A Nameless People
If this be true it would go to show that a people of comparatively high culture existed at a not very remote period on the Mexican tableland. But what their name was or their racial affinity the writer does not profess to know. Many modern American scholars of note have conferred upon them the name of “Toltecs,” and speak freely of the “Toltec period” and of “Toltec art.” It may appear pedantic to refuse to recognise that the cultured people who dwelt in Mexico in pre-Nahua times were “the Toltecs.” But in the face of the absence of genuine and authoritative native written records dealing with the question, the author finds himself compelled to remain unconvinced as to the exact designation of the mysterious older race which preceded the Nahua. There are not wanting authorities who appear to regard the pictorial chronicles of the Nahua as quite as worthy of credence as written records, but it must be clear that tradition or even history set down in pictorial form can never possess that degree of definiteness contained in a written account.