The name Toltec came to be used as a synonym for a builder in stone or a worker of metals, and it was due to the influence of this race that the other branches of the Nahuatlaca stock made their progress in the civilizing arts. Not only do they stand out among other peoples of the New World as prominent in the pursuit of useful arts and in artistic achievement, but they deserve a place of honor because the deity they worshipped, Suetzalcohuatl, was not propiatiated by sacrifices of blood, but by offerings of maize, perfumes, and flowers. Probably many of them migrated to the regions of Central America, where they were able to preserve their own traditions. Here can be seen better than in the neighborhood of their ancient capital the specimens of their artistic skill. Some of the Toltecs of the dispersion took refuge at Cholula, which at the time of the Conquest was the chief seat of Toltec arts and religion, and also the center of the slave trade. Not far off is the town of Tlaxcallan. The dissolution of the Toltec control was followed by a long period marked by successive waves of migration. Some of these nomadic tribes who described themselves as Chichimecs of the sun (Teo Chichimecs) established themselves in the strong places of the mountains, and took possession of Tlaxcallan, making it their center. In time this pueblo and its neighbors became of great importance, emigrants spreading from it over parts of Yucatan and Central America. Even at the time of the Spanish conquest the territory which Tlaxcallan dominated, although it was only forty miles in its greatest length and considerably narrower in breadth, mustered 50,000 warriors. The spread of the Nahuatlaca race by their various emigrating swarms brought them over all parts of the Mexican plateau, and also to the coast both of the Atlantic and Pacific, but the center of their rule lay in the narrow Valley of Mexico, probably once the crater of an immense volcano surrounded by a girdle of mountains. There were fifty pueblos in the valley placed on or near the four lakes which, by changes in the distribution of land and water, had taken the place of the one large body of water that had once filled the extinct crater. Before the coming of the Nahuatlaca the district was occupied by the Otomis, whose language is still spoken in the neighborhood of Mexico City.