Chapter 6

PLATE XVII.

Interior of chamber, Mitla, showing type of mural decoration peculiar to this region. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.

Nevertheless the memory of the King did not fade from native imagination with the fall of his throne. Stories of the greatness, the pride and the destruction of Montezuma spread; they became confused with older legends; and finally the Mexican monarch himself became the subject of myth. Far to the north the Papago[65]still show the cave of Montezuma, whom they have identified with Sihu, the elder brother of Coyote; and they tell how Montezuma, coming forth from a cave dug by the Creator, led the Indian nations thence. At first all went happily, and men and beasts conversed with one another until a flood ended this age of felicity, only Montezuma and his brother, Coyote, escaping in arks which they made forthemselves. When the waters had subsided, they aided in the repeopling of the world, and to Montezuma was assigned the lordship of the new race, but, being swollen with pride and arrogance by his high dignity, he failed to rule justly. The Great Spirit, to punish him, removed the sun to a remote part of the heavens; whereupon Montezuma set about building a house which should reach the skies, and whose apartments he lined with jewels and precious metals. This the Great Spirit destroyed with his thunder; but Montezuma was still rebellious, whereupon as his supreme punishment, the Great Spirit sent an insect to summon the Spaniards from the East for his destruction.

How far the political influence of the Aztec Empire extended is not clearly certain, but there are numerous indications that its cultural relations were very wide. There are rites and myths of the Pueblo Indians, Hopi and Zuñi, whose resemblance to the Mexican seems surely to imply a connexion not too remote; while far to the south, among the Nahua of Lake Nicaragua, the creator pair and ruling gods, Tamagostad and Çipattoval, are identical with the Mexican generative couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal.[66]

In outlying districts today the less-touched Nahuatlan tribes preserve their essential paganism, and Lumholtz's and Preuss's accounts[67]of the pantheons of the Cora and Huichol Indians give us a living image of what must have been the ancestral religion of the Nahuatlan tribes, at least in the crude days of their wanderings. Father Sun, say the Cora, is fierce in the summer-time, slaying men and animals; but Chuvalete, the Morning Star, keeps watch over him to prevent him from harming the people. Morning Star is cool and dislikes heat, and once he shot the Sun, causing him to fall to earth; but an old man restored him to the heavens, giving him a new start, Chuvalete is the first friend of the Cora among the gods, and it is to him that they address their prayers as they go to the spring to bathe in the early dawn; they call him, "ElderBrother," just as the Earth is "Our Mother" and the Sun "Our Father." The Water Serpent of the West, the Moon, the Winds, the Rain, the Lightning,—all these are familiar deities. Preuss[68]calls attention to the striking emphasis which the Cora place on the power of thought: the leaders of the ceremonies are called "thinkers" and in their prayers and rites the conception of a magical preservative and creative power in thought frequently recurs, not only as a power of priests, who have obtained it through purification, but as the essential power of the gods. Thus, of the sun about to rise:

"Our Father in Heaven thinks upon his Earth, our Father the Shining One.There he is, on the other side of the World.He thinks with his Thought, our Father, the Shining One.He remembers, too, what he is, our Father, the Shining One."

And again it is the sacred words handed down in ritual through which men acquire that mystical participation in the divine power that preserves them in life:

"Here are present his Words, which he has given to us, his children,Wherewith we live and continue in the World.Indeed, all his Words are here present, which he has uttered and left unto us.Here leaves he unto his children his Thought."

The Huichol have a more populous pantheon. Tatevali ("Grandfather Fire") is the deity of life and health, and also of shamans and prophesying. Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is likewise a fire-god and a singing shaman; he is the son of Grandfather Fire and yet his elder; for, it is said, Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is the spark produced in striking flint, while Grandfather Fire is the flame fed by wood. Father Sun is another important deity who was created, they say, when the Corn Mother (or the Eagle Mother, as some have it) threw her young son, armed with bow and arrows, into an oven,whence he emerged as the divinity. Setting Sun is the assistant of Father Sun; and with the Moon, who is a Grandmother, he helps to keep Tokakami, the black and blood-smeared god of death, from leaving his underworld abode to devour the Indians. Tamats, the Elder Brother, is divinity of wind and air and messenger of the gods;[69]the cock belongs to him, because it follows the course of the Sun and always knows where the Sun is; and he is also the deity who conquered the underworld people and put the world into shape. He appears in different forms (like Tezcatlipoca), now a wolf, now a deer, a pine-tree, a whirlwind; and it is he who taught the ancients "all they had to do in order to comply with what the gods wanted at the five points of the world." There are goddesses, too. Takotsi Nakawe ("Grandmother Growth") is the Earth goddess who gives long life and is the mother of the armadillo, the peccary, and the bear; to her belong maize, and squash, and beans, and sheep; she is water, likewise, and is a Rain-Serpent in the east. Rain-Serpent goddesses live in each of the Quarters—she of the east is red, and the flowers of spring are her skirt; she of the west is white, like a white cloud; blue is the Rain-Serpent goddess of the south, and to her belong seeds and singing shamans; while the Rain-Serpent goddess of the north, whose name means "Rain and Fog hanging in the Trees and Grass," is spotted. Another goddess is Young Mother Eagle, the Sun's mother, and it is she who holds the world in her talons and guards everything; the stars are her dress. With Grandmother Growth beneath, Young Mother Eagle above, and the four Rain-Serpent goddesses, the six cardinal points of the world are defined. It will be observed, too, that the goddesses are deities of the feminine element, earth and water; while the gods are divinities of the masculine elements, fire and air.

