158 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
animated passages. The author, Don Francisco Ernandez Arana 
Xahila, of the Ahpotzotzil princes of Guatemala, was the grandson of 
King Hunyg, who died of the plague five years before the Spaniards 
set foot in the country, in 1519.” This King Hunyg whom Brasseur 
names was the son of Oxlahun Pek.* 
Brasseur’s chief informant in regard to the history of Oaxaca, and 
especially of the Zaachilla-Yoho Kingdom, is Francisco de Burgoa, 
whose History of the Province of the Preachers of Oaxaca was published 
in Mexico in 1671. “This rare work is full of the most interesting 
details regarding the history and geography of the Kingdoms of 
Tzapotecapan and Tehuantepec in the State of Oaxaca.” Brasseur 
calls Burgoa the Walter Scott of Mexico. The Zapotec, Mixtec, and 
allied languages of Oaxaca and its surroundings, are quite distinct from 
the Aztec or Nahuatl, on the one hand, and from the Maya-Quiche 
tongues, on the other. Brasseur cites many authorities in addition to 
the three named, but these furnish the most important materials for 
his histories of the Quiches, the Cachiquels, and the Oaxacans, and for 
the elucidation of the records just deciphered on the monuments of 
Palenque and Copan. For the history of the Mayas of Yucatan, and 
the related Tzendals of Chiapas, Brasseur was indebted to the work of 
Ordonez, a native of Cindad Real in Chiapas in the end of the eighteenth 
century, who wrote the History of the Creation of Heaven and Earth 
according to the System of the American Peoples, and edited some 
Tzendal fragments. He was also familiar with some of the Maya 
Chronicles, which Stephens brought to light, and which Dr. Brinton has 
published in extenso.* However, he confesses that the early history of 
Yucatan, Honduras, and Eastern Guatemala, the very history we are in 
search of, is very scanty and obscure.’ 
The inscriptions make no mention of Quiche and Maya kingdoms. 
Those of Cawek and Oaxaca are alone recognized in them. According 
to Brasseur’s documents, the Quiche Kingdom, called the House of 
Cawek, existed in the fifteenth century under a powerful monarch, 
Qikab I., when the Cachiquels were weak. This king, anxious to 
limit the power of his feudatories, created from among the plebeian 
warriors distinguished for courage, a class of Achihab or military 
tribunes of the people. These Achihab became the champions of the 
oppressed people, and sought for reforms in government, and Qikab’s 
four sons took part with them. In a rage, Qikab threw himself into 
the arms of the nobility whom he had alienated, and called around 
him his Ahpop Camha, a Cesar to his Augustus, the chief of the 
