(1) Jack D. Forbes, “Aztecas del Norte – The Chicanos of Aztlán”, Fawcet 1973; “… one of the earliest Mexican influences appearing in the United States was maize horticulture. The initial domestication of maize, and the subsequent development of hundreds of new varieties represent one of the Mexican people’s greatest accomplishments, as can be confirmed today by Iowa farmers or Soviet agricultural spcialists. However, it is unnecessary to review here the world-wide significance of maize, for it is enogh merely to cite corn on the cob, popcorn, Cracker Jacks, tamales, hoiny, cornmeal mush, corn whiskey, and succotash to realize the importance of maize culture in the United States. / The introduction of maize did not, of itself, lead to the development of advanced culture in the United States. Shortly before the Christian era, however, certain groups of Southwestern natives began. // to acquire new crops from Mexico, including beans, squash, and beter forms of corn. They also learned to manufacture pottery from the Mexican Indians. With those innovations as a base, they produced a series of new traditions …’ // Thse new traditons included the Mogollon [300 B.C – A.D 1100], Pioneer Gilla River [B.C./A.D. A.D. 700] and Pueblo-Anasazi [B.C./A.D. – precent] cultures, the three basic sedentary ways of life in the Southwest pror to 1600 A.D. /
(2) Passim: Thus, from a Mexican horticultural-ceramic base arose an advanced culture in the United States which is tstill represented by the |Hopi, Zuni, Keres, and Tewa –Tiwa groups of Arizona and New Mexico. But Mexican influences did not cease after the Christian era. On the contrary, they became more intense and led, either directly or indirectly, to developments in architecture, ceramics,, painting, etching, stone-working, clothing, trade, metallurgy, religion, and social/political organization. Between 900 and 1200 A.D. a Mexican people whom we call the Hohokam appear to have established a great metropolitan trading city at Snaketown, Arizona. From this center Hohokam colinists or traders penetrated north to what is now Flagstaff and west to the Colorado River, and Hohokam pottery has been found in the San Fernando Valley of California. These North Mexicans brought with them techniques for making ceremonial ball courts, copper bells, temple mounds, mosaic mirrors, clay figurines, etchings and an elaborate assemblage of ornaments and tools of stone, pottery, and shell. The construction of a monumental irrigation system alone marks the Hohokam as an able, energetic, and well-organized people [these canals are now being used by Anglo-Americans]. The decline of the Hohokam culture [ca. 1200] was followed by the rise of other Mexican-oreinted or Mexican-influenced complexes, including that of Cassa Grandes, Chihuahua [ca. 1200-1500]. Casa Grandes, like Snaketown, was a great trading center and the location for an intensieve irrigation complex. The Casas grandes natives apparently specialized in copper mining and metallurgy and raised thousands of macaws. [The latter, along with copper bells, were a major intertibal trade item in the Southwest.] / At Casas Grandes and farther to the north in Arizona and New Mexico the first American ‘skyscrapers’, four- and five-story buldings, were being built in this period. /
(4) Passim: It will not be necessary for our purposes to revieuw all of the Mexican influences in the s|outhwet before 1600, but the plumed-serpent religious concept and cotton clothing might be cited to illustrate the range of diffusion. Farther east the Mexican impact is alos apparent, both in the initial stages of horticultural development and in later pases of advanced culture. In the initial stages of horticultural development and in later pahses of advanced culture. Interestingly, it is especially in the Mississipty- and Ohio-Valleythat the most Mexican-like cultures deveop, with great temple pyramids of earth, copper ornamentation, Mexican-stykle art, and with a religious-political outlook womewhat resembling those of Mesoamerica. / The natives of the South [Mississippi-Alabama] were especially under |Mesoamerican influence between 1300 and 1600, and it is interesting to speculate on the extent of Mexican trading activity necessary to have induced such resemblances. It is, however, not surprising that Mexican influences could reacht that far north. Beginning with the Christian era, Anáhuaac produced a series of great cities and possessed a large population[some authorities now feel that there were perhaps twenty million inhabitants in central Mexico in the 1520s]. Such centers as Teotihuacán, with a ceremonial area of eight square miles, must have exertd an influence for hunderds of miles in all directions.”
Marx Caesar Asimov 