PREFATORY NOTE. 



By W J McGee. 



I. 



In many respects the aboriginal culture of the Western Hemisphere 

 attained highest development id Yucatan, the land of the Maya. Here 

 the Spanish explorers found cities of peculiar yet noble architecture; 

 a people of great individuality and native force, yet of refined manners, 

 clothed in woven and dyed cotton stuffs; a definitely organized sys- 

 tem of government; a literature and history inscribed on animal and 

 vegetal parchments and carved in stone or painted on walls; and even 

 a highly developed calendaric and chronologic system. Despite the 

 greed and bigotry of th^invaders, who saw nothing good beyond their 

 own selfish aims, despite the diversity of tongues and modes of thought, 

 the civilization of the East and that of the West stood so near the same 

 plane as to blend at some points; and the cities of Copan, Palenque, 

 Chichen Itza, and Uxmal came to be known throughout the world of 

 growing civilization. 



Although Columbus appears to have encountered representatives of 

 the Maya people in his fourth voyage, it was not until 1517 that the 

 Spaniards, under Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, first landed on the 

 shores of Yucatan. They found that peninsula divided into eighteen 

 or nineteen independent petty states or provinces, each ruled by a 

 hereditary chief, the villages in each province having a subordinate 

 organization under a local ruler, frequently a junior member of the 

 reigning family; the partition of land being communal and changing 

 from year to year. The several provinces were feebly united in a con- 

 federation; but this major institutional element was less perfectly 

 developed than among the Aztecs and several other American jieoples. 



While the appellation "Maya" applies specifically to the aboriginal 

 inhabitants found in Yucatan and their descendants, the same appella- 

 tion, or the compound term Maya-Kiche, is usually applied to the 

 various peoples of the same linguistic stock, including several tribes 

 in or bordering on Guatemala and Mexico. The languages of these 

 several tribes are closely related and, despite certain common elements 