Beliefs such as these inevitably suggest those of the older Mexico, and similarly in many of the rites of these Indians there are analogies to Aztec cult. Perhaps most striking of allis the elaborate and partly mystical adoration of the hikuli, or peyote (cacti of the genusLophophora), to which are ascribed mantic power and the induction of ecstacy; and in which, no doubt, we see the marvellous plant which the Aztec encountered in their migration. The cult extends to tribes remote in the north and is not without a touch of welcome poetry, as in the Tarahumare song given by Lumholtz[70]—

"Beautiful lily, in bloom this morning, guard me!Drive away sorcery! Make me grow old!Let me reach the age at which I have to take up a walking-stick!I thank thee for exhaling thy fragrance, there where thou art standing!"

Native American civilization attained its apogee among the Maya. This is not true in a political sense, for, though at the time of the Conquest the Maya remembered a past political greatness, there is no reason to believe that it had ever been, either in power or in organization, a rival of such states as the Aztec and Inca. The Mayan cities had been confederate in their unions rather than national, aristocratic in their governments rather than monarchic; and in their greatest unity the power of their strongest rulers, the lords of Mayapan, appears to have been that of feudal suzerains, or at best of insecure tyrants. Politically the Mayan cities present somewhat the aspect of the loose-leaguing Hellenic states, and it is not without probability that in each case the looseness of the political organization was directly conducive to the intense civic pride which undoubtedly in each case fostered an extraordinary development of the arts. For in all the more intellectual tokens of culture—in art, in mathematics, in writing, and in historical records—the Mayan peoples surpassed all other native Americans, leaving in the ruins of their cities and in the profusion of their sculptured monuments such evidences of genius as only the most famous centres of Old-World antiquity can rival.

The territories of the Mayan stock are singularly compact.[71]They occupied—and their descendants now occupy—the Peninsula of Yucatan, the valley of the Usumacinta, and the cordillera rising westerly and sinking to the Pacific. The RioMotagua, emptying into the Gulf of Honduras, and the Rio Grijalva, debouching into the Bay of Campeche, form respectively their south-eastern and western borders excepting for the fact that on the eastern coasts of Mexico, facing the Gulf of Campeche, the Huastec (and perhaps their Totonac neighbours) represent a Mayan kindred. Between this western branch and the great Mayan centre of Yucatan the coast was occupied by intrusive Nahuatlan tribes, landward from whom lay the territories of the Zoquean and Zapotecan stocks, the western neighbours of the Mayan peoples.

The culture of the Maya is distinctly related, either as parent or as branch, to the civilizations of Mexico.[72]Affinities of Haustec and Maya works of art indicate that the ancestors of the two branches were not separated previous to a considerable progress in civilization; while, in a broader way, the cultures of the Nahuatlan, Zapotecan, and Mayan peoples have common elements of art, ritual, myth, and, above all, of mathematical and calendric systems which mark them as sprung from a common source. The Zapotec, situated between the Nahuatlan and Mayan centres, show an intermediate art and science, whose elements clearly unite the two extremes; while the appearance of place-names, such as Nonoual and Tulan, or Tollan, in both Maya and Nahua tradition imply at least a remote geographical community. The Nahuatlan tribes, if we may believe their own account, were comparatively recent comers into the realm of a civilization long anteceding them, and one which they, as barbarians, adopted; the Maya (at least, mythically) remembered the day of their coming into Yucatan. On the basis of these two facts and the undoubted community of culture of the two races, it has been not implausibly reasoned that the Toltec of Nahua tradition were in fact the ancestors of the Maya, who, abandoning their original home in Mexico, made their way to the peninsula, there to perfect their civilization; and the common association of Quetzalcoatl ("Kukulcan" in Maya) with the migration-legendsadds strength to this theory. Nevertheless, tradition points to the high antiquity of the southern rather than of the Mexican centres of civilization; and as the facts seem to be well explained by the assumption of a northern extension of Mayan culture in the Toltec or pre-Toltec age, followed by its recession in the period of its decline in the south, this may be taken as the more acceptable theory in the light of present knowledge. According to this view, the Nahua should be regarded as the late inheritors of an older civilization which they had gradually pushed back upon its place of origin and which, indeed, they were threatening still further at the time of the Conquest, for even then Nahuatlan tribes had forced themselves among and beyond the declining Maya.

