ON THE STEPS OF THE CABILDO, ATITLAN.
It will be as well now to give a slight sketch of the history of the Indians whose country we were passing through. At the time of Alvarado’s entry into Guatemala in February 1524, the tableland round about the modern towns of Santa Cruz del Quiché and Quezaltenango was occupied by the Quiché Indians, who had their capital at Utatlan, close to Santa Cruz. The Cachiquels held the land to the east of the Quichés, and their capital, Patinamit or Iximché, stood near the modern town of Tecpan Guatemala, and is called by Alvarado the “City of Guatemala.” The Tzutuhils, a less powerful tribe, appear to have held the land on the east and south shores of the lake of Atitlan, and probably had their headquarters on the site of the present Indian village of Atitlan. All three tribes spoke languages of (what is now known as) the Maya-Quiché stock, a family of languages which extends over the whole peninsula of Yucatan, through the greater part of Guatemala, and parts of Tabasco and Chiapas. The confederation of these three tribes or nations—Quichés, Cachiquels, and Tzutuhils—is sometimes spoken of as the Quiché-Cachiquel Empire; but whether it was ever a united empire, as we understand the term, is somewhat doubtful, while it is quite certain that at the time of the Spanish invasion all three tribes were at enmity with one another.
It is sometimes assumed that these people had attained a high degree of civilization, and were especially advanced in the art of building; but this assumption I believe to be mainly due to the grossly exaggerated descriptions of their towns given by the early Spanish historians, and unfortunately there are no other written records to which we can refer on these points.
Of the three aboriginal MSS. still extant, not one (so far as I know) has been attributed to the Quichés or Cachiquels, and no carved inscriptions have been found amongst the ruins of their towns; but a few glyphs painted on pottery which is ascribed to them would lead one to suppose that they made use of the Maya script. Of late years two documents have been discovered which have gained for these people some literary reputation—the ‘Popul-Vuh,’ or sacred book of the Quichés, and the ‘Chronicles’ of the Cachiquels: the fact that they are written in Roman characters shows that the transcription at least is of recent date; but whilst they are of undoubted interest with regard to mythology and traditional history, they afford no guide to the then prevailing state of civilization.
After making due allowance for the inaccuracies of the available descriptions, it may undoubtedly be conceded that at the time of the Spanish conquest the Quichés and Cachiquels lived in organized communities and that they were fairly proficient in the arts, without attempting to exalt their culture to the same level with that of the builders of Palenque or Copan, or the great towns in Yucatan. For their history since the Spanish invasion we must turn to the earliest accounts of them left to us by their conquerors.
THE PLAZA, ATITLAN.
Alvarado left Mexico in December 1523, with an army of 120 horsemen, and 40 led horses, 300 infantry, of whom 130 were crossbowmen and arquebusiers, four pieces of artillery, and some thousands of picked Indian warriors. He passed over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and marched on through the province of Soconusco, fighting a battle near Tonalá, and on the 11th April he addressed a despatch from Utatlan to his great Captain Hernando Cortés, who was then in Mexico, as follows:—
“Señor, from Soconusco I wrote to your Highness all that had happened to me as far as that place, and said something of what I looked to find ahead of me. And after I had sent my messengers to this country to inform the people that I was coming to conquer and pacify certain provinces which were unwilling to place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty, I begged help and assistance from them as vassals (for as such they had offered themselves to your Highness begging favour and aid for their country) and said that if they gave their assistance in the way they ought to do as good and loyal vassals of his Majesty, they should be well treated by me and the Spaniards in my company; and if not, I would make war on them as against traitors rebelling and fighting against the dominion of our Lord the Emperor, and as such they would be treated, and in addition to this, that we would make slaves of all taken alive in the war. And having done all this and despatched the messengers, who were men of their own people, I reviewed all my people, both foot and horse, and the next day, on the morning of Saturday, I set out in search of their land, and after marching for three days through uninhabited forest, we pitched our camp, and the scouts whom I had sent out captured three spies from a town in this land named Zapotitlán. I asked them what they came for, and they told me that they were collecting honey, but it was notorious that they were spies....”