Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/74

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THE STORY OF MEXICO.

mote period to think that these Chichimecs were not the barbarous tribe who lived in caves and ate lizards, but a later arrival from the mysterious north.

During the reign of Xolotl new tribes came wandering down from these remote regions. These successive waves of emigration give the idea of a constantly renewed struggle for supremacy far off in the unknown Amaquemecan, resulting in the migration of the conquered side. Xolotl received these new arrivals with benign hospitality, gave them lands to plant, and encouraged them to settle in his realm. Among these were the Aculhuas and Tepanecs, who founded the kingdoms, afterwards important, of Atzcapotzalco and Tlacopan.

Xolotl had the credit of reigning from 1120 to 1232, when he died. This would make him at least one hundred and twenty years old at his death. And some people from this imagine that there were several Xolotls that succeeded one another. Let us believe that he lived to this great age. The name means "Eye of great vigilance."

For three generations his immediate successors ruled the kingdom with firmness and judgment, compelling their people to cultivate the land, thus protecting agriculture, which was their chief source of wealth, and building towns to put an end to wandering habits inherited from the men who lived in caves on the mountain side.

Quinatzin, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, established the capital of the kingdom of the Chichimecs in Texcuco. It was during his