When the Spaniards reached Yucatan, its civilization was already decadent. The greater cities had been abandoned and were falling into decay, while the country was anarchical with local enmities. The past greatness of Mayapan and Chichen Itza was remembered; but rather, as Bishop Landa's account shows,[73]for the intensification of the jealousies of those who boasted great descent than as models for emulation. Three brothers from the east—so runs the Bishop's narrative—had founded Chichen Itza, living honourably until one of them died, when dissensions arose, and the two surviving brothers were assassinated. Either before this event, or immediately afterward, there arrived from the west a great prince named Cuculcan who, "after his departure, was regarded in Mexico as a god and was called Cezalcouati; and he was venerated as a divinity in Yucatan also because of his zeal for the public good." He quieted the dissensions of the people and founded the city of Mayapan, where he built a round temple, with four entrances opening to the four quarters, "entirely different from all those that are in Yucatan"; and after ruling in Mayapan for seven years he returned to Mexico, leaving peace and amity behind him. The family of the Cocomes succeeded to the rule, and shortly afterward came Tutul-Xiu and his followers, who hadbeen wandering in the interior for forty years. These formed an alliance with Mayapan; but eventually the Cocomes, by introducing Mexican mercenaries (who brought the bow, previously unknown there) were able to tyrannize over the people. Under the leadership of the Xius, rising in revolt, the Cocomes were overthrown, only one son out of the royal house escaping; and Mayapan, after five centuries of power, was abandoned. The single Cocom who escaped gathered his followers and founded Tibulon calling his province Zututa, while the Mexican mercenaries settled at Canul. Achchel, a noble who had married the daughter of the Ahkin-Mai, chief priest of Mayapan and keeper of the mysteries, founded the kingdom of the Cheles on the coast; and the Xius held the inlands. "Between these three great princely houses of the Cocomes, Xivis, and Cheles there were constant struggles and cruel hatreds, and these endure even now that they have become Christians. The Cocomes say to the Xivis that they assassinated their sovereign and stole his domains; the Xivis reply that they are neither less noble nor less ancient and royal than the others, and that far from being traitors, they were the liberators of the country in slaying a tyrant. The Cheles, in turn, claim to be as noble as any, since they are descended from the most venerated priest of Mayapan. On another side, they mutually reviled each other in the matter of food, since the Cheles, dwelling on the coast, would not give fish or salt to the Cocomes, obliging them to send far for these, while the Cocomes would not permit the Cheles the game and fruits of their territory."

PLATE XVIII

Temple 3, ruins of Tikal. AfterMemoirs of the Peabody Museum, Vol. V, Plate II.

Such is the picture which Bishop Landa gives of the conditions in the north of the peninsula at the time of the Conquest, about a century after the fall of Mayapan; and native records and archaeology alike sustain its general truth.[74]At Chichen Itza the so-called Ball Court is regarded as Mexican in inspiration, while in the same city exist the ruins of a round temple similar to those which tradition ascribes to Kukulcan, different in character from the normal Mayan types. Reliefsrepresenting warriors in Mexican garb also point to Nahuatlan incursions, which may in fact have been the occasion for the dissolution of the Mayan league of the cities of the north—Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Mayapan—in theBooks of Chilam Balamrepresented as powerful in the day of the great among the Maya of Yucatan.

These "Books" are historical chronicles written after the Conquest by members of native families—chiefly the Tutul-Xiu—and from them, as key events of Yucatec history, a few events stand forth so conspicuously that possible dates can be assigned to them. "This is the arrangement of thekatuns[periods of 7200 days] since the departure was made from the land, from the house of Nonoual, where were the four Tutul-Xiu, from Zuiva in the west; they came from the land of Tulapan, having formed a league."[75]So begins one of the chronicles, indicating a remote migration of the Xiu family from the west—an event which Spinden and Joyce place near 160a. d.[76]The next event recorded is a stay, eighty years later, at Chacnouiton (or Chacnabiton), where a sojourn of ninety-nine years is recorded; and thence the migration was renewed, Bakhalal, near the Gulf of Honduras, being occupied for some sixty years. Here it was that the wanderers "learned of," or discovered, Chichen Itza, and hither the people removed about the middle of the fifth century, only to abandon it after a century or more in order to occupy Chacanputun, on the Bay of Campeche. Two hundred and sixty years later this seat was lost, and the Itza returned, about the year 970a. d., to Chichen Itza, while a member of the Tutul-Xiu founded Uxmal, these two cities joining with Mayapan to form the triple league which, for more than two centuries, was to bring peace and prosperity and the climax of its civilization to northern Yucatan. This happy condition was ended by "the treachery of Hunac Ceel," who introduced foreign warriors (Mexicans, as their names indicate) into Chichen Itza, overthrew its ruler, Chac Xib Chac, and caused a state of anarchy. For a brief period power centredin Mayapan, which ruled with something like order, until "by the revolt of the Itza" it also lost its position and was finally depopulated in 1442, this disaster being closely followed by plagues, wars, and a terrific storm, accompanied by inundation, all of which carried the destruction forward.

