42 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
The fact also that a native Mexican scribe, writing shortly after the 
Spanish Conquest (1558), was able to amplify and expand some pre-Colum- 
bian record into such an accurate historical account as the Annals of Quauh- 
titlan proves conclusively that historical synopses were carefully kept and 
the principal events of Aztec history noted therein. In the manuscript 
mentioned, the history of the Chichimec, a Nahua tribe inhabiting the Valley 
of Mexico in pre-Columbian times, is traced from 635 Aa. D. down to 1558 
A. D. in practically an unbroken sequence of nearly a thousand years. 
These records, to be sure, contain little more than a succession of highly 
abbreviated allusions to the principal events, but their historical character 
can hardly be challenged on that account, and they may be accepted without 
reservation as reliable sources for the reconstruction of ancient American 
history. 
Unfortunately such is not found to be the case when we turn to the 
three Maya manuscripts that have come down to us, although the Spanish 
chroniclers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries explicitly state that 
the Maya also recorded their history in their books. 
The writer has reviewed this evidence elsewhere,! but the more impor- 
tant passages bearing on this point are repeated below. Many, in fact 
most, of the early Spanish chroniclers make the direct statement that the 
Maya recorded their history in their manuscripts or books. Bishop Landa, 
always one of our most reliable authorities, writing as early as 1566, says in 
this connection: “And the sciences which they [the priests] taught were the 
count of the years, months, and days, the feasts and ceremonies, the adminis- 
tration of their sacraments, days and fatal times, their methods of divination 
and prophecy, and foretelling events, and the remedies for the sick, and their 
antiquities.”* And again, “They [the priests] attended the service of the 
temples and to the teaching of their sciences and how to write them in their 
books.’’® And again, “This people also used certain characters or letters 
with which they wrote in their books their ancient matters and sciences.’’4 
Father Ponce, who made a tour through New Spain in 1588, writes: 
“The natives of Yucatan are, among all the inhabitants of New Spain, espe- 
cially deserving of praise for three things. First, that before the Spaniards 
came they made use of characters and letters with which they wrote out 
their histories, their ceremonies, the order of sacrifices to their idols and 
their calendars in books made of the bark of a certain tree.’ 
Doctor Aguilar, writing at the close of the same century, 1596, says: 
“On these [the fiber-books] they painted in color the reckoning of their 
years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, famines, and other events.’”® 
Father Lizana, writing in 1601, is scarcely less explicit: “The history 
and authorities we can cite are certain ancient characters, scarcely under- 
stood by many and explained by some old Indians, sons of the priests of 
their gods, who alone knew how to read and expound them and who were 
believed in and revered as much as the gods themselves.’” 
1Morley, 1915, pp. 33-36. ‘Landa, 1881, p. 103. ‘Aguilar, 1639, p. 87. 
*Landa, 1881, p. 74. ‘Ponce, 1872, p. 392. 7Lizana, 1893, p. 3. 
*Landa, op. cit., same page. 
