INDEPENDENT INDIAN STATES OF 

 YUCATAN" 



By Karl Sapper 



It is a well-known fact that the conquest of Yucatan offered the 

 Spaniards great difficviltios and that the adelantado Don Francisco de 

 Montejo, although he fully understood the art of craftily turning the 

 dissensions among the different Indian states to his own advantage, at 

 length found himself forced to call on Ferdinand Cortes for aid. 

 After the conquest of the peninsula was finally a(;c()niplished the 

 Indians rose here and there to regain their freedom. The Spaniards 

 suppressed the insurrections with brutal force, but could never dispel 

 the hatred toward their white oppressors which, even to this day, 

 smolders in the hearts of the Mayas and manifests itself from time 

 to time in a renewal of bloody insurrections, like those which took 

 l^lace in the middle of the last and of the present century (1761 and 

 1847). The latter rebellion has had a lasting influence on the polit- 

 ical development of the peninsula, and furnishes a key to the compre- 

 hension of the peculiar conditions whicli exist to-day. For this 

 reason I will enter into a somewhat detailed discussion of (hem liere. 



The movement began among the eastern tribes, who were soon 

 joined by those of the south; a large munber of villages were 

 destroyed, and in the year 1848 Bacalar,'' the last important place of 

 the Mexicans in southern Yucatan, at that time a city of more than 

 5,000 inhabitants, also fell into the liands of the eastern Indians under 

 Venancio Pec, Juan Pal)lo Cocom, Teodoro ^"illaI^u>vn. and others. 

 In the following year (May 3, 1849) the Yucatecos. under Colonel 

 Zetina, succeeded indeed in regaining possession of the city, but in 

 June of the same year the eastern Indians, under Jacinto Pat, vv'iw- 

 forced by the southern Mayas of Chichanha, under Jose Maria Tzuc, 

 made another vigorous attack on Bacalar, and Avere repulsed only 

 Avith difficulty. The siege lasted for years, and Avas only interrupted 

 when the Mexican garrison received large reenforcements. 



" Globus, V. G7, n. 1.3. 



'' Bacalar, originally called Bakhalal, was founded in 1545 by Don Melchor Pacheco. 

 Concerning the history of this place see the article " Bacalar "' in The Angeliis, Belize, 

 V. 9, 1893, pp. 48 and following. 



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