by the Toltecs, is quite certain. It has been common to consider the Chichimecs as a Nahua people, and even so critical a writer as Mr. Bancroft adopts this popular error. As long ago as 1855, Sr. Francisco Pimentel undertook to show the mistake into which many had fallen, and in his _Lenguas Indigenas de Mexico_ (published in 1862), has furnished conclusive proof that the Chichimecs originally spoke a different language from the Nahua nations, but subsequently adopted the Nahua tongue, on the principle set forth by Balbi: “It is not the language of the conquering people that invariably dominates, but that which is most regular and cultured.” On the testimony of Torquemada,[397] Ixtlilxochitl[398] and Juan Bautista Pomar,[399] Sr. Pimentel shows that the Chichimec language was once distinct and different from the Nahua, and that these people came under the civilizing influences of the Toltecs during their golden age, but in their declining period availed themselves of the opportunity of possessing their country and advanced civilization.[400] If the Chichimecs were the neighbors of the Toltecs in Hue hue Tlapalan, it is reasonable to expect some light on the situation of that disputed locality in the Chichimec traditions; but in this expectation we are disappointed. There is no mention of that ancient home of the Nahuas, nor of any route pursued in their migrations. Amaquemecan is the only name which is applied to their most primitive land or history; one of the cities which they occupied at some remote period seems to have borne the name. When the Toltecs sent to the Chichimecs for their first king, they were, according to Ixtlilxochitl, in the neighborhood of Panuco. Panes describes them as having passed the sea, and, according to their reckoning, in the year Five Tolti to have arrived at the seven caves. Thence they journeyed to Amacatepeque, and certain persons left that province to go to Tepenec, which is to say “the Mountain of Echo.”[401] Ixtlilxochitl and some other authors derive them from Chicomoztoc, a rendezvous of the nations, which has been located by Clavigero at about twenty miles south of Zacatecas but is considered by Duran and Acosta as identical with Aztlan in the region of Florida.[402] It is impossible to determine either the starting-point or route of this people, who subsequently became amalgamated with the scattered Toltecs after the fall of Tollan, and whose rule in Anahuac may properly be dated from the (1062) middle of the eleventh until nearly the middle of the fifteenth (1431) century.