12 cook: size of MAYA FARMS 



The system followed by the Mayas of Yucatan has been de- 

 scribed by Brinton as follows: 



Personal tenure of land did not exist. The town lands were divided 

 out annually among the members of the community, as their wants 

 required, the consumption of each adult being calculated at twenty 

 loads (of a man) of maize each year, this being the staple food. 



I mention this particularly in order to correct a grave error in Landa's 

 Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 130. He says, "Suelen de costumbre 

 sembrar para cada casado con su muger medida de CCCC pi^s que llaman 

 hun-iiinic, medida con vara de XX pies, XX en ancho y XX en largo." 

 The agrarian measure uinic or hun uinic (one man) contained 20 kaan, 

 each 24 yards (varas) square. One kaan was estimated to yield two 

 loads of com, and hence the calculation was forty loads of the staff of 

 life for each family. Landa's statement that a patch 20 feet square 

 was assigned to a family is absurd on the face of it.^ 



Since Bishop Landa's Relacion is by far the largest body of 



direct knowledge of the Maya civilization, it is worth while to 



remove an unwarranted impeachment of the practical value of 



this important record. The passage quoted by Brinton may not 



be free from ambiguity of construction, but the charge of "grave 



error" is hardly to be justified. Neither the Spanish original 



nor the accompanying French translation of Brasseur de Bour- 



bourg is "absurd" in the manner alleged. Instead of a patch 



20 feet square, a square of 400 feet on each side is indicated by 



Landa; that is, 400 times as much land as Brinton supposed. 



Confusion doubtless arose from the use of the words medida and 



vara in senses that are somewhat unusual, though hardly to be 



misunderstood in relation to the context. Substitution of que 



for lo qual also makes Brinton's transcription of the passage 



appear more casual and ambiguous than the original. The 



sense may be stated as follows : 



They follow the custom of sowing for each married man and his 

 wife an area 400 feet square, which they call hun uinic, measured with 

 a stick 20 feet long, 20 sticks in breadth and 20 in length. 



Brinton does not state the source of the figures that he would 

 substitute for Landa's, but since the two versions fall within the 

 same order of magnitude they may be said to confirm rather 

 than to contradict each other. The Bishop's "one man" area 



1 Brinton, D. G. The Maya Chronicles, 27, 1882, the second paragraph as a 

 footnote. See also. Essays of an Americanist, 438, 1890. 



