In considering the origin of the Nahua nations, especially of the Toltecs and Aztecs, it is common to look upon the former as the first inhabitants of Mexico. Such a conclusion is, however, erroneous, since the Toltecs were preceded in Central-Southern Mexico, and even in Anahuac, both by people of different extraction from themselves and by scattering tribes of their own linguistic family, the Nahua. Of the former class, the most conspicuous are the so-called Quinametin (or Quinames), otherwise known as giants. These fierce and powerful people were encountered by the Olmecs, the first Nahuas to colonize the region north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. All the early writers refer to them in terms which indicate that they were disposed to accept the existence of a race of giants as a fact. Veytia and Clavigero, however, are convinced that the report is not to be accepted literally. The widest possible difference of opinion as to their origin and relationship to existing tribes prevails with different authors. All agree, however, that they were the first inhabitants of the country. These cruel monsters, addicted to the most disgusting vices, the terror of the immigrating peoples, at last met their fate, according to Ixtlilxochitl, in a great convulsion of nature which shook the earth and caused the mountains and volcanoes to swallow up and kill them.[362] It is probable that this account was figurative. Duran says they were destroyed by the Tlascaltecs while eating.[363] Veytia attributes the destruction to the Olmec chiefs, who made a feast for their enemies and when they were stupid and drunken fell upon them and slew them. We think that in this allusion to the giants, “the first inhabitants of the land,” we see the Votanic colonists from Xibalba that are supposed to have penetrated Anahuac at an early day. They may not have carried any special degree of refinement with them from their old home, and if they did, they probably lapsed into a state of semi-barbarism. Their power as a people, their enmity to the immigrants, and their traditional connection with the hated and all-powerful Xibalba, may have won for them the name of giants because of the fear that was entertained of them; or, as Mr. Bancroft thinks, they may not have been savages at all, but a civilized branch of the Xibalbans, carrying on the warfare in the North which had been waged farther South.[364] It is quite probable that we have here a figurative allusion, from a Nahua standpoint, to the fall of the Xibalban power itself—the new-world Babylon, which, like the old, may have met its fate during a drunken revel.[365]