Garcı ́a, Rocha identified the Toltecs as the descendants of the ten tribes; his
treatment involved careful readings of all the relevant prophets and numerous
scholars, ethnographers, geographers, and cartographers from the ancients
Josephus, Pliny, and Strabo to Ortelius and other early modern figures.
“How did the ten tribes arrive from the East to the West?” This, in Rocha’s
view, was the main “difficulty that the Prophet Esdras left open” when he
described the route to Arzareth.^133 Rocha tracked the tribes’ route from Sa-
maria all the way to Mexico, leaving no theory untouched and no map unex-
amined (except Postel, who is conspicuously missing). The result is a
marvelous treatise on world geography, including a meticulous analysis of
several of Ortelius’s Asian maps in conjunction with biblical prophecies
tracing the tribes’ routes through northern Assyria to Armenia and the Caspian
Sea and from there to Turkestan and Arzareth. Rocha paid heed to the Green-
land and Atlantis theories, reviewing every piece of evidence. He also discussed
the possibility that the ten tribes might be on other continents, such as
Africa.^134 In the end, he came up with an all-encompassing hypothesis that
combined all of the previous ones: some tribes had come through Atlantis,
some through Greenland, and the majority from Arzareth through the Straits
of Anian. Some even remained in their original Old World locations, with
others staying on in different locations through which they had passed en
route. This allowed Rocha to encompass all of the locations ever discussed as
putative homes of the ten tribes and to bring many of their residents along to
the Americas:
The lost or exiled tribes... and their descendants and the other
nations came from Asia and from Grand Tartary, populating all
of Northern America [la America Septentrional] and all parts of
Mexico.... The first that entered Mexico were the Toltecs, who were
the main bunch of the ten tribes and many of them came from
Arzareth penetrating through the Kingdom of Anian and passing
the Straits of the same name.^135
Rocha adds to the list other members of the ten tribes, who had remained
in Arzareth and then arrived in the Americas in a later wave (which sequencing
explains the ethnic differences among the various peoples of Mexico). The
most important innovation in his treatment is the idea that the ten tribes are
not located in one place; their remnants could be found anywhere along their
way from Samaria to Mexico. In short, Rocha tells a well-documented story of a
global migration and wandering centered in part on the ten tribes. This set the
stage for the global search for the tribes that began in the later part of the
eighteenth century.