A deadly enemy of Quetzalcoatl, one Huemac, of the strong hand, landed at Panuco with a great army and marched on Quetzalcoatl's city of Tullan or Tollan, located on the shores of a great lake. Like a very modern totalitarian dictator in Europe, Huemac burned and ravaged all before him and left the people with only their eyes to weep. Wherever, he passed, great cruelties were done, and great tyrannies were set up, say the old Spanish chronicles, derived from the native traditions, which are, possibly, confused,or are have gone off the rails, with native traditionalists, in identifying the Toltecs, which were led by Huemac, with the men in black led by Quetzalcoatl.

Anyway, Huemac established the Toltec power in old Mexico, and it did not fade away till some 465 years before Cortez landed in Aztecan Mexico, and ruined the succeeding Aztec civilization whose last emperor was the ill-fated Moctezuma. Fray Bernardino Sahagun takes up the story, at this point:
"The day came when Quetzalcoatl persuaded the Toltecs (?) to go out from the city of Tullan. They left it at his order, although they had been there a long time, and had built fine and beautiful houses, temples and palaces, all with the greatest magnificence, and even possessed great riches in all the places where they had spread. Departing out, they took their leave, abandoning houses, lands, cities, riches; for, not being able to take all away, they buried much riches and gold under the earth, whence one draws it out today, full of admiration for the excellence of their works. Obeying the orders of Quetzalcoatl they went, pushing before them, with infinite difficulties, their wives, and sick and old, none making resistance to his commands. All went on the road, immediately Quetzalcoatl came out of Tullan to go up to the region of Tlalpallan, whence he never returned..."

Torquemada was told that Huemac reigned in Tullan for seventy years after Quetzalcoatl quitted it; but he varies the story of Sahagun by saying that Quetzalcoatl left Tullan in a rage because of the evil he foresaw to a place which had become licentious, and that it was from Cholullan, where he abode many years, that he finally went to the sea. From Cholullan, Quetzalcoatl had sent out men who colonized Yucatan, Tabasco and Campeche and Onohualco by the sea - and, bas-reliefs and totem poles show, what is now British Columbia. There, these colonizers "built most splendid and great Roman edifices as at Mixtlan (Hell in the Mexican language), which show that these men were of great intellect and powers who constructed these fine buildings".

Quetzalcoatl, as Torquemada suggests, may have become an old man weighed down by the burden of years and weary of exercising a wisdom and skill which seemed like to become a vanity and vexation of spirit..."when he departed from Cholullan, he pretended that he was going to visit other provinces that he had sent men to settle". However, that may be, Huemac of the strange land, in a rage that Quetzalcoatl had removed himself from his reach, slaughtered all he found, and such fear came on men that they worshipped Huemac as a god, endeavouring by that to darken and destroy the form of ritual that Quetzalcoatl had already bequeathed to that city".

There was also an ancient Mexican tradition handed down by the far later Aztecs or Nahuatls, that the first settlers in ancient Mexico and Central America were white people. They were subsequently conquered by invaders of a dark-skinned race who drove them out of the land, forced them into ships and saw them sail away for a far-off land to the east, in the direction of the rising sun, where they settled. The natives of Guatemala, at the time of the Spanish conquest, also had this tradition.

END