Mexican Maize Fields 23 



settlers. So among the natives of present-day Guatemala are 

 preserved folklore and folkways that originated in the far-off 

 days when the tribes came down from the Cordilleras to pay 

 homage to the Plumed Serpent and to the "Young Green 

 God/' Ghanan. 



Their agricultural customs in particular are derived from 

 ancient Mayan sources. The tribes that invaded the land were 

 not corn-planters. They received the gift of bread from those 

 they conquered. From them, too, they learned to "make 

 milpas" by burning off the forest growth, and planting in the 

 ashes seeds of the maize. Even when the Spaniards came, 

 bringing a new law and a new religion, they, too, soon adapted 

 their ways of living to include certain of the native customs. 

 Through all the invasions and conquests the real conqueror 

 was the maize. It, not the laws laid down by the Spanish gov- 

 ernor or the Catholic Church, determined the seasons, gave 

 success or failure, poverty or wealth, happiness or sorrow. 



With the desertion of the Guatemalan cities in the sixth 

 century A. D., the story of the Maya moves to Yucatan. There 

 the immigrants proceeded to build out of the native limestone 

 new cities that rivaled for size, elegance and culture the capi- 

 tals of their old empire. For the next five centuries, Chichen 

 Itza, Mayapan and Uxmal were to represent civilization in the 

 West. It, too, was a civilization founded on corn. The wan- 

 derers had carried Kukulkan, The Plumed Serpent, and 

 Ghanan with them. They built them temples in the new 

 cities that were more elaborate than the old shrines higher in 

 the hills. In Chichen Itza, in particular, the cult of the rain- 

 god assume an importance that it could only have had in a 

 land whose soil needed plentiful showers to make it produce. 

 Indeed, so urgent was their need of rain that, under Aztec in- 

 fluence, the Maya finally instituted human sacrifices to the 

 deity. In times of drought, a young and beautiful virgin was 

 cast into the sacred well at Chichen Itza as a bride and a bribe 

 for the rain-god. Some years ago, when this well was dredged, 

 the mud gave up not only a treasure of gold disks, turquoise, 



