I now turn from the wild hunting tribes who peopled the shores of the
Great Lakes and the fastnesses of the northern forests to that cultivated
race whose capital city was in the Valley of Mexico, and whose scattered
colonies were found on the shores of both oceans from the mouths of the
Rio Grande and the Gila, south, almost to the Isthmus of Panama. They are
familiarly known as Aztecs or Mexicans, and the language common to them
all was the _Nahuatl_, a word of their own, meaning "the pleasant
sounding."
Their mythology has been preserved in greater fullness than that of any
other American people, and for this reason I am enabled to set forth in
ampler detail the elements of their hero-myth, which, indeed, may be taken
as the most perfect type of those I have collected in this volume.
Sec.1. _The Two Antagonists._
The culture hero of the Aztecs was Quetzalcoatl, and the leading drama,
the central myth, in all the extensive and intricate theology of the
Nahuatl speaking tribes was his long contest with Tezcatlipoca, "a
contest," observes an eminent Mexican antiquary, "which came to be the
main element in the Nahuatl religion and the cause of its modifications,
and which materially influenced the destinies of that race from its
earliest epochs to the time of its destruction.
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