Mexico weekly ledger., 1897-06-03
HOW WAS MEXICO NAMED?
Some Unwritten History From the
Period of the Ancient Aztecs Down
to the Present Time.


Correspondence of the Ledger.
MEXICO, MISSOURI, May 2S, 1897,
Was Mexico named after the sold
Mexico road" or was the road named
after our city? Most any road has it;
midway, it's middletown or its middle
brook. The city of Old Mexico was
located by the Aztecs and everything
about it shows that they understood it
to mean ~"midway," "between"
("half," "medium," ''better-half,'
"returning-half." The Gulf of Mex
leo is mid,cay betWeen the land and the
waters, the continents and the oceans.
The state of Mexico is mtdaUay between
the continents and the oceans. Its
capital, the City of Mexico, which was
founded (some writers say eight cen
turtles before America was discovered,
Is located in an elevated plateau, or
valley, midUGy bettpeen the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans On a peninsular
isthmus midtUdy betUeen North and
South America. Nor is this all, for it
is located just south of the tropic of
Cancer midvay the Northern Hemis-
phere, where the sun yearly turns
back from its northern and returns again
and again to its southern home.
Whether the word is of Aztec origin l
have been unable to ascertain. l do
not think it appears any place on the
map of the Eastern Hemisphere, at
least before the discovery of Amer
lea, and while similar words with SIM
liar meanings are in the youngest and
Oldest languages none of them applied
to place. 1t seems to me that similar
thoughts produce similar sounds in all
language to all peoples, to all tongues,
with accent to suit the veal or woe,
the joy or the sorrow of the individual
utterance. If the word, Mexico, should
be of a foreign language the facts re-
main that the city was founded centu-
ries before America was discovered,
and that the meaning of the word, as
understood by its founders, is writ
ten everywhere about it. Beautiful
thoughts-they are sufficient to build
cities and civilize savages.
When a small boy in Boone county
we had for neighbors a number of
very old men, large, active, fine look
ing, white-headed. Some of them
lived on "the old Mexico road" and
others were then over eighty years
old. That part of the county was then
very thickly timbered; so thick with
young timber and underbrush that one
could scarcely ride through the woods.
One of these old gentlemen, Mr.. VIM.
Maupin, has often said that at first
there were only the large trees and
that one could ride through the woods
on horse back and see a deer a mile
away. In the early days the Indians
burned the grass off every fall and the
fires kept the young trees and under
brush and the lower limbs of the large
trees from growing. While fishing on
the Hardin farm the other day l could
notice in the timber the difference be-
tween the old trees and the young
ones that had grown since these In
dian fires have ceased. These prairie
fires were the Indians road tax, and
to avoid building bridges the buffalo
and Indian made their trail along the
top of the ridges. Sometimes the In
dian took a short or easy cut on the
buffalo and went in his canoe along
the rivers.
From Mexico to Canada the Jesuit
followed along these trails and estab-
lished missions among the Indians
more than a hundred years before any
other white man ever settled in Mis-
souri,, and after st. Louis became a
city her first commerce passed out in
caravans along these Indian, buffalo,
Jesuit trails to San Antonio, Santa Fe
and Old Mexico. If the Wabash rail-
road was properly named it would be
called the Old Mexico and Canadian
Route.
In Evangeline Prof. Longfellow in,
his description of the ~wanderings of
the Arcadians, shows us how early and
well these Jesuit trails were known to
the men of Cambridge, and they did
not use this knowledge in a poetical
way only, but along the top of the
ridge and both banks of the rivers
they have built their railroads and the
mantle of the humble Jesuit has often
fallen to the railroad king, if the truth
was told.
The Arctic did not call themselves
Mexicans. Mexico was not the name
Of themselves, their city, nor their
country, but it was a more sacred
name. 1t seems to me to be the name
Of their temple, their religion, per-
haps their God. Like Salem and the
Jebusites when Melchizedek was their
king, but unlike Jerusalem and it's
possessors. And alike Salem, Mexico
is located inland from the sea, north
of an isthmus with another civilization
(its Egypt south of the isthmus, but
instead of the Nile there is an old
mountain road, with no pyramids nor
Great Sahara. My conclusion is that
our beautiful city of Mexico here in
Missouri is named from an old Indian
camping ground and means, enid
way", ''between" Mexico and (the
coast of Nova Scotia) Canada. The
Jesuit being the owner of a compass
probably applied the name to the site,
but the American first taught the Jes-
nit it's meaning.
What o diversion for the learned
Jesuit priest with an audience from
the prairies to entertain them with
legends and stories of the Great Sa-
hara. Yes, entertain them with le-
gends of the great desert, the other
savage highway, whose prairie fires
have ceased to burn 30 long that the
winds, In playing, have picked up
their sands and carried them away
until the level of the desert is below
the sea. Yes, told them OF the camel,
asy to Take
asy to Operate
a.. ,s.suves peculiar to Hoods Pins. Small in