The closing century of the Toltec power was a frightful one for broil, pestilence, and famine among the people, amours and revenge in the great chieftain’s household, revolt among the vassals; with sorcery rampant and the gods angry; with volcanoes belching, summers like a furnace, and winters like the pole; with the dreaded omen of a rabbit, horned like a deer, confronting the ruler, while rebel forces threatened the capital. There was also civil strife within the gates, phallic worship and debauchery,—all preceding an inundation of Chichimecan hordes. Thus the power that had flourished for several hundred years fell,—seemingly in the latter half of the eleventh century.[825] The remnant that was left of the desolated people went hither and thither, till the fragments were absorbed in the conquerors, or migrated to distant regions south.[826] Whether the term Toltec signified a nation, or only denoted a dynasty, is a question for the archæologists to determine. The general opinion heretofore has been that they were a distinct race, of the Nahua stock, however, and that they came from the north. The story which has been thus far told of their history is the narrative of Ixtlilxochitl, and is repeated by Veytia, Clavigero, Prescott, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Orozco y Berra, Nadaillac, and the later compilers. Sahagún seems to have been the first to make a distinct use of the name Toltec, and Charency in his paper on _Xibalba_ finds evidence that the Toltecs constituted two different migrations, the one of a race that was straight-headed, which came from the northwest, and the other of a flat-headed people, which came from Florida. Brinton, on the contrary, finds no warrant either for this dual migration, or indeed for considering the Toltecs to be other than a section of the same race, that we know later as Aztecs or Mexicans. This sweeping denial of their ethnical independence had been forestalled by Gallatin;[827] but no one before Brinton had made it a distinct issue, though some writers before and since have verged on his views.[828] Others, like Charnay, have answered Brinton’s arguments, and defended the older views.[829] Bandelier’s views connect them with the Maya rather than with the Nahua stock,[830] if, as he thinks may be the case, they were the people who landed at Pánuco and settled at Tamoanchan, the Votanites, as they are sometimes called. He traces back to Herrera and Torquemada the identification for the first time of the Toltecs with these people.[831] Bandelier’s conclusions, however, are that “all we can gather about them with safety is, that they were a sedentary Indian stock, which at some remote period settled in Central Mexico,” and that “nothing certain is known of their language.”[832]