This reconstruction of northern Yucatec history, however, gives no clue to the origin or life of the cities of the south—Palenque, Piedras Negras, and Yaxchilan in the lower central valley of the Usumacintla; Seibal on its upper reaches, not far from Lake Peten, near which are the ruins of Tikal and Naranjo; while, south-east of these, Copan, on the river of the same name, and Quirigua mark the boundaries of Mayan power toward Central America. These cities had been long in ruins at the time of the Conquest; their builders were forgotten, and their sites were hardly known; nor do the sparse traditions which have survived in the south—the CakchiquelAnnalsand thePopul Vuh—throw light upon them. Were it not for the ingenuity of scholars, who have deciphered the numeral and dating system of their many monuments, their period would have remained but vague surmise; nor would this have sufficed without the aid of the Tutul-Xiu chronicles to bring the readings within the range of our own chronological system. The problem is by no means a simple one, even when the dates on the monuments have been read; for the southern centres employed a system—the "long count," as it is called—of which only a single monumental specimen, a lintel at Chichen Itza, has been discovered in the north. Nevertheless, with the aid of this inscription, and with the probable identification of its date in the light of theBooks of Chilam Balam, scholars have arrived at something like consensus as to the period of the southern floruit of Mayan culture. This falls within the ninth Maya cycle (160a. d.to 554a. d., on Spinden's reckoning), for it is a remarkable fact that practically all the monuments of the south are of this cycle; and as the archaeological evidence indicates an occupancy of nearly two centuries forseveral of the cities, it is clear that the southern civilization, like the northern of a later day, was marked by the contemporaneous rise of several great centres. Morley[77]suggests that the south may even have been held by a league of three cities, as was later the case in the north, Palenque dominating the west, Tikal the centre and north, and Copan the south and east. Two archaic inscriptions—on the Tuxtla Statuette and the Leiden Plate, as the relics are called—bear dates of the eighth cycle, the earlier falling a century or more before the beginning of our era; and these, no doubt, imply a nascent civilization which was to reach the height of its power in the fifth century, when the cities of the south produced those masterpieces of sculpture which mark the climax of an American aboriginal art, which was to disappear, a century later, leaving scarcely a memory in the land of its origin.

As restored by Morley,[78]the history of Mayan civilization falls into two periods of imperial development, each subdivided into several epochs. The older, or parent empire is that of the south; the later, formed by colonization begun while the old civilization was still flourishing, is that of the peninsula. Morley's scheme is as follows:

Old EmpireI.Archaic PeriodEarliest times toc. 360a. d.II.Middle Periodc. 360a. d.toc. 460a. d.III.Great Periodc. 460a. d.toc. 600a. d.New EmpireIV.Colonization Periodc. 420a. d.toc. 620a. d.V.Transitional Periodc. 620a. d.toc. 980a. d.VI.Renaissance Periodc. 980a. d.toc. 1190a. d.VII.Toltec Periodc. 1190a. d.toc. 1450a. d.VIII.Final Periodc. 1450a. d.toc. 1537a. d.

PLATE XIX.

Map of Yucatan, showing sites of ancient cities. After Morley,BBE 57, Plate I.

Each of the earlier periods is marked by the appearance of new sites and the foundation of new cities as well as by advancein the arts; and as a whole the Old Empire is marked by the high development of its sculpture and the use of the more complete mode of reckoning, while in the cities of the New Empire architecture attains to its highest development.

Such are the more plausible theories of Mayan culture history, although there are others (those of Brasseur de Bourbourg, for example) which would place the age of Mayan greatness earlier by many centuries.

From their remote beginnings, as with other peoples whose traditions lead back to an age of migrations, the Mayan tribes remembered culture heroes, tutors in the arts as well as founders of empire, priests as well as kings, who may have been historic,[79]but who in origin were probably gods rather than men—gods whom time had confused with the persons of their priestly or royal worshippers, and in whose deeds cosmic and historic events were distortedly intermingled. Tales of three such heroes hold a central place in Mayan mythology: Votan, the hero of Tzental legend, whose name is associated with Palenque and the tradition of a great "Votanic Empire" of times long past; Zamna, or Itzamna, a Yucatec hero; and Kukulcan, known to the Quiché as Gucumatz, who is the Mayan equivalent of Quetzalcoatl. All three of these hero-deities are reputed to have come from afar—strange in costume and in custom,—to have been the inventors or teachers of writing, and to have founded new cults.

The Tzental legend of Votan,[80]describing him as having appeared from across the sea, declares that when he reached Laguna de Términos he named the country "the Land of Birds and Game" because of the abundant life of the region; and thence the Votanides ascended the Usumacinta valley, ultimately founding their capital at Palenque, whose older and perhaps original name was Nachan, or "House of Snakes." Shortlyafterward, no less astonishing to the Votanides than had been their own apparition to the rude aboriginal, came other boatloads of long-robed strangers, the first Nahuatlans; but these were peaceably amalgamated into the new empire. Votan ruled many years, and, among other works, composed a narrative of the origin of the Indian nations, of which Ordoñez y Aguiar gives a summary. The chief argument of the work, he says, aims to show that Votan was descended from Imos (one of the genii, or guardians, of the days), that he was of the race of Chan, the Serpent, and that he took his origin from Chivim. Being the first man whom God had sent to this region, which we call America, to people and divide the lands, he made known the route which he had followed, and after he had established his seat, he made divers journeys to Valum-Chivim. These were four in number: in the first he related that having departed from Valum-Votan, he set out toward the House of Thirteen Serpents and then went to Valum-Chivim, whence he passed by the city where he beheld the House of God being built. He next visited the ruins of the ancient edifice which men had erected at the command of their common ancestor in order to climb to the sky; and he declared that those with whom he there conversed assured him that that was the place where God had given to each tribe its own particular tongue. He affirmed that on his return from the House of God he went forth a second time to examine all the subterranean regions which he had passed, and the signs to be found there, adding that he was made to traverse a subterranean road which, leading beneath the Earth and terminating at the roots of the Sky, was none other than the hole of a snake; and this he entered because he was "the Son of the Serpent."

