620 



NATURE 



[April 28, 1892 



Cortes visited the town of Tayasal, built on a small island in 

 the lake, which, we are told, was the chief town of the district, 

 and which was doubtless then, as it was later, the stronghold of 

 the warlike Itzaes. Now, fortunately, we know something of 

 the subsequent history of this town, for Tayasal was visited by 

 missionaries from Yucatan in 1618, 1619, and 1623. This last 

 missionary expedition ended disastrously, as the missionary and 

 his followers were murdered by the natives ; and we then have 

 but scanty information about the Itzaes until the country was 

 invaded by the Spaniards from Yucatan, and Tayasal captured 

 in 1697. A curious story shows us that Tayasal is not likely to 

 have suffered any serious disturbance between Cortes's visit and 

 the year 1618. 



In his letter to the King he states that, " At this village, or, 

 rather, at the plantations that were close to the lake, I was 

 obliged to leave one of my horses, owing to his having got a 

 splinter in his foot. The Chief promised to take care of the 

 animal and cure him, but I do not know if he will succeed, or 

 what he will do with him." 



On the day after the arrival of the missionary fathers Fuen- 

 salida and Orbita, in 1618, the Chief of the Itzaes showed them 

 round the town, " in the middle of which, on the rising ground, 

 were numerous and large buildings, ' cues ' or oratories of their 

 devilish and false gods. Entering into one of them, they saw 

 in the centre of it a large idol in the form of a horse, well 

 modelled in stone and plaster. It was seated on the ground, on 

 its haunches. 



' ' These barbarians reverenced it as the God of Thunder, and 

 called it Tzimindiac, which means ' the horse of thunder and 

 lightning.'" 



This sight was too much for the religious zeal of Padre 

 Orbita, who, seizing a great stone, jumped on to the idol and 

 hammered it to pieces. It is hardly necessary to add that the 

 Chief had the greatest difficulty in saving the lives of the mis- 

 sionaries from his infuriated people, and that they were compelled 

 to leave the island at once. 



It was afterwards learnt from the natives that they had thought 

 the horse to be the god of thunder and lightning because they 

 had seen the Spaniards firing their guns from horseback, and 

 that when they found the horse to be ill, " they gave it to eat 

 fowls and other meat, and presented it with garlands of flowers, 

 as it was their custom to do when their own chiefs were ailing," 

 and that, on its death, a council of chieftains was called, and it 

 resolved to make an image of the horse in stone. 



In the year 1700, the historian Villagutieres published a de- 

 tailed account of the conquest of Itza by the Spaniards, and a 

 description of the town of Tayasal, stating that " it was full of 

 houses, some with stone walls more than a yard high, and, above 

 these, wooden beams and roofs of thatch, and others of wood 

 and thatch only"; and " of the twenty-one oratories which 

 General Ursua found in the island, the principal and largest 

 was that of the high priest Quincanek, cousin of the king 

 Canek ; this was rectangular (cuadrada), with a beautiful 

 breastwork {pretil) and nine handsome steps, and each front 

 was about twenty yards long and very high. " 



Speaking from memory, I should say that the island is not 

 more than 500 yards across, and there are no s gns whatever at 

 the present time of any ancient foundations. It is now covered with 

 poorly-built adobe houses, and in the centre is a church, which 

 probably occupies the site of the ancient 'cues,' Now, within 

 a day's walk from the north shore of the lake are the very 

 remarkable ruins of Tikal, of which a short description has 

 already been given ; yet nothing whatever is told us either by 

 Cortes, by the missionaries, or by Villagutieres, of the existence 

 of a town on this site, and the ruins were unknown to the 

 Spaniards until the year 1848. 



The missionaries, on their journeys from the Spanish outpost 

 at Tipu to Tayasal must have passed within a few miles of the 

 site of the ruins ; and it is impossible to believe that, so long 

 as Tikal was inhabited, Tayasal could have been the chief 

 town of the district, or, indeed, that Tikal could have been 

 inhabited at all without the fact coming to the knowledge of the 

 Spaniards. 



If any further evidence were needed to show that the great 

 structures raised during the epoch of higher civilization had 

 already been deserted at the time of the Spanish conquest, it 

 can be found in what Cortes himself states with regard to the 

 town in Guatemala which he calls Chacujal. 



