SCOPE OF THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION. 43 
Bishop Cogolludo, nearly a century later (1688), adds the following 
evidence: “In a city named Tixhualatun, which signifies ‘place where one 
graven stone is placed upon another,’ they say are their archives, where 
everybody had recourse for events of all kinds, as we do to Simancas.’’! 
Finally, as late as 1697, Villagutierre found historical records still being 
kept in the hieroglyphic writing by an independent Maya tribe, the Itza, 
of Peten: “Because their king (Canek) had read it in his analtehes [fiber- 
books or codices] they had knowledge of the provinces of Yucatan, and of 
the fact that their ancestors had formerly come from them; analtehes or 
histories being one and the same thing.’” 
Indeed, so far as the manuscripts are concerned, there can be little doubt, 
in the face of such diréct evidence as the foregoing, that the Maya also 
recorded their history. 
When we come to examine the Maya codices extant, however, these 
statements are not substantiated. The Dresden Codex, for example, deals 
with the tonalamatl, and astronomical phenomena and calculations. The 
Codex Tro-Cortesianus is almost entirely given over to the record of tonal- 
amatls, and the Codex Peresianus partially so. There is a possibility, how- 
ever, that the last may have some small content of history, as a succession 
of katuns like the u kahlay katunob in the Books of Chilan Balam clearly 
appears on one side of the manuscript.’ 
II {Katun] 2 Ahau 
[Katun] 13 Ahau 
XI [Katun] 11 Ahau 
IX [Katun] 9 Ahau 
VII [Katun] 7 Ahau 
V [Katun] 5 Ahau 
III [Katun] 3 Ahau 
I [Katun] 1 Ahau 
XII [Katun] 12 Ahau 
X [Katun] ro Ahau 
VIII [Katun] 8 Ahau There was fighting in the fortress of Mayapan 
because of the seizure of the fortress and the for- 
tified town by the joint government in the city of 
Mayapan. 
VI [Katun] 6 Ahau 
IV [Katun] 4 Ahau The pestilence took place; the general death took 
place in the fortress. 
(II [Katun] 2 Ahau The small-pox broke out. 
XIII [Katun] 13 Ahau Ahpulha died the sixth year. The count of the years 
was toward the East, [the month] Pop began on 
[the day] 4 Kantothe East . . . . 9 Imix was the 
ra. | day on which Ahpulha Napot Xiu died in the year 
ie of the Lord 158. 
XI [Katun] 11 Ahau The mighty men came from the East. They brought 
the sickness. They arrived for the first time in 
this country we Maya men say in the year 1513.° 

1Cogolludo, 1688, p. 186. 
*Villagutierre, 1701, p. 353. 
3Morley, 1915, pp. 33, 84, 79-86 and Appendix VII, p. 576. 
4Matter inclosed in brackets, thus [ ], does not appear in the original. 
tinuity of the sequence, however. 
5This extract appears on the back of folio 41 of the Book of Chilan Balam of Chumayel. For a facsimile 
reproduction see Gordon, 1913, plate 76, and for a translation with notes, Brinton, 1882, pp. 155, 156, 161, and 162. 
Here the “2 Ahau”’ preserves the con- 