Ordoñez would like to see in this legend (which he has obviously accommodated to his desire) a record of historical wanderings in and from Old World lands and out of Biblical times. Yet the narrative, even in its garbled form, is clearly a cosmologic myth—at the least a tale of the sun's journey, andprobably this tale set in the general context of Ages of the World (the four journeys of Votan?) analogous to those of Nahuatlan myth and of thePopul Vuh. When it is added that Votan was known by the epithet "Heart of the People," that his successor was called Canam-Lum ("Serpent of the Earth"), and that both of these were venerated as gods at the time of the Conquest, no word need be added to emphasize the naturalistic character of the myth; although there may be truth in a legend of Votanides, or Votan-worshippers, as founders of Palenque and possibly as institutors of Mayan civilization.

Zamna (Itzamna, Yzamna, "House of the Dews," or "Lap of the Dews")[81]was the reputed bringer of civilization into the peninsula and the traditional founder of Mayapan, which he was said to have made a centre of feudal rule. Like Votan he was supposed to have been the first to name the localities of the land, to have invented writing, and to have instructed the barbarous aborigines in the arts. "With the populations which came from the East," Cogolludo writes, "was a man, called Zamna, who was as their priest, and who, they say, was the one who gave the names by which they now distinguish, in their language, all the seaports, hills, estuaries, coasts, mountains, and other parts of the country, which assuredly is an admirable thing if he thus made a division of every part of the land, of which scarcely an inch has not its proper appellation in their tongue." After having lived to a great age, Zamna is said to have been buried at Izamal, where his tomb-temple became a centre for pilgrimage. In fact, Izamal is but a modification of a name of Itzamna, since its older form is Itzmatul, which means, says the Abbé Brasseur, "He who asks or obtains the dew or the frost." The ancients of Izamal, Lizana declares, possessed a renowned idol, Ytzmatul, which "had no other name ... although it was said that he was a powerful king in this region, to whom obedience was given as to the son of the gods. When he was asked how he was named and how he should be addressed, he answered only,Ytzen caan, ytzen muyal,'I am the dew, the substance, of the sky and clouds.'"

All this is plain euhemerism, for Itzamna was a deity of rain and fertility; Yucatan, it is said, was without moisture when he came to it; he rose from the sea; and his temples and his tomb were by the seaside. His festival, according to Landa, fell in Mac (March), when he was worshipped in company with the gods of abundance. He caused the dead to rise and cured the sick; while in his honour a temple was built with four doors leading to the four extremities of the country, as far as Guatemala, Tabasco, and Chiapas, this shrine being called Kab-ul, or "the Potent Hand,"—a striking image of the sky-deity reaching down from heaven, of which there are analogues in Egypt and Peru. Both Landa and Lizana state that he was the son of Hunab-Ku ("the Holy One"), "the one living and true God, who, they said, is the greatest of the gods, and who cannot be figured or represented because he is incorporeal.... From him everything proceeds,... and he has a son whom they name Hun Ytzamna." All this indicates a deity of the descending rains and dews, son of Father Heaven, and, through his association with the East, giver of life, light, and knowledge. Students of the codices believe that he is represented by "God D"—the aged divinity with the Roman nose and toothless mouth, associated (as is Tlaloc) with the double-headed serpent, which is clearly a sky-symbol. Perhaps, as Seler suggests, he is the "Grandfather Above," the Lord of life, analogous to the Mexican Tonacatecutli.[82]

As has been indicated, the worship of Kukulcan,[83]to whom tradition ascribed the latest appearance of the three culture heroes, was especially associated with Chichen Itza and Mayapan, and perhaps with Nahua immigrations. His name, like that of the Quiché demiurge Gucumatz, means "Plumed Serpent" and is a precise equivalent of "Quetzalcoatl"—the first element referring directly to the long and iridescent plumes of the quetzal. The frequency of bird-serpent symbols in Mayaart, regarded as emblematic of this deity, as well as images, both in the codices and on the monuments, of the long-nosed god himself, indicate a deep-seated and fervent worship, so that it may indeed be an open question as to whether Kukulcan is the pattern or the copy of Quetzalcoatl, with the probabilities favoring the Maya source. Certainly it is significant that, as Tozzer tells us, his name still survives among the Yucatec Maya, while to the Lacandones he is a many-headed snake which dwells with the great father, Nohochakyum: "this snake is killed and eaten only at the time of great national peril, as during an eclipse of the moon and especially that of the sun."

