I
The picture of life in the Old Maya Empire of Central America during the sixth century after Christ is reconstructed almost entirely from the archæological evidence. Unlike many of the indigenous cultures of our own country which have survived with all their wealth of legend, myth, rite and ceremonial, down to the present day, the Old Maya Empire had vanished centuries before the Discovery of America. The episode in the life of a boy who might have lived in those colorful times must necessarily be based upon what we may glean from the monuments, temples and palaces of the period, helped out here and there by some few ethnological facts about the New Maya Empire gathered a millenium later.
The term “True Man,” halach vinic, was that given by the Maya only to their highest chiefs, their hereditary rulers, who would seem to have lived in a state not unlike feudalism, even discounting the indubitable feudalistic bias with which all the early Spanish chroniclers wrote. The rulers together with the priesthood would appear to have been nearly, if not quite absolute; succession to the supreme office passed by hereditary descent, though probably individual unfitness therefor could and did modify the operation of strict primogeniture; finally a system of vassalage, of lesser chieftains dependent upon an overlord, certainly obtained. Indeed, such are the extent and magnificence of the architectural and monumental remains of the Maya civilization that in order to have achieved them, it is necessary to postulate a highly centralized form of government, administered by a small, powerful caste.