1898-99.] DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 179 
burned them alive. When this merciless act became known, the Huastecs 
deserted their villages and scattered among the forests and mountains.”* 
The writer has furnished these extracts from the works of reputable 
authors, each possessing a more than ordinary acquaintance with ancient 
American literature, to illustrate in the best possible way the light which 
traditional history sheds upon that which is monumental. Without that 
traditional history it would be the next thing to impossible to assign the 
monumental records a place in time; therefore the former are of very 
great value, and their importance should not be underrated. But the 
inscriptions reveal much of which history is silent, leaving indeed links 
to be desired, yet correcting several false notions for which either the 
traditions or their interpreters are to blame. The writer, while cherishing 
admiration for the valuable work performed by the Abbé Brasseur de 
Bourbourg and Dr. Brinton, does not homologate their dogmatic 
inferences and critical conjectures. Palenque and Copan, as yet but very 
partially read, constitute a touch-stone for testing the credibility of con- 
temporary records of Mexican and Central American history. 
CHAPTER XI. 
AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORY OF THE INSCRIPTIONS IN THE LIGHT 
OF WRITTEN DOCUMENTS. 
According to Brasseur’s documents, Oxlahuh-Tzy died in 1510, and 
his great victory over the Atzih Winak Hunahpu was gained in the 
Cachiquel year corresponding to 1499-1500. The death of Qikab I of 
Quiche, which apparently preceded by a very short time Oxlahuh’s 
accession to power, is placed at a point not later than 1450,so that 1499 
might easily have been the forty-eighth year of the Cachiquel king’s 
reign. He was thus contemporaneous with Montezuma I. of Mexico, 
who began to reign in 1440, with Axayacatl, whose accession dated from 
1467, with Tizocicatzin from 1481, with Ahuitzotl from 1486, and with 
Montezuma II. from 1503. His contemporaries in Oaxaca were 
Zaachilla III., whom Ahuitzotl of Mexico defeated in 1486, and 
Cocyoéza, with whom the same monarch made a treaty of peace in 1497. 
Assuming that Brasseur is right in his date of 1499-1500 for the victory 
of Oxlahuh, the main difficulty is to reconcile the presence of Cocyoéza’s 
son Cocyopy in the campaign with the apparent fact that he was not 
