uences emanating from an ancient
and highly cultured centre of civilization situated in the south, which
had followed, during untold centuries, the same lines of primitive thought
which have been stated. This question of contact and influence from an
older civilization is so important and the material I have collected on
the subject is so extensive and complex, that it cannot be adequately
treated here. Further on I shall discuss at length certain historical data
throwing light on ancient contact and influences. Meanwhile I may as well
state here that, having carefully weighed all testimony, I accept as amply
proven and well supported, the testimony of Las Casas, Torquemada,
Mendieta and others, who record that the Mexican culture-hero Quetzalcoatl
was an actual person who had come to Mexico from Yucatan twice and had
finally returned thither, leaving a small colony of his vassals behind him
whose influence upon the religious and social organization and symbolism
of the tribes, inhabiting the central plateau, can be plainly discerned.
Montezuma himself, in his famous speech to Cortes, which the latter
carefully reported to the Emperor Charles V, states that: "we [the Mexican
rulers] were brought here by a lord, whose vassals all of our predecessors
were, and who returned from here to his native land. He afterwards came
here again, after a long time, during which many of his followers who had
remained, had married native women of this land, raised large families and
founded towns in which they dwelt. He wished to take them away from here
with him, but they did not want to go, nor would they receive or adopt him
as their ruler, and so he departed. Hut we have always thought that his
descendants would surely come to subjugate this country and claim us as
their vassals...." (Historia de Nueva Espana. Hernan Cortes, ed.
Lorenzana, p. 81; see also p. 96). I do not see how it is possible to
construe such plain, unadorned statements of simple, common-place facts
into the assumption that Montezuma was recounting a mythical account of
the disappearance of the Light-god from the sky, as upheld by some modern
writers, who interpret the whole episode as a sun-myth or legend.

I have already shown that the meaning of the ocelot-skin and the spider,
employed as symbols by the Mexicans, is apparent only when studied by
means of the Maya language of Yucatan, the land whence the culture-hero is
said to have come by the foregoing authoritie