The importance of Kukulcan in the peninsula is indicated by Landa's description of his festival, which occurred on the sixteenth day of Xul (October 24). Upon Kukulcan's departure, says Landa (who clearly regarded the god as an historical personage), there were some Indians who believed that he had ascended into heaven, and regarding him as a god, they built temples in his honour. After the destruction of Mayapan, however, his feasts were kept only in the province of Mani, "but the other districts, turn by turn, in recognition of what was due to Kukulcan, presented each year at Mani sometimes four, sometimes five, magnificent feather banners with which they celebrated thefête." This festival was observed in the following manner: After fasts and abstinences, the lords and priests of Mani assembled before the multitude; and on the evening of the festal day, together with a great number of mummers, they issued from the palace of the prince, proceeding slowly to the temple of Kukulcan, which had been properly adorned. When they had reached it and had prayed, they erected their banners, setting forth their idols on a carpet of leafage; and having lighted a new fire, they burned incense in many places, making oblations of meat cooked without seasoning and of drink made from beans and the seeds of gourds. The lords and all who had observed the fast remained there five days and five nights, praying, burning copal, andperforming sacred dances, during which period the mummers went from the house of one noble to that of another, performing their acts and receiving the gifts offered them. At the end of five days they carried their donations to the temple, where they shared all with the lords, the singers, the priests, and the dancers; and after this the banners and idols (doubtless household gods) were taken again to the palace of the prince, whence each returned to his own house. "They say and hold for certain that Kukulcan descended from the sky the last day of the feast and personally received the sacrifices, the penitences, and the offerings made in his honour."

For the names of the Maya gods we are mainly indebted to sparse notices in the works of Landa and Lizana, who, in obliterating native writings, destroyed far more than they preserved. Landa[84]gives a general picture of the aboriginal religion, indicating a ritual not less elaborate than the Mexican, though with far less human bloodshed. "They had," he says, "a great number of idols and of sumptuous temples. Besides the ordinary shrines, princes, priests, and chief men had oratories with household idols, where they made special prayers and offerings. They had as much devotion for Cozumel and the wells of the Chichen Itza as we for pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem; and they went to visit them and make offerings as we go to holy places.... They had such a number of idols that their gods did not suffice them; for there was not an animal nor a reptile of which they did not make images, and they formed them also in the likeness of their gods and goddesses. They had some idols of stone, but in small number, and others, of lesser size, of wood, though not so many as of earthenware. The idols in wood were esteemed to such a degree as to be counted for inheritances, and in them they had the greatest confidence. They were not at all ignorant that their idols wereonly the work of their own hands, dead things and without divinity, but they venerated them for the sake of what they represented and because of the rites with which they had consecrated them."

PLATE XX. (A).

Tablet of the Foliated Cross, Palenque. This cross, like that shown in Plate XX (B), rests upon a monstrous head, doubtless representing the Underworld, and is surmounted by the quetzal, the symbol of rain and vegetation. It is possible that the greater of the two human figures represents a deity, the lesser a priest, or that both are divinities as in the analogous figures of the codices (cf. PlateIX, upper figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

PLATE XX (B).

Tablet of the Cross, Palenque. The cross was encountered as an object of worship on the Island of Cozumel by the first-coming Spaniards. Cruciform figures of several types are of frequent occurrence as cosmic symbols in Mexican and Mayan art. With this plate and with Plate XX (A) should be compared PlatesVIandIX. After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

PLATE XX (C).

Tablet of the Sun, Palenque. The two caryatid-like figures beneath the solar symbol doubtless represent the upbearers of the heavens (cf. PlateIX, lower figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

Among the deities mentioned by Landa are the Chacs, or "gods of abundance," whose feasts were held in the spring of the year in connexion with the four Bacab, or deities of the Quarters; and again in association with Itzamna at the great March festival designed to obtain water for the crops, when the hearts of every kind of wild animal and reptile were offered in sacrifice. The Chacs were evidently rain-gods, like the Mexican Tlaloque, with a ruler, Chac, corresponding to Tlaloc. The name was likewise applied to four old men annually chosen to assist the priests in the festivals, and from Landa's descriptions of the parts played by them it is clear that they represented the genii of the Quarters.

Other divinities who are named include Ekchuah (also mentioned by Cogolludo and Las Casas), to whom travellers prayed and burned copal: "At night, wherever they rested, they erected three small stones, depositing upon each of these some grains of their incense, while before them they placed three other flat stones on which they put more incense, entreating the god which they name Ekchuah that he would deign to bring them safely home." There were, again, medicine-gods, Cit-Bolon-Tum and Ahau-Chamahez, names which Brasseur de Bourbourg[85]interprets as meaning respectively "Boar-with-the-Nine-Tusks" and "Lord-of-the-Magic-Tooth." There were gods of the chase; gods of fisher folk; gods of maize, as Yum Kaax ("Lord of Harvests"), of cocoa; and no doubt of all other food plants. Of the annual feasts, the most significant appear to have been the New Year's consecration of the idols in the month Pop (July); the great medicine festival, with devotion to hunters' and fishermen's gods, in Zip (September); the festival of Kukulcan in Xul (October); the fabrication of new idols in Mol (December); the Ocna, or renovation of thetemple in honour of the gods of the fields, in Yax (January); the interesting expiation for bloodshed—"for they regarded as abominable all shedding of blood apart from sacrifice"—in Zac (February); the rain-prayer to Itzamna and the Chacs, in March (mentioned above); and the Pax (May) festival in which the Nacon, or war-chief, was honoured, and at which the Holkan-Okot, or "Dance of the Warriors," was probably the notable feature. The war-god is represented in the codices with a black line upon his face, supposed to represent war-paint, and is often shown as presiding over the body of a sacrificial victim; while with him is associated not only the death-god, Ahpuch, but another grim deity, the "Black Captain," Ek Ahau.

Celestial divinities were probably numerous in the Maya pantheon, as was almost inevitable in view of the extraordinary development of astronomical observation. Xaman Ek was the North Star, while Venus was Noh Ek, the Great Star. The Sun, according to Lizana,[86]was worshipped at Izamal as Kinich-Kakmo, the "Fiery-Visaged Sun"; and the macaw was his symbol, for, they said, "the Sun descends at midday to consume the sacrifice as the macaw descends in plumage of many colours." In view of all the fire thus came at noon upon the altars, after which the priest prophesied what should come to pass, especially by way of pestilence, famine, and death. "The Yucatec have an excessive fear of death," says Landa, "as may be seen in all their rites with which they honour their gods, which have no other end than to obtain health and life and their daily bread"; and he continues with a description of the abode of blessed souls, a land of food, drink, and sweet savours, where "there is a tree which they call Yaxche, of an admirable freshness under the shady branches of which they will enjoy eternal pleasure.... The pains of a wicked-life consist in a descent to a place still lower which they call Mitnal, there to be tormented by demons and to suffer the tortures of hunger, cold, famine, and sorrow." The lord of this hell isHanhau; and the future life, good or bad, is eternal, for the life of souls has no end. "They hold it as certain that the souls of those who hang themselves go to paradise, there to be received by Ixtab, goddess of the hanged"; and many ended their lives in this manner for but light reason such as a disappointment or an illness.

The image of Ixtab, with body limp and head in a loop, as if hanged, is one of those recognized in the codices; for in default of mythic tales, few of which are preserved concerning the Yucatec gods, these codex drawings and the monumental images furnish our main clues to the Maya pantheon. Following the suggestion of Schellhas,[87]it is customary to designate the codical deities (nameless, or uncertainly named) by letters. Thus, God A is represented with visible vertebrae and skull head, and is therefore identified as the death-god, named Hanhau in Landa's account, Ahpuch by Hernández, and Yum Cimil ("Lord of Death") by the Yucatec of today. Death is occasionally shown as an owl-headed deity, and is also associated with the moan-bird (a kind of screech-owl), with the god of war, and with a being that is dubiously identified as a divinity of frost and of sin. God B, whose image occurs most frequently of all in the codices, and who is represented with protruding teeth, a pendulous nose, and lolling tongue, is closely connected with the serpent and with symbols of the meteorological elements and of the cardinal points; and is regarded as representing Kukulcan. God C, the "god with the ornamented face," is a sky-deity, tentatively identified with the North Star, or perhaps with the constellation of the Little Bear. God D, the old divinity with the Roman nose and the toothless jaws, is regarded by Schellhas as a god of the moon or of the night, although in him other scholars see Itzamna, regarded as a sun-deity. God E is the maize-god, probably Yum Kaax, or "Lord of Harvests"; God F is the deity of war; and with him is sometimes associated God M, the "black god with the red lips," perhaps Ekchuah, the divinity of merchantsand travellers, for war and commerce are connected in the New World as in the Old.

These seven deities are those of most frequent occurrence in the codices, though the full list, which surely gives a general picture of the Maya pantheon, includes also God G, the sun-god God H, the Chicchan-god (or serpent-deity); God I, a water-goddess; God K, the "god with the ornamented nose"; God L, the "old black god," perhaps related to M; God N, the "god of the end of the year"; God O, a goddess with the face of an old woman; and God P, a frog-god. Others are animal deities,—the dog, jaguar, vulture, tortoise, and, in differing shapes of representation, the panther, deer, peccary, bat, and many forms of birds and animals.

Not a few of these ancient deities hold among the Maya of today something of their ancient dignity: they are slightly degraded, not utterly overthrown by the intervention of Catholic Christianity. At least this is the picture given by Tozzer as result of his researches among the Yucatac villagers. According to them, he says,[88]there are seven heavens above the earth, each pierced by a hole at its center. A giant ceiba, growing in the exact center of the earth, rears its branches through the holes of the heavens until it reaches the seventh, where livesEl Gran Diosof the Spaniards; and it is by means of this tree that the spirits of the dead ascend from heaven to heaven. Below this topmost Christianized heaven, dwell the spirits, under the rule ofEl Gran Dios, which are none other than the ancient Maya gods. In the sixth heaven are the bearded old men, the Nukuchyumchakob, or Yumchakob, white-haired and very fond of smoking, who are the lords of rain and the protectors of human beings—apparently the Chacs of the earlier chroniclers, though the description of them would seem to imply that Kukulcan is of their number; perhaps originally he was their lord; now they receive their orders fromEl Gran Dios.

