HISTORY OF THE SITE. 23 
ments, published in the Biologia Centrali-Americana, which was noted above 
as being the first reproduction of the Maya inscriptions sufficiently accurate 
to permit their intensive study, he found time to mold the most important 
sculptures, to carry on extensive excavations, and to survey and map the 
Main Structure.? 
Although Stephens was the first to suspect that the town called Copan, 
conquered in 1530 by Hernando de Chaves, was not the same as the great 
ruined city now known by that name,’ it was Maudslay who finally exposed 
this error. As early as Garcia de Palacio’s time, 7.¢., within a generation of the 
Spanish Conquest, the city was in ruins, and Garcia de Palacio himself states 
“that they could never have been built by the natives of that province.” 
The attempt to identify the town conquered by Chaves in 1530 with the 
ruins of the same name was first made by Fuentes y Guzman, as we have 
seen, and was later followed blindly by Juarros and Galindo, who are chiefly 
responsible for the general dissemination of this erroneous idea. 
Maudslay’s work at Copan proved—as in fact Garcia de Palacio actually 
had written three centuries earlier—that the site must have been in ruins 
long before the Spanish Conquest. He ably presents this view in the follow- 
ing quotation, which, although written more than 30 years ago, still ex- 
presses the result of the latest investigations on this point: 
“Only one conclusion appears possible, which is, that Copan, Quirigua, Palen- 
que, Menche,® and Tikal were all deserted and buried in the forest before the 
Spaniards entered the country, and that the great tract of country over which these 
ruins are scattered was then inhabited by such races as the Itzaes and the inhabit- 
ants of Chacujal, who, if they were the descendants of the builders of these wonder- 
ful pueblos, had lost the power, the skill, and the culture to which these broken 
sculptures and ruined edifices alone bear witness.” 
Maudslay visited Copan thrice, the first time for three days in 1881; 
the second time for five months in 1885, when the greater part of his work 
was done; and the third time for three weeks in 1894 for the Peabody Museum 

1Maudslay’s plan of the Main Structure appears in vol. 1, plate 1 of his work mentioned above, plates 2 and 3 
showing birds-eye views of a plaster relief map of the same. Maudslay also published a plan of the Main Structure, a 
sketch-map of part of the valley (showing the Main Structure and Group 9), and several cross-sections of the 
Acropolis, in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for 1886. See Maudslay, 1886, 568-595, 608. 
2Stephens, 1841, vol. 1, pp. 99, IOI, 160. 
3This important site has been known under several different names. Rockstroh, the first European to visit the 
place, called it Menché Tinamit, Menché being the name of a former Indian chief of the region, Bol Menché, and 
Tinamit or Tenamitl, the Nahua word for “city.”” (Maudslay, 1889-1902, vol. 11 of text, p. 40, and vol. 11, plate 76.) 
This name, as Maler points out, is unsatisfactory because the two parts are derived from different languages, 
Menché or Mehenche, “young forest,” being Maya, and Tinamit, or Tenamitl, Nahuatl. Maler himself suggests 
the name Yaxchilan (1903, p. 105), a Maya word yax, meaning “greer.,” and chilan, “that which is scattered about’”’ 
and by extension, “stones,” hence Yaxchilan, “green stones.” (Maler, 1903, p. 104, note I.) This is the name by 
which the site is now generally known, not only in the immediate vicinity, but also in this country, and moreover 
has the merit of being of pure Maya origin. 
Maudslay, who follows Rockstroh here, takes exception to Spinden’s use of Yaxchilan (1913, pp. 242, 243), 
on the grounds that the discoverer should have the privilege of naming the site. This, though true as a general 
proposition, should not be allowed to apply when linguistic propriety is in question, and Maler’s name Yaxchilan 
appears preferable to Menché Tinamit. ; 
As early as 1885, Charnay named this site Lorillard City (Charnay, 1887, p. 436) in honor of Pierre Lorillard of 
New York, who partly defrayed the expenses of his work. This inappropriate name did not become fixed in the 
nomenclature of the science, however, and now is all but forgotten. 
4Maudslay, 1886, p. 591. Gordon, writing a decade later, reaches a similar conclusion. (Gordon, 1896, p. 3.) 
