15. ETHNOLOGY. Ethnologically Mex ico is one of the most interesting of the coun tries of the Western world. Within her bound aries are represented all the really great cul tured races of North America. Her territory forms the bridge of the continents over which surged backward and forward for uncounted centuries untold races, many of whom have disappeared forever, leaving behind them buried remains of their arts, their industries, their tribal customs and remnants of their vari ous languages engrafted upon those of the races who succeeded them.
The historic races of Mexico belong to a score or more of families, which future in tenser study and investigation may or may not show to be related. Many of the languages are divided into sub-families and these into dialects, some of which are quite separate, while others blend into one another so that it is hard to determine where one begins and the other ends. But all are indicative of the pres ence in Mexico of many races of distinct cus toms, habits and religious beliefs for a long period of time and of the changes in the dis tribution of these people which had already taken place, and which were continuing to take place at the time of the Conquest. Mexico, as we see it in the first quarter of the 16th cen tury, presents but one of the many ethnological phases of her kaleidoscopic existence.
Origin of Races.— Beside tradition, there is no guide pointing the way to the penetration of the cloud that hangs over the past of these mysterious races, other than such aids as are lent by linguistic studies, comparative ethnolog ical investigations, archeological remains and such echoes of the past as have come down to us in the complicated mythologies of the vari ous families inhabiting the western hemisphere.
Two great racial traditions in Mexico point to distinctly different origins for the two lead ing races of the country. Nahua tradition would seem to indicate that they came into Mexico from the north by way of the Pacific coast, while Maya tradition as invariably points to the east and more specifically to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, as the direction from which they worked southward into their pres ent habitat. And yet, when the great Nahua culture god, Quetzalcoatl, arrived in Mexico, it was by way of the Gulf of Mexico, and when he departed from the scene of his labors, for the unknown land from which he had come, it was by way of Coatzacoalcos (Puerto Mex ico) on the Gulf side of the Isthmus of Te huantepec. This and similar traditions have been used to prove that the Nahua tribes must have come from the east. Much is made of the fact that, while the Nahuas are repre sented, in their traditions, as coming from the north and west, Quetzalcoatl is as invariably represented as coming from the east, and that, as mythology is always older than tradition, the Nahuas must have come originally from the east and have afterward wandered north and come south again. There is nothing to support
this hypothesis. It must be kept in mind that, in these traditions of race migration and in that of the movements of the culture god, there are wrapped up two distinctly different events, which, in all probability, have no relation to one another. Quetzalcoatl's office as messen ger of the sun god who sent him on his mis sion of culture to. Mexico necessarily forced him to begin his journey from the direction of the home of the sun which, according to Nahua tradition, was in the east ; and the same reason made him sail away again toward the east when his mission on earth had been accoin piished. The great prophet who came frau the sun and the races that arrived from h west and north are, therefore, distinct in at. gin. The one is the creation of the imagr Lion, the others bid us listen to the echoes :! migration through several centuries of its sew historic existence.
The origin of the Mexican people has hi traced, by over-zealous investigators, to alnico every race under the sun. Mongolians, Tr tars, Japanese, Hindoos, Malays, Hebren Carthaginians, Irish, Welsh, Australasians, b kimos, Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians e Africans have been successively put forws with elaborate arguments as the original fore fathers of the Mexican people. But it is ailr within the past half century that serious it along scientific lines has bee undertaken by properly trained workers Is result of this investigation shows conclusinir that, whatever may have been the origin the races of the American continent, that ore gin is to be sought for so far back in the pas that races, customs, mythologies and tong no have had time to blend and to create a iv number of sub-tongues and dialects with tle corresponding tribal and clan variations. L also shows that Mexico must have been origi nally populated before the domestication :4 wild animals, and even before many of the is mats of the present day came into use in its Eastern Hemisphere. The horse, the cow, tit sheep, the goat, the elephant, the camel, eln. had become an integral part of the civilinin of the Old World, were unknown in Amen:: prior to the Columbian discovery. In men. the animal life of the Western Hemisphere :, so different from that of the eastern that: separation of many centuries is necessary ;: account for this diversity. The difference the plant life of the Eastern and of the Water: Worlds is even more noteworthy.