In the fifth heaven above dwell the protecting spirits of thefields and the forests; in the fourth the protectors of animals; in the third the spirits ill-disposed toward men; in the second the lords of the four winds; while in the first above the earth reside the Yumbalamob, for the special protection of Christians. These latter are invisible during the day, but at night they sit beside the crosses reared at the entrances of the pueblos, one for each of the cardinal points, protecting the villagers from the dangers of the forest. With obsidian knives they cut through the wind, and make sounds by which they signal to their comrades stationed at other entrances to the town. Truly, this description answers astonishingly to the Aztec lord of the crossroads, Tezcatlipoca.

Below the earth is Kisin, the earthquake, the evil one, who resents the chill rains sent down by the Yumchakob, and raises a wind to clear the sky. The spirits of suicides dwell here also, and all souls excepting those of war-slain men and women dead of child-birth (which go directly to heaven) are doomed for a time to this underworld realm.

Other diminished deities are Ahkinshok, the owner of the days; the guardians of the bees; the spirit of new fire; Ahkushtal, of birth; Ahmakiq, who locks up the crop-destroying winds; patrons of medicine; and a crowd of workers of ill to men, among them the Shtabai, serpentiform demons who issue from their cavernous abodes and in female form snare men to ruin. Paqok, on the other hand, wanders abroad at night and attacks women. The Yoyolche are also night-walkers; their step is half a league, and they shake the house as they pass.

Tozzer makes the interesting observation that in many cases, where among the Maya is found a class of spirits, the purely heathen Lacandones recognize a single god. Thus, to the Nukuchyumchakob of the Maya corresponds the Lacandone Nohochakyum, who is the Great Father and chief god of their religion, having as his servants the spirits of the east, the constellations, and the thunder. At the end of the world he will wear around his body the serpent Hapikern, who will drawpeople to him by his breath and slay them. Nohochakyum is one of four brothers, apparently lords of the four quarters. As is usual in such groups, he of the east is pre-eminent. Usukun, one of the brothers, is a cave-dweller, having the earthquake for his servant; he is regarded with dread, and his image is set apart from the other gods. There are a number of other gods and goddesses of the Lacandones, several of which are clearly identifiable as the same as the Maya deities described by Landa and other early writers. As a whole, the pantheon is a humane one; it lacks that quality of terror which makes hideous the congregation of the Aztec deities. Most of the gods, Maya and Lacandone, are kindly-disposed toward men, and doubtless it was this kindliness reflected back which kept the Maya altars relatively free of human blood.

No region in America appears to have furnished so many or such striking analogies to Christian ritual and symbolism as did the Mayan. It was here, on the island of Cozumel, that the cross was an object of veneration even at the first coming of the Spaniard; and when the rites of the natives were studied by the missionaries, they were found to include many that seemed to be Christian in inspiration. Bishop Landa[89]describes at length the Yucatec baptism, which was designated by a name equivalent, he says, torenascor—"for in the Yucatec tonguezihilmeans to be reborn"—and which was celebrated in a complex festival, godfather and all. The name of the rite was Em-Ku, or "Descent of God"; and, he adds, "They believe that they receive therefrom a disposition inclined to good conduct and that it guarantees them from all temptations of the devil with respect to temporal things, while by means of this rite and a good life they hope to secure salvation." Sacraments of various sorts, confession of sins, penitence, penance, and pilgrimages to holy shrines were other ritual similaritieswith Catholic Christianity which could not fail to be impressive and which actually furthered the change of religion with a minimum of friction.

Along with these analogies of ritual there were likenesses of belief: traditions of a deluge, a confusion of tongues, and a dispersion of peoples, as well as reminiscences of legendary teachers of the arts of life and of the truths of religion in which it was not difficult for the eye of faith to discern the missionary labours of Saint Thomas. Las Casas,[90]quoting a certain cleric, Padre Francisco Hernández, tells of a Yucatec trinity: one of their old men, when asked as to their ancient religion, said that "they recognized and believed in God who dwells in heaven, and that this God was Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Father was called Içona, who had created men and all things, that the Son was named Bacab, and that he was born of a virgin called Chibirias, who is in heaven with God; the Holy Spirit they termed Echuac." The son, Bacab, it is added, being scourged and crowned with thorns by one Eopuco, was tied upon a cross with extended arms, where he died; but after three days he arose and ascended into heaven to be with his father. The name Echuac signifies "merchant"; "and good merchandise the Holy Spirit bore to this world, for He filled the earth with gifts and graces so divine and so abundant."

The honesty of this account is no less evident than its distortion, which may have been due as much to the confused reminiscences of the old Indian as to the imaginative expectancy of the Spanish recorder. Bacab and Ekchuah are mentioned by Landa and others, and Las Casas also states that the mother of Chibirias was named Hischen (que nosotros decimos haber sido Sant' Ana), who must surely be the goddess Ixchel, goddess of fecundity, invoked at child-birth. The association of the Bacabs (for there are four of them) with the cross and with heaven is also intelligible, since the Bacabs are genii of the Quarters, where they upheld the skies and guarded the waters, which were symbolized in rites by water-jars with animal orhuman heads. They are, no doubt, in the Maya region as in Mexico, represented by caryatid and cruciform figures, of which, we may suppose, the celebrated Tablet of the Cross and Tablet of the Foliate Cross at Palenque are examples.

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