When, after having crossed the base of the peninsula of 

 Yucatan, the starving army arrived at the mouth of the Rio 



NO. II 74, VOL. 45 



Dulce, it was only to find the Spanish colony it had come in 

 search of reduced to a similar extremity of famine. 



The scanty Indian population in the neighbourhood had been 

 rendered hostile by the exactions of the settlers, and it was 

 immediately necessary to scour the country for long distances in 

 search of food. The most important of these raids, and, indeed, 

 the only successful one, was led by Cortes himself, who landed 

 on the south side of the Golfo Dulce, and marched about two 

 leagues inland (when he must have been within about twelve to 

 fifteen miles of the site of the ruins of Quirigua), and then 

 turned along the mountain-range to the south of the Rio Polo- 

 chic, and finally succeeded in reaching Chacujal, which is situ- 

 ated between two small streams which run into the Polochic. 

 The inhabitants had all fled, but Cortes was fortunate in finding 

 a large store of Indian corn, and other food. 



Cortes writes of the town as follows : — " Marching through 

 the place we arrived at the great square, where they had 

 their mosques and houses of worship, and as we saw the 

 mosques and buildings round them just in the manner and 

 form of those at Culua " (on the coast of Mexico), "we were 

 more overawed and astonished than we had been hitherto, since 

 nowhere since we had left Acala had we seen such signs of 

 policy and power. ... On the following morning I sent out 

 several parties of men to explore the village, which was well 

 designed, the houses well built, and close to each other." I can 

 find no record whatever of Chacujal subsequent to the date of 

 Cortes's visit ; but in 1884 I myself visited the ruins of the town, 

 guided by Cortes's own description of the site. The ruins are 

 now completely buried in the forest, but there was little difficulty 

 in tracing the general plan of the town, and making out the 

 foundations of the principal buildings. 



It is easy to understand how Cortes may have been favourably 

 impressed with the flourishing appearance of the place after his 

 terrible and tedious journey through the forest, yet it is quite 

 clear from the ruins that the structures themselves could never 

 have been of any considerable importance. The walls of the 

 principal buildings had only been built of stone to half their 

 height, and the superstructure and roof must have been made of 

 some perishable material — a great contrast to the thick stone 

 walls and heavy stone roofs at Palenque, Tikal, Menche, and 

 Copan. Another point of importance is that the plan and 

 method of construction of the buildings at Chacujal is similar to 

 that of the ruins on the hill-tops a little further inland near San 

 Jeronimo, Rabinal, and Cubulco, some of which I have visited. 

 These were undoubtedly the strongholds of those Indians of the 

 Tierra de Guerra to whom no high culture has ever been 

 attributed, and who were induced by the Padre Las Casas to 

 leave their fastnesses and settle in the plain of Rabinal in the 

 year 1537. 



It can therefore now be stated without doubt that, although 

 Cortes and his followers on his march from Mexico to Honduras 

 passed within a short distance of several of the sites of the most 

 important ruins in Central America, they heard nothing of their 

 existence as living cities. 



Let us now consider the case of the often-described ruins of 

 Copan on the northern frontier of Honduras. 



The earliest information dates back to the year 1576, when the 

 ruins were visited by Palacio del Rio, who described them in a 

 letter written to King Philip II. of Spain. After giving an 

 account of the sculptured monoliths, he mentions the numerous 

 mounds which could be ascended by stone stairways, but he says 

 nothing whatever about houses or temples, which such a careful 

 observer as Palacio could not have omitted to mention had they 

 then been in existence. He further states in his letter that it 

 was impossible to believe that the scanty Indian population of 

 the districts could have raised such monuments as he found at 

 Copan, and that his efforts to elicit information from the leaders 

 of the Indians dwelling in the neighbourhood only showed that 

 all knowledge of the people who had raised these mpnuments 

 was lost in the mists of tradition. 



Enough has now been said to show that the most important ruins 

 in the whole of this Maya district (outside of Yucatan) were never 

 known to the Spaniards as the sites of inhabited towns, and it 

 now remains to say only a few more words about those towns in 

 which the conquerors actually found the people dwelling. The 

 descriptions already quoted from early writers, or given from my 

 own observations of the ruins in the cases of Tayasal and 

 Chacujal, give some idea of what these towns were like ; and 

 the correctness of these descriptions is strengthened by the 

 results of a careful examination which I have made of the sites 



