82 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



g-oddess) "; and that also the onh' place which Landa mentions on the 

 Lagiina de Terminos, Tixchel, "to the aged goddess", seems to have 

 been a place for the worship of a female deity. 



Copan, Quirigua, and Palenque lie beyond the limits of the present 

 treatise. Their prosperity was e\'idently temporary, caused by cer- 

 tain trade combinations, and for a time by the resultant conditions, of 

 acicumiilated wealth and power. It had doubtless already passed away 

 when Cortes entered this region. The intermediate territor}^ was pro))- 

 ably always on a lower plane of governmental, social, and material 

 development, although in pre-Spanish times it was never as low as it 

 afterward l^ecame on account of the entire cessation of trattic and the 

 subversion of all existing conditions in the surrounding regions. As 

 the above statements show, we had, then, in ancient times two nations 

 existing side by side, distinct, though closely related one to the other. 

 Of the two the Mayas have preserved their nationality to the present 

 day, while the other, the Chols, appear to have been al)sorbed, partly by 

 the former and partly and chiefly by the neighboring Qu'ekchi, " Here, 

 as in other regions, notwithstanding original difl'erences of race, sim- 

 ilar conditions of environment and extensive mutual intercourse have 

 produced a fairly uniform picture of civilization. This fact is at once 

 seen by comparing the descriptions of Choi settlements in the north 

 of Cahabon, given by the old Dominican monks, with that which Doc- 

 tor Sapper gives of the Lacandons on the lower bank of the Kio de la 

 Pasion. But it is also shown in several other details. At the con- 

 quest of the rock city in the Laguna del Lacandon, as the chronicler 

 expressh^ mentions, no idols whatever were found, for the Lacandons 

 worshiped the sun only (el cuerpo solar), and brought their ofterings 

 and sacriflces to the sun itself and not to any representations of it, 

 differing in this way very distinctly from the Itzaex and other tribes 

 of those mountains, who had countless idols, statues, and images of 

 metal, stone, and wood, with many superstitious customs and diabolical 

 ceremonies. '' 



The same statement is made in another place concerning the Acalans 

 and Lacandons. Similarly, the Dominican monks reported that thej^ 

 had found no idols at all, either of stone or any other material, among 

 the Chols in the north of Cahabon. Sacrifices of black wax and other 

 inflammable material were made, and chickens and other birds were 

 occasionally sacrificed, as well as blood, which the Indians drew from 

 themselves by piercing their tongues, their ears, their temples, or the 

 muscles of their arms and legs. But the Indians said that they made 

 these sacrifices to the woods and the high mountains, the dangerous 

 fords of the rivers, the road crossings, and the lakelike expansions of 

 the rivers. In fact, the fathers found a place of sacrifice on the summit 



"Sapper, in Petermann's Geographls^che Mittheilungen, 1893, p. 8. 

 '' Villagiitierre y Sotomayur, v. 1, chap. 2. 



