a 
: 
— et eee ey er he Se 
1898-99.] DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 205 
evident from there being no mention of him in the inscriptions, unless 
the Yokchi Cayub be he, that Cachiquel sovereignty was complete, 
under Oxcabuc and Huntoh, over Guatemala, Vera Paz, and part of 
Chiapas, as well as over Yucatan. The only apparent competitors 
with these joint sovereigns in that part of the world were the Zaachillas 
II. and III. of Oaxaca, whose kingdom interposed between theirs and 
that of Montezuma I. of Mexico. At the same time, the title Ahpop 
of the House of Cawek, assumed by Oxlahun-Pek at a later period, 
nowhere occurs in these two inscriptions, so that it would seem as if the 
Quiche royal family had, for the time, ceased to be recognized. 
Nevertheless, all was done in the name of Quiche and the House of 
Cawek. Oxcabuc is called the Hunich of Quiche ; the Oxyib army is 
said to have deserted Quiche in rebelling against the Cachiquel officers. 
Cayub is termed the Yokchi of Cawek ; and even the oldzan, or chief 
. executioner, in Katzib, is said to be of Quiche Cawek, as well as the pop 
of the army of Quiche. The supremacy of Quiche as the first of the 
Central American kingdoms is thus recognized, but it is a supremacy 
under foreign, that is, Cachiquel domination, with no reference to 
royalty in the line of Qikab. Already the usurpation, which Oxlahun- 
Pek was yet to make complete in name, had begun in’ reality in the 
persons of Oxcabuc and Huntoh. The very rebellion recorded may 
have been the results of a transference of authority from Quiche to 
Cachiquel. That the latter were a more cruel race than the former 
cannot be determined until other monuments of greater antiquity yield 
up their secrets ; certainly, it would have been hard for the Quiche 
monarchs to have excelled the barbarities of Oxlahun-Pek and his 
immediate predecessors. 
Finally, the position of Oxbuc is a peculjar and not very honourable 
one. He appears to have been the legitimate ruler of the Oxyibs or 
Uxabs, his very name in the form Yok Pok marking him as being over 
the Pokos of the Mams, or Poko-Mams, to whose family the Uxabs 
belonged. The rebellion of his people was not directed against himself, 
even as a Quiche Hunichob, but against the domineering Cachiquels ; 
yet he identified himself with the conquerors at his people’s expense ; 
otherwise, doubtless, he would have perished with them, and his name 
and deeds remained unrecorded. His loyalty to so-called Quiche-Cawek 
was prudent, but the reverse of patriotic. The wonder is that his tribe 
did not resent his treatment of their warriors, and that his family 
continued, even after the Spanish conquest, to exercise authority in 
Ekab. 
