ithout
recalling that, in the City of Mexico, there is an unexplained bas-relief
which was put up by the Spaniards after the Conquest but evidently figures
a native tradition. It represents an eagle bearing in his talons a
personage, wearing a diadem, beneath whom is a group of native
weapons.(30) The arms of Mexico representing an eagle holding a serpent in
its talons and resting on a cactus, is too well known to require comment
and recalls the Peruvian tradition of the eagle of the Incas conquering
the serpent-totem of a hostile people.

Striking as these undeniable resemblances undoubtedly are, they would not,
by themselves, justify the immediate conclusion that an actual direct
connection existed between the Peruvian traditions and the Guatemalan and
Mexican bas-reliefs which almost seem to illustrate the same or analogous
incidents. At the same time they prove that, besides their scheme of
government, the Incas had certain myths or traditions in common with the
civilized tribes inhabiting Central America.

It is well to bear in mind that the situations of Cuzco in Peru and Santa
Lucia in Guatemala are both adjacent to the Pacific coast with an
intervening distance of about 27-1/2 degrees of latitude. But 15 degrees,
however, lie between the northern boundary of modern Peru and the southern
boundary of Nicaragua where, as proven by Buschmann, innumerable names of
localities in the Nahuatl language testify to its ancient occupation by a
Nahuatl-speaking race.

It is noteworthy that this eminent philologist observed how the name
employed to designate the bamboo bed of the Cacique Agateite, in
Nicaragua, "barbacoa," was the same as that of the wooden bed or litter
used by the Inca in Peru (_op. cit._ p. 756). Buschmann likewise
identified the word galpon=great hall or house. He also expressed the
opinion that "the Quechua word _pampa_ resembles the Mexican _amilpampa
ehecatl_=the south wind, but the Mexican is formed by the affixes pan and
pa and the Quechua substantive means an even, open plain. At the same time
this meaning and form could be derived from the Mexican affixes"
(Buschmann, Ueber Aztekische Ortsnamen III, 7, p. 627).

Following this precedent I have ventured to search for further
resemblances between Nahuatl and Quechua words, and one of the remarkable
results I obtained was the discovery that the well-known Quechua name for
colonists=Mitimaes, the meaning of which, in Quechua, is not forthcoming,
se