It cannot be inferred from evidences derived from the relics hitherto discovered in the United States, that the primitive inhabitants of our country were not, for centuries, contemporaneous with the Tultecans. That they were, indeed, will appear extremely probable, in solving the question as to their ultimate destiny. It is a very common and a very important question, 'What became of the numerous people who once populated our western valleys?' Though we may not give a conclusive answer to the inquiry, yet it may be shown that, in the final overthrow of the Tultecan nation, and synchronous with the desertion, and perhaps destruction, of the city of Palenque, the barbarous northern nations of Aztiques and Chichimecas, before alluded to, were none others than the primitive inhabitants of the Mississippi valley; who, in the order observed in the rise and fall of nations, were expelled from their country by hordes of a still more northern and warlike nation of Tartars.
We find, to begin with the human family in Central America, and the earliest arts which are at present revealed to us, that the Tultecan people, or a people analogous in their arts, customs, etc., inhabited, at the period of their glory, the provinces of Yucatan, Chiapa, and Guatemala. Which of the two first named portions of that delightful country was the scene of their primeval history, does not clearly appear. Should it be determined that this people actually traversed the great Atlantic, agreeably to the somewhat plausible and ingenious story of _Votan_, of which we shall hereafter speak, the province of Yucatan may be supposed to have been the spot where they first established themselves, and reared their stone edifices; and, indeed, if the fact goes for any thing in illustrating this position, the ruins of their architectural monuments are actually found strewed along the province, from near its eastern point, toward the famous city we have mentioned. But if the Tultecan metropolis, situated on an elevated paradisian plain, far removed from any other similar ruins, was _de facto_, the first residence of man in America, we shall be at a loss to assign any other than an indigenous origin for the Tultecan people. On a question thus undecided, there can be no cause of wonder, if there are those who are conscientiously _Pre-Adamites_. But, without designing to favor one opinion more than another, independent of the evidence actually offered, it may be confidently affirmed, that there does not appear any satisfactory proofs adduced by those who have attempted to trace the origin of that people, that they partook more of the character of one eastern people than another. There has been, in truth, no distinguished nation of people with whose ancient history we are acquainted, who had not manners and customs resembling those of the Palencians. It is not strange, therefore, that men, influenced by preconceived opinions, should have assigned various reasons to account for the commencement of human population in America, and that, in the height of their zeal to reconcile all things with those opinions, they should have propounded their own imaginings, and the sheerest inventions, as sober matters of fact. Such, melancholy as is the fact for moral truth, has too often been the case, whenever favorite theories have been in jeopardy, or have stood in need of opportune evidence to render them plausible or reconcilable with popular dogmas. The story of Votan, though ingenious, and though accredited by many, for the same reason, is indebted, we may believe, to the same ideal source for its origin. This story, however, claims notice, and a mention of the circumstances on which it is founded, in speaking of the beginning of our race on this continent. With history, as with science, there have been at all times those who have stepped forth, and gratuitously proposed theories, probable and improbable, in aid of opinions involving individual interests and sectarian views; but, in the case before us, we are left alone with facts and probability to establish our conclusions, which we are not at liberty to warp by prejudice, or the favor of others' opinions.