalcoatl, whom Lewis Spence assumes to have belonged to the mild and learned' race of which I have spoken, was not wholly free from human sacrifice, though it was in most respects the reverse of the dark worship of the Aztec war-gods that finally brought Anahuac under their spell. The Toltecs were the first of that many-tribed Nahua race which peopled Mexico within our era—the people who lived by rule, as distinct from the utterly savage and nomad Indian tribes around them. The Nahua came from the north, and gave as many names and reminiscences of their journey from "Aztlan" as the Maori "gave of his Hawaiki. Our author identifies the home of the Nahua, from which the Toltecs made the first descent, as British Columbia. The Golden Ages of Toltec rule and art, under its first glorious and peaceful kings, is set down as lasting about five centuries. Their capital was Tollan, in Northern Mexico, the Tula 01 Spanish records. The accounts of their fall differ widely, but it is uniformly ascribed to the jealous machinations of the war-gods of the succeeding ruder Nahua tribes. Tales of wicked kings whose iniquities brought down the wrath of the gods on Tollan alternate with tales of the betrayal and fall of Quetzalcoatl himselt before the magic of the evil ones. The end of Toltec supremacy is definitely set down as almost contemporary with the Norman Conquest. Wilder tribes set up a regime where force and war prevailed over reason and the peaceful arts. The Otomi. a name well known to readers of Rider Hagxrard's thrilling romance, ''Montezuma's Daughter," and a still stronger people, the Chicemecs, took the place of the Toltecs, who faded away, leaving but a few obedient workers to pass on something 4>f the old culture to their conquerors. Other races, the Acoliuans, the Huasteca, a people related to the cultured Maya of Central America, the Mixteca. and Zapotica, with many more tribes of lesser or greater civilisation, an'pear in the centuries after the Toltec dispossession—a time not unlike the Avars of the Saxon Hentarchy. Strange ano verv ancient are the Cliff-dwelling Pueblo Indians, far older than the Nahuan invaders, but probably mixed with Nahuan blood later. But the people with whose name Mexico was finally identified were so lato in their migrations and conquests that it is still doubtful whether they were

true Nahuans or not. The melancholy, war-obsessed Aztecs, who in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought the many races of the Nahua and the aboriginal Indians of the great plateau under their sombre sway assimililated what was left of Toltec civilisation, and reigned in great splendour in the city of Tenochtitlau, the Venice of Anahuac, built in the Lake Tezcuco. This city, now called Mexico, and situated some distance from the Lake, was the seat of Montezuma, and a scene of marvellous beauty and magnificence when Cortes first beheld it, "lying like a white crane in the blue waters." (To be